Art Lab 1 - Introduction to Game Art
CIS 300: Introduction to Computer Game Design – Fall 2006
Bridging the gap between Mind and Machine
Design a character
This does not have to be any character from your project, although if you are sure you will need a specific character for your project feel free to use it as the subject. Your character does not need to be human.
Think about your character's personality
Create a text document named "Character
Description.txt" and write a character biography that answer some of these
questions:
What is your character's name?
How old is your character?
What kind of world does your character inhabit?
Does it have any special abilities or adaptations for its environment
(underwater breathing, flying, etc.)?
Is there anything interesting about your character’s past?
What are your character's goals in life (avenge parent's death, become rich,
find a wife)?
Describe a typical day in the life of your character.
Be specific. The better you know your characters, the easier it will be for you to visualize them.
Get inspired! (Optional – do this outside of class time)
Every artist can benefit from studying the works of others. The internet contains a vast wealth of amazing artwork to inspire your own designs. Take a moment to look at some of the artwork out there.
Here are some favorites from the course staff:
Oddworld – rich site containing art from the Oddworld titles from concept to completion
Yoshitaka Amano – The concept artist for countless Japanese video games and anime including the entire Final Fantasy series
Lou Romano – artblog from the production designer of The Incredibles
Hoon from Mess Studio – comic artist with some amazing character designs
Ittoku's Oekaki – Japanese character designer (site in Japanese)
Sangjun – Concept artist who works for Lucas Films
Aaron St. Goddard – Concept artist with some excellent creature designs
Lewiston's Sketchbook – Some good sketches to look at
Character Design Discussion – A good character design discussion on Conceptart.org
Take a note of the poses, color schemes, and styles of the artwork you like. Also, many of these artists accompany their work with character biographies. Take note of how they describe their characters.
If you are interested in looking at more artwork, here are a few popular art communities to try:
Draw your character
You will need to turn in:
At LEAST 3 drafts from any angle (basic pencil drawings representing nearly the whole body or the entire head)
1 head shot (frontal, 3/4, or profile)
1 frontal full-body shot (standing straight up with arms extended out to the side)
1 posed shot (this one is important). Your posed shot should convey the personality of your character. If you don’t know what we mean, take a look at some of links we provided above. (Hoon’s Ninja Talkshow series is a good example) Make sure that it is an interesting pose and make it look natural. Take a look at what the old Disney masters had to say about “wooden” vs. natural poses:
From The Illusion of Life (Thomas and Johnston)
The 3 latter drawings are your "final draft" of sorts, so pay attention to detail. Do not color or shade your final drafts; they should be just pencil or ink line drawings. You do not need to draw your character in a setting, but you are certainly welcome to.
2) Scan it!
Now you must scan your images into Photoshop. Open the program. Now go to the
File menu, click Import and then choose the name of your scanner. The scanner's
TWAIN device will open. Click Preview to do an initial scan. A preview image
will pop up, from which you select the area you want scanned. Change scanning
resolution to 150 dpi. Click Scan when you are ready, and your image will be
scanned and opened into Photoshop as a Photoshop Document.
You can resize your file by altering its Canvas size or Image size. Using the
first just resizes your boundaries, leaving your image intact. The latter
resizes your boundaries and stretches or shrinks your image to fit the new
dimensions.
You may choose to work at a high resolution (200 or 300 dpi) and then save your
final images at lower resolutions (72 or 100 dpi). A higher resolution has the
capability of producing smoother results especially if you start stretching
your image, but requires a lot more memory to save and may take result in long
rendering times (as in applying a filter). Generally, though, you should save
your working images (the .psd file) in a high resolution.
Scan at least 3 drafts and your 3 final line drawings into Photoshop. All your
rough drafts should be in one image (resize your canvas as necessary and cut
and paste), and your 3 final drafts should each be in a separate image. Save
them as "Roughs.jpg," "Head.jpg," "Front.jpg,"
and "Pose.psd." Note that Pose will be a .psd file.
3) Color it!
You only need to color in your pose drawing, but you must sill scan your other
drawings in order to turn them in.
Setting your drawing as the outline
Open your pose file. Ensure that it is saved as "Pose.psd."
Double-click the "Background" layer in your Layers palette. This
changes it to "Layer 0." Click the tab reading
Coloring and Shading
Choose a color scheme that reflects your character and start coloring. Pay
attention to light and shadow.
Play around with the different blending modes (you've already
changed your line drawing's layer from "
Some blending methods you might want to try:
- Create a shadow layer set to multiply and a separate highlight layer set to screen
- Use the Burn and Dodge tool (located slightly above the middle on the toolbar)
- If you come from a traditional art background, you may prefer staying in the normal mode and blend with the smudge tool (hotkey ‘r’)
Note: If these tools are too harsh, you can decrease the exposure on the top options bar right under the main menu.
Some Tips:
- Many artists find it helpful to place each color on its own separate layer so colors do not mix near borders when smudging
- Play
around with your brush properties. Adjust the hardness of the brush to suit
your style. Those of you who want a smoothly blended look will want to turn
on the airbrush tool (
) and change the hardness to 0% - If you get stuck on a color scheme for your character, take a moment to browse some photographs on the web. If you find a photo with a color scheme that suits your character, use the eyedropper tool (hotkey ‘I’) to capture that scheme as a starting point for your character.
- While we are not requiring extreme details, adding details can significantly improve the overall quality of your artwork. Rim highlights, folds in clothing, textures, etc. can dramatically improve the look and feel of your work.
4) Create an alpha channel.
In a typical RGB image, each pixel stores a value from 0 to 255 (8 bits) for
red, green, and blue, or 24 bits for each pixel. Higher bit depth produces
wider color ranges, but creates larger file sizes. 24 bits usually gives us
enough colors, but if we want some pixels to be invisible, or only partially
visible? This is where alpha comes into play. An RGBA image stores a value for
red, green, blue, and alpha (opacity) using 32 bits for each pixel.
Now let's assign some alpha information to each pixel! On the Layers window on
the right of your screen, click the Channels tab. Here you will see four
channels (RGB, Red, Blue, and Green). If instead of RGB, you see CMYK, Cyan,
Magenta, Yellow, and Black (or even something else!) that means you are not
working with RGB colors. Fix this by going to Image->Mode->RGB Color.
CMYK has its advantages, but for this project stick to RGB. At the bottom of
the Layers window, click the Create New Layer button. You now have an Alpha
Channel.
Click on the RGB channel to select it. You should see your drawing again. From
the tools palette, click the magic wand selection tool (stick with sparkled
end). Ensure that "Use All Layers" is checked (on the top under the
main menu). Now click on the space surrounding your drawing to select the blank
space. If the selection is too great or too little, adjust the Tolerance
percentage at the top of your screen and reselect the blank space. Once you
have selected all of your background, go to the Select drop menu and click
Inverse. Now your drawing should be selected, instead of the background. Click
once more to the Channels tab of your Layers window. Select the Alpha Channel,
and hit your delete key. Now the silhouette of your image should be seen. If
nothing happens, make sure that your background color is white at the bottom of
the tools palette and try deleting again. Ultimately in your Alpha Channel
layer, a white silhouette of your image should rest against a black background.
Take a look at the channels tab. Make sure that all channels are visible (they
have the little eye to the left of them) and that the alpha channel is
selected. Now zoom in around the area where your character touches the
background. You should see the background in a shade of pink and the character
in its regular color. Using the pencil or paintbrush tool with a small size,
touch-up the alpha channel. The magic wand tool most likely didn't do a perfect
job selecting the background, so you have to draw black onto areas where the
background IS NOT pink and draw white on the areas where the character IS pink.
Once you are satisfied with your alpha channel, you hide it by clicking the
little black eye next to it. Don't worry, even if the alpha channel is hidden,
saving a file with alpha information will use the alpha channel to determine
opacity.
5) Save it!
Not all file formats can save alpha information (JPEGs, for example). You can
tell if a file format supports alpha if the "Alpha channels" checkbox
in the "Save As" dialog is not grayed out and your document contains
an alpha channel. If you do not have an alpha channel, this option should
remain grayed out. Select the TIFF format and make sure that "Layers"
is NOT checked and "Alpha Channels" IS checked.
That's it! Zip up the following files and submit them as
"lab1art.zip" via CMS:
Character Description.txt
Roughs.jpg
Head.jpg
Front.jpg
Pose.tif
Due Friday September 8, 2006 at 11:59pm through CMS.