Final Character

The most successful concept was chosen and developed.

Using tutorials from artists who have worked on League of legends to improve my painting technique.

Tutorials

http://chrisbjors.deviantart.com/art/League-of-Legends-Vi-and-Jinx-step-by-step-436212143

http://shilin.deviantart.com/art/2013-Shilin-s-drawing-tutorial-walkthrough-439701179

Combining Concepts

I have tried to combine the Chinese dragon and the cannon dragon, taking influence from ancient Chinese fire arms.

The first concept was my first try at this level of development. I liked the helmet and claws but overall I felt the image was quite flat and didn't have enough detail, feedback was form peers was also the same. The second concept was much more successful in combing the Chinese style and cannons, as well as showing of the spirit aspect.

I have taken the strongest concepts forward and began adding details and highlights. i found that using gradients in this part of the process helps to add  detail to the character as shown in the DOTA character guide.

http://media.steampowered.com/apps/dota2/workshop/Dota2CharacterArtGuide.pdf

Dragon Concept taken forward

I have chosen to take the dragon concept forward, although I feel both concepts are strong.

I have made quick sketches of a wide variety of armors and weapons. I have taken this process to encourage me to keep iterating at each step and explore more options for concepts, encase I find a stronger concept than before.

The favored designs were the Chinese, polish and my favorite the black knight 

Dragon Concept

This idea was inspired by an idea of a creature(dragon or snake creature maybe?) encased in layered armor.

I have continued to use the rubbing out to create shapes technique to create these as it gives good impression of the layers. I feel i spent to much time making the layer armor, this stage me be better done by line sketches.

I like these concepts that are similar to a Chinese dragons, i like the idea of the smoke and the sharp claws as weapons. The smoke concept on its own however may be to similar to another character in league of legends, Nocturne.

Scarab Priest Concept

After doing some research into the character creation process at riot, I have started to conceptualize some ideas. Above I have been inspired by an existing world in League of Legends. The brothers shown in the research page are the only characters from the mysterious land and I thought it would be interesting to further explore that theme.

I have started by doing quick sketches of random ideas inspired by Egyptian mythology to get a verity of possible directions

I most preferred the the walking scarab man idea, therefore I have began to use silhouettes to quickly pick out details. I like this process so far although when picking out shapes i often take to long at this stage.

Overall Design Process at Riot Games for League of legends

Character design is an iterative process at Riot, all aspects for the character concept can change and the character can also be inspired by many things :

Backstory/lore

Name

Theme

 Abilities

 Inspiration – other champions, mechanic, personality, real world ideas

At Riot they also have many people working together to create a character although the main idea usually comes from one person. They may also get a verity of people to work on concepts who haven't worked at riot before.

Research into artists that have worked at riot, blogs and youtube channels that show there process. some of them also have tutorials on how they work:

IronStylus – Michael Maurino – Concept Artist

Lead concept artist for Riot Games. His blog shows his process and concept art for certain champions in league of legends, as well as skin designs for champions.

He prefers to design powerful female characters, as he wants to address the ‘problem’ with much of League of Legend’s art has – the over sexualized characters, which is more obvious in the older character designs

http://ironstylus.blogspot.co.uk/

Paul Kwon – Concept Artist

http://www.paulsketch.com/

KNockmaw - Kienan Lafferty – Splash Artist

Was splash artist at Riot Games, now works on his own projects? His YouTube and deviant art have many tutorials for artists and show of the process when he created the splash art for League of Legends

http://www.youtube.com/user/KienanLafferty

http://knockwurst.deviantart.com/gallery/

Michalivan – Michal Ivan – Splash Artist

Created a lot of the more recent splash art for League of Legends

He was hired through the digital media group Puppet Works, who are also responsible for several of the more recent animations for League of Legends.

http://www.puppetworks.eu/#/work/league-of-legends/splash-art

http://michalivan.deviantart.com/

Idea 2 League of Legends & Brief

After some more thought on my project I had decided to go with a project  that I would really enjoy.

My focus for this project is to research other artists work process then apply this to my own work. My creative outcome is to create unique character concepts and splash art for the game League of Legends.

Brief:

Conceive, design and produce a character concept and splash art for League of Legends MOBA game.

Outcomes

1 – Research character design pipelines and apply these to my own work.

2 – Research concept drawing styles and apply these to my own work

3 – Improve Character anatomy through research/study

Sci-Fi Racing game - IDEA 1

 One of my project ideas was to create characters for a racing a sci-fi racing game this has mainly been influenced by games like XG3 Extreme G Racing(which I played allot when I was younger) and films like Pacific Rim. Theses two influences show how each of the teams have individuality, i think the racing game idea would therefore push me to have more variation in my concepts, to make each team different.

Semester 2 - Gallery visit

Juliet on the Balcony by Thomas Francais Dicksee, 1875.

First Impressions
Fantasy, Very detailed and well painted. The use of light, contrast and color caught my eye.

Description
A portrait of Juliet from Romeo and Juliet. The painting shows Juliet gazing out from her balcony (a famous scene in the play). Uses Oil on canvas, smooth and detailed textures, unfortunately hard to see because the painting is far away. Uses saturated/light colors, which contrast with the background and edges of the composition which are dark. Juliet is mostly pale and has light from the moon cast on her, this brings the viewers attention to her.

Observation
The use of light and pale colors give the feeling of neutrally, cold and sadness. Her passive posture, face expression and hand position suggest sadness, passiveness and worried. Juliet is facing out from the balcony into the distance, the outside cool colors/light contrast with the warm colors from inside the house, which emphasize Juliet loneliness. Overall composition is built around Juliet.

Questions that i felt were asked:
-Why is she alone? -why is she standing in the balcony looking for something? -why is she sad/worried?

Critical View
-Use of light and color work well to convey the feelings of the subject.
-Light reflectively and the use of texture make the piece eye catching. I am impressed withe the detail overall.

-Could maybe use darker shadows around the edges to further bring attention to Juliet

Reflective View
Feels very fantasy inspired, the overall use of color, light, texture, composition is very impressive. reminds me of how turner uses light in his paintings.
I am planning to do a painting/concept art for this semester, I would like to continue to evaluate other artists work and use there techniques to improve my work.

Final Character Pose Sheet

Final character design.

Mixed Development

Here i have tried to mix aspects from all the characters so far, with the aim of creating a final character.

character development 'butcher'

These are some characters based on silhouettes that were liked by my peers and myself.

I have made them more aggressive to further fit with the aggressive Celtic warrior theme.

After reading some Celtic stories I Identified common characters in the Celtic culture. The above are some characters based on the Godess Morigan.

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Below is some of the back story research, a list of common Celtic characters that i have been taking influence from.

These stories take place in Eireann, an ancient, mythical version of Celtic Ireland.

Characters from Celtic stories:

Nemed the Great, the first ruler and ancestor for all the races in Eireann.

Taun: chieftain of the Cesair from the land Eireann, he was powerful and happy, so the gods allowed the wild to destroy his people, he was then tasked with recording history and was reborn many times as a stag, boar and eagle.

Gods:

Dagda: the god in human guise, strong, spiritual, oldest and wisest.

Ogma: the brother of Dagda: mind over strength, teacher and scholar, invented the Ogham script.

Manannan Mac Lir: god of the sea, commander of the De Danann fleet, magical air ships and named the Isle of Man.

Breas the beautiful: son of Elethan, king of the Fomor, champion in battle, brave but Arrogant and unforgiving.

Sisterhood of War Witches, the Badb: Macha, Morrigan and Nemain, shape shifters, beautiful one second and bloodthirsty harpies the next.

Morfhis the druid: ancient spells.

Dian-cecht: healer and god of medicine / his son Miach: hates the old ways of healing and uses magic(perhaps blood magic) to replace body parts and heal.

Donn: ruler of the dead and the otherworld.

Goibhnu, luchta and Creidne: craftsmen.

Races of people:

Cesair: Tauns people

Fir Bolg: the family of Nemed, the first high king Eochai, they divided Eireann into provinces.

Tuatha De: came to Eireann to share with the Fir Bolg but the Fir Bolg refused, and war ensued.

Story draft – reference from the stories on The Silver Arm

Nauda was a great Queen but, was betrayed by her companion Breas, who secretly poisoned Nauda in battle. Nauda lost her arm in the violent battle against the Fir Bolg and was believed to be dead. Her crown was given to Breas because Nauda was not whole of body therefore not strong enough to lead, as was tradition. Breas was chosen because of her beauty and strength in battle, she was a respected warrior, but was a weak leader.

Breas had been persuaded by the powerful wizard, Balor of the Evil Eye, that Nauda would be the downfall of the Tautha De. Balor had shown Nauda a false vision and used his evil magic to corrupt Breas. Breas went mad, because the realization that she had killed her Queen and the evil corruption from Balor.

At first Breas led well but taxed the people severely because she was being threatened by the Fomor she gave into their demands and allowed them to raid there lands.

Nauda survived the battle but had lost her arm and was weak from the poison. She lay in the forest by a stream bleeding and praying to the gods for strength. Nauda fell unconscious but awoke, a tent with her wounds bandaged.

Warrior Development

The first image has been posted before but I have brought the characters to a more finished state.

The characters are wearing armor and weapons that were commonly wore in Celtic times. For this idea I created a proud, veteran warrior.

These characters are also wearing some historical armor, but I've tired to make them look more menacing as the character is supposed to be the antagonist in the story.

Research Update

Here is a good chunk of the reference I have been using during the project. The top collection consists of:

- Athletes and modern fighters

-Stock photos that I felt show the attitude my character could have

-Pose reference, because I need to improve the variety of poses in my characters

This moodboard has examples of warrior characters from video games, films and TV, that have interesting traits my character may have.

I also have historical reference from the books I mentioned previously.