Week 3-Viking Hand in

Name: Sarah Wright
P Number: p1322992x
Email: p1322992x@email.dmu.ac.uk
Project Title: VS- Partially Stylized Character Project

Overview: To produce semi-stylized Viking characters based on the artwork of JC Leyendecker. The lead character is going to be a spritely young girl, with a collection of supporting characters from her village, and enemy characters. For this project I produced a main character 3 support character one main Enemy character and 2 lower enemy characters as well as promotional images.

The process for this included:

• Researching and studying Leyendeckers’ work specifically his style of rendering. 
• Finding "modern day Vikings" to bas my characters faces and body types on 
• Researching Viking Clothing 
• Sketching out my collection of characters 
• Preparing my characters for colour and exploring pallets 
• Producing final renders. 

Research/Mood boards:







Thumbnails:
A few sketches to get a feel for the characters I wanted to produce, in response to my Viking mood board.

Further Character Iterations:

Design Evaluation:

Colour research/thumbnails

I began this process by creating clown renders of my characters, from there I base my first pallets off the colouring in my Viking clothing mood board. After some feedback it was suggested that I take inspiration from Leyendecker for my colour choices. So I made a reference sheet of hero and villain images that I could extract my pallets from, this worked very well and I'm pleased with how the final pallets turned out.

Rendering Studies:
​Noting down the materials present in my character designs and studying how Leyendecker renders these.

Final Character Sheets:

Render Crib Sheet:

This was created in response to feedback, it was suggested to me that I put all the reference I needed for my more polished outcomes onto one sheet, so I did not lose sight of the Leyendecker look I needed to stick to.

Hel Character Exploration:

Composition thumbnails and Polished Promotional Images:

Evaluation Q&A

Q: Did I answer the brief?
Not particularly, in trying to hit the quantity of characters needed for the brief I missed out when it came to rendering them all in a Leyendecker style. I plan to put my characters back in the context of Leyendecker’s work when I revisit this project.

Q: How well did I mange my time
Pretty well. I ran out of time to polish some of my characters, but I can make that up at a later point. I feel like my hero designs are fairly strong though. However because I'm not used to the level of characters I had to produce I had to skip some iteration when it came to designing my enemy characters, and overall rendering time was cut. For future project I'll need to cut down the steps I usually take when producing designs.

Q: Did my end result represent what I wanted for this project?

Yes, I produced the quantity of characters I needed for this project, and I am happy with the designs of the majority of them. When it comes to the level of polish I wanted I didn't quite hit that, but that’s a matter of time rather than ability. 

Q: Strengths I found during this project

I was more efficient and organised in my process than I normally am. I'm used to creating one character at a time so I gave myself several opportunities to evaluate and check my characters against each other to make sure they all fit as a group, which helped me produce some solid designs.

Q: Weaknesses I found during this project
Trying to render my characters in the style of Leyendecker was an issue throughout this project.

Q. What stressed me out the most during this project?
The quantity of characters threw me when it came to cleaning them all up to an intermediate level.

Conclusion:
Overall I love how the main character and Hel turned out. Though I fell a little short on time to develop my enemies my hero characters worked out great this project.This project may not have turned out as polished as i'd like, i can see where I can develop this and improve upon it. Also how I can mold this to better fit into my portfolio. So that’s a win for me.