I have
been asked to evaluate my own art work that I have produced in this unit,
therefore I will be explaining the reason for choosing specific tools as well
as how I used my knowledge and skills to overcome certain problems.
Generating
ideas for creating logo designs was not really a big problem for me in this
unit because I think I am quiet imaginative and creative, especially when it
comes to designing things for games. Since that I play lot of games, most of my
design were based on weapons as well as wolf because it is one of my favourite
animal which I think is widely used for games.
At the
beginning I have used wolf and mountains images from Google to create some
logos which I would not be capable to draw either by hand or on the computer,
this allowed me to generate some ideas for a logo. However I realised that I
should not have used randomly images from Google because you cannot know
whether you are allowed to copy images and modify which could be copyright
issue. Therefore I have not used those logos containing such images for my
final logo and splash art, instead I have research free images on the internet
that you are allowed to use without any worries. The website that I have used
is http://www.stockfreeimages.com/ . Below are the images that I have rejected:
(Edited: 29/05/14)
(Edited: 29/05/14)
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| I cut the body to have only the head |
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| This is the wolf picture that I got from Google Image |
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| The head has been modified by adding some effects |
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| This is the other image that I have not used |
Since that
I am designing a splash art for game company, real picture would not suit
because most of games out there are 3D elements with texture making it kind of
real but not as in the real world, and other games are based on cartoon or
anime arts. Therefore I have modified a lot the images by adding effects so
that they are appropriate for type of game like AvAlon.
One of the
main tools that I used in this unit to create things is probably “Pen tool”
from Photoshop, it allowed me to draw things such as sword and axe easily
because I was able to modify the shapes and edge of those weapons freely and
multiple of time without any worries (undo).
When
editing in Photoshop you have layers where you add elements such as effects,
shapes, or even other images, then you able to hide any layers in order to work
on specific layer (to make editing easier). I took advantage of this feature
that Photoshop gives because I am able to keep my changes and original
separated by duplicating layers. This technique allowed me to get back my
previous designs when I made changes that I did not like, which I would have
been able to if everything was in one layer.
One of my
favourite tools for modifying the shape of an image is probably liquify because
it allows me to change freely any area of my images, which I think it adds them
a special touch such as spiky outer or mixing colours and elements, or even
completely change the images’ appearance. In addition to quick selection tool
which I used mostly to remove some parts of images which I did not like or bits
that were not appropriate for making changes, this technique was used for
removing the body the wolf image, so that I can use only the head.
I used
circle and rectangle into some area of my logos because I wanted to have
prefect circles and rectangle such as black circle for the background of
certain logos which were making them look more as a logo than just a simple
image. Furthermore I was able to make them transparent which I used in my
promotional banner to make an overlay colour above another image.
The reason
I choose to make a promotional banner above others was because I am frequent
with advertising banners because they are all over the internet, especially
when I visit games’ websites. So I was more confident for my first splash art
and I thought I will be able to create a decent banner for promoting my game.
For this
splash art I had to choose my logo design and some rejected design to create
the banner, so some decisions were required such as which designs were good for
the banner, which layers should be kept and whether colour had to be changed,
etc. Since that most of my designs were based on weapons such as swords, axe
and shield, grouping and adding them into my promotional banner was not that
hard. However some changes were needed, size was the major problem because all
my design were supposed to be a size of 500x500 pixels and the banner size is
1500x500, so I had to resize the images to fit them appropriately to the banner
and also in order to include more designs than 3.
To enhance
the look of my banner I also modified some of my designs such as the shape of
some images as well as some layers, some layers were not proper to other
designs, mostly because of colours and some were kind of repetitive (similar to
some designs).
In my
opinion the thing that restricted my skills from creating decent designs was
probably because of not having lot of knowledge and skill in Photoshop since it
was the first time I was using it. However now I learned lot of skills and
technique in Photoshop which I probably would have difficulties to learn if I
was learning if on my own.
