Environment Artists
Yuji Kaneko
https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/encyclopedia/people.php?id=81925
Yuji Kaneko is one of my most favourite background artist especially with Kill la Kill (TV). The environment designs that eh create perfectly describe the setting and are very pleasing to the eye as he tends to use an analogous colour scheme. The example of his above of Kill la Kill perfectly displays his artistic sense as you can see the slums are very miss-matched and uses quite dull and dirty colours like the browns and brownish oranges and yellows with greys. It describes the setting and mood of the environment alone. He is very good at creating class and themes within his environments. What is also good about the environment above is that it is as full as can be and filled with some many unique and distinctive buildings. the only sort of empty is the wall between the slums and upper floor, which create a sort of status between them and the slums, but the slums here is the clear focus in the art.
Yasayuki Honne
https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0993866/
Yasayuki Honne is one of my Favourite game artists for his intuitive approach toward game design as well as his environment art is very ethereal and pleasing to look at, which is fitting for the fantasy themes he is tasked with. He is a big Name at Monolith Games and is known for working on Xenoblade Chronicles, Chrono Trigger and Baten Kaitos. The reason why I think he is somewhat of a genius as when he was task with design the two giant titans, in which is the characters of Xenoblade Chronicles lives within, he decides to design two relatively large sculpture of the titans with details of different accessible areas on the titans and gave them I nice colour scheme, which in turn really help to visualise the world and its design. He is brilliant when it comes to world design as his art describe the setting well and his use of colour is good as he is good at using colour schemes like analogous colours shown art piece above as his uses brownish oranges to light blues fittingly to the colour scheme as the colours shift as your eyes follow the art.
Mu Yu Jiang
https://www.artstation.com/idnomore
Mu Yu Jiang is a Chinese Environmental artist that works creating multiple art pieces for Monster Hunter Online. He has a lot of informative piece on his ArtStation as He displays display his design process and even shows how he will use Primitive 3D design piece to help develop and imagine the 3D aspect of the piece. The parts that I like about this artist is how he uses lighting and contrast to create focal points in his art and using that same contrast in brightness between the foreground and background. This piece I think shows the skill of well as it shows his talent in creating realistic and expressive backgrounds with the use of textures and contrasting light and hues.
Interior-Environment Design
Line Art
After finding inspiration and reference for the design for the environment, I started to develop the line art for the interior design for my environment. the interior design was inside of the circus tent. The line art was designed using multiple layers and perspective grids that I made by using the perspective ruler tool. Using the perspective grids I mapped out an overhead, angled perspective view of the interior before using the grids to help develop the inside of the circus tent. Using reference, layers and grids, I finally developed the line art of the interior creating a stage for circus acts. The start of the line art I did rough and finally finished it a clean edit. the line art I think went really well and I’m very fond of the perspective of the art piece. even though working with the perspective was hard, in the end, it worked out really well as it did create a very nice wide-angle shot of the interior. I do think that I could add a lot more detail to the scene and would have loved to add much more depth to it.
Monochromatic Art
Then I got started on developing the monochrome version of the interior art. for the monochrome version I used it to develop the values and lighting of certain parts of the interior environment. For this section, I used multiple layers again and then proceeded to colour in the different parts of the environment and displayed the values within. I did this simply by using the magic wand tool to select certain parts of the line art and then fill the selected area. sometimes I also had to invert the selection. I just filled in various areas with grey and some slightly with a lighter black. The art of the monochromatic is nothing special. I create the very basic values of the environment of the lighting and different materials in the scene. I do think that I could have done it better and added more details and features to the art piece. I also need to find out how to properly implement the monochrome version in the coloured version without needing pretty much copy the monochrome version as reference.
Full-Colour Art
I started off doing the basic colouring of the piece. For this, I took slight inspiration from Yuji as I refer to his colour theory of analogous colour scheme and his use of dull colours and lighting to create interest in certain parts of the scene. Like how I made the centre stage brighter and bigger them most other things in the scene to make it the point of interest. I started off by selecting the hues of the colours that I wanted. All that I did was draw the hue colours of the different areas within the environment and then I used the colour dodge layer option on the monochromatic layer to overlay the colour layer and create all the shadows and lighting on the coloured layer. for the complete coloured environment piece, I think the colours are all relatively fitting with them all being warm colours and do not clash or feel intrusive within the scene. There are big things that I would like to change within the scene though. I definitely could of add more to the scene. The interior seems very empty and could have been made more involved. I think that I could have made the stage large and added props and scaffolding. Also, the texture is another big thing that I would like to add to the scene to make it more interesting. I also need to learn to be able to draw better with using line art as reference rather than having it heavily involved as a part of my drawings as I’m too reliant on it to keep my scene looking clean. I do think that the environment overall is mediocre and would of love to put more time into it to improve it heavily and making more up to the standing of Yuji art. as I like the simplicity of his artwork in Kill La Kill but how full it was and how in-depth it is. I think that the colour scheme is alright and is fitting for it, and there are the groundworks there to be able to improve on it and make it better. I really do like the perspective and it captures the theme quite well.
Exterior-Environment Design
Line Art
I proceeded to develop the line art for the exterior design of the environment. This was done by using perspective grids and the brush tool to draw the line art. The line art was done simply on different layers using the brush tool. I think that the line art worked out pretty fine and the perspective grids helped get the angels and scaling down for me. personally, I think that I could have done better line art for the circus and made it look bigger smoother and nicer. It’s just that the circus could have had a more grandeur look. if there was anything else I guess I’d probably add in stands to make it feel more circus-like and full. I also could have added in some outlines of people to create that lively atmosphere. The reference that I used for the line art is 1st person reference of a hill within Grantham with a few houses on it and an abundance of trees.
Monochromatic Art
For the monochromatic version, I originally did a very simplistic version that was lacking in details and texture. The original version didn’t end up lining up in values to what I was doing in the coloured version as I used a lot of texturing and details for the grass, unlike the monochromatic version. In the end, I proceeded to create a monochromatic version of the coloured version and then edit it and changed the layer type to be colour dodge to be able to overlay the colour change on top of the coloured version. I think that the overall design and lighting is pretty good in the scene. I think that the value of the grass and sky was pretty good and Matches what a wanted. I wanted it to be lighter towards the forefront to create more interest in the forefront than in the background. the issue for me is that I think that the buildings within the scene are a little too simplistic to the rest of it. here I put an example of the simplistic and more textured form. After changing to that more detailed values I do wish that I changed the values of the buildings a bit.
Full-Colour Art
Here is proceeded to create the finalised exterior environment by adding in colour and using various texture brushes such as grass texture brushes and watercolour brushes to design the ground and sky. I then quickly coloured in the building using warmers tone in comparison to the more natural areas I drew in cooler tones. This was a part of the influence of Yasayuki design. I tried to imitate his use of analogous colours with the scaling in lighting form the ground up as typically as shown in one of his pieces that I put in. He mainly focuses on warm colours and scales the brightness going up as I did the opposite. I also tried to create a more balanced scene like he did in his two colour differences and I don’t think I captured that same process as he did as even though I believe that I relatively fit had a similar level of colour balance, he has his colour a lot more compact to each other as for mine they’re spaced out and seem more alienated. I think that for the most part the texturing and dept of the environment went pretty well and indicates the theme well. I do believe I could have made the scene more lively and added more details to the building to make it look better as I’ve relied on the line art for the builds to create the depth and the details. I do think that the Exterior turn out a lot better and here I relied less on the line art to make my environment look clean just for the buildings. I do think that there some improvement that I could have definitely put in, but do like the ending that I came out with. I do wish that the grass wasn’t soo blue as well.
Final Evaluation
Overall I do think that the environment is good enough to describe the themes and setting therein as well as that colours all fit relatively well together. I do think that I should have spent more time into making the environment much more crisp and accurate to what I want. There are definitely some details that still need adding in. The environments are pretty accurate to how I wanted them to be and have a nice perspective to them and the exterior has some nice texture to it that is missing from the interior design. there is definitely more than I could have done, but at the same time it does fit the theme and they have some upsides to them and just need a good polishing in some areas to make them better.