Isometric Project

I decided to undertake the isometric project which requires at least six microcosm highly finished pieces to be provided following by design concepts. We have been given three weeks for each three projects that we will do.

My goals are to fully explore the design process and go through each stage practising all the skills that are required in concept art. One of my aims is to create professionally designed concepts that can be presented as a portfolio pieces and most importantly meet all the requirements that are specified in the design brief. The reason why I decided to proceed with this project is to display my drawing and designing abilities which is not only demonstrating my knowledge of different modeling software but to also show my traditional and digital drawing abilities. Also this assignment is preparing and giving me practice in 2d artwork before my final major project.

I started with looking into various existing games and designs of isometric scenes. I have gathered a few examples varying in style, theme, colour and mood, on top of that I briefly annotated each one with how I could use and im​plement it into my own creation. I was mainly looking at the different themes, styles and colour combinations that I could use to base my designs. The aim of this moo​dboard was to gather successful designs and ideas that already exist and understand ho​w they are designed to fit their purpose and use these to my advantage.​

I then attempted to throw in some designs of my own, at this point I have roughly sketched some ideas based on the style of the platform and gameplay. The aim of these designs is to gather the variety of different ideas of gameplay and styles to further explore the most successful one.

• The first idea was just a adventure puzzle place on simple square platform, that would be designed to a specific theme.

• With second idea I focused on the gameplay and how I could make the environment interactive with the given setting.

• The third idea was mainly following the rule of isometric view as well as the atmosphere and colour palette of Monument Valley in the fusion of basic shapes and impossible scenes like that of the Penrose Steps.

• With the fourth idea my aim was to continuously link the journey in a domino like puzzle where you have to match them all to get and link more cubes together.

• Fifth was another experiment as to how I can link platforms together I came up with the idea to add a ladder or hot air balloon to proceed to another level. My main aim with this theme was to make it really colorful.

• Idea number six was also an adventure with only square objects.

• Idea seven was a platform made out of numbers

• The last idea was another adventure puzzle built on castles.

I decided to go forward with my third idea and this is because I thought that this idea was the most original and I could turn this into something that is very alike the Monument Valley game. After I developed these eight designs I started to develop more ideas, I have made a list of animals and searching each one as I go I began sketching rough ideas.

I have also had some feedback and I was asked to develop some sketches a bit more.

• Snail- too simplistic

• Cat - simplify the design

Lasty, during this week I have created and analysed colour palette using the moodboard I created previously. I selected images that I found successful in terms of colour and design and

Each of these images are beautifully designed by their composition, lighting and mood and the colours, they work perfectly within their image however once I select and pull out each colour separately they no longer looked like they fit together. In my opinion, the first image and last are the most successful because the first one clearly is using a complementary pair that really makes the image stand out and the last image has a really nice mood created by colours used.

Overall I found this stage not very helpful as the colours work for these specific themes and atmospheres but they wouldn't work with any of my designs, however I will definitely think about including complementary colour in my designs and also how to manipulate mood by the use of colour.