Apologies for the delay in posts! It’s been a mental few months of a new academic year, having my partner move in with me (which has been amazing), therapy to deal with some self doubt issues and turning 30! So it’s time to get back to some normality with my website!

I’m at that stage with my work where I feel pretty comfortable with everything that I do; my process, my style etc. This is usually a good indicator that it’s time to learn some new things and push through to that ‘next level’, with the first step being a list of exactly what to improve on so that I don’t become overwhelmed. When I create this list I’m thinking about techniques I want to improve, different theories I want to focus on, visual communication, style etc. but I do try to remind myself to focus on only one or two of these per piece, trying to improve too many things at once creates more room for more problems to crop up. I decided firstly to focus on the stylisation of my characters (particularly human ones) and also my character sheet and their communication of the character visually, both in terms of the game design pipeline and the personality of the character.

I already had some very early ideas for characters that I could use, as I’ve been thinking about a world where I can really develop my world building around the things that I love to design; so basically fish and creatures! Although this world still needs a lot of work, I thought it would be good to start to develop one of the characters to establish a style for my idea. I essentially want to build a world where monster fish roam and the people that are left rely on these huge creatures; for food, transport, homes etc. Lots of communities catch these fish too, something that I wanted to explore through my characters. I’ve always thought that noodling catfish is super interesting so I wanted to create a character that noodles monster fish; called ‘Noodle’, super imaginative I know!. I wanted this character to be a little chaotic, a little bit like Junkrat from Overwatch.

Due to this being a look at improving my skills, I needed to make sure I had something to direct that, rather than just trying to improve something purely based on what I thought it should be. The first thing I did was gather some reference for Noodle himself, but then I also gathered plenty of reference on the stylisation I wanted to achieve along with the kind of character sheets I wanted to aim for. I also watched a few videos by the artists who already worked in these kinds of styles to give me a bit of an insight into how they achieve it. This kind of research and reference is invaluable to move forward with your skills but is often overlooked.

Once I’d got the reference for both the character and the areas I wanted to improve on, I started to do some studies from those, especially in terms of the stylisation more than anything else. When you’re trying to improve on a skill, even if it’s something you already have good knowledge of, it’s important to understand how it works first, don’t be fooled into thinking you can just recreate it on the first try. Understand it, do studies and develop it in your own way to figure out what you will take across into your own work.

As I mentioned though, stylisation wasn’t the only thing that I was focusing on improving, I really wanted to flesh out the personality of my characters too. Seeing as I wanted Noodle to be quite erratic, I already knew I had a lot to explore. I also wanted to show the fact that he catches fish somehow, along with showing his standard outfit along with what he might look like when he’s actually noodling. Again, this is an important place to do studies, I did studies of different ways to possibly hold fish, different facial expressions etc. this all helped to eliminate what didn’t feel right for Noodle and explore in more depth what did.

Previously when I’ve designed character sheets, I’ve had the character ready to go on the sheet, but then been digging for ideas of what else to add. This time round, because I’d explored the character of Noodle so much, I struggled to fit everything even onto two sheets, and I feel like the end result is so much more interesting to explore visually. However, it was my first time trying this so I like to think that I can adapt this into my workflow more naturally now in the future and make the next one even better!

So just some last pointers if you’re feeling a bit stagnant and want to improve on some areas of your work.

Make a list of areas you’d like to improve on (include techniques, theories, deliverables themselves etc.)
Pick one to two things you’d like to tackle first and choose a project to apply them to (or choose the project first, then the skills that would fit it best).
Only focus on improving these areas in this project, don’t overload yourself.
Gather reference for the improvements themselves too; gather reference of the style you’re aiming for, make notes from tutorials etc.
Do studies and breakdowns and begin to develop and explore how these will fit into your own workflow.
Apply what you’ve learned to your project with the reference always at hand!

Apologies for it being a while since the last post! Work has been a little crazy, but I hope this was a helpful insight into using personal projects to improve your skills!

Levelling up through personal projects!