The full digital character design can be located within the digital files on the USB. The original traditional artwork design can be located on page 18 of the black sketchbook, and the research on page 17. Currently, I cannot find a way to change the file extension to an image format to present here.
My experience with creating digital artwork
Until the 10th of January 2019, (3 days before this post was published) I had not touched a single piece of software or equipment for creating digital artwork. I had strongly endeavoured to start this new form of creating artwork before the beginning of the first year of university, but found I had no need until this project.
However, I had in my possession a rudimentary graphics tablet, which came with some equally primitive digital artwork software called ArtRage Lite. This was when I decided to pick up the graphics pen and finally explore what I hope would be a new skill.
I should explain that I also had no lessons in using this software, so I jumped into it completely blind. Using a mixture of ArtRage Lite's 'Oil Brush', 'Eraser', 'Pencil', 'Paint Roller', 'Pastel', 'Color Sampler' and 'Fill' tools, I managed to create a design for a character befitting my game's cartoony art style.
As I had only been making digital artwork for three days, I confess that my digital artwork is currently looking quite unprofessional and of a poor quality. I have yet to master shading and drawing assets that are more than balls of bacteria. I will also admit that most of the block colour areas look quite badly done. However, I did figure out how to shade somewhat, despite my work being only three days old. That all being said, I am proud that I finally managed to create some digital artwork which doesn't look completely abhorrent and wrong, design-wise. I believe that the more I practice, the better my work will get, and I did frequently see that here.
Of course, as I have mentioned before, the software I used was very rudimentary and came free with my tablet. I fully understand that there are dramatically more advanced programs out there, and I hope to use them comfortably one day. For now, ArtRage Lite served a purpose, and I think it did a good job.
In the future, after I have had a lot more practice in creating basic digital artwork, I hope to master this new skill by drastically upgrading my software, and possibly my tablet (although that will be much further down the line) and get very comfortable with the new technology. This skill will be vital if I am to have a chance in the games industry, as this is now the modern way of creating artwork for games. I believe that moving with the technology is crucial to achieving and surviving industry employment.
Decisions made in ArtRage Lite whilst creating the character
For the majority of the bacteria's body, I used the 'Oil Brush' tool and made the brush it as thin as I could on the program. This made using it much easier and more manageable. All I did after that was change the colours to varying shades of purple, using the reference images of Streptococcus Pneumoniae on page 19 of my black sketchbook.
As is usual with Strep., each 'ball' was a different spherical shade of purple, which I adjusted accordingly in the program. I finally learned how to shade used the 'Pastel' tool, and it turned out a lot better than I thought it would as I varied the colour of purple on each 'ball'. The 'Fill' tool was very useful for setting block colours without having to constantly manually colour each piece of the bacteria. Another useful tool was the 'Color Sampler'. For each 'ball', I needed to have one primary colour and one secondary colour. When switching between colours, the program loses one at a time. This tool allowed me to find it in an instant, which would have normally taken me a lot longer, greatly slowing my progress. The 'Paint Roller' tool was fairly inaccurate, but I used it to fill a wide area quickly.
The decisions behind the design itself
The most difficult task for this was to not make the bacteria look very anthropomorphic, so as to stay away from the art style of television show Ozzy and Drix.
After doing extensive research into Streptococcus and gathering a small collection of clear reference images, I decided to keep the main colour scheme of varying shades of purple for the body. I also kept the same 'chain-link' ball shape, as the bacteria looks like this in the body anyway. Because they seemed linked together by a chain, I added a chain link between every pair. The whole bacteria itself reminded me of a snake, so I deviated the design of the end of the bacteria into a rattlesnake's tail to add an element of danger. After learning that Streptococcus gets around the body via its own way of 'swimming', I gave it facial swimming apparatus so as to add a humorous twist onto the design. After all, this game isn't deadly serious.
10-13/01/2019