FMP/Game cover Evaluation
FMP Development:
For the FMP development I was asked to get down 4 initial ideas for my final project. The ideas I had in mind was to do a documentary, poster/collage design, animated gifs, and game cover project. I was told to do this because it would give me more variety of choices that I could choose. This helped me a lot because it gave me lots of time to think about what I wanted to do for my final project. At the same time It didn’t help because at the time of doing this developing my ideas, it was during online sessions (lock down) so I had to think about the pros and cons of each idea. I also had to make a mind map, basically brainstorming about my interests and hobbies. I did this because it was one of the requirements from the FMP brief and it also helped me because it gave me some ideas to think about what I wanted to do with FMP and to see what field I wanted to go in. There were other requirements from the brief like self-assessment, 16 personalities test and strengths and weaknesses through the course. Doing all that was compulsory because it was required from FMP brief. This also helped because it motivated me to do this project and it also gave me the chance to reflect on the entire course and seeing where my strengths and weaknesses are so I can improve upon them and at the same time seeing what I am good at in the course.
Concept Development (Visual concepts/research:
The FMP idea I went with was a game cover project. I decided to do this because I was really good at editing images/ digital artwork. Also the FMP brief had a specific theme which was incognito. This helped a lot because I was told to do visual research/ concepts. This didn’t help that much I was asked to make mood boards, but at the time of doing it was online and I didn’t have the resources to make them. However to fix this problem one of my tutors found an outlet for this and it was photo pea. To make the mood boards I used photo pea. This helped a lot because it I could do more visual concepts and research. The style of concepts and research I was doing for my game cover project was that I went for a comic book route. To do this I looked for many images of comic book characters that I could find that have something to do with the idea and theme of incognito. I did this because it would help me a lot with type of game cover I was going to produce and the style for was comic book/superheroes but also at the same adding that incognito theme into it. I not only did mood boards, but I also did a bit of typography. I did a good amount of typography that had the same comic book style to it but at the same adding in the theme of incognito, because I got comic book images from google and used it embed them into the text. I not only did this for comic book characters I also did it with animated shows and cartoons. I did this because it will make my research stronger, and it gave me more of an idea of what my game cover Is going to look like. The problems I had while doing this was that I forgot to reference the images that I used and didn’t have source material to back up my visual research/concepts. However to fix this I referenced every single image I used for my visual research by using Harvard referencing (Cite this for me).
Game cover research:
To start of my game cover project I had to do some research on game covers. I did this because it would give me a better idea what game covers are and what they are all about in terms designs. I specifically chose superheroes game covers because the type of game covers, I wanted to produce is superhero based. This helped me because it gave me ideas on what my game cover could come out to be like. This also helped me a lot because There were sources out the there on how to make custom game cover. However this did not help because there weren’t that many sources the I could find about game covers and how the idea of incognito fits in with the type of game covers I was looking for. But to fix this problem I referenced two of game cover images and annotated them as best as I could and explaining the theme of incognito and how it links in with the idea of incognito. I also had to do research on game rating. I did this because so I can find out what rating there are for games. This helped me because the audience demographic I was trying to target was teenagers, so it helped me in a way when it comes making my own cover and I know what rating to put on the game cover.
Comic book/artist/cartoon research: To expand my research even more I decided to do research on comic books. I decided to do this because the type of game cover that I am going to make was superhero/comic book based. This helped because it allowed me to learn more about comic books and their history. I also did research on artists. I did this because I wanted to see what art style I should capture for inspiration in terms of drawing. This helped a lot because it gives me more motivation to have my own character designs and to see different styles. I also did a bit of research on some animated stuff. I did this because I wanted my game cover not only to have that comic book style but want it to look more cartoony is well. This helped a lot because it gave more info on how certain cartoons can be linked in with the idea of incognito. For references purposes I got a good amount references from images and other different sources and websites. This helped a lot because it makes my research stronger and more evident and the entire research as whole including the game cover research
Experimentation/concepts designs (architectures, character designs):
After I finished my research, I started working concepts/designs ideas. The two experimentational ideas I worked on was architectures and character designs. For the architectures design I used power point. I used this because I am more familiar with this software and it was a lot easier to use. This helped a lot because it was less time consuming, and I got more designs out of the way and it was a lot easier to do. After I finished designing my architectures, I then moved on to my character designs. This did not work well at first because I was planning on drawing the full character, but I couldn’t do that because I only had a week left before deadline. In order for me to complete my character designs I decided to do portraits instead. My original plan for the character designs were to do six but I couldn’t do that because of the lock down and covid so I decided to do four instead. I decided to do this because I am good at drawing portraits and it a lot easier to do and also it is less time consuming, and I it get them done. After I finished drawing them, I took them into photoshop to colour them by using the fill bucket tool. This helped out a lot because at them time of experimenting and designing my characters I was in college and it was very useful because I had the right resources and it, I could get them done quickly before deadline.
Final Game cover design:
After completing my concepts and character designs I then started to work on the game cover. For the game cover I was planning to design 2 covers. I decided to do this because it was my original plan to make 2 game covers. To make the game covers the software I used was photo pea. I used this software in particular because for me it’s a lot easier to use and I know what I am doing when using it. This really helped me out a lot because I completed the game covers in one day which gave more time to annotate and also at the same when I was designing my game covers, I made sure that it had some what of a link to the idea of incognito and the style wanted it for. At the same time it didn’t help that much because my original idea was to have game covers with totally different brand-new character designs, but I couldn’t get final character designs done because I only had a week to complete, and I only had a short amount time to get everything done. So to fix this problem/issue I was dealing was that I had to improvise. I instead used my characters design ideas in my final game covers. This helped out a lot because it saved a lot of time to complete and get to nearly finishing my final project. When designing my game covers, I designed 2. For the first game cover I used two out of the four-character designs and for the second game cover I used the same designs but changed a bit. I did this because It would work better, and I also did this because I wanted to make the two covers feel more unique and different from each other but at the same time standing out more and looking more professional.
Conclusion:
In conclusion If I were to do this project again, I could’ve had more ideas out and when it comes to experimentation, I could’ve designed more characters. Another thing I could’ve done better is to design a character for the final product. Another thing I could’ve done better is to add a bit more research and more source material. What I could’ve done differently is that I could have made the game cover like animation/ gif. The reason I could’ve done this is that it was part of my original ideas for this project, but I couldn’t do it because of the amount of time I had ran out from with dealing with other stuff.