OUDF403 Evaluation

Throughout the fundamental skills module I have gained and developed skills and knowledge relating to concept art, in particular character design. To begin the module we were tasked with visiting the Leeds City Museum and the Royal Armouries with the objective of collecting a range of images that would serve as inspiration to develop a character, with this in mind I came up with 5 alternative characters and began looking for exhibits at the museum that would relate to these ideas. The trip to the royal armouries helped me finalise which character idea I would develop the furthest, with that character being the Taiwanese Tribal Warrior.

The next task was called archetype, which was to develop our character to fit an archetype of our choosing, because I was going for a cyberpunk theme, it was fairly simple for me to choose the archetype of Reluctant Hero, which has been one of the longest running staples of cyberpunk stories.

We then had to create a short flipbook animation showing an action relating to our character. From the start of this mini-brief I knew exactly what action my character would perform, she would cut a log in half with her sword. I had worked with simple animation techniques in the past, so although it was fairly easy for me to produce, the animation was time consuming. I also had issues regarding digitising the animation, but I figured out what I was doing wrong and corrected it.

The final mini-brief was to produce an environment for our character to reside in, again I found this fairly simple as I had been producing environmental sketches as I’d been going along, and understood the character’s environment as I am a fan of traditional oriental architecture and styles. My original idea was going to be a Dojo in a building similar to a Zen temple however while working on the environment I went to the hospital with an eye wound. This inspired me to update both the environment and the character’s back story; the character would reside in a medical area of the temple, due to it being a modernised version of Zen Buddhism, with her sustaining injuries that take into account her being there. I found the floor pan quick and easy to create however I struggled on the perspective drawings as there was only so much of the room I could show in each.

In this module I have learned that using moodboards I can quickly figure out a solid idea for an aspect of my character, as even though I may be working on a unique theme, I can find images that can help to consolidate my ideas for things such as colour and environment. Despite this I have only just begun to scratch the surface of drawing digitally and I really need to expand on my colour work, despite the meagre work I have done with colour, I understand how to improve with colour, and I also have found the use of moodboards can help to identify key colour schemes within certain themes, with cyberpunk works using a lot more greens, blues and purples than blacks and reds, than I first expected.

I have thoroughly enjoyed this module and it has helped me to highlight skills I could greatly improve, and has allowed me to begin working with skills I would love to advance further.