Industry practice Week 8-14
Week 8
As another memeber of my team was struggling with looking into the Anxiety character, they asked to swap characters with me, so I am now going to be doing the research and character design for the Anxiety character. As I will no longer be working on the PTSD character, I will not be developing my sketches for that character design anymore.
For the anxiety character, I will be looking into the different ways that Anxiety can show its self in someone, this can either be the way they speak, the kinds of people they tend to hang around, how they present themself and how they might dress depending on how they're feeling.
I will also be starting my initial sketching phase for the environment designs that I have been assigned for the project, for these I will be designing the bedroom and the park. The bedroom being one of the main areas where the main character will be spending their time at the start and end of each day, potentially sometimes for the whole day.
Character research
There are lots of ways that Anxiety is able to present its self in someone. I did some quick research to find a list of all the different symptoms of anxiety, which are as follows "a churning feeling in your stomach, feeling light headed and dizzy, pins and needles, feeling restless or unable to sit still, headaches, back aches or other forms of aches and pains, faster breathing, as fast, thumping or irregular heartbeat, sweating or hot flushes, sleep problems, grinding your teeth, nausea, needing the toilet more or less often, changes in your sex drive and having panic attacks."
Initial sketches- Character
For some initial character sketches, I made a quick head base for the character, which I then used to make multiple different hair styles for the character. I will also make a full body base in order to come up with a few outfit designs for the character's clothes. Once we have decided as a group which designs we want from each set of intiial concepts, I will combine them both on one character for the final concept.
The hair style that we will be going for with this character is the third one, as we feel as a group this better fits the requirements of the character.
For the character's clothing, I wanted to go with something that makes the character look a little more reserved, as this would better fit the idea of the character being based on anxiety. Based on this, I went with a baggy hoodie on all three of my initial concepts, as I feel like this fits the idea of a character suffering from anxiety the most. In terms of legwear, I didn't want the character to be left with any expsoed skin, so they're either wearing shorter legwear with tights or trousers with socks as I feel like this would better fit in with the theme of the character.
Of the three outfit designs, we will be going with the first one, although, I will be adding a few more details to some areas of the design, as it feels a little bit basic
Initial sketches- Bedroom
To start off the bedroom design, I looked into creating some simple floorplans to get a general idea of what sort of layout I want for the room and any connected rooms that they might have to add a bit more depth to the design of the room, even if the connected rooms aren't shown in their own scenes, the door between might be ajar, so having the layouts will help with deciding what should be shown on the other side of the doorway.
Of the room layouts I have come up with, I have decided to take the 4th design forward to the development phase, as this layout focuses more on the bedroom, and gives a possiblility for multiple views in the bedroom, one potentially looking from the right wall towards the computer and bed, the other view coming from the bed side looking towards the shelves.
I will now start to develop the room creating a finalised concept of the room design. I will be starting off focusing on a view looking towards the bed and computer, as I feel like this will be the most important view in the bedroom, as they character will be shown in the morning and before they go to bed in every day of the story's progression.
Having sketched the initial base sketch for the bedroom, I will start to look at different colour for the room. I will try a range of different colours for the walls and the carpet, as we will probably be using several different colours for the environments as the
For my initial colours, I wanted to go with something brighter and more inviting than we might end up with as the visual novel progresses. The room would also probably start to become more chaotic and messy as they main character's mental health declines, as they would become less inclined to keep their room in order due to a lack of motivation.
I have left the posters on the walls blank, as a different memeber of my group is meant to be designing the clutter for the room.
This colour variation of the bedroom is based around the idea of midway through the game, if the main character's mental health is declining, the colours will start to become a lot more desaturated and muted, at the same time, the room will become a lot more cluttered and dirty as the main character will feel less inclined to keep their room in order due to the state of their mind.
Initial sketches- Park
As the park is going to be a scene for one of the good endings of the visual novel where the main character seeks help with their mental health, and gets to a good place. This environment will be made with a positive atmosphere in mind, with an attempt at invoking a somewhat calming feeling.
In my initial sketch for the park, I was trying to think about what kinds of things would be good to include in the scene. The main things that I opted for in the park was a central water feature, as water features can generally be seen as quite calming, to add to this feeling, I added some reeds around the edges of the water and a duck. For the rest of the park, I filled it with grass, trees and a bench, all of which are very common in most parks and could also be seen as quite relaxing features.
With my initial sketch finished for the park, I will now start thinking about what kinds of colours I can include in the environment to further enhance the feelings that I want the environment to give off.
When picking out the colours for the game, I didn't want to make them too bright as the general colourscheme of the game is meant to be toned down, but I picked colours that are quite a bit brighter than some of the colours that have been used in darker scenes such as the mid and ending bedroom scenes, for which I opted for much darker and desaturated shades quite unlike the fuller colours that I have used in this park scene.
With all of my concepts for the environments and my character now finished, I will pass them onto the 2d leads of my group, ready for them to be finalised for sprites and scene backgrounds. My main focus with this concept work now done will become the storyboarding, which will be drawn based on the script that will also be completed soon.
The storyboard will be used as a template for which sprites and backgrounds we need for each day of the story, giving us a better idea of which areas and characetrs are going to be the most important throughout the story.
References
https://www.mind.org.uk/information-support/types-of-mental-health-problems/anxiety-and-panic-attacks/symptoms/
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