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Week 4: Stereotypes &Tropes

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Stereotypes          For this week's reading, the authors discussed how video games often use stereotypes and tropes and how it is noticeable and still used in a majority of them even to this day.      In the video game series, Dishonored , I believe one of the central characters, Emily Kaldwin, is an example of a character that has both reinforced and broke the stereotype of being the "damsel in distress." In the first game, Dishonored , Emily Kaldwin was a teenage princess who was kidnapped by the main antagonists at the beginning of the game. She would stay in their capture until the main protagonist, Corvo, freed her at the end of the game after defeating the final boss. Unfortunately, she doesn't get any real character development other than the fact that she's just the goal that the player is trying to achieve to complete the game (Sarkeesian, 2013). If I were to play with different tropes, I'd invert or subvert Emily from the innocent girl ...
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Week 3: Shape, Scale, Colors

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  Sketches:           For this week's assignment, we had to continue practicing our sketching skills, specifically gestures, and scribbles. The photos below are what I believe is my best work from practicing gestures. While I am no artist whatsoever, I was proud of these three sketches. Shape:           According to the reading, the major shapes of a character usually have similar traits based on its basic shape design(Solarski, 2013). While I never meant to draw it on purpose, I quickly noticed that the design of my character matched similar traits according to its shape. Because I drew my character to have a more circular shape, you can see attributes such as innocence and youth in my design that you often see in most circular concepts (Solarski, 2013). It doesn't look too intimidating but instead looks rather adorable despite having a neutral facial expression. [Insert Picture Here] Scale:       ...
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Week 2: Research From High Concept

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High Concept:     For this week's class, we learned to research from high concepts when designing new characters based on the advice from Chris Solarski (Solarski, 2012). In this week's reading, Solarski recommends using a high concept to start with and then leading to a mind map where you research your chosen keywords with one of the various additional topics to bring inspiration for when you design your character's looks, clothing, weapons, etc. (Solarski, 2012). To help flesh out the story behind our character, another reading that talks about respecting and developing our characters by showing their unique attire (physical), backstory (sociological), his thoughts (psychological), and their growth as a character over time (Sheldon, 2013).  Sketches: Respecting Character: The character is a short, scruffy old man who wears religious-like clothing and a hood over his head while carrying a book and cane. (Physical) The character is well-known in his town as one of th...
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Week 1: Gesture Scribble/Uncanny Valley

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      For class, we were asked to spend at least two hours practicing our drawing skills as well as watching videos to help further understand certain aspects of sketching character designs such as gestures and poses. While I don't consider myself to be an artist or a good drawer by any means, there are a few sketches that I've done that I believe are my best work and that I'm proud of.  Picture of my 3 Best Sketches:      Another assignment that we had to do was to find an inanimate/non-human object out in the world and use our creative minds to create a video game character that would avoid landing in the uncanny valley territory. Essentially, we had to design a character based off of an object or thing that wouldn't resemble a human being that would give off a sense of weirdness. Personally, I was very proud of my drawing as I felt that I was able to draw my video game character perfectly to what I envisioned in my mind when I saw this object in the...
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