Final assignment

Our final assignment for the 2D course, for the grade VG, was to use a provided picture of a city to put shadows and light in. It was also a second part of the assignment; to construct from a loose sketch we were also provided with. I started out with the city, since that seemed to be the most time consuming task. We wasn’t supposed to get into detail, but it was hard to avoid all of them.

I began with deciding on where my light source would be and then proceeded to fill the lighter areas which were in contact with my light source. Then I added the shadows; the surfaces facing away from my light source and places where, for example, the roof or a house cast a shadow. To create some more contrast after I was done, I played around a bit with overlay effects with black and white.

The next part was to construct from a loose sketch. It looked like a cowboy to me, so I continued down that path. I quickly built up a body based on the pose we were provided with. I decided to look up some references of cowboys, to get a pretty accurate outfit instead of winging it. I found one I liked and started working on the clothes keeping those clothes in mind. It was a joy to work on after sitting so long, staring at a city.

Helping programmers

During the winter break, I didn’t get much drawing done. I did some small work on the assignment we were given, but didn’t finish it until I got back to the island. However, I did help some programmers with their art in the game they are making; to program a game is their final assignment. I was asked to draw two different blocks; one solid and one that could be destroyed, a background, two players, an enemy, a bomb and an explosion. Since they were basing their game on the old Mac game Boom, I also based my design and style after that game.

To be honest, I didn’t put much thought into the design since I already had something to go after. The only thing I had in mind was to show the enemy as more square and stiff compared to the two players, to somehow give him an evil vibe.

I was later asked to also make two skulls and UI for their game, which resulted in this:

They wanted two separate skulls for the two players and it would somehow also show who they belonged to. Since we had a green and a yellow player, I just added a faint glow behind the skulls. The UI would be placed to the left of the game, with info about their current life count and probably something more. I also did a quick logo, so the UI would remind more of the original UI in Boom.