Visual Studies
Name: Angela Ceroula
Student Number: 21462845
Module Title: Visual Studies
Brief: Brief 6, Own project
Lecturer: Nathan Fowles
Date of submission: 21/01/2022
URL: https://angelaceroula.wixsite.com/amcgd/visual-studies
Week 1
On the first lecture of week one we were tasked to sketch a bicycle without references, not for the aesthetics but for its functionality.
Second task being creating a child's dream sequence, starting by forming an idea and creating a scrip, I've considered to recreate a nightmare based on the child's home environment.
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Dream sequence draft 1
Child’s Dream Sequence
Nightmare based on child’s home environment.
Characters
Child:
Innocent,
Mother figure:
Bright, looks like an angel, comforting, happy but sad, struggles to stand
Father figure:
Dark, formless, red eyes, rough, wicked, blurry, two faced, abusive
1:
Back from school
Kitchen mother figure preparing food
Black shade around neck+arm
2:
Hiding in bed under blankets
Noisy outside with yelling noises, sudden stop, heavy footsteps coming closer, door is locked but someone trying to open it, banging on door.
Scene 1
From over the shoulder of child perspective
The world outside is a scary place but sometimes home can be even scarier.
Child arrives home from school, as they open the door everything feels dark, poor lighting but a good smell is in the air, the child recognising it food. Child runs towards the origin of the smell, a bright kitchen room with an angel wearing an apron, just standing nearby is enough to warm them up through the coldest nights. This angel with dark shades around her neck welcomes the child back with a warm smile instructing them to have a seat and presenting them with a glowing white dish with two sunny eggs, a side of rice and a couple sausages cut down in small pieces.
Dad figure arrives and enters kitchen room, room loses light, feels dark and heavy almost instantly. He grabs a bottle and a glass from the nearby cabinet and sits by the table with a newspaper he got on his way home.
There is no interaction.
Forced Perspective
In forced perspective experiments I have used a toy model of Sara Ryder from the video game Mass Effect: Andromeda. Experimenting with both a professional camera and a phone camera, from simple placement and angle to building an environment using objects found lying around the house as well as experimenting with light.
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Concept Artist - Adam Adamowicz
As part of this module's tasks to research a practitioner, I searched for the concept artists of some of my favourite games, in this case Fallout 3/4 and Skyrim due to their ambient and immersion, these games have been beautifully designed in accordance to setting and environment. And so I found Adam Adamowicz.
Adam was the sole concept artist for Fallout 3, having personally played the game extensively and now much later going through the concept art created for the game I can say for sure the game wouldn't have been the same without the vision of this artist.
I find it inspiring how the carefully created visual concept from the mind of an artist came into fruition as the immersive interactive environment of one of the games I very much love.
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Week 2
This week during we did a 1 minute drawing of a human figure and then developed more into the characters of the dream sequence, I made some changes that fit the sequence more in visual terms, mainly in how the male figure is represented in the dream. For the moment they remain as ideas until I further develop the dream.
 1 minute human figure drawing |  The Child |
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 Mom and Dad figures |
Visualising the Narrative task
Part of this week's tasks was to take various types of shots using our own smartphone. I have used two of my character models as subjects.
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Long shot: Shows the full length of the subject and includes a large portion of the surrounding area, use to set the scene.
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Mid Shot: Shows part of the subject from around the waist line up, draws attention to the subject and close surroundings
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Medium Closeup: Shows the subject from middle of the torso up to imitate closeness to personal space.
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Closeup: Shows the face of the subject to focus on the subject's emotions
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Extreme Closeup: An extreme close up focusing on one part of the subject's face to give a more emotional emphasis of the subject's emotions.
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Panning Shot: Conveys a sense of movement in relation to the subject.
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Over the shoulder: Shows a subject, or area of interest from over the shoulder of a character, to show what this character is focusing on.
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Dutch Angle: A tilt shot used to create a sense of unease.
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 Long Shot (LS) |  Mid Shot (MS) |
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 Mid Shot (MS) |  Medium Closeup (MCU) |
 Closeup (CU) |  Extreme Closeup (ECU) |
 Panning Shot |  Over the shoulder POV |
 Dutch Angle |
Dream Sequence
I went back on my concept/script for this task and reworked it, now with two full scenes and more details that I can use to further work on the character design.
I am hoping this new scrip is more fitting for a nightmare and with a more engaging little story.
With a new reworked script written it was necessary to adjust and change the design of the characters a bit, the child still keeps the same design overall while Faceless gets a head silhouette but still remains faceless and unrecognizable by the child.
Dream Sequence Revised Script
Child Dream Sequence, a nightmare
Scenario
Where: Suburban house
When: Evening
Characters: Child, Father figure/faceless, Mother Figure
Main POV: Child (he)
Scene 1
From the perspective of the child, he arrives home in the evening, sun is almost set, the streetlights have just turned on. The child is wearing a backpack and a long hooded yellow jacket with paint stains at the sleeves, he generally looks gloomy and not too happy when he enters home.
As he arrives home the ambient looks dark, he goes to the kitchen which is shared with the living room where he sees from behind a feminine figure by the stove preparing something. Although this figure is wearing a blindfold, she recognises it is the child that has just arrived.
MOTHER FIGURE: (slightly turning towards the child)
- Welcome back honey, how was school?
CHILD: (shrugs but says nothing, puts backpack down)
MOTHER FIGURE:
- You’ve arrived late, don’t spend too much time in the playground and please do your homework after dinner.
CHILD: (Nods and sits at the table)
--
Sound of a car echoes while it parks in the driveway in front of the garage, a few seconds later the sound of the car door can be heard closing as it was done with quite some force (driveway is next to the main windows of the living room). Then the front door of the house opens, a faceless figure enters, dumps their briefcase and jacket then fast walks with heavy steps into the room reaching for a bottle and a glass from a cabinet on top, away from the reach of the small child.
FACELESS:
- ^*(£^)”(*^$£&^)”)(*”$£*^)(~@:$~£”:@!
(Swearing and intelligible has the child cannot comprehend faceless or any of this character’s speech; faceless bangs the items on the table as he sits down mumbling to himself)
The child in this moment cowers as much as he can on his chair opposite to faceless.
By now the mother figure has finished the food preparations and as she sets a plate with food for faceless, he stares at the food for a second and proceeds to slap the plate away, breaking it as it hits the floor.
FACELESS: -^()(*&£$*^)(&)! &£(*$^(*”)&)$£!
(yelling and swearing, faceless turns aggressive)
MOTHER FIGURE: (turns to the child)
- Honey, would you be a darling and go to your room, I’ll bring you dinner shortly.
The child spares no time and jumps from his chair, grabs his backpack and runs upstairs to his room leaving behind noises of ceramic breaking and intelligible screams.
End of Scene 1
Scene 2
Child’s room
The child gets to his room, throws the backpack to the side and locks the door, he then hides under the blankets but still some space to be able to see the door, the only light in the room are the lights coming from the window, the light from under the door and the light from the keyhole.
The screaming and breaking can still be heard from downstairs until there’s a thud noise, everything falls silent afterwards, the only sound the child can hear is the sound of his own heartbeat which sounds louder in the silence. Then the sound of footsteps can be heard coming up the stairs.
The child focuses on the door, not being able to do anything else but staring at the door cowering in his blanket. A shadow disturbs the light underneath the door and 2 loud knocks echo in the room.
MOTHER FIGURE: Honey it is alright now, open up, I have your dinner here.
The child feeling more relieved slowly comes off his hiding place, walks to the door, unlocks it and slowly opens it revealing right in front a what was before a white plate holding faceless’ severed head bathed in red. The child frozen in place looks up to the Mother Figure whose blindfold became loose revealing indifferent scary eyes along with a smile.
MOTHER FIGURE:
- Now now, take your meal and do your homework.
All the child can do is extend a hand to grab the plate in front of him which makes the Mother Figure note the paint stains on his sleeves.
MOTHER FIGURE:
- Oh honey, the garage door isn’t a canvas, there was no need to rile up your father. Next time let me know and I’ll buy you a canvas you can paint on.
(fixes her blindfold and walks back downstairs humming)
End of Scene 2
Characters and setting
 Mother Figure |  The Child |  Faceless |
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 1 |  2 |
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 3 |  4 |
 Floorplan |
 House Reference image |
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 Childroom reference image |
Perspective experiments
As part of this week's tasks I drew my name first under 2 point perspective then 3 point, since I thought I did something wrong there I re did the 3 point perspective of my name using the 3 points roughly on the same position and distance.
The 3 point was a bit challenging as it kept giving me a deformed feeling, thus why I redid it and obtained pretty much the same result.
Other part of the task was to draw a character in perspective. I don't think I did a very good job at it but there is always room for improvement, and practice.
 2 point pv |  3 point pv |
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 3 point pv redone |  3 point pv |
Human head
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Human head perspective drawing, this helped me having a better sense of proportion and direction of where characters might be focusing and how the viewer can interpret them.
Week 8
Experiments with collage for character design.
This helped me having a sense of how ridiculous a character can look like, instead of being stuck in the proper proportions of human drawing.
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Week 9
Character drawing studies, pose, perspective and turnover.
Attempt at drawing using a digital tablet.
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Particularly helpful to have a sense of proportion and perspective of body parts in relation to one another and how they connect.
The tablet was also trying a different medium that I am not used to, much more potential to make a visually clean drawing but a bit overwhelming to work with at my current level, requires more experimentation and getting used to from me, I prefer more traditional drawing methods.
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Colour and Material Experiments
Giving a new life to an object
One of the tasks given was to pick and object and give it a new "life". Although not very original I used my table lamp.
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First i drew the outline of the lamp itself, then decided to make it into a character, just for fun I opted to turn said lamp into a "God" for stickmen. But if there is one why not more? So opted to turn it into a "zoo" where lamp gods visit to be worshiped, with various instances of worship not just floating sofa with balloons worship.
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For this task I decided to experiment with colour and a mix of materials, so I used a black watercolour marker for the outline, and coloured markers for the balloons, the lamp and parts of the wall in the instance, for the rest I tried using watercolours.
On photoshop I adjusted the contrast jut to make the colours more vivid.
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Colour and Materials
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Mixing of materials and colour, I'm not particularly good at creating harmony with colour, but experimented by using complementary colours and similar colours of different tones. as for materials I have used oil pastels and soft pastels.
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Used the colour experiments task to get more familiar with shapes, shading and perspective.
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 Thefallofthebaldman |  dawnoftheshapes |
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Brief 6 - Game project (part 1)
As part of the module we are to develop an individual response and interpretation to one of the briefs given.
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One of my areas that I need to develop better being idea generation I felt particularly stuck, in order to try and generate ideas I started by grabbing a brush pen and start drawing random lines maybe along them I'd find something that would give me some sort of idea of what to do.
I first drew something that became a tombstone and took from there, drawing something that resembles a chapel and trying to come up with some story for these elements.
My rough first idea being about this protagonist that comes into a village (mostly abandoned) to find about the mysterious demise of their grandparents that passed years ago (maybe great-grandparents). The first stop being the local cemetery where on a lot of the tombstones the year of death being the same. Upon touching the tombstone the protagonist would be able to see into the deceased villagers memories, considering the last moments of the deceased or a selective memory the deceased wanted to convey to the protagonist. The whole point being the protagonist trying to make sense of these memories to figure out what happened a long time ago that somehow killed most of the villagers and how does this relate to his ancestor as well as why does he have this ability.
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Making this some sort of supernatural mystery, a bit of a puzzle, a bit of a journey.
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Brief 6 - Game project (part 2)
Game name: "Inheritance "
The purpose is to make a concept for a game, so I’m thinking of a story-based mystery In with the player must explore the area and use the main character’s powers in order to obtain clues and unravel the mystery.
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Scenario
Intro sequence
The protagonist since a young age had always an affinity towards spirituality, from hearing voices that weren’t there, to seeing faint figures on the street. They had their run-ins with mental hospitals and a diagnosis of schizophrenia, none of the medical solutions really addressed the issue.
The protagonist now in their mid-20’s with no direct clue about what is wrong with them, until one day at a family gathering a distant aunt told a family story from an ancestor that lived in the 1700’s in a coastal village that is now abandoned. The story tells how this ancestor believed he could interact with the underworld, in other words, ghosts, how this ancestor went crazy, it being the reason his grown children left for another town and that he was the reason of a big disaster had befallen the village which resulted in the death of most of the population.
This being the only relatable lead the protagonist had about their condition, they left to visit the town in hopes of finding some clues.
The protagonist arrives at the lapidated village (now controlled by the player), can immediately see faint figures going around, as the player gets closer to them, ghastly voices can be heard, parts of conversations long forgotten, some words feeling heavier than others. As the player advances further into the village more figures can be seen and the voices flood the protagonist’s head, becoming louder and louder impossible to ignore, in this moment (beginning of cutscene) all the protagonist can do is try to cover their ears to no avail, as the protagonist cowers by the damaged fountain in the middle of the village as soon has they touch it, due to the overwhelming sensory overload the protagonist passes out. The first thing the protagonists sees when they open their eyes, as if waking from a dream is a reflection on the water of the fountain, a face they do not recognise, wearing clothes from an era they never lived through, the fountain now seems restored to its former glory (end of cutscene).
The player here resumes control over this new character as if the protagonist was in this character’s body/head, the player will have freedom to explore what the village looked like while it was still developing. As the player walks around, the NPCs would react to this character and addressing them by name, which would be one of the game’s pivotal characters. In this manner the player would gather information about the state of the village and get to know other characters and places important at the time. As soon as the player collects all the information and clues needed, the possession-like segment would come to an end with the protagonist waking up back in the present time back by the fountain. This time the voices would seem clear, and the ghosts of characters met in the previous segment would also look clearer and recognizable as well.
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The Protagonist is a reincarnation, their spirit has the ability to access spiritual data, each reincarnation has a specific ability, the protagonist ability is to be able to tell what's real and what's not as well as astral projection which is what makes them able to see and hear ghosts/spirits, their ancestor had the ability to possess spirits and be able to interact with the world through them. The protagonist gets the ancestor ability by making a direct connection with them through the fountain (some past meaningful event for the ancestor involving it), initially the protagonist can only consciously be in the body which only allows for exploring, not exactly controlling the actions (from a player point of view), this ability would be further developed once the protagonist possesses the spirit of their ancestor. The ancestors don't necessarily mean that they are past reincarnations, it can be any person in the past that hasn't lived at the same time, in this case it just happened to be an ancestor. Other reincarnations had different abilities that the player can learn from possessing them, for them to be able to, they need a direct connection, even if by possessing someone in the past that had direct contact with past reincarnations so the player can follow through to try and find a direct connection/link to possess them and learn their ability.
Other reincarnations would have, for example, abilities such as aura view, telekinesis or teleport.
Protagonist (s)
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I purposely left the protagonist's gender ambiguous so the player could pick whichever gender they are more comfortable playing the game as.
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Initially I sketched the characters from upper torso up with pencil and paper, then using a tablet I "scanned" the sketch and tried drawing them on the tablet using the initial sketch as base.
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Villagers (NPCs)
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Using paintings from the 18th Century as reference for what clothes from the time look like, I sketched some villagers and re-drew them on the tablet.
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Environment
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I did image searching of village layouts and more paintings from the 18th century to use as reference to build the village that the game would set place at, using those resources I sketched with pencil, carbon and charcoal the fictitious village. I started by drawing part of the village in perspective and did a very rough village layout to help visualise the environment.
Environment with NPCs
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Again I used the tablet to sketch over the perspective drawing of the village, I kept using blacks and whites as felt they gave a more dark and mysterious feeling.
Later I added the villagers to populate the environment, some more detailed than others to simulate what the player would see after a segment in which they met some of the NPC characters, others would still be just a ghastly silhouette marking that there are more characters to meet in order to progress with the story.
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I liked the texture feel of the mixture between digital and traditional sketches, I feel it gives more essence to the environment.
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Process notes
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As I'm more used to traditional art, the sketching mostly starts with a pencil and by drawing a rough idea then after formulating some more details around the idea. In this case I had a specific period in mind, the 18th century, and for such I did look for elements that would give me a more accurate idea of what that time period would look like, for this I believe paintings from that era would be the most accurate representations of the customs, culture and technology of that period.
Taking these elements in consideration I've tried to visualise what I wanted to portray in my game, keeping the style on blacks and whites. On the digital aspects, the process was initially redrawing, adding more detail, and shading, shading wise I played mostly with opacity over various layers. As noticeable on the protagonist drawings, I experimented with various brushes, the following drawings of the villagers and environment I kept using the same 3-4 brushes and different opacity depending on the brush.
On the environment drawing I also used highlighting with a white low opacity brush for edges that would be directly lit by the sun.
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