Dragon Song Bloggpost 1.
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Concept Art-
For the project of the rhythmical game Dragon Song, my role is to lead the graphical output to the game as well asdesign the avatar for the protagonist of the game which is what I will cover in this blogpost.
The game needed a protagonist that could match the protagonist of the game concept that our group chose. In the concept, the protagonist was a dragon and we liked the idea of a playable dragon for our game so my first mission was to create a dragon that was unique and that matched the mood that the art team set for the graphical style for the game. So to create a concept art for the dragon I wanted to mix the different dragon styles that were scouted out by the others in the art team. It consisted by a dragon with large wings, a dragon with horns and a smaller dragon with large eyes. I had to try to mix all this to try to create a unique design for the dragon. We also decided on a cartoony style for the art work to the game. A design everyone on the art team was conferrable with and could handle. I started with thinking about the pose that the dragon most possibly would be in. I thought about that the dragon would be in a relaxed pose that would be most ideal for the characteristics for the dragon. I was struck by a sudden dog video I saw in an add as I was searching for inspiration. The dog sat by the owner and had a very relaxed and peaceful pose. So I tried to create a dog like sitting pose and that is how the body of the dragon was created. Later I sketched the dragons head. It should be a large head with large horns that came out in a forward position. The eyes that were to be large and easily spotted was very inspirited by my favorite art style, manga. I often draw manga so the idea of large eyes came very natural to me. The problem was that in manga, boy and girls have very recognizable eyes for their gender so I had to do my best not to do very manly eyes or very girly eyes. If it was one thing that I wanted with my design of the dragon, it was that it would be genderless so all sorts of genders could connect with the avatar.
As I had my head and body done, I had to focus on the wings of the dragon. It was one of the most simple things to sketch up since that I just had to do thing was to make them large. The tail on the other hand was a tricky thing to make. More tricky than I ever could have imagined. The whole of the dragon was very different and a plain tail seemed boring so I thought that I should make it more interesting. I had just read of the designing for “Lion King” in Walt Disney’s book and I thought that I could make it a lion’s tail. Although the tail would be a little too small in comparison with the body of a dragon if I would make it was on a lion so I had my original design on y dragon tail but I added the tassel of the end of the lion tail to the dragon tail and it seemed fine on sketch. Now came the most time consuming part of the process which was making a clear line out of the sketch I made. Then the dragon would be most visual to present to the team.
The clear line creating is also the time for me personally to add some minor details so that it can make the design more unique, more unique that the sketch. I had some scale like plates go from the top of the head between the horns down to the end of the neck of the dragon to make it have more of a dragon look. I did not want it to stray too far from a dragon design because it is still a dragon. I also made some webbing for the dragon wings to have a little more feeling to it. It felt empty without anything there and feathers seemed out of place. After the clear line was done, looked at my design and thought that the facial expression was a little vague. I wanted the dragon to give a positive feel and so I added a smile to it to have that happy feeling.  The results were a happy dragon that mostly consisted of the features my team wished for and it looked like a mash up between My Little Pony and Pokémon. I was anyhow pleased with the results. It was not my favorite piece of art by the ones that I created but it matched the mood and graphical design that was set for the game. Therefore was it this design that was chosen to be included in the game as well as be written in this blogpost.
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