Task 3.1 – Draw and Time It

After Team Meeting 5: Part 2 was undergone, I was given the task to draw a mock piece for the art element I wish to take on in this project by Shannon as Art Lead. This task was given to everyone in the team who wished to pursue an art role in this project. She also told us to time how long the mock piece takes us to complete so that she could get an idea as to the speed everyone draws at. Gaining this knowledge would help create a more accurate development calendar and give us an insight into how long this project would take us to complete in terms of art.

I ended up choosing environment design/art as the art element I wished to pursue as I wanted to improve my skills in that area. I opted for designing and drawing the frog pond as it was one of the more fleshed out areas of the game’s environment so far. The area’s key elements were a pond, a frog on a mushroom and a berry bush. I kept in mind these key elements when designing the mock piece.

Before I began sketching anything, I created a small moodboard for inspiration. Shown below is the moodboard.

I decided to begin timing myself at the start of my sketch process so I could see how long it would take me to create the entire piece.

Firstly, I roughly sketched out the composition of the piece, ensuring that all the key elements were included. Shown below is the sketch.

Next, I made a colour palette using colours I thought would suit the piece. I used my moodboard to colour pick the shades I wanted. Shown below is the colour palette.

Finally, I began painting the piece. Shown below is the painting.

Time Taken to Design & Paint it: 2 hours

I decided to incorporate both mushrooms and trees as part of the forest to explore different design options for the mushroom forest. I also chose to experiment with different art styles within the piece instead of opting for a cohesive style throughout because I wanted to explore several art styles without redrawing the same piece multiple times to achieve this goal.

I also incorporated a foreground and back layer as we had decided that a layered background would make for a more dynamic game world. The frog design is loosely based on the GDD – the frog has fly eyes as its mutation.