Week 3: Shape, Scale, Colors

 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:

        In the reading regarding game proportions and scale, one notable concept it talked about was the head-to-body proportions and how the height of your character and the expectations that will come with it will differ depending on how many heads fit your character ((Sivers, 2016). As an example, the author noted that a character's body that fits about 7-8 in the heads category is often expected to look like realistic human characters, while one's that are 6 or below are expected to be cartoonish (Sivers, 2016). As for my character, I'd say that the scale of my character fits somewhere between the 2-3 in the heads category, which means that my character is expected to be very cartoonish as well as being very expressive. While my character's face tries to look intimidating, it fails due to its size and cartoony style. However, if I were to scale my character up to 7-8 heads, then my character would look more threatening and have a more realistic movement than a playful one.


[Insert Pictures Here]

Color:

In the reading, the author talks about how every game chooses a certain color scheme to evoke the game's setting, tone, and/or theme (Stewart, 2017). Many games often use higher-contrast colors to bring the player's eyes towards important items and/or areas that progress the game (Stewart, 2017). While this is not my final color palette, I experimented with some color combinations by coloring the head with this light gray color but colored certain body parts with a higher contrasting color. I did this because I thought of a possible game mechanic where the player must switch out body parts depending on the puzzle/area. So, I made each body part a different color to indicate to the player which part they should use to progress.

[Insert Picture Here]

Bibliography:

1.  Solarski, C. (2013, January 30). The Aesthetics of Game Art and Game Design. Game Developer. Retrieved September 11, 2021, from https://www.gamedeveloper.com/design/the-aesthetics-of-game-art-and-game-design.

2.  Sivers, Y. (2016, July 26). Design tips: In-game proportions and scale. Game Developer. Retrieved September 11, 2021, from https://www.gamedeveloper.com/design/design-tips-in-game-proportions-and-scale.

3.  Stewart, D. (2017, April 11). Color in Video Games: How to Choose a Palette. Game Developer. Retrieved September 12, 2021, from https://www.gamedeveloper.com/design/color-in-video-games-how-to-choose-a-palette.

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