Helpful Sources:
http://design.tutsplus.com/tutorials/photoshop-brush-tool-a-basic-guide--psd-5200
Colour Coordination:
Blue - Planning
Pink - Changes
Green - Walkthroughs
For the first week I plan to mainly work on research phase and have most of it finished and to start work on some of the drawing I will be doing; as well as to sort of my ideas.
Week One:
Mon- Tues
To start of the final project the first thing I though I would do is get my ideas together both in blogger form as well as a brainstorm to get a good idea on where I would want to go with this project and how I should approach it. To start of decided to look at genres my character should fall into in which I decided to decide between my two favourite genres that being Fantasy & Sci-Fi in then I spilt them off into some sub category's that define what I want better then researching into them to see which would fit my project more. After this research I finally decided that my designs would be from a setting that was a hybrid of cyberpunk & fantasy which I would reflect onto the designs of the character & companion. Then I did some research into traditional character archetypes that I might want to do which were anti-hero or villain, in which I first looked up the most stereotypical villain i could find which let me to look at Disney's villains as they make good reference and are easy to see through, while for the anti-hero I looked at what defines them; in the end I decided to go with an anti-hero like character as their was more possibility in what I could do.
After this I decided to get a better idea of what I wanted in the project to which I did a brainstorm on a website where I put down all my ideas on what could be potentially be in my project such as character appearence, companion traits, genre choices etc.
Wed - Thurs
After this I decided on how I would be shaping my character & companion in which I decided that I would base them of one or two of the seven deadly sins, to do this I will research the sin/s that I choose from both the biblical stand point and from how media and pop culture have embodied them.
As well as looking at their meaning and what links to them moreover looking at their opposites the Seven Heavenly Virtues as well as there meanings to compare between the two so that when it comes to decide how to draw my characters I can have a better idea on how they should luck.
The research I did after this consisted of looking at different art styles which I could for my development work and final pieces in which I first looked at the Disney art work used for their films both old and new, which I looked at because I have always appreciated the designs of characters within them and decided to look in depth on how they look. In which I started by looking at the design and development work for
The Little Mermaid in which I noticed that they over exaggerate the expressions of characters to better fit them into the role which I liked as it gave the designs a nice kind of style.
Whereas next I looked at the designs for the Elsa character from the film
Frozen, which I looked at for reference of another type of villain or maybe an anti-hero as I'm unsure what her official role is, however I looked her designs regardless which contained mixed expressions that seemed more evil than the latter which I preferred more as it has certain look that draws me in. I also looked up the Shoujo manga/anime art style that dominates the female audience in Japan which I looked at as I like hair that used as it is nicely detailed without being overly detailed which will fit my design nicely.
The next thing I started doing was Art studies on the Disney art styles by drawing out some random sketches in that style, in which I first used a picture of designs for Elsa's facial expressions and tried to practice doing these to help me get the style done correctly; as well as doing my own basic sketches in this style. As well as also doing art studying on the Shoujo manga style to see if I could incorporate maybe the eyes or hair designs into my work to make it seem more unique.
Fri-Sat:
After this I decided to do a few rough sketches of character's heads based upon three out the seven deadly sins to get an idea on which one I wanted to do as well as narrowing it down to three which I did because some I weren't really interested in so I picked the ones that looked best in which I eventually went for Envy as it seemed the most interesting.
For the next week I plan to start & finish the initial design process and maybe get a little bit into the development stage. For the initial ideas stage I intend to decide on which sin my character will represent and whether to have there companion as another sin or the opposite virtue, as well as designing the basic figure for the character and choosing how I will their appearance a cross between cyberpunk and fantasy. But I have previous though of what I want my character to look like which is hooded character which is what I will be starting my design process of will, however for the companion I haven't decided but will have by the latest when Week Two starts.
Week 2:
Mon:
To start of this week I decided to do a last bit of research into the emotion jealously as it is linked to the sin of Envy which I have chosen as the main sin I will be basing my character of. After this I started my initial design phase by first designing how my character would look hooded as this is one of the appearances that I had wanted in the design from the start in which I looked up secondary research in the form of images of actual people in hoods to get a good idea of how my character should look as well as then doing 2 - 3 rough sketches of my character hooded to get a good idea on how they would look.
Also after this I thought about what I would do for the companion in which I have decided to base it's appearence upon the one of the heavenly virtues to which I chose Kindness which is the opposite on Envy.
After this I did some extra research on the how I should make the expression of Jealousy in which I started this of by looking up how it works and what defines it as well as to see how it can change between genders which I did to help decide the characters gender to which I choose female as they are more expression at with there emotions which gives me more to work with.
After I then decided to do some rough sketches and research into the jealous expression where I learned that it is mainly conveyed through the mouth and eye direction & look, to which I then started the rough drawings of some eyes of jealous looking people from fiction & non-fiction as well as the same for mouths to which I then drew them onto a rough version of my initial design to see which would suit the designs more.
Tuesday:
To start of the day I first though about where to go from here on out in regard to my design and development work, in which I decided I will begin my development work on the head of my character, to which while looking at my original initial design I decided that I wanted my characters to have messy hair, so for the development I drew 2-3 development designs of different hair styles as well as a fourth spare one that was my initial idea and will be used as a fall plan idea; for this I did a little bit of secondary research in which I gathered some images of people with messy hair and then did some sketches of their hair.
After this after much thinking I decided on doing a combination between the original hair and the 1st development design of hairs then mixed the two together where nice and fit the design well. To which afterwards I did the designs for the cyberpunk part of face in which I decided on doing it as a eye as this would justify the jealous expression I gave her, To which I started the process by just designing a variety of eyes for her and then developing one of them to look like her normal eyes so it fits the style.
Then I continued on to the finished face design in which I just combined the various elements I had developed on to one face and did that. But I also added some scars to the design to have the character have the more jealousy over things fitting the envy role better. I also added some elven ears to the characters to add some fantasy elements in.
After this I started doing some initial ideas for the torso of the main body in which I used a variety of reference images ranging from Disney concept pieces so I could get the style right as well as looking at augmentation in cyberpunk to see how I could change the body to fit in a my chosen genre.
Thurs-Fri:
To start of on Thursday I finished off my initial design process for the torso in which I found a suitable cross between the two genres for the clothing as my final initial idea to which I will then develop next. Which I started of by first looking at, some images of augmented legs to get some ideas on how to do my legs then I moved on to design some legs after getting some reference; in which I then designed 4 different versions that all looked different but had some similarities to each other in terms of design and theme, moreover after that I chose my favourite two and then combined them to make the design that I wanted to which I did a final piece for that leg to however I on doing a orthographic of this piece in which the front view didn't turn out particularly well and I will need to solve this problem by doing some practice drawing.
After this I decided on look back at my initial designs for my torso and after some thinking I decided that the clothes were a good and fit for the design I was going for except that I might alter them at a later stage to look more fantasy like however they are good for now. Then decided on doing the augmented arm design in which I first decided on getting an image of a woman's arm and then drawing it for reference and the base structure, then drawing a few designs over this structure.
After this I then though about how my research should presented in which after some suggestions from a tutor I decided on having my research being presented and the front of my sketchbook, to show. As well as that I was also advised on what my secondary character should in which of having a companion creature as the second design, I decided on doing a doppleganger character that would represent the opposite virtue of my character in which after looking at my research, I discovered that I would base the design around the virtue Kindness.
Plan:
For the next week I have decided on concentrating on my Photoshop skills and honing my abilities on the art style so it makes the final design easier to do when I come to it.
Week 3:
Tues:
To start of the week I decided to work on my Photoshop skills by doing some the development in it, to which I started by doing some designs for the ears using very dark colours ranginmg from black to gray and then using various shades to highlight where the contrast is. After this I decided on doing the eye design for the cyberpunk eye in Photoshop to have some more practice when using Photoshop as well as practicing how to do contrast in digital art.
Then after doing this, I decided on doing some 'experiment' work where I matched up the robot arm designs with the torso to see which looked best, but I decided that drawing the torso over and over again would take to much time, in which I decided on using Photoshop as i only need to draw it once and then draw each arm once and then just match them up by flicking on and off layers.
Thurs:
Later on I decided going back to my sketch book work but were stuck on how to progress with my development process, so I decided on having my classmates give me feedback the design work in which I found that the art style I had choosen to do which was the Disney Art style had slowly down graded into an anime style which not what I wanted; so to resolve this I have started to do some pratices in converting my design into the Disney art style. In which I ended up doing two designs doing the latter; so with the first design, it didn't turn out particulaly well as the eyes were to big and mouth looked out of place, plus the hiar looked to similar to hair found in anime but the face shape wasn't bad at all.
When coming to the second design, when I intially did it - it wasn't as good as I could make it as it looked to similar to the first design, however after some much needed feedback I decided on redoing the design, by first re-designing the eyes which I started after getting feedback from a classmate which in a shortened version said 'That my eyes were too rounded and full circles like anime, while Disney eyes a more like a line that curves but dosen't full go round. Also that disney eyes don't have a shine to them and are just completely dark unlike the eyes you were doing'. After seeing this I corrected why mistake by just colouring the eyes completely black for the design work.
For the holiday I have planned to finish of my 1st character in the sense that all the development and orthographic had been finished on paper as well as that I plan to start and hopefully finish the seconf character so that when I come back to college I can head back into the Photoshop work.
2 week Holiday:
During my 2 weeks of I decided to continue you on with my 1st character design and hopefully finish it as well as start the 2nd design and finish it, however the did not happen; well I did finish my first character and make it half way through the development process for the 2nd while changing lots of my design ideas around.
So to start off the holiday I first decided on doing a full quick rough sketch of my character using the different development designs that I have produced so far, excluding the hands and feet, which I did to see where I was so far in terms of development as well as to match up my finished pieces to see if they looked good together which would have been easier in Photoshop however I don't have access to it at home (oh well) but I couldn't do this for the feet and hands as they haven't been developed yet so to counter this I just used drew some basic hands and feet as placeholders.
After this to fix my previous problem I decided on doing my development designs for the hand and feet in which I firstly had a though on how it should be presented to which I then looked at my portfolio for reference in this and decided on something that looked presentable. After this I started by first drawing a normal hand as reference and then using it as a template for designs which is something I also did for the feet and then did 2-3 development designs for each.
After this I did a quick orthographic of my first character, which was for the most part a alright piece however there were many problems that met this such as a lack of feet as I need some help with this as it has proven quite difficult which I will ask when back at college. I also used a lot of placeholders in this design as there was a lot of things I couldn't do without help or practice at a later date. Also
After this I decided on moving too my second character design as any other design work for the first would be more optional to do in Photoshop rather than in a sketch book. So to start I started by working on the expression and face a bit by first looking at some lust pictures and doing some designs of mouths, however with the eye design it only took one design as the design I drew fit the character perfectly as well as then practicing on the type of facial that I want for both my characters as the previous character orthographic did not look so good in the face as it didn't look like a Disney art style; so to fix this I looked at some pictures of present day Disney animation and old animation like Alice in Wonderland to see which one works with design better.
Then I moved onto the hair designs in which I started of by first looking at some research images showing hair styles that a glamorous look to them which I did as my character is supposed to look really attractive compared to the first; so I did 2-3 drawings of a few hair styles and then instead of thinking about which would look better by redrawing the hair and head multiple times, I decided to wait until I was back in college so I could use Photoshop for this bit of the development.
After this I did a few different designs on how my 2nd characters' augmentic arm should look in which I did around 3-4 that were based around having them look alot better then than the other character's arm as it symbolises how she gets better stuff because she's more attractive, in which the designs arn't as detailed as the previous but do look more slimer and human. I decided to decide on the arm in a similar fashion to the hair.
Week 6:
My plan for this week is to finish off my 2nd character design while not in college as in college I would like to start my Digital work in which I have to decided to start of by doing some quick rough sketches of my first characters before confronting how I should paint/colour the image as well doing some rough sketches in Photoshop of my 2nd character to help will my design work.
Tues:
To start of the day I decided to do some quick sketches of my characters in Photoshop which I did so I could use them at a later date. After this I decided to do some more work on my development of lust/ 2nd character in which I did some development designs where I drew out the character design I currently had from head to start of the thighs in which I ten began changing the design a couple of times such as stopping hair and clothes with others I have designed to see which design looks best with another.
Thurs:
For this day after getting some feedback from a tutor, I decided to address the points that needed work, which were that I needed to improve my style to look more Disney as my work had turned more towards the manga style; as well as also be given the goal to look at artists who used the art style to see how to do it more accuratly.
So I decided on first looking for some images of Tangled that Glen Keane had done as his art was really related towards what i'm doing, so I found some imaged that I liked and moved them over to Photoshop in which I ten traced over their outline to get the template of how the art style should look and then drew my characters into that, while keeping the reference in the corners of the screen.
After some extra feedback from my tutor I have learned that, I need to simplify my designs I bit more as well as fix certain features such as I need to fix the eye so it fits the style better as well as make the hair on Lust look more natural when it drops while the hair on on Envy needs to lean more towards the art style as and the moments it's to detailed in comparison.
To fix the eye I was shown how to use the Laso tool which allowed me to make a better looking eye than before as well looking at various references of Disney styled eyes to get the style right. However the design I did could have been better as it dosen't blend that well.
Eye Written Walkthrough:
In which to start of the eye design I first used the laso tool around the eye to ensure no paint escapes the area I want to paint in, then I moved on to painting a black oval/circle in the center of the eye using hard brushes as well as drawing the outline to where the light would be in the eye, then painting the inside of that white using a.. let's call it a soft brush, then continuing to use that soft brush to paint in the rest of the eye starting with choosing a colour and then working from left to right starting around the white area with the darker shade and then slowly progressing towards light shades as I move towards the right.
Week 7 & 8:
For this week I continued on with trying to correct my art style as well as pushing on with the development work. During the week I have done many things to process through my development in hopes of reaching my final design pharse; so to start of one the things I did was some more digital drawings on practicing the art style so I could grasp how to do the final design better when I came to it.
I continued on doing some digital drawings of my character starting of with doing a more accurate version of Envy's orthographic with a few placeholders being used for the time being. In which I ten had someone take a look at it and get there thoughts of it, to which I learned that I need to fix the hair to fit the style more rather than the manga art style it was leaning towards to which I did about three designs of a few hairstyles that were designed to look slightly evil as well as messy as that was the theme I was going for with the hair.
After this I began work on my final piece as I believe I had got the basic style down, in which I started by first drafting out one to five templates and then picking out the one I like the most which was the two characters on opposite sides of a mirror with there hands touching together, which was inspired by some fan art from Future Diary. So to start I began by first drawing the outlines of the characters very roughly and then I decided to straighten out the lines by drawing over them in a more neater way as well as using different brushes or pencil to get different effects.
Then I began to work on the final design's colours, in which I began by looking up Disney movies that use the old colour scheme rather than the new ones such as 'The Little Mermaid' or 'The Lion King', in which I studied to learn how to use the colour palette by practing on some older designs.
Use a fuzzy brush for shadows.
Use seperate layers for shadows and colour
Using pencil type of brush for basic colour.
Turn opactity down (Basic Col - 85%) {Shadows - 16% - 25%)
Then I began doing it on the final piece using everything I had learned from the previous part and came out with a pretty decent piece so far, however I then moved onto the eyes as I had been using a placeholder in to now and am currently looking over disney images attempting to get that specfic place correct, as well as deciding on how i'm supposed to make it look like the characrers are looking at each other through a mirror.
Plan:
On the last few weeks I plan to finish of all the little details before I begin the mounting, in which I have decided to work on a little bit of everything such as finshing of any sketchbook work left by doing those last two orthographics and putting in any forgotten research. I also plan to go over my final design a few times to check that everything feels okay after recieving some feedback from Drew.
Week 9:
To start of the week I decided on first finishing of the last two subjects of research as well as then moving those to my sketchbook. I also went and finished of my poster and am currently going over my final design work.
15/05/15
Soon after this I came to a 'finished' piece of work that I believe I am happy with, and am just finishing of bits of my sketchbook as well as the evaluation.
19/05/15
Mounting my work.
Evaluation:
The project I was given allowed me to create anything I wished so for this project I had intended to create a final piece of concept art of two characters for a fantasy/ cyberpunk genre while using the Disney art style (DAS) as well as produce a full design process for the two using both traditional drawing and digital drawing, while using a variety of research to help me along the way. I did this project because I wanted to have some challenge while I worked which is the reason I used DAS.
Research Phase:
For the research phase of my project I decided to start out by looking at the themes my characters would be set in and looked into games, films and other media that where also set within these genres which I did to get a better idea on what elements and themes would be incoparated into my character's design.
I also had a look at the Disney art style (DAS) which I was looking at for most of the project as a consent reference and reminded as to how my work is going to look; this I did because the art style would be the foundation of my work so I needed this reference to progress.
I did use an artist or two during my development and research process for reference in which I used Glen Keane a man who has worked using the DAS for years and was a great influence on my work; using quite a lot of development and concept pieces for help. Later on I did look at a variety of Diseny films to look at how they did the colours which helped me alot later on when doing some of the development as well as my final piece in which it helped.
I also dipped a bit into the manga art style to see if i could incorperate any elements from their into my work however it did not work out and soon didn't use it at all; this research that I did not really help and was more of a hinderance later which I resolved over time. However later on used it for expressions which were a big help when doing jealousy as it's hard to display that emotion but this research helped with that as it's pulled of quite nicely in manga.
I also looked at the seven deadly sins and there opposites as I wanted to base the characters of two of the sins to which I looked at each sin until I decided upon two: Envy & Lust. To which afterwards I looked at some artists impressions of them to get a good idea on how I should present these characters; this helped my work as it allowed me to get a good perspective on how my characters should look or atleast an idea of something I should aim my characters to look like.
Later in on the body project I looked at few themes I could use for my final piece which I did because I wanted my final piece to convey something other than it being just a boring 2D image so I decided on basing my design on Body dsymorphia as this was close to what i wanted.
Lastly I did do some research into antomy but that mainly helped me make the proptions I wanted for my characters.
To improve upon this I should have looked into the topics in more context as well as presented the later ones better in my sketchbook.
Development:
In the development phase I had quite a few successs in which one was that I was able to nail the Disney art style after many hours of practicing in both traditional and digital, however during the first part of my sketchbook the style started heading the wrong way so it dosen't look as good as it could have. Next in my work when designing the different parts of the body I believe the way Iayed out my work was pretty good however later on I feel like it deterioted later on as it got a bit messy.
Over the course of the development not all of the ideas that were in the development made to the final piece, in which the first one was the setting which was supposed to be a cross between fantasy and cyberpunk, however the when doing the designs I couldn't work the fantasy in into it as the two didn't gell very well together. But ther cyberpunk element did make it in becoming the main setting and what a heavy amount of design work was based around.
The main ideas that I managed to develop into the FMP are made of a range of things. One of them is the seven deadly sins aspects which grew alongside with both characters and helped to develop the characters into their current appearence. Other ideas that made into the final piece were the theme of the piece which was body dsymorphia which I found has fit nicely with piece as well as the second characters occupation which was a prostitude which I did because it fittted nicely with the roles of the character and elped shape her development more.
.
I didn't use that many different materials and media in this project which was not what I had hoped for, however the things i did use where traditional drawing and digital drawing. I used the tradtional drawing mainly for the development side of my work so primarily in my sketchbook, which I used because using them in development is easier as well as more convient if i make mistakes. The other media I used digital drawing I did it mainly for more the development work as well as the final piece which I did because it's more versatile to use than traditional drawing as well as that I can create a my final piece better with less mistakes.
To improve I believe I should have used more media and materials to express my designs more as well as having more variety in the development work.
Final
On the final piece their were a few success one of them being that I believe that the way the characters are postioned shows the theme I chose quite nicely however I really like the rest of the design that much as I don't think it look perticulaly well but I do believe I did the lighting quite well in comparion as well as the enviroment that serves as the background.
While at the same time I believe that there were quite a few problems that I found with my final piece, one of the problems was that I didn't like how the coilours gelled with the outlines as you can barely see despite that they are crucial to image but I kind of fixed this by bringing there opacity up to a higher level and turning down the colours opacity.
I also didn't like the mirror I did for the final piece as it dosen't really look like a mirror and everytime i try to add some streams of light to the mirror it just didn't look right however I kind of fix this later on but it still looks kind of out of place.
To improve upon this piece I should look at the Disney style more in both the actual drawing and colour, as well as practiced my Photoshop skills more so it would have looked more professional.
Conclusion
So in conclusion at the end of this project Ifeel that I did quite well with my development and research parts as I spent a lot of time on those, while the final piece didn't quite live up to what I had expected it to look like and though that I could have improved upon it further by practicing the colour a bit more and by being a bit more independent.
If I could do this project again however I would have done something not as challenging maybe a creature and it's enviroment because that's what I like to do, however if I had to do what I just did again I probably would have done a bit more research into Disney as well as researched more artists and there techniques.
This genre is a sub-genre within sci-fi that relies heavily on certain themes which are the blurred line between virtual reality & real life which can resulted in some intresting worlds and characters; the world of cyberpunk also relies heavily on human augmentation (swapping body parts for mechanical ones) & heavy use of robots/ A.I. Cyberpunk has influnced many different insustry that could be used as refrence points in the future which ranges from the film & TV industry that include films like Blade Runner. I can also look at the Japanese anime/manga industry for idea by looking films like Ghost in the Shell as well as TV series Psycho Pass as both are cyberpunk themed media; and lastly I can look at game industry for reference which includes titles like Deus Ex, Synicate, Cyberpunk & System Shock. 
This genre can be desribed as the world that is primarily not set on our planet and features a lot of magic and supernatural powers/phenomuoms, for the world, plot & setting. Within in this imaginary world & magical creatures are quite common. The fantasy genre has found it's may into most of the world's different medias ranging from various films including the Percy Jackson films, as well as being just as popular in TV series including the shows Game of Thrones & Merlin. Games have also been home to fantasy for quite sometime with games like Final Fantasy & Dragon Age. 
A classic example of a villain from fiction is Ursula The Sea Witch from Disney's The Little Mermaid who serves as the primary antagonist for the movie; she is depicted as a strange cross between woman and octopus which is a strange combination however it gives of negative effect as octopus are not the most lovely looking fish out there in which it helps create a disturbing like appearance that tells the viewer that this is the 'bad guy' furthermore she also supports quite a large body which could be seen as a negative appearance due to most real people not liking fat bodies and tend to discriminate against people who have the latter which would make her more identifiable as a villain to a child as this gives a negative effect as children are generally warded off getting fat and is seen as a bad thing in a child's eye. Another way to see her as a villain is by the use of colour as the colours used for her tend to be quite dark which gives her more of villainous look rather than having bright colours that other in the film sprout. 
An example of a anti- hero is Snape from the Harry Potter books & films who has the appearance of the grumpy looking man and is hard to distinguish from any other type of character based upon appearance but it is in his personality that he shines as a anti-hero as he does many things that would be consided evil in his lives but has done them for good reasons an example of this is a quote by the author of book 'Yes, I do; though a very flawed hero. An anti-hero, perhaps. He is not a particularly likeable man in many ways. He remains rather cruel, a bully, riddled with bitterness and insecurity—and yet he loved, and showed loyalty to that love and, ultimately, laid down his life because of it. That's pretty heroic'. He is example of The “Disney” Anti-Hero Category.
The next art style I will look at is similar to that of previous in which the style is the anime art style or to be perspefic the shoujo art style seen in manga & anime which is not as over exaggerated as the others with sligtly smaller eyes and has more detail put into the hair compared to others. It also features a lot of flashy extras behind character to help convey the feeling being shown along with the expression on characters faces which is the heart of the style as it helps seperate characters from each other. Examples include Skip Beat, Ao Haru Ride & Kamigami no Asobi. 
Body Dysmorphia
