GIF, Business cards and postcards

 I attempted at making a GIF in Photoshop to put into my showreel, which I have created in AfterEffects.

However, AfterEffects does not take into account frame delays or same frames in a row. This meant that the GIF was played and completed almost instantly, which I disliked.



The way the gif should have been played. AfterEffects does not loop GIFs forever, but plays them once, regardless of the GIFs settings in Photoshop.

In the end, I took the image of the closed eye frame to add simple effects to at the end. The effect is a layer of light that emits from the cracks upon the baby Magma Dragon. While not shown here, they are shown below.

The light changes intensity in the showreel but here it is set at an Opacity of 50%.
As part of our submission we also had to submit designs for business cards and postcards. This image, I felt, was perfect for a business card as it was in the showreel (so people could instantly know where it came from), it shows my style of art very clearly and is eye catching.

For the postcard I chose to use the full grown dragons to fully compare them. I added a shadow gradient to each one to give them more depth.

Another update, All Tribe references

 The completed Sky People Refence

The Completed Forest People Reference










I found a small hurdle when drawing up the fire tribe - the Chainmail

 This turned out to be a mess so I ended up making my own

MUCH better

The Completed Magma People Reference

The Completed Aqua People Reference
(resubmitted to put with the rest of the references

Update and The NUA Incident

 Firstly, I apologize for the lack of work over Easter. A lot of family issues got in the way and I was unable to work at home.

But now i'm back at university I can crack on.

Water Tribe

My human references will look like this.










Other than our project, we also have to submit an asset to a game that the university is making: The NUA Incident.






I chose to do some art related to my project and submit that as an image to place on an asset in the game.















The completed piece

Altering the Air Dragon + other changes

Seeing as the Air dragon seemed too different I looked at a dragon like bird - The bearded vulture

Look at the majesticness

Using these images as a better reference I gave the face a tweek and the legs a bit more...floomph









 --------------------------------

 Air dragons - All stages recieved the changes above
- give more depth if time

 Earth Dragons - No changes
 - Will implement rock texture if have the time

 Fire Dragons - colouration on scales to show body heat through scales
-COMPLETE

 Sea Dragons - Scale texture added
 -Fin texture if time







With this, I now move on to my humans 

Earth Dragons And overall comparison

 

My Earth Dragons were pretty simple to colour. Once I had a rough earth and grass colour pallet I got right on it.
The scatter brush has been my greatest friend and has given my Dragon more detail with ease.


Using this method, I merely coloured my other stages.
So here's all the stages as they stand

 

With my dragons all alligned I saw one major problem:

The Air Dragons stage looks TOO dofferent to the rest, almost as if he doesn't belong in the same concept!
I have a few options to change this:
 - Change the design completely
 - Change a few features

The first option would require more time, time which is needed to start on my humans for the project.
The second, however, is achieveable. With minor adjustements to certain areas, I can make them look more like they belong with the rest in Tomara.

Showreel animation test...thing

To truly show the diversity of my knowledge in my showreel (for my university of course) I plan on doing a very short intro animation for Tomara, highlighting around The Mountains Of Dawn

 (A little reminder about it's whereabouts)










On this note, I also chose to narrow down the world to a selected part of the land at the beginning so the game doesn't end up too huge.

With this, I have altered the edges of this map to fit better. I also want to highlight The Mountains Of Dawn as they are to be implemented as an important part of the game.

With the new map set out I present my test animation

I am somewhat happy with it. For a showreel I feel it is too slow, or is missing something (other than the title, mind you)

- The possibility of adding a dragon flying through the mountains is an option, and I could easily animate it in PhotoShop as a GIF file.

- Clouds and lighting effects would be required to bring this to it's greatest (but again, this was a test to see how it would move and flow)

- Need to increase the speed of the animation overall.

But for a test, I feel it was a success.

Tomara Logo

On top of completing our BA8 we have to start thinking about our showreels and how they're presented. I need a logo for my concept to test an idea I have.

 These were some of the first ideas I had, with a couple more added on to the end. I like the idea of implementing part of or the whole dragon into it.
The earlier symbols will still be used if I can find a place for them, most noteably symbols of the clans within Tomara.







For the logo, I sketched up three more ideas around "the dragon and the stone" concept. In the end I settled for the clawed hand holding it for a few reasons other than being my favourite.
- It works best to show off the stone
- It leaves mystery to the dragon holding it

 I chose the stone to be an opal in the end because opals come in varying patterns and colours, giving it a magical property.








I had sketched up these ideas to further put detail into the logo. Despite liking the idea of an eye within the opal and fire somewhere around it, I wondered how I would make that work.

Looking up more opals I found one called "Dragons breath fire opal" - very fitting both by name and by appearance for my project.

I grabbed the two that looked best to me and used the colours to blotch out a rough idea of how it would look.



Finalising the linework and the colour, I now have the logo for Tomara. I will need to figure out a font sutiable to show it is Tomara.
The colour of the clawed hand is not final, and will be decided at a later date. As of now, it is a placeholder to show how it would work.