My Design Process

For my last design process, I produced a photoshop painting for a video game fan-art competition.
My initial process started with me writing down the criteria for the work, and brainstorming ideas about, until I eliminate to the final idea(s) depending on the time constraints, I then continue by creating a rough composition in my sketchbook, which I tend to use a lot for concepting and just getting my creativity flowing.

Biro drawing scan from sketchbook.

I then scanned the initial sketch into photoshop and used this as a background layer from which I created a digital sketch over the top of the background using the fantastic layers tool, many tips and techniques that I used in my design process were picked up from the digital tutorials of Bobby Chiu, a freelance concept artist, I also referred to 'Bold Visions: The Digital Painting Bible', Gary Tonge (2008), and 'The Skillful Huntsman: Visual development of a Grimm tale at Art Center College of Design', Designstudio|press/ Scott Robertson et al (2005).

When creating the composition, I regularly used the 'flip' command to horizontally reflect my drawing so that I could re-assess the image through fresh eyes- this is the modern equivalent of holding a mirror to one's work to check that the composition balances well. I referred to some of my previous A level art experience when composing the work.

Once a composition was developed, I moved onto establishing base tones and light sources for the piece, this was possibly one of
the longer parts of the process, as the setup on this layer can affect the direction of the entire piece.

The initial tonal/lighting render.

Upon finishing this stage, I then began blocking in basic colour schemes, attempting to create a complementary and pleasing colour composition, the colours went through numerous iterations.

The colour balance attempt, before final touches were added.

 I used a mix of my education as well as online research to decide upon the final colour composition, though I still experimented with different approaches, as I wanted to test a warm and a cold composition.



I posted the unfinished screenshots to my DeviantArt page, as well as asking for the advice of people I knew, once I had recieved enough feedback I made a note of what needed adjusting and set about it in my final passes where I added details, effects and general artistic touches to round the piece off to a satisfactory degree in time for the competition deadline.

The Final Piece.

The final image won joint first place and earned me a mention as well as a nice collection of goodies.

In relevant future work, I will be looking back on my experience in this project, and build on my skills to hopefully create better and better work.