So match our brief I cartoon-ised my original design. I feel that this has stopped the image being inappropriate to my target audience and allowed me to link it to our coruse as they are "WII" style characters.
Dose it match my original intentions and is it appropriate to my audience?
My design matches my original intentions and my briefs specs but its an adaption of my original design. I intend for a "peace circle" of fantasy characters around the world. My final design had full bodied creatures with high detail on armour and clothing. but as i tried this I couldn't create the image without it looking scary, so I have it in a cartoon style. For my intentions I have three characters that are fantasy to show a range of differences which follows the equality and diversity theme. The image I feel is suitable to young audience as it "cartooney" and is none offensive or mature, it also suits the older generation as it isn't specifically referencing any cult/pop classic images.
The techniques I have used and improvements/developments.
In 3D studio max I created a sphere and placed an image of the world around it as a wrap texture then I put it into photoshop. In addobe photoshop I created the background by using the gradient tool to get gradual shading from dark blue to light blue. I then added "smoke" strokes to create a cloud effect around the world. The strokes/clouds effect I added were originally meant to be an actual sky like image but I feel that as the simple strokes they are, both more in keeping with the image as a whole unless I used very basic cartoon clouds which I attempted to draw but they seemed to distort the overall feel of my design. For the characters I created a template on photoshop using the basic shapes and the with the pen tool to complete the shape of the character (e.g. the Dragon started as a circle and rectangle I the used the pen tool to round off the corners and add more shape to the image.) and the paint brush tool to add more detail, I then merged the layers of the pen and the template shapes. Then to create the textures I used a mixture of blending options and filters (e.g. (as an example of the blending) I used drop shadow on the Orc/Goblin's eyes to create depth to them and adjusted it to focus more on the lower part of his eyes to make Bags under them.)(e.g. (as an example of filters) for the Minotaur I used the noise filter to add a fur feel and then cutout to change the lines to look like hairs.). I am pleased with the look of my characters and i feel that the bodies have improved my design but I wish had scanned in my second final design rather than making it digitally from the design. Although this has made me both more confident and comfortable with photoshop as I have practised with most of the tools in the programme to create this image and for my next project that uses photoshop I will make use of the pen tool and blending options to create an image from a scanned peice.
The style and content of my work.
For my image the style is similar to "Wii" characters and children's
cartoons but instead of people they are fantasy creatures. Top right is a
picture of Wii gameplay from gametrailliers.com showing a typical Wii
character playing frisbee and his hands are floating independently from his body
like my images characters hands. The Wii characters have detailed faces and plain body's and in gameplay there limbs are transparent or none existent. I feel that this style suits my desktop image as it has a direct link to our course and the industry
that most ages will hopefully notice. There is also a cartoon style that is universal to all ages (as it isn't strictly mature) so my target audience will be able to appreciate the style the other image to right the right is of a cartoon dragon from istockphoto.com which I found an advert for in the gaming magazine play this photo of a dragon I found after I had created my dragon but I can see a lot of comparisons within both images. This Dragon has more detail and a full body but no texture and if I was to redo my design I would use the cartoon style more than the Wii style as the full image looks neater.
The problems I encountered.
My first design for this desktop image was hard to manipulate in photoshop and after I had finally started making progress it had an evil feel to it that wouldn't suit the younger end of my target audience, it resembled villains from He-Man like skeletor. So I re-drafted my design as a more child friendly version that resembled the Wii characters.were the textures mainly the Minotaur fur as I had to keep experimenting with diffrant combinations of filters, but I couldn't get a 3d texture I am happy enough with it to hand in the work but I would still like to have improved it.
Did you meet the deadline?
Yes and No the evaluation (this) didn't post on blogger. but I completed the work on time, just.
What I would do differently next time.
I would create a more abstract image maybe with only one character and focus less on equality and diversity, as I feel I restricted myself too much with that theme.
