Personal Investigation work

Purpose

The purpose of my personal investigation is to create the image, branding and ideas of a video game. This includes the story and characters, logos, box art, etc.

Research

I made a mood board of game covers to get ideas for when I was designing my own. I mostly looked at games of the RPG genre because that's what I've chosen for my own, so I thought it'd be best to know the proper conventions of the genre. Getting a variety of  cover designs was also important as it prevents me from sticking to one train of thought, and could help me to come up with something better than I first could've thought of.

 

Logos

I looked at fonts for creating my logo. I could use these fonts or draw the logo with inspiration from these fonts.

These are some logos I created for the game. I used the fonts I looked at above, and tried to convey a general idea about the plot just through them. A large aspect of creating it was the juxtaposition of the name "Death in Wonderland", so I used different fonts to make it more effective. Along with this in the first two drafts was the knife and pillow as another point of juxtaposition. A main colour in all of the logos is purple. I used it heavily because its a mysterious colour which fits the genre of the story being a murder mystery.

I thought creating a simple bit of artwork could also help with the logo, as some games such as Final Fantasy do this too. I liked the juxtaposition of the fonts so I used that again along with imagery of a knife to show the danger. I thought the logo could be a bit more interesting so I used a grain filter as I felt it creates an uneasy and corrupted atmosphere and also is just visually interesting.

Drawings

To get a better grip of anatomy and posing I made some traced drawings. I started off an image, traced over and then coloured them through observation. For the first 3 drawings I did the linework in Illustrator, and then took them into Photoshop to colour. This was because I knew how to easily blend colours to make some of the shading look more natural. I struggled with colouring hair at first. This was mostly from when I was drawing myself as mine goes off into a lot of directions. I used a more paintbrush like brush in Photoshop to achieve the effect I did, because I felt the strands it created was accurate to hair. 

I moved on to making everything entirely in Illustrator, which was difficult to adjust to but worked out better I feel. A huge benefit of Illustrator is that its vector based, and so the quality of the file allows it to be upscaled and still look good. I had to learn how to use the pen tool as it was necessary to creating the shapes that make up  the shading. At first I tried using the pencil, which worked well but it was difficult to create a pointed end with. That and proportional curves are much easier to do with the pen tool. I also made use of transparency and opacity here. So when shading all I had to do was use the colour black or white for the most part, and then mess with the transparency options and slider to get the range of tones to use without testing to find the right colours constantly. 

A Scanner Darkly

As a source of inspiration and reference I've looked at the film A Scanner Darkly for my drawings above. It uses a cutout style throughout. Its a style that essentially breaks an image down into simpler shapes made from a single blocked colour. I looked at these images while figuring out how to colour the faces and took note of the smaller shapes that are used to highlight or show dark areas. The style of the film is very effective as I feel it looks both simple and complex thanks to the colouring.

Character Designs

I've created character designs for the game. At this point its just basic headshots as that's the main focus of the design and I need to do that before going into posing. I've drawn in Illustrator and then coloured in Photoshop for the blends of colour in the hair.

 

Planning Documents (Storyboards, visualisations, etc)

 

I created storyboards to plan out the story of the game. They show how cutscenes within the game would play out, although they'd use character portraits and text boxes in a final product. In the second storyboard I started to show branching paths. This is because its common that games offer you different choices in dialogue, and they change how the character you're speaking to reacts or even how the situation unfolds. 

Other than the storyboard I planned out how the game would be structured. I split it into two sections: RPG and Social. These two are the different gameplay elements that act as a part of the structure. The RPG section details where the main RPG combat takes place, the levels, characters introduced and any very important story details and storyboards. The Social branch is the other side of gameplay, where the player is able to freely interact with characters in the environment outside of the RPG section. I also mention the tutorials, which are introductions to how the mechanics of the game work.

I made visualisations for the different versions of game packaging. Firstly I have a few variations of what the game's basic cover could be, as its best to come up with multiple rather than sticking to a single idea. I also made visualisations for a limited edition and its contents, and I decided the contents based on other products I looked at.

Game/Product Art

I created character portraits that would be used in the game. I took what I learned from the traced drawings and applied them to here, even with the less realistic style. Typically games of the JRPG genre have character portraits when there is dialogue, and they're used to show a range of emotions. Its common that the body and expressions are drawn separately so that the character stays in place while a new expression is simply overlaid. An example of a game with using portraits is below.

(screenshot is from Persona 4 Golden, the artist for the game is Shigenori Soejima)

When making the different expressions I finished drawing the body and first face, then copied that onto separate artboards. I then drew the different expressions on different artboards, which made exporting every expression at once much simpler. This was especially helpful because I wanted the mouths to have some slight animation to them, so I created separate layers for each expression and I had to export multiple times.

Soundtrack

I needed to create my own assets and graphics to use for the soundtrack, so I thought it'd be fitting to have some headphones to give this case and disc its own identity, and to easily tell that its the soundtrack to the game. Since I still wanted to fit in with the game, I drew a knife that could go behind the headphones. This was based off one of my visualisations. I took a picture of my headphones at home, and traced over them in Illustrator. They aren't exact simply because I wanted them to look a bit different and preferred this look. After tracing the outlines in black, I duplicated the layer and coloured the duplicate. I then duplicated that because I wanted to have a version with the blue outlines and one without any outlines.

Following the visualisation I made I drew this character to put onto the cover of the soundtrack. When drawing it I needed a reference for the pose I wanted to use to make sure it was anatomically correct. I looked into getting some kind of posing software and found Justsketchme, which allows you to freely move the joints of a model. I used this as the base for my drawing, and did a sketch layer and traced to just get the general pose, and then I drew over that again, except this time more refined for the actual drawing here. Along with this I had reference of the character to draw from, and also looked at art of an existing game character so I had some reference to inspire a pose and to get the general anime style proportions correct when adding the facial details.

I also drew a music note for the cover of the soundtrack to fit my visualisation. I drew a face on it just to have a bit more flair on the drawing. 

This is the cover I made for the soundtrack using both of the drawings I created. I decided to use the colour replacement tool to change the blue to different colours, just to see if I'd like it more. I prefer the first blue as the character stands out more against the other colours. When creating the background I simply made square with the shape tool, centred it at the top, duplicated it to each side and then duplicated it down. I created the shape in the middle just with the pen tool. I made a pink shape first and just duplicated that, turned it purple and resized it. To get the double stroke on the text I created the black stroke first, then duplicated, dragged the layer below, changed it to pink and made the stroke larger. My choice of font is very different than from what I've used before for the logo, but this was because I felt it fit in with the tone of the drawings, and how it works well with the pink strokes. 

I took it into InDesign so I could export with a spine and back cover. While a CD case will usually have a song list at the back, I didn't have one here because an entire game's soundtrack would be too long to list. I didn't add a barcode here either because the soundtrack is part of a limited edition bundle from one of my visualisations. I didn't want to leave it blank so I used the background of the front cover.

I made some variations for the disc. Originally I wasn't going to have one but after trying these few out I'm glad I did because I think it turned out better. I ended up using the lavender-ish swirl because I think that goes better with the blue headphones and knife than the pink does. I really liked how the pink splatter worked with the spiral but I don't think they are quite as impactful with the lavender. 

These are the physical products to come from this. I had to edit the image a little to make the print look better. I had to measure out the CD case and spine properly, which took me a few tries to get just right. Unfortunately I couldn't get the background to come out as I'd want it to, so the pattern is only very slightly visible.

Artbook

I drew paint brushes in Illustrator to use on the cover of the game's artbook as according to my visualisation. Instead of tracing like with the headphones I did this from observation of one brush at first and then just did it free hand. I drew multiple different brushes to use because I thought it would be bland to reuse the same one over and over. 

An inspiration for the artbook design was this cover for the manga "Thus Spoke Kishibe Rohan" by Hirohiko Araki. I really like how the paintbrushes interact with the character and wanted to do something like that myself. 

This is the finished drawing for the artbook cover. Like I did with the drawing for the soundtrack, I used Justsketchme to create a pose and traced over that. I used a lot of what I learned from earlier drawings, which was the sort of shape based shading. I'm happy with how it turned out but I think I can improve on the folds and shading on clothing. 

I used a different outfit for this character than previously, because I wanted the artbook to have something distinct but I also thought that this could also be advertised as a costume within the game and that owning the artbook/limited edition gives you access to it without paying extra. This is a common practice with games so I thought it'd be a good idea here. 

This is the cover I ended up making. I decided to add a few more brushes and strokes as I felt that the background felt a little bit empty. I had some trouble in making the paint on his face look good and while I'm happy with how it turned out I feel that could also be improved.

I changed the colour to black as a variation. This was to capture the darker aspect of the game and because of the contrast of the colourful brushes with the very dark background.

Since this is a book I also needed a back cover and spine. I first made this in InDesign to have the pages and spine in place, and then exported it as a PDF so I could add the brush strokes to the back in Photoshop. I decided not to draw them on the book's spine because they're typically blank anyway and I thought it could distract from the text. I also added on the drawing I'd made for my logo, because when I looked into back covers for art books like this I came across using images there instead of a blurb. Since this comes with a limited edition game it mightn't even be necessary to have a blurb because you know what to expect.

I took a book that I own and stuck my cover onto it. The print came out well for this, perhaps due to the bright colours letting the shading stand out much more along with the size of the image in the centre. After feedback I added inside flaps so I didn't have to risk any damage to the book when sticking the cover, and so there could be a blurb on the inside cover.

Cover/Case

Below are the drawings I made for the case's cover I used a mix of poses from photos I took and using Justsketchme. Some of the drawings cut off because that's all I needed to use, and so I thought it would be pointless to draw too much of what you wouldn't see. Again it was the same process as before in illustrator

I had to use a photo I took of my hand along with a pose created in Justsketchme when drawing this image, as I found it a little too inaccurate to draw it from at that angle. This worked out far better than it would have otherwise as the shape was wrong and it seemed a bit too big.

This was what I intended to make in InDesign, again I made it in that so I had the pages and spine correct. However this isn't what I ended up with as InDesign couldn't export my gradient on the front, so I had to change it.

When exporting it I instead changed the gradient to a few shapes, to at least give a similar impression. When getting game screenshots for the back of the box, I decided to use a software I have called RPG Maker MV, which is a game creation tool. It has pre-existing assets built into it, which are almost all of what is used there. However I used the character portrait that I made here, and tried to create a scenarios with the tool that would be accurate to the story and ideas of the game.

When using the information for the back of the case, I actually took a picture of a PS4 game I own and edited it with Photoshop to have PS5 and the developer logo because I didn't have a PS5 game to use.

This is the physical case. While it's not the size of a PS5 case, I'm quite happy with how this turned out to look, as it looks the part. Some drawings got affected by the printing here which does hurt it a bit however.

Limited Edition Box

Below is the design of the front of the box. While this is far more simple looking than my other drawings I did this intentionally to make this stand out much more as a limited edition version. Its a simple but cool aesthetic I think, which would hopefully draw people to it and encourage them to buy it.

This is the box net that I used. I printed it out at A4 initially, and had to scan and resize it across two pieces of  A2 paper so that it would fit all of the items to go inside. When making this I measured the width and height of the other products combined first so that when printed onto A2 it would work properly.

This is how the box net turned out. So it was more sturdy I printed it onto card, and used a craft knife to cut and score the folds. As shown above everything fits inside the box well, so I'm very happy with this. I think the simple design choice for the box really did help to make it stand out now that I have seen it physically.