i created this concept art for our game pitch from scratch, i am really proud of this digital painting as its my second attempt at doing this kind of realistic coloured art, i mainly work in sketches and rarely ever attempt to colour them because ive never been good with colouring in, ive found it hard to correctly set the mood by matching the correct tones but digital painting is far more easier and approachable as i allows me to make mistakes or experiment. ive always had an eye for colour tones and how light reacts in a scene but have never explored it to this detail. i am seriously considering becoming a concept artist after this second attempts successful outcome.
this concept was later created using cinema 4d by a member of my team
i also contributed by creating the basis for our story, coming up with the concept really, after long debate within our group we all settled on a atmospheric horror genre to which i came up with the basis for the original story idea, which was actually too graphic in upsetting scenes so after a discussion with the team as a whole we all contributed new ides to make my first draft more digestible for a mass demographic and marketable for a potential release.
the live action trailer was also created,directed and filmed by me
this next video is the full trailer made by my team with us all contributing, this video was sent to industry professionals to receive feedback.
industrial feedback
industry professional 1
industry professional 2
industry professional 3
this was the feedback received from the industry pannel. we found this very useful to hear insight from people within the industry, they were clear and honest. me and my team were happy with what we had achieved in the time we were given although if given one more day working on our video pitch we would have been able to put way more in to the final product. however the information from these industry professionals blew us away, myself and my team are proud of what we've achieved and the positivity received from the professionals just goes to reinforce our belief that we can, as students aspiring to break into the gaming industry, make it in this world. we may only be beginners right now but i think me and my team can do great things.
on this project i was the creative lead, coming up with the ideas to progress the group, generating a basis for most of our work and then conferring with the rest of our team to shape and expand on these ideas. we had many meetings with lengthy discussions about my general ideas for this project, it was of upmost importance to allow the rest of my team put themselves into this and leave their own mark on the world. as an artist it is often hard to hear criticism weather it be positive or negative feedback but understanding and really involving my team allowed our idea to flourish and expand.
and these were just a few buzzwords we came up with as a mini exercise for the team, just to make sure we were all on track and on the same wave length as it were.
now comes my other task as creative lead- concept art.
this was one of the first concepts i came up with, an image of " the valley of death".
by the time i had finished this the story had grown beyond this idea so i never "fleshed it out"
this image is the sketched version of the digital painting shown at the start of this post.
this was one of the first images i created and i was adamant it stay in our game design so i digitally painted it using photoshop software and worked it into our story, this painting was the catalyst to the game mechanic that our game would eventually rest upon. i speak about this further on.
i also drew some other views of the house showing some layout and perspective to help my team visualise the style of the house.i was going for a classic american house, middle class family home.
some rough storyboarding for my live action trailer
this would be the character of the father of the family who were murdered. his disfigurement being a representation of his mortal wound, gunshot to the face. i wanted it to not be obvious though, i needed to be grotesque but also a little surreal. my art for the characters tried to emulate the spirit of horror survival great silent hill.
these two images were from a silent hill game. i wanted to emulate and reflect this as much as i could in my art.
so for the sketching process i played with some facial and body structure, trying to create a tortured, malnourished look, for a comparison i used images from the holocaust. images of starving, thin and skeletal jewish inmates.
"WARNING"
the next images my be distressing to some viewers but i add them only to show evidence of my work and artistic research. they depict jewish prisoners in states of severe malnourishment and some nudity.
this inspired the thin body in the next sketch image, i also tried to exaggerate some of the thin skeletal facial structures associated with starvation.
i wasn't satisfied with the face in terms of resemblance to the silent hills artistry so i sketched a few basic ideas based around the characters way of death. he blows his face off with a gun so i played around with how this would look if it wasn't actually the real wound but rather a "supernatural manifestation" of the wound.
i decided on basing it around a flower, how a flowers petals would be closed in on its self protecting its self from the harsh environment. this would be like how the father is protecting him and his family in the afterlife only to be shown as a hateful monster on the outside never truly seeing the beauty of his love for his family on the inside.
these were just a few basic ideas to begin with but eventually expanded on first by my self, then reigned in by the rest of the team. they focussed me in a sense, listening to them and incorporating the ideas put forward to me.
the image below is the logo design for our team, i tweaked and added my own ideas into a basic design made by the other concept artist in our team
as a group we conferred and updated our tutor of the progress we were making, he had a few ideas that would direct us to make the conceptual idea into feasible game.
one of these would be how our point of the game would manifest onto a mechanic, he told us the ideas we had were great but it wouldn't work if we didn't have a way to resolve the "endgame" or even how we would outline outline how the puzzles would relate to the house its self.
we decided on making the house decay as a game mechanic to show a mental state or health of the player, each time you couldnt complete a puzzle you could leave it but the house would delapidate, referring to a mental break down.
but as the house/mind got worse, the easier the puzzles would become to complete as shown in the designs below. the house would fall apart each time you left the pussle incomplete, but every time this would happen part of the house would obstruct your possible paths until one path would be left, the right path to complete the puzzle, so the closer you became to "brain death" the easier it would be to claw your way back to " sanity"
