The Design Process: Deliver - Part 1
Coming to the conclusion of this project, I began directly illustrating my final outcome.
As a starting point, I sketched out a brief mind map to develop ideas for what parts of Crossness I could visually incorporate into a character design. This ranged from the general colour palette, to individual motifs and structures being designated to a specific body part.
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| Primary sketches |
Following on from this, I began to create some primary iterations through quick sketches - putting to use my newly discovered knowledge of shape language, and directly observing from my photos of Crossness to ensure I was accurately and thoroughly depicting the setting in my design choices. My first two iterations were bulky, square-bodied robot-like figures. As much as these accurately incorporated both the shape language (large engines) and structures (cogs and gears) of Crossness, I personally felt their designed appeared too unrefined to visually represent the intricate Victorian engineering that Crossness is predominantly known for. This decision lead me to develop a more slender, humanoid figure in my next iteration. I decided to still keep the torso bulky and squared off to retain the engine shape, however I went on to make the rest of the body slightly more elongated to evoke the imagery of pipework in the limbs. This decision is what brought me to my final sketch, a very tall but very slim figure with a squared off torso and pipe-like limbs. |
| Overlaying Crossness aspects |
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| Line art and first colour palette |
I continued with the theme of robotics to encapsulate the theme of engineering within my design, and began to layer some of the insignias and structures found around Crossness over my sketch to develop ideas for the body patterning and how the design could incorporate the pumping station's visual elements.
From this I developed a finished sketch, which I then refined by creating a neat line art layer to accentuate the key lines and details in the design.
From this, I experimented with colour palettes for the character. At first I used the extracted colour palettes I'd created earlier in the project, however these were too washed out and didn't accentuate the deep saturated colours and metallic textures of Crossness. I then went on to colour pick directly from the Crossness photos - this was a lot more successful, and after another iteration that didn't feel right (the colours were too sporadic, contrasting and over saturated), I finally settled on a colour palette. The chosen colour palette utilised the reds, blues, golds, and greens found throughout Crossness while not feeling too overwhelming to look at.
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| Sketch progression |
The final step was to render the image - accentuating the presently flat colours and bringing the character to life (so to speak). I began this process by adding a glow effect to his chest piece and eyes to represent power flowing through his body (this was achieved by creating multiple blurred layers in varied shades of blue and applying a multiply layer effect to them). I then went on to texture the character by airbrushing over particular parts of his design with contrasting colours (the red over the gold, the gold over the red). This created a more brushed, metallic look - while also creating the illusion of rusted metal and worn paintwork chipping away to reveal a base metal underneath. To conclude this process, I applied a multiply layer consisting of a solid red overlay of the character - which I then erased to create a rim lighting effect around the character.
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Colour palette
iterations 2 and 3 |
Finally, I produced a character sheet/blueprint of the character by copying the line art, lowering the opacity, and enlarging it to create a simple yet effective background that draws attention to the foreground subject of the completed character design. I then duplicated this method and annotated the design to more directly depict the visual references to Crossness incorporated into the character. I chose to make a character sheet as I enjoyed the ideation of my completed design being a character in an animation or comic book.
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Texturing, shading, and
rim lighting process |
If I were to continue this project - I would likely attempt to create a short animation or gif featuring my character. Given the opportunity to rework this design process, I would have experimented more with colour palettes and how they could be applied to the final design. I would have also further experimented with texturing my character using different methods - as I feel I decided on a method of texturing too quickly and didn't allow myself the opportunity to create various iterations to then decide on the better outcome.I feel the final outcome of my work is a well achieved character design that clearly depicts the place of which it is intended to embody. The delivery/presentation of the final outcome, however, could be better - If I were to maintain the character sheet/blueprint format, I would like to also include some gesture sketches and possibly a full body and headshot turnaround to clearly define my character's form in a 3D space.
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| Final product with and without annotation |
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