Hurray for Sprites and Game Maker!

So I picked up a new game editor this weekend, and have been playing around with designing sprites. Game Maker is a pretty neat little editor, it's pretty user friendly and by that I mean artist friendly, my knowledge of programming is fairly rudimentary but even I could stumble through it  without much difficulty. Before long I had a moving character and something that could be considered a game mechanic. I have strong interest in game design but my interest is mainly from an artistic perspective so when designing a game mechanic I'm always thinking "How cool would this look?"



Lilly is a ghost who has forgotten why she died, you must help Lilly traverse purgatory in search of the keys that unlock the gates leading out of purgatory and help her remember and find closure as to how she died. Along the way you will be hunted by the reaper of lost souls, seeking to send you to your final destination.

 The stone is a kind of symbolism, it's a physical representation of Lilly's guilt and the way I want her to move is as though she is constantly struggling to carry it with her. I know it's kind of a deep way for giving a reason, of why a ghost is carrying around a big rock, but why else would a ghost be lugging around a rock?

                                 

Game Maker is best used with sprites, so as I was learning it I was swapping between it and photoshop, painting up little sprite images as I needed them. I had the vision of the main character being a ghost that it is weighed down by a heavy stone tied to her, and the gameplay mechanic is built around the idea of lugging a heavy stone around a level while trying to outrun something. Essentially a platformer where your struggling to just barely escape. Sounds like a recipe for success and to be able to actually let my game designer friends play around with the mechanic rather than just drawing it out and trying to explain it is a definite plus.

As an artist with an interest in Game Design I'm looking for better ways to communicate my ideas, Thats really why I've choose to be a game artist, because a picture tells what thousand words can't, and it's just easier to communicate with a drawing then with a written description. Art's pretty awsome in how it communicates, but I think its important as a game artist to learn how a little bit about game design too and learn how to make functioning game mechanics even if it's only a basic knowledge, I think that makes it easier for the designer and the artist to work together and create a gaming experience that has a meaningful impact with the players

Creature Portrait

I was wanting something to paint this weekend and drew up a portrait for a creature. The idea behind the creature is that it is a cave dwelling reptile probably having evolved from a  puffer fish. It is about the size of  a dog and is bipedal it has venomous sacks along it's back with quills protruding from each sack that can inject large doses of the venom. It's something you would definitely regret running into.

Grim- Designing a Page and my Process: Part 1

So I just finished the black and white and first page of my web-comic, and I thought it would be a good idea to document my process and approach. In comics  I feel a picture should tell a thousand words, and one thing that I am striving for in this comic book project is to make each page have a strong visual impact, where the story could be told with as few words as possible.

Before getting started I did a rough scene break down of the pages, having written my story ahead of time, I already know whats going to happen so my next step is figuring out how to tell this story visually and in as few words as possible, comics are a visual medium and unlike books we have to show, not tell. Below is a breakdown of the first four pages. 

Something I've learned from movies is that you need to capture the audiences attention within the first 10 minutes or they will lose interest, action tends to work best. The Lord of the Rings trilogy does a great job of this with the war scene in the first movie, Gandalf fighting the Balrog in the second film, and Smeagol murdering his hobbit pal for the ring in the third movie. The first 10 minutes in a movie equate to about the first 5 pages in a comic book, so those first 5 pages have to be epic.

My first page is a medieval war scene with blood and action on every panel. It establishes the time frame and sets the overall mood of the story. The words don't really matter to me on this page the primary focus is the visual impact of each panel. For the page I did a series of rough thumbnails of each panel developing a composition within the panel while also thinking how each panel will develop the overall composition of the page. (I will discuss that a little bit later.) 

Once I have a plan developed I then go to work doing hand drawings of each of my panels. I love to draw so this is by far my favorite step in the process. I draw out each panel in my sketchbook very large and focus heavily on my facial expressions and dynamic poses. While the humans are drawn to be a little more realistic and serious than my animal characters, I still keep a somewhat cartoon like stylization to them because it is a story with talking animals and fairy tale subject matter, and to make them too realistic would cause them feel out of place in the universe. I did a lot of concept work before this stage so drawing in this style feels pretty natural to me at this point so all of these detailed drawings probably take about a day to complete.

 After finishing my drawings I then get them ready to compose on a page. From my thumbnails and roughs I already know how my page is going to work compositionally and I've drawn each panel to help that overall composition. Each panel is designed to encourage you to move your eye around the page and if you follow the arrows on the image below you'll see those deliberate decisions in action.

So following the arrows from top to bottom.

The sweep of the blade killing the first soldier pushes the eye towards the left, to look the soldier to the far right. The soldier on the right is looking at a downward angle towards the second panel. 

The blade with the soldiers reflection  on the second panel has a slight curve that draws the eye to the third panel of the soldier getting his face cut. The soldier turns his face to the right drawing the eye to the fourth panel of the soldier getting impaled.

The soldiers drops his blade and it's angle draws the eye to the fifth panel where both the dead hand and the blade are pointing towards the fifth panel. The soldiers slack dead eyes in the fifth panel are looking up towards the next body shot with arrows and the man impaled by arrows is looking towards the dead body to the right. 

Finishing the page.

Being a huge fan of comic books, I put a lot of thought in just how I would go about telling a story, and it's always satisfying as your hard work starts to take shape. My next post will be discussing color and painting techniques. 

-Matt

Grim-Longshadow W.I.P

This is some more work with the Grim project. This is one of the main characters of the story, Longshadow, a mink. Longshadow is a bloodthirsty little fellow with a strong distaste for humanity. Named for his jet black fur Longshadow does his best work at night, slinking his way behind enemy lines in the moonlight. 

Longshadow's disgust for humanity is stemmed from trappers and their viewing his hide as a valuable commodity. Having lost brethren and family to traps and snares has left a bitter taste in the mouth of this member of the weasel family, and has left him bitter and resentful.of all humanity, even those humans of like mind that work towards a similar cause.

 Though surly, and unwavering in his distrust for humanity, Longshadow is still of good nature, and is able to put his own racism aside and work side by side with even those he hates most, if for a cause that benefits the greater good. But these alliances are temporary, and when the dust clears so too does the alliance end, and any wrongs  committed to this black furred rogue, will be answered for, with blood if necessary.

This painting isn't one of my favorites, I've come to realize that I'm going to need to revisit the design perhaps or perhaps even scrap everything and draw him all over again. After painting the rat I realized that this design just isn't meshing well with the style that I want to present. I realize the armor just isn't working and it has to change. I got alot of practice with this painting though and thats always a good thing. 

Grim Paintings

One of my projects is the development of a web-comic in my spare time. Inspired by old world world fairy tales Grim is an Arthurian legend set during the Dark Ages when war is a constant and fear common. In this time magic is as real as any blade, and pervades every part of the world including the animals, giving them sentience and human emotions. I've designing and evolving the art style and this is a sample of how I have been developing the comics art style. this is sample of the sentient rats in the story.

The storyline of the rats is that they were at one time enslaved by the hares and though their now free, they live amongst the hares as a second class citizen within the hare kingdom known as the Warrens, which was built upon the backs of the rats enslaved ancestors. Some rats live within the Warrens seeking to survive in a world where they are barely tolerated, some rally together in secret working towards equality, peacefully for some and through bloodshed for others. And some leave the Warrens altogether seeking a new life and a new land to call their own. 

The style for the animals evolved gradually for the animals the first designs being much more humanoid by desig. I later changed this design drawing inspiration from movies like The Secret of Nimh and The Great Mouse Detective This style I felt sold the fairy tale motif more effectively than the earlier graphic novel style.

Back to Basics

I've been spending a large portion of my time lately doing anatomy studies, In my current sketch book I'm visiting each section of the human body and doing in depth studies of the skeletal and muscle structures starting with the skull and facial muscles. I've just started my work on the facial muscle drawings and decided it would be nice to push these studies and do paint overs on the finished drawings. I was going for a more old world design with inspirations from Da'Vinci's sketchbook.

The facial muscles are always my favorite muscles to draw. There just cool to look at . I painted extreme light around the dark edges of this drawing and dark shadows around the light edges to really make the overall image have a little more punch

Every heavy metal fan with any self respect, knows how to draw a skull. Its one of the first things I ever learned how to draw and still one of my favorite things to draw. The hardest part was trying to not make it look all stylized and evil looking which was the most challenging part of these studies. 

Well the high poly is complete for this model, working on getting a low poly built for the projection. I'm looking forward to seeing this when it's all complete.