Salford City CollegeEccles Sixth Form CentreBTec Level 3Extended Diploma in Creative Media ProductionGames Design

Unit 78 – Digital Graphics for Computer GamesHA2 – Transformation Production Log

Name Paulina Karolina Kucharska

Date: 23 – 26 October

I have finished all the tutorials and my logo, I also made a mind map about myself and roughly calculated the budget based of my thoughts how much I could work if I wouldn’t be bothered by no one.

Then I realised, it’s impossible for me to work these 400-500 hours during these 5 weeks, so I changed the calculations made. I estimated my work done for overall of 60 hours. It was the end of the first week, and 3 tasks were done. I had Sunday free so I started the 4th task.

That’s how my chart looked at the beginning of the entire task, I presumed I can fit these tasks in this order, and be up to date with them.

Next week, which was our free week I couldn’t do much, because I was forced to look after my sister all the time. At the weekend after complaining I finally could sleep more that just up to 8 and do work.

Third week I have done the easiest tasks, and on Tuesday I done photoshoot. Then I wasted few hours doing research for things I may use in my final artwork. That week I had just the Raster artwork done.

I realised I don’t have much time left, so I went to college on my day off to spend additional hours on working.

The last two tasks are left for the final week.

Date: 29 October – 2 November

I was writing about my main protagonist. The idea I got at the very beginning of the task, but it was brief. I asked few my friends about games and films with similar genres, plot, gameplay and character class. Soon I got quite interesting story, the inspiration I took from my view of relationship between Thor and Loki as well as the Dishonored character, who has been framed for the murder of a child. It can be a coincidence, but adoption, sibling’s betrayal and the necessity of

departure appear quite often in my inventions. The imagery and game titles found I included in presentation in different slides.

Medieval and fantasy are genres I really like, so they were my first and final choice, I only made them the ‘dark’ version.

I don’t have any problems with inventing synopsis and characters, because some time ago, I was engaged in Role Play writing with people.

Tasks 3 and 4 basically were easy and pleasant for me.

Date: 4 – 7 November

On Tuesday I managed to do a photoshoot of myself with my boyfriend’s help. After that I was researching a lot of pictures with things that may be used to the final amalgam. I couldn’t decide which ones I will use at the end, so I took a few examples of each thing I wanted.

During the rasterising process I used a lot of free transform, to freely rotate, reflect and most importantly scale the objects, so they fit the characters. Each picture I opened separately and copied on a layer higher than background, so while erasing around them I won’t have the white outline, but rather slightly transparent outlines. I don’t like magnetic lasso tool or magic want (in anything else than pixel art) so I used just an eraser tool either with full or half of its hardness and with different sizes depending where I was erasing. The final picture I copied/cut on a separate layer and dragged on my design. All of pictures needed to be resized and/or rotated to fit nicely into the place I wanted them to be.

I also copied my main background on two layers; in upper one I erased everything except buildings, tree, birds and the hanged man, in the bottom one I used clone stamp tool to erase the castle without destroying the background. The reason why I done that is because I needed space in between these details, to paste object and don’t struggle with eraser, but simply arrange them. I added the moon and made it a little opaque, it made it appear like a phantom frame for the antagonist and also colours did match to the sky. In the place of castle I pasted the black forest outline and used brush tool to make fog.

To make Nelsira, I used 4 different pictures, … When she was finished, I cropped the edges to make them fit inside the moon. Then I used the blending mode to slightly improve the view.

…whereas for Arten I used my photo and 8 different pictures. I am too short to be my character, so I used free transform to stretch my photo.

The colours and quality of different objects, landscape etc. combined in my amalgam didn’t really match, but it didn’t matter to me, as I can always change the colours while doing the next stage – the vector graphics.

Date: 10 - 16 November

I started making the vector artwork, first making my character. The main tool I used was a pen tool, the most of visible edges I tried to make smooth with Bezier curves, for the hidden parts I simply clicked and made them angular.

So far I marked different things (not including shadows or details) on over 70 layers – just for my main character and antagonist. I spent half of Wednesday to continue on it. I have done the basics of my protagonist character and antagonist face, also birds and the dead man.

I started adding details to Arten, first on face and then on skin, then I moved on clothes. For some shadows I was using opacity 25-50-75% to make them blend a little. I also changed colours a little by picking them in a rainbow colour wheel, so they will match better to her appearance. I rotated Nelsira’s eyebrows to make her appear mischievous, I reflected her (and rotated to match the previous angle) arm, because I realised that the thumb should be on the other side.

I nearly finished the upper part and reached over a 100 of layers, and even more patches. Apart of pen tool I was using selection tool to change the curves into ones I wanted. I also was using eyedropper for some colours, which then I made darker to create more shadows. I tried using eraser, but it was massive and made a hole in all layers except the locked ones, so I undo-ed this and never redo-ed it. I used curved lines to make shoe laces.

I downloaded the free version of Illustrator at home and started to make the background. I weren’t as precise as I was when doing characters. I started the building, but left the creation of it for later.

I had enough of pen tool, so when making the road and background details I used an opaque brush tool, not regular one but the strokes called charcoal and thin pencil. I used different sizes and one by one I made a lot of single stripes. The fog I also drew with use of brush tool. The colours I was taking from background I

already had with use of eyedropper. I think that way was more efficient, both in time and the look of it.

I began to make buildings behind the character. I didn’t make them detailed with an exception to a stone wall in one of them and door in second one. Instead of straight lines I made them appear crooked. The colours as well I used from the existing background. They are grey so I believe they won’t catch the eye, leaving most of attention to main characters. During the process I locked the layers containing characters and other objects I finished, so I won’t accidentally click on them and still be able to keep them visible.

I kept swapping between ground and sky, making one of them visible and one not. There were only buildings on the right side left to make. The process was the same like in tracing the bigger ones, however they colours weren’t in the scale of grey, but rather blue, brown and turquoise. Buildings in the far back I kept as a single silhouette, but added additional fog on them.

The whole process was terribly long, tiring and painful for my eyes but I enjoyed it. Cell-shading however, is not always simple.

Date:17 – 21 November

On Monday during my support lesson I asked teacher about her written opinion about my work.

I published my work into Deviantart in hope someone may respond and help me with achieving task 6.

http://nidreth.deviantart.com/art/Transformation-Art-Template-021114-495204305?ga_submit_new=10%253A1416322575

I filled and signed the Legal Ethical Checklist document.

I added some more information to task 3, I wrote them under ‘Edit:’ to make it clear it has been added.

I started to make a layout of the Jewel case. I placed a dark rectangle on the side and back of the cover, then used the type tool and wrote my blurp. For the grey paragraphs I made an invisible rectangle and used a type tool which works in closed paths. I also placed my avatar, which was resized to fit the logos at the bottom.

I created a title for the game and picked the nice font. Then I copied it and placed in one more place.

The last thing I done was placing my artwork on the front page.