ART DIRECTION - EXERCISES

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15.04.20 - 15.05.20 (Week 1 - Week 4)
Piyaphon Inthavong (0337589)
Art Direction
Exercises

INSTRUCTIONS


LECTURES

Week 1 | April 15th, 2020

Today Mr. Kannan introduced the class into the topic of Art Direction. First, we went through the MIB (Module Information Booklet) together and had a quick overview of all the upcoming exercises and projects. A summary of the projects are as the following:
  • Project 1: Idea proposal for the concept of the game
  • Project 2: Polish your art bible
  • Final project: Craft a complete art bible, which essentially includes every component before making the game, and a compilation of everything.
Art directors are essential to every creative project. They have to study the entire creative brief, what it does, what it's supposed to do, it's contents. A proper proposal is a necessity for every project before choosing the right pathways for the art team to fulfill that direction.

 After the quick overview of the subject, Mr. Kannan showed us a series of examples from our seniors' art bible to the industry-level proposals. The examples helped contribute to our understandings of how the art direction process is applied in the real world.

 We then grouped into a pair of 2 to work together for the rest of the module (I was grouped with Ava). Our first task was to research into the differences between an art director and a creative director. We have to prepare a presentation slides outlining their purposes, roles, and importance in a creative team and study their differences in all fields (games, movies, graphics, new media, etc).

Week 2 | April 24th, 2020

We had a little review session at the beginning of today's lecture. For motivation purposes and great art direction inspiration sources, Mr. Kannan advised that we check through the list of websites on artist inspirations. A few of my favourites are listed below:
  • Pinterest
  • Art Station
  • The Rookies
  • Behance
  • 80.lv
Figure 2.1. Concept art mood board example.

 Mr. Kannan explained a more efficient way to use a mood board to communicate your idea clearly with explanations before passing them on to the other artists. The mood board should be telling what exactly to look at. Extract the information from the photos and explain the design elements such as the shapes, colors, textures. To further clarify the process, Mr. Kannan demonstrated an example via Photoshop.

Figure 2.2. Mood board extraction on Photoshop.

 Mr. Kannan also recommended us to select photos of a scenario in a different color scheme. This is to show the overall ambiance of the background, thus including the lighting and shadow in different time or mood of the particular scenario. The purpose of having a color palette in a net shell is for us to justify and differentiate the elements on the screen such as the character, the background, objects/items, user interface, etc.
Figure 2.3. Mood board of scenery in different mood/color palette.

Week 3 | April 29th, 2020

Today Mr. Kannan based his lectures on the study of the mood board. He refers regularly to how important they are and wants to reassure that the class understood it clearly before moving on to the next practical session in creating a mood board for our game proposal. Mr. Kannan shared a few more useful tools and websites to work on with, one of which he uses often is Adobe Color. That being said, we browsed quickly through the different color complementaries and combo. We learned to extract colors from custom images and make use of the color wheel.

 When undertaking a project, The first thing to do is to identify what the client really wants. What's their goal?
  • Who are the primary audiences?
  • What are the possible limitations?
The target audience is the primary priority art directors have to base his decisions in art direction on. Be careful of few tricky sides such as the cultural differences. In games, we have to study the amours, clothing, weapons, props used in that culture. We finally ended the session with mostly tips and tricks on collecting and extracting process of the mood board. It was a practical session after all.

Week 4 | May 8th, 2020

We were introduced to Trello as a project management software to work on our future project 2. Here are a few notes on today's lecture: 

When undertaking any creative project, what do you need to identify first?

Once you reach the production stage, which is when the art direction brief (target audience, color, shape language) is already confirmed, you have to break down all the task, just write down all the tasks you think is essential to the project. This should be done even before the sketching process, as it is crucial for you to know the functions and the contributions of the particular project.

First identify the function of the UI.
Figure 4.1. First identify the function of the UI.

Set the priorities of the function, then sketch.
Figure 4.2. Set the priorities of the function, then sketch.

EXERCISES

Exercise 1 | April 17th, 2020

During this practical session, Ava and I presented the slides on the differences between art directors and creative directors as attached below:

Mr. Kannan's feedback and additional pointers:
  • It's great seeing each point being elaborated further than what's written on the slides.
  • He agreed that it's worth mentioning the challenge of maintaining the quality output of the design staff members and helping them out at their downtime. Art directors are more than the head decision-maker of the visual aspect.
  • Creative directors are the bigger picture of all departments. Despite them not touching much into the details of the visual concept, they manage them as a whole in carrying out the strategy and sharing their visions.
  • Mr. Kannan pointed out that in the Entertainment Design field of art direction, a higher-ranked position is present; That is the Director of Photography. Since the filming industry requires an exceptional knowledge range and management, it's crucial to consider different head-specialists working in the decision-making process, planning, and executing the plan.
Next task
After the presentation session, Mr. Kannan appointed us a new task on presenting slides about leadership in art direction. Before the dismissal of the session, Mr. Kannan told us to prepare 3 game ideas for the upcoming project proposal. We will have to prepare our research, game analysis (pros and cons) on the chosen game with our partners. This process is a part of a UX Designers's role, and UX is an essential component of art direction.

Exercise 2 | April 24th, 2020



 Mr. Kannan's feedback and additional pointers:
  • The presentation covers all the points given, its good.
  • Adding on to the leadership types such as the Democratic style, being a great leader is being a role model for the people to follow naturally, and not forced.
  • Accept critiques is crucial. That's where the improvements come in and hence resulting in a great result. 
  • Mr. Kannan advised that we have constant self-reflecting so that we could keep learning from our mistakes.

Exercise 3 | May 14th, 2020

As the last exercise before moving to the projects, Ava and I presented on the ways to formulate an art direction project. To begin, we both decided to design a clean slide for the last exercise due to the little time that we could spare together this week. We presented the management methods of the art director, and stressed on how important communication in a project as it aligns every member to the same page in the working progress. Without it, organisations are more prone to causing mistakes in projects and leads to argument, inefficiency and unhappy clients. Check the slides below to learn about our presentation.



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