Final Design

Tests

This is a prototype of the environment that I planned to create for my forest environment. In this, I have planned out where I wanted everything within my environment to be placed and mostly to see if the environment looks visually appealing and effective. I used mood boards and mind maps to plan what I actually wanted within my environment and this helped a lot because it gave me a lot of ideas to further extend the imagination that I believe made my forest seem more interesting than a boring one filled with only trees and minor detail. 

Final piece

This is my final piece for my environment. I am quite pleased with the final outcome of my environment because I believe that it looks rather unique due to the range of different contrast in colours and the whole design. There were some small parts within this unit that I changed throughout which meant that I didn't follow my planning piece o the exact of how I would of liked it to be but I think that I made the right choice to change a few things within the design because I believe that the outcome was much better than it would of been.

As you can see, I have used many of the same techniques that I have used in the creation of my original materials, which was really useful and effective because I could repeat the techniques using better colours and being more confident in making the design look effective. In the final piece, I have used a range of different materials including oil pastel, watercolour, acrylic paint, tissue paper and coffee. I think the wide range and variety of different materials I have used aided me to define my environment and make it more unique compared to other environment as it adds small details that combine together leaving behind a really nice outcome.

However, I think that there were some things within my final piece that could have gone much more smoothly as I think that I would have been better off creating more samples and practice pieces so that I had a better idea and route of what I was doing within my work as I believe that when I was in the making of my final environment, I was making some things up as I went along which meant that my final outcome seems more sketchy than it could have been. The trees that I have created aren't the greatest in my opinion as you can clearly see from a distance that the colour goes out of the line and my forest only consists of a minimal amount of trees which is quite strange. 

Alternative Ideas

MIND MAPS

Here are some mind maps that we as a group came up with. As you can see, some environments had many more ideas and inspirations to cover rather than others. We created these in order to gather as much information and resources for each type of environment and it also helped me eventually decide which environment I wanted to do within the end.

MOOD BOARDS

We created Mood Boards in order to show what the environment looked like in real life, in video games or areas very similar to the topic. These mood boards allowed me to gather inspiration to use my imagination and collect different resources from all of the images to merge and create my own environment.

Mixed Media Surfaces

PENCIL LINES

(different types of pencil, 2 descriptions)

(Top = 4B, Bottom = 1B)

In this, I have created 2 types of crisscross like patterns where I simply used my pencil to form straight lines travelling in different directions. As you can see, I have done 2 samples of this technique because I have used different pencils where they are different in softness which give off different effects.

The bottom image is where I used a 1B pencil that gave off a much lighter effect as the lines are thin, it's harder to smudge, easier to erase, less chalky and the pencil stayed durable for a longer time. This has a much cleaner look compared to the image on the top where I used a 4B pencil as the type of pencil was much softer which lead to darker and thicker lines which were easier to smudge, harder to erase, easier to smudge and I had to sharpen my pencil much more frequently as it wasn't as durable and more was being used in the process.

I have created a different type of effect where I have dabbed the pencil on the paper at different speeds where as for some, I would rapidly tap it down and for others, I may press it down and twist it for a thicker outcome. I tried to make it so that the dots would spread out around the page so that in one of the corners, I would have a large capacity of dots and they would decrease as you move away from the corner.

On the bottom, I have used the 1B pencil which gave me an outcome where the dots are much harder to see in some areas as they were very small but the 4B pencil is much more visible and seems to be slightly smudged compared to the 1B.

In this, I have used the pencils to create a shading effect where I would start by pressing hard and make the sequence lighter throughout the process to make it seem as if the tone is fading away. After I completed this, I have simply used a rubber in a crisscross format leaving behind a nice effect.

Once again, The 1B looks much more clear and precise than the 4B as the 4B seems very smudged and low quality when compared.

PEN LINES



After trying this with pencil, I wanted to use the same or very similar techniques with other materials to see what kind of effect I would receive. In this image, I have used a pen in the different crisscross motion and as you can see, the effect looks rather nice and quite effective considering that the lines are quite thin, the colours get darker once they overlay and it generally looks quite visually appealing.



In this, I have drawn random lines around a surface with the pen and then simply used water to smudge the pen and observe what would happen in the after effect. As you can see, the effect is unique as parts of the area has a different tone compared to others. I think this tone is quite mysterious but I couldn't see myself using this technique within my work.



In this, I have started heavily dotting in the corner and made it ease off once it gets further and further away. As you can see, when the dots are clumped together, the image has a much darker and bolder effect but when spread far out, it doesn't seem as impactful.


INK LINES



Again, I have used to crisscross method but this time, I changed the material once again to ink which allowed me to experiment even further than I had. This was very mix and match as nothing seems even compared to contrast, thickness and tone as everything seems random. I think that this effect actually looks quite appealing and unique but I think using this in a piece of work would be a bit of a gamble since it would be difficult to repeat it the same once again.



When applying water, the effect is much less satisfying than the pen as the smudge is much more murky and even than the pen, which I don't find visually appealing. This looks like a big mess to me and I don't think that I could use it within any of my work.



The dotting technique is quite nice as I enjoy looking at the big fat and bold dots because they stand out but the bad thing about this is that everything seemed to smudge very easily whilst trying to apply this to paper.


TEXTURES

Coffee + Tissue Paper



I really like this effect because the colours contrast very well and I love the effect that that the tissue paper allowed the coffee to achieve and I think the combination is really good and I would really like to use this within a piece of my work because this type of texture could be used for many different types of things such as trees and surfaces.

This was quite easy to create since the materials and instructions were quite easy to be applied to the paper and the outcome looks amazing and really great to implement into a piece of my work.


Masking Tape + Water colour



This is rather unique as I couldn't see myself using this in my work, but I really like how the water colour and tape have worked together to achieve this effect. I really like how the edges of the tape pick up a lot of the colour and the actual tape only picks up bits such as dots which looks quite effective.

This was a really simple texture to create because I didn't really have to apply many materials or use different effects as the process was really simple and I think it could be used in a handful of pieces.


Black Tissue Paper + Bleach



When I was doing this, I had no idea that this effect would work so well or look the way it did, and I think that this effect is one of my favourites. The bleach took out the colour of the black tissue paper and left behind a pale type of orangey colour. This material would work very well with effects such as fire which I don't think I will be including in my work this unit.

I think that this type of effect was more difficult to create precisely because the bleach spreads down quite randomly but the outcome looks really effective one complete as the colours have started to fade away and look overall very effective.


Oil Pastel + Water Colour



I think that this effect is rather visually appealing and could work within many aspects of my work, as I really like how the pastel can leave that effect as not all of the watercolour is eliminated but enough is for a really nice effect.

This was really easy to apply and I think that this could also be used in many of my work pieces due to how simple and effective the technique can be.


Paint + Sponge



In this, I have used different shades of orange and I applied the colour onto paper by simply using a sponge. I really like the effect I got out of this, as I think it could be used in many different effective ways that would work really nicely with things within the environment, such as sand and the sky.

I really like this type of texture that I have create because it looks really unique and effective compared to the others that I have created. I think that this type of material would be easy to make using a sponge but I think it would be much more difficult to replicate this process in a similar style to how I have done it now.


Bubble Wrap + Paint



This was quite a sketchy but nice looking texture that I had created by using paint and bubble wrap. I think that this looks really cool as everything has such a random effect as paint may seem darker but lighter in other places which I like a lot.

I really like this texture as it was simple to apply to paper and the materials were really easy and ready to apply. I don't think that doing this requires much skill and it can be effective in my work under certain circumstances.

Water colour + Different shades of Green



Here is another grass-like texture that I have created and I think that this looks really nice as I have used many different colours to define each strand and I also like the way how its very random because it would look really good if I used this technique for a field-like area within my environment.

I think that this texture that I have created looks really effective and appealing and it didn't take much to actually create. I think that I could create this type of texture again very easily as I think that it has a really nice outcome and the style would look quite effective in my work.


Primary and Secondary Colour



I created this to show the different effects that each primary colour would give when:

• In full block colour form
• Slowly fading
• Merging together.

From this, we can see all of the different effects that I was left with and each one looks quite appealing and I think that I could use water colours like this within my work to create different types of colours by merging and by using different tones of the colour.

IMAGES FOR ENVIRONMENT

Here are some of the images that I have collected for inspiration for my first test environment. All of these images are from different games and I chose them because I thought that they all looked quite appealing and I could do a good job with creating it as my own piece using my own textures that I have created.














PLANNING

In the end, I decided to go with the beach type of environment from Dead Island, since I really liked viewing the bright colours and I thought that the textures that I had were good for this type of environment.



I created this plan so that I knew exactly what I was going to do and where each different texture would end up going.


PICTURE

Here is the final outcome of my test environment. I am quite pleased since this is my first time doing this but I think that I could have done a much better job using a second attempt since I found out that I struggled quite a bit to cut out nice shapes with the textures that I had. However, I am quite happy with the textures that I have used because I think that they match really well and give the image a nice contrast to itself.

I found this task quite difficult since I wasn't the greatest at creating the best type of materials or physically cutting out the shapes precisely. I would have felt much more comfortable creating this piece using a pencil and paper but I think that if I got the chance to try this again, I would put much more effort and enthusiasm into this task.