Sparth: Closer Look

Above: 3 concept designs by Sparth

Shape Breakdown:

I broke apart the above image, splitting it into foreground (red) and background (blue).

This is a great example of form language, as one can clearly separate each layer of depth on the shapes alone.The boat in the foreground is predominantly a common ship silhouette, and the eye immediately recognises this. The hood of the ship is a strong curve, and combined with the rowing character creates a very readable form. The viewer can clearly see the ship form, even before detailing and texture. The background features multiple repeating Ziggurat's, the squared pyramids often built by Sumarian and Babylonian civilizations. It's square-based imagery contrasts greatly from the round ship in the foreground.
Finally, even though the "birds" in the sky are simple flecks and lines, our eye and mind immediately recognises these as avian forms. Not only do these add to the world that the artist has created, but they also create a sense of depth and scale.

The ship looks man made, featuring many patterns and designs appearing to be decorative.

The artist has designed the canvas area of the ship to appear stitched, with large recognizable rope ties and off-coloured patches. The asymmetry of the wooden planks that hold up the ship also add to the cultured, man made design.

The background buildings are peppered with small windows and rectangles of shading, increasing the overall sense of depth and further solidifying the idea that yes, these shapes are buildings.

Shape Breakdown

Sparth is a particular fan of using domes and spheres in his environment designs. These are reminiscent of mosques and the domed architecture of the middle east. The use of these repeating shapes in varying sizes add depth and believe-ability in the piece. You can faintly make out repeats of these in the background, creating depth and implying that this is not the only structure in this environment. The use of stripes and stepped shapes form staircases and generate architecture for the viewer to interpret. 

The use of sweeping forms near the bottom of the piece guide the viewers eye, and serve as roadways and paths. On closer inspection, these are almost abstract in their nature, but collectively create a believable ground platform design. 

30/10/2015 - A New Hope (ft Ryan Locke)

Today I spoke with Ryan, mostly to try and set aside some of the doubts and anxiety that have built up over the last few weeks. Worries about my research not being relevant enough, or that the materials and subjects I've been looking at aren't leading me to what I want to create.
Ryan took my ideas and put a research spin on it, we discussed the elements of design, as well as the visual language of shapes, and how this is essentially the root of all design.
For this year, I not only want to improve my own work and knowledge in the concept art realm, but also fill my mental reference library with the form and shapes I will study.

I want to create a design book. A book that features all of the visual elements required to create a world and tell a story. I've decided to base this story on the Cornish/British folklore tale, Jack the Giant Killer. Using the visual language I absorb from research, studying non-western culture in current media, I will imbue this tale with this language, creating a new and unique visual document that will not only show a story and world, but also how I design these elements.

What I wanna do:

Research - How Film/Game/TV interpret non-western cultures and display this
                  Semiotics - How it works for art
                  Shape language - Character/Environment/ANYTHING
                  World Of Warcraft - Pandarin Realm 
                  Break down concept art and show cultural influences/why they did it
                  Shape Design - Character sillhouettes
                                            Environment forms
                                            
                                            
Practical -  Shape language:
                                              Shape study/Paintovers
                                              Character Thumbs (silhouette/line/etc)
                                              Environment Thumbs ("")
                                              Pattern studies
                                              


Production - Visual Design Book:
                                                       Thumbnails - Character/Environment/Composition/Props
                                                       Character Sketches/Clothing/Tools/Vehicles/Weapons
                                                       + Rendering: Characters/Environment/Composition pieces
                                                       
                                               --------------------------------------------------

So this little list is a combination of my own ideas and some of the research aspects that Ryan discussed today. I already feel better just looking at it. Titles! Categories! My gosh.
                                           

Character Concepts

Environment thumbnails

This week i've been looking at environment artists as well as concept designers. More specifically, how I can improve my own concept design pipeline and overall visual aesthetic. In particular, I struggle with creating depth, so this project is helping improve my understanding of environments and depth.

 I chose to focus on thumbnails at this point as I feel like it would be a good place to start regarding my project, which I hope to conclude with a large portfolio of design, covering characters, environments and all the elements necessary to build a visual world. Using the information gathered from my research on visual culture, I hope to improve my own concept art work, as well as collate my newly gained knowledge to further enhance my abilities as a concept designer.

The bottom right image I tried to replicate the colour scheme and landscape forms of a traditional Japanese town.

Side work

Recent commissioned paintings/illustration 

Preparation for presentation and idea collation!

The above diagram depicts how I believe visual culture is formed. Initially I was torn between Character and Environment influences. Both of these are huge regions to cover. However, these two attributes are interchangeable, and codependent. I realised a few things:

• People (or characters) are shaped by the environment around them. Physical attributes, how the characters look are visually reflected by their environment. Clothing is created from available materials, whilst the source of available food will affect the populations build.
  If these people were born in subterranean lava caves, would they need to breath oxygen?
  Would they be slimmer and more agile, or motionless to preserve energy?

• Environments are equally affected by the presence of people. Whether this is direct, like architecture and housing, or indirect such as footprints, destroyed monuments from a past era. There are also examples of deserted environments, which are defined exactly by that, the lack of inhabitants.

An example was given to me today, explaining why farmers and country folk can visibly tell the difference between their own kind and city folk. This is obvious in a sense, as their clothing would not be of a farmhands, but they would also have smaller details such as an adjusted vocabulary to suit their environment, they may also have a completely different accent.

Artists:

One concept designer whom I find is particularly effective at creating "lived in" environments, is Nicolas Bouvier, more familiarly known as Sparth. These environments collate both natural formations such as mountains, as well as buildings and structures that draw influence from all over the world.

I feel that repetition of domed structures creates a sense of visual culture, as it reflects our own repetition of architecture. As we saw in Assassins Creed with the flat rooftops and tightly-packed cities, human beings like repetition. We like having an architectural "style" that is native to whatever area we inhabit. By having these repeating structures, Sparth creates a wider sense of depth and further builds the world that he has painted. The environments look "lived in".

Assassins Creed - Architecture and Environment Study

Whilst on the hunt for material to research, I was suggested by a colleague to look into the Assassins Creed series in order to find some non-western visual design in current video games. Specifically, I have chosen to research the first Assassins Creed game. I chose this game out of the other in the series mainly due to my own knowledge of it, as it's the one I've played the most! This is a personal favourite of mine, as it was one of the first "open world" games I experienced, and was immediately immersed in.

Assassins Creed is an open world, historical, stealth exploration game. By this I mean, there is a lot to do in the game. AC was developed by Ubisoft Montreal in 2007 for Playstation 3 and Xbox 360.
Throughout most of the game, you play as protagonist assassin Altair Ibn-La'Ahad as you scurry and parkour your way across the rooftops and through the alleyways of the Holy Land, an area which would be more familiarly considered Israel, Palestine, Syria, Jordan and Lebanon.
The environments are highly immersive, each building detailed with middle-eastern architectural designs. Each bustling street corner decorated with textures and brought to life with authentic characters.

The narrative takes Altair to the sky, as the character must climb and navigate rooftops and various historical buildings to complete missions and story objectives. This allows the player to experience the environment in it's fullest. Taking advantage of a long field of view, the player can see the vast span of buildings and architecture, made even prettier through use of cinematic lighting, This is physically implemented in AC, as in order to expand the in-game map, the player must scale particularly high structures and activate a "Sync zone".

A viewpoint in Damascus, Altair atop a Minaret.

Middle Eastern Architecture

The sprawling cities and asymmetry of the Holy Land is historically the result of a different style of building laws. Whilst western countries have strict land and building laws, resulting in organised, huge structures in a linear design, middle eastern countries at this time did not. Land was not owned in the same way, and people built structures that suited their own needs. People would decide to live somewhere, and would build structures wherever suited and would fit. This resulted in the cobbled-together, layered look that Assassins Creed recreates.

Motif elements of middle eastern architectural are as follows;

• Attached housing, often with little to no spacing between
• Flat rooftops, permeated with simplistic dome shapes
• Mosques - Religion was predominantly Islamic
• Minarets (Arabic for "Beacon") - These are tall, slim towers usually attached to a Mosque.
• Stone/Sand materials
• Beams connecting adjacent buildings
• Framed windows
• Tight streets broken up by courtyards and small market areas 

Above is a simple depiction as to how these motif's work

Above: Line/Paint studies on the structure and design of these common middle-eastern buildings.

Cultural Relevance

The minaret is a tower in which a Muezzin (the person who leads prayer and worship) call the faithful to pray and pay respect 5 times a day. Before modern technology like speakers and amplifiers, the Muezzin would have climb large towers like these in order to make themselves heard to the faithful. This is nodded at in AC as Altair scales the Minaret's in order to scan the city. This then expands the players in-game map, allowing more locations and missions to be found.

Although technology has since advanced, many cities from Delhi to Saudi Arabia still feature the tall towers. These are cultural symbols, kept to honour the past.

The houses and buildings are tightly packed together, reflecting the traditional conditions in which middle eastern houses are generally kept. Between courtyards, churches and mosques stretch miles of winding passages, shaded alleyways and short bridges. Traditionally, doors were built specifically not to face one another, as it would mean seeing directly into each other's houses and would be a breach of privacy. The use of these structures and buildings add both cultural immersion and gameplay aspects.



Gameplay Function

The use of traditional middle eastern pattern and architecture has a direct and purposeful impact on gameplay. As Altair, the player finds themselves sprinting through alleyways, able to grab and climb from almost any object attached to a house or building. The use of narrow passageways, courtyards and tightly packed architecture not only immerses the player in an accurate middle-eastern setting, but also benefits gameplay through the free-running/parkour mechanic.
The rooftops are mostly flat, of varying heights and connected to most of the adjacent buildings through the previously mentioned beams and frame structures. Not only is this accurate to how traditional middle-eastern living conditions, but it again allows the player to further explore and traverse the land easily and at a running pace.

Getting specific

At the moment I am trying to converge my research and ideas into a more linear and specific region, so that I can properly study and learn from specific areas to a research question. At the moment, my research is around the lines of:

For my research (and dissertation) I plan to explore how current media, specifically game and film/tv,
draw influence and depict non-western cultures, and how this is represented visually. I plan to explore the definition and essence of culture, and how this has an impact on character and environment design.

Furthermore, I will explore how a culture can be formed visually, and how this can be used to "worldbuild" within concept art and design. I plan to research and practice how cultural iconography and visual design can be applied practically through concept art.

- Something along those lines.

Pinning down what a "culture" is, and how this is depicted through visual imagery

I've been thinking about what it is exactly that I want to do for this year.
I am interested in how worlds are built through the addition of cultural influence, and how this adds depth and narrative to 2D images. Above, i've broken down what I believe makes up the essence of culture. Not only am I interested in this, but specifically how this is represented visually, and how this can be applied to improve or add depth to concept art.

I plan to cover character design and environment design in this project, and how the essence of cultural influence can improve and create depth.

Exhibition visit! McManus Galleries, Dundee. Below is a collage of interesting items, textiles and patterns that I observed whilst there.

A quick character/composition piece I did based on 2 tutorials, once by Daarken on character design and another by James Paick on greyscalee environment thumbnailing. I tried to incorporate influence from Asian design and textile, whilst using a character silhouette i'd made a couple weeks ago.