Phenomenology

Phenomenology is prevalent in most horror games as the player is under constant pressure and may feel more anxious. The genre's tendency to utilize jumpscares also allows the player to become more aware of their own body. Rising blood pressure and increased heart rate is more common when playing these games.

Another example of phenomenology is more immersive games. With the recent release of VR to the public, players can become more immersed within games. They utilize parts of their body to play, specifically the head, which allows for a more interactive experience. Systems such as the Nintendo Wii and the Kinect also utilize this, forcing players to become more aware of themselves and their surroundings.

A lot of action games lack the ability to keep players aware of their own body as most players will typically become immersed within the genre. Games such as Halo or Counterstrike allow little in terms of phenomenology as they focus more on the experience and the gameplay rather than interactivity.

The PS Vita (RIP) attempted to allow players to interact with games using parts of their body more, whether it be blowing into the mic, turning and tilting the console or using the dual touchscreen to increase dynamics.

Extra Life Drawing sessions

Here are a numerous amount of sketches from a few weeks worth of extra life drawing sessions. I have been determined to improve my anatomy and the overall quality of my sketches through constant practice. From all of these sessions I feel a lot more confident in my ability to draw the human body, more specifically the torso. My observational skills have grown a comparable amount since the beginning of the year when I first started life drawing. I still feel a little weak when it comes to perspective or the face, but that will come with practice.

I need to work on capturing more tone within my sketches rather than the overall form. Working like this will give me a larger understanding on the effect lighting has on the body which will help with my 2D concept art and 3D modelling. Applying what I have learned from life drawing into my 2D work, however, is a completely different thing!

Hopefully with more sessions I will be able to translate my skills easier.

Yet another creature design

I thought I'd make some more 2D based work so I don't get too rusty from all of this 3D! I tried staying a little loose whilst considering areas of detail for contrast. I worked in black and white as i'd like to contrast my tones more by using more intense areas of shadow and brighter highlights and rim lighting.

Anything to draw more creatures really~

Personal work - more designs

Above is a creature design and the result of a new work flow that I have been experimenting with. I used a variety of textures around the piece as well as playing with layers for specific purposes (such as shadow, light and warm skin tones) to help add variety and slight realism, whilst speeding up my work at the same time. I tried to create a contrast between more refined areas and looser, more expressive brush strokes.

I enjoyed creating this piece, although I feel I need to work on my colour choices and once again I should implement more colour variations into the painting itself. 

This second piece was a quick ship design I came up with. It is mainly just a simple silhouette paint-over to try and speed up my work more so. I also played with more layer uses to allow for a more metallic appearance of the ship - which I still need to refine and work on. I like this image but I feel I could improve on a lot more aspects. I need to use more references as well!

Personal work - Landscape sketches

Above are two quick limited pallet sketches. These sketches remain largely unfinished as I was discouraged during their creation. I felt conflicted with my approach to each of these and I feel like preparation or initial sketches would help beforehand.
Personally I don't like either of these and I would like to improve my environmental work.

This image was a more refined environment design. I utilized more contrast between light and dark as well as using photographs during the initial stages of the piece. I feel like this image came out much better than the previous two and it rectifies some problems I had with them. I still think I should try loosening up my style more and implementing more colour variations within my paintings.

Here are some quick thumbnail sketches. I trialled a new work flow for thumbnail creation within photoshop. These thumbnails took approximately 5 minutes each and I tried to experiment with colour for each of them.

Personal work - character concepts

Above are two quick character concepts based on a few silhouettes I created over the weekend. I opted for a monochromatic approach as I wanted to work on my usage of tone, looser sketching style and readability. I feel like I had some minor successes and more importantly I had a lot of fun creating these~

As for critique I feel like I need to work a LOT more on anatomy and I should use references a lot more to help create more believable images. I should also look into workflows that allow me to go from a monochromatic painting to a coloured painting.

Personal work - zBrush rendering

For this model I wanted to focus on the rendering aspect of zBrush. I devised a quick demon-like character within zBrush and used the internal rendering within the software. I used a blade runner inspired material to add interesting rim lighting to the render as well!

This next render was created using Marmoset Toolbag 2. The render itself looks rather bland as I did not texture my model which in hindsight was a missed opportunity! This does however give me reason into looking at UV mapping within zBrush instead of exporting into Maya.

MT2 is a very nice renderer however and I intend to use it for more of my future 3D work!