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Collaboration Project Week with Graphic Design
This week, I've collaborated with Graphic Design, Graphics for Publishing and fellow Games Art students. We were given two words, and left to our own devices. Our words were "Surprise" and "Pencil".Immediately after being grouped, we sat together to discuss our specialisms, skill-sets and how we could apply them to this project- we began by writing all our first ideas down in brainstorms.
We had some... interesting ideas to begin with, but through constant talking our ideas started to take shape. We talked about the idea of surprise, perhaps leaving pencils in locations with words laser-printed into them, the idea of street artists leaving free art for people, a pleasant surprise- the joy of discovery. We soon had the idea of leaving pads as well, perhaps enticing the public to draw, perhaps at train stations or whilst waiting for the bus, where people gather and have little to do. This could be part of a capaign, perhaps promoting an even like The Big Draw or perhaps a charity. Leaving part of a drawing for people to add to if desired was also an idea.
We soon developed this concept further with a focus on promoting charities. We had the idea of an app, still using this drawing idea with pads at places as way of promoting it. We'd have users draw things in the app, people in that location, say London, would be assigned the task of drawing an animal, any animal- these drawings would come together to form a large mural of the WWF charity logo, a panda. There would be a range of small challenges people could take on, donating via the app to these charities would unlock new pallets and tools to use- the app being a means of promotion for these charaties. These murals would be made into larger physical posters to promote further, merch such as mugs and shirts, and of course pencils, would also be sold for the causes with these designs. We seemed to have come up with a business at this point, but soon realised we'd completed run away from one crucial element, "Surprise". Having really developed and got carried away with this idea, we started again, but still focused on the idea of an app.
We started again. From our original idea we branched out and had the idea, with much discussion, to create a sort of social media for artist, that was less about chatting via messenger, and more about gathering in real life to potentially collaborate. We discussed much on the potential ins and outd of this app, but it would primarily focus on location of the user and nearby art classes, events or gatherings with users able to set up own events in public, cafe drawing for example, a way for like-minded or different people to meet. There would be a surprise spotlight everyday on new, recommended or popular events and there's be qr codes in certain popular drawing hotspots such as monuments or museums that would let nearby users come together.
With our app idea in place, everyone in the group had made attempts at logo creation and app icons. Myself included.
A colour pallete had been chosen and the Graphic designers set out on webpages, icons and layouts, others worked on menu flow and various roles were given out. Our project was far more geared towards our graphic designers, but we still found a use for us Game Artists in useful ways, one team member highly interested in Game Design covered UX and elements of UI that were broadened by the teams Graphic Designers, the other worked on an animatic for the loading screen. I discussed the use of a mascot rendered in 3D software, a chameleon or a peacock.
We quickly decided to drop the peacock idea and instead opt for a little chameleon that I was put in charge of modeling, to be used in promotional materials.
For this model we wanted a lowpoly aesthetic, and I was about to use new techniques in way of a new shader and texturing technique that didn't feature UV unwrapping, but painting right onto the faces themselves. After a failed attempt from trying to model from a complicated polysphere, I started again with a more simple primitive.
The paint vertex tool proved difficult at first but I soon adjusted. With guidence and crit from my team, I slowly painted the model in more aesthetically pleasing ways, using different brushes and experimenting with eye size and horns.
The chameleon would sit on a pencil and the horns were removed. Getting renders of the pencils themselves were a collaborative effort as my laptop cannot render anti-alliasing as it hasn't the power to use viewport 2.0, a team mate taking the file I sent them to get pencil render to also be used in promotional material.
And the chameleon
Throughout this project, I found myself taking very much a leadership role, something I'm not used to doing, I honed in on what people's interests and skills were and leveraged this so our group worked harmonious, we all had a voice and a lot of input in this project, I just found myself able to direct the group and stay on path as well as listening to everyone I was working with.
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