Team Logo Design

So, this year has begun with being split into groups, for our final project. I was placed into group two, and given the role of team leader, my team consisted of,  Joey Brown, who was selected for his ideas and concept designs, as well as his 3D skills. Stuart Wade was chosen for his concept art, and to help promote his communication capabilities. Micheal Prior, who was added to the roster for his ability with 3D and idealisms, Curtis Stoyles for his ideas, and photoshop work, and finally myself, obviously for my ideas, concept art and to help promote and improve my communications skills in a leadership manner.

Our first task, consisted of select our team name. It is important that a name is concise, straight forward, I believe a little witty as well, easy to say, it was stated that a name should not be more than two syllabals this helps to make sure that the name is easy to pronouce, and understand when spoken. So in our teams we sat down with a sheet of A3 paper, and began the process of brainstorming our ideas. It was suggested that we add at least three names, of course most in my team came up with many more, which of course I was rather pleased with, as this showed enthusiasm towards the project undertaking.

I put forward more than the suggested three per member, and the one that recieved the most votes was Explosive Matrix. I had a feeling that this would be the one chosen, and one that appealed to me, so I was happy when this was the selected name. Although I will admit it was difficult logo concept, and didn't have many ideas brimming at the time, so I knew there was going to be challenge with the final conceptual idea's.

The other names that where selected by the group where as follows, Holy Turtle from Micheal, which I thought this particular name was intuitive, quite funky and I thought was rather unique. I knew Micheal had an idea of where to progress with this name, with his enthusiasm was well noted.

Chaotic Moose, from Joe Brown. This name again was unique, and his design ideals, reminded me a lot of Manard Moose, I think a lot of thought when into the design asthetics, but I have to say I was not a fan of the name itself, I didn't think it expressed much in the terms of game develop studio, which is why I voted against this particular name. A better alternative could have been Chaotic Pioneers, or Dev.Moose, something that related somewhat to development, which would have been more founded.

Stuart Wade's was Cybertronix. He had a little help from the team in developing this name, and we believe it represents more of a gaming environment, and a little bit of a tech software development environment. Still it was one of the more favoured names, and his design idealism, was brilliant, if not second to none. I have to say now, out of all the logos this was my favourite. 

Explosive Matrix came to me through my recent work with 3D Graphics Programming, working with Matrices and Vertices, gave me inspiration with the name, select matrix as a 3D term, one familar with the asepct of programming in a 3D Environment. Explosive, this word was to add a air of gaming to it, most by giving a general concept of gaming enthusiasm.

Below is the tally sheet of the name ideas and those in our group. Unfortunatly, Curtis Stoyles could not be present for the task, due to unforseen circumstance, so we had to leap on without him, and hope to catch him up and keep him informed, when he returns. This had provided us with a disadvantage towards the other groups, intially we had one less than the other two groups to begin with, and without Curtis, we are down to four members, meaning we have to put the extra effort in, and hope he makes hasty return.

As you can see many idea's where spread across, and we had more than a few names which we wanted to use. The selected favourites which we was tasked to develop into a logo where as follows.

- Myself: Explosive Matrix

- Micheal Prior: Holy Turtle

- Joey Brown: Chaotic Moose

- Stuart Wade: Cybertronics

So, it came down to design, with my brain lacking in any idea of how I was going to achieve an effective logo. I sat down and began to think about what made me come up with Explosive Matrix, as a programmer, I knew in 3D Graphics that a matrix was used, especially in OpenGL to help render 3D Vertices and Points. So, taking that into consideration, what is a "Matrix" usually inmagined as, minus a world created by machines where humans minds are linked too, so they can harvest humans as batteries, a Matrix is a 3D Cube, least, represented as one. I took this into context, so numerous thoughts now hit me. What was a cube? Rubix Cubes, Computer Towers, were somewhat cuboid. I even tried to influence the Mathematical Matrix Symbol to incorporate a more general approach to the matrix and make it more funky, and simplistic.

I tried to keep in mind Simplicity and memorisation. The memory had to be easily recognisable, digestable in one bite, and easy on the eyes. Not too detailed and taking in context those with difficulties in sight as well. For this reason I chose bright colours, to help make it stand out, and tried to avoid too many details. See the two concepts sheets below, with annotation to get a better idea on what ideas I came up with. The final concept was the logo I dubbed, "Literal Matrix" for it's literal matrix mathetical routes.

With these ideas, I expanded on them a little, taking into context certain aspects, I even had a practice
at creating one of the logo templates, coming up with this design attempt.

 

This design, was the breaking up logo, and was my first attempt at creating the logo itself, of course this is nothing like the chosen logo and was merely select as a method of attempting to incorporate a 3D logo. In the end this logo was not selected as the final product. What I like about this logo specifcally though, is the incorporation of physics and 3D. Gaming is particular is more renowned for the aspect of 3D Models and Physics and because of that is one of the reasons decided to see how this particular design would play out.

So with the final logo selected, and a new design being developed in photoshop I began to create what I invisioned on paper, I was generally happy to admit that the literal design that was selected, I was more than pleased about, it was a simple design, and one I thought would work both professionally and one I knew I had the skills to develop with little to no problems.

I set up photoshop, with the following setting.

- A6 Page Format Size (? cm and ? cm)
- DPI - 72 - This format allowed for a neutral depth in pixels, and when it came to printing, allows us to
                    print with a good crisp standard.
- The end file was saved as .png for good compression and tranferability, and so it reacts well if placed on
   a webpage or alternatively a video game case or tech product.

Below was the final product, I will talk through the development steps afterwards, and then dicuss a little bit on the designs and inspiration and move onto comparison with a professional example.

The final product, I have to admit now that I was rather very proud with this particular logo design, it to seems professional, simple and eye-catching. The feedback I recieved of the tutors as well confirmed my own thoughts, and I can quote. "That look very professional...", "Simple, Stylish, I like it" where amongst the words said about my design.

The inspiration for my design stremmed from two locations. One being the matrix used in maths. If I can direct your attention to the below image, so you can get a better ides of what I am trying to explain here.

(http://www.mathwarehouse.com/algebra/matrix/multiply-matrix.php)

As you can see from above, a matrix is a group of numbers, as large as 4x4. They are encapsulated within

a square brace [ ] and often represent a square, they are used in 3D mathematics to calculate vertices and quadrants, and a key asset to 3D Mathematical Development. 

This was the inspiration, I wanted with this design to stay true to the concept of a matrix but still make the logo funky, fun and eye - catching.

 Development design was generally quite easy, I took inspiration from the centerpiece of the logo from my Tutor Chris Dewey no less. He did a small lecture on logo design, accompanied by a story of how he developed the Play.com logo. I remember specifically he spoke of circles being a more femnine aspect, and representing unity. I wanted to incorporate this aspect, as well as the basis that I have realised circles are a common factor in most logos, and wanted to to use them in hopes that I would gain the same kind of concept, design.

I also decided that I need to create a more manly aspect to the logo centerpiece, after all, we are a games development team. Without sounding too sexist there. I decided to add some spikes to the logo to create a more male and gaming aspect about it and it made the end product stand out just alittle bit more, instead of looking like some sort of plain logo design.

Unit 69 - Influential Ideals and Concepts.

Through the course of the project I have developed Batman further and taken him into a context which was different from his usual heroic self. Batman has long been one of my more favoured heroes, simply because he doesn't rely on powers but on wit, strength and deception. But in a more conceptual focus, Batman provides a great essence to take pitch from, the character itself is beautifully designed, providing a great interface for any super hero to be based upon.

It is often I take inspiration from this character when developing my own, and I chose Batman as my character to develop simply, because he is so well designed, the idea, the concept and the understanding behind Batman, as well as the costume and way he is pressed across is a great backbone for any Anti-Hero character to follow.

Batman to begin with started off as a rather happy, cheerful and charismatic individual, which often could be seen in a rather comical sense and didn't show any essence of the darker side of today. He was rather scrawny and used a lot of gadgets and repellents to help him fight, oh.. and his boy wonder Robin. Of course, let us compare him to the Batman of today, you can see that he is a rather darker and more bulky in muscularity and demeanour. Nothing like the Batman from the early days, with this Batman is also a lot more like Marvel Hero Punisher, with a darker and leaner context within him.

Through this development I think that is the more interpretation of Batman that I influenced my character design and through the research of Batman I discovered the traits that signify the character depict a lot about him. Such as a passive attitude, a willingness to save other people, a dark persona and appearance, the ability to fight, seems to be rather intelligent individual, likes to use a range of gadgets in order to accomplish the task.

From this I have taken many aspects, such as his passive and rather dark attitude, and his ability to fight with my version of Batman. I have placed him in a large trench coat, which is something that is more common from the Hero Punisher, which is something I have taken many aspects from. I have also taken into account that I wanted my character to be in the World War 2 era as opposed to the normal fictional modern city of Gotham which is applied to the original Batman.

At first I was going to select a noir style, common in the Batman series "Gotham Noir" and which is more traditional in the old 30s type concepts. But seeing as mine was at the same time as old, it was rather conceptual on the basis that it was very action orientated, rather than detective and it seemed rather rustic and post apocolyptic as opposed to city based, Sherlock Holmes/Dick Tracey styled themes. With this in mind I decided to go with a more colourful, modern based theme and try to relate it to the common Batman comic styles.

The layout I chose was rather similar to a comic layout, I tried to keep the border lines relatively thin, and attempted to allow enough room for it to be overflowed to try to keep a molded concept, where it seems to interact between frames which is something that seems to be quite common in todays comic books, in trying to create not just frames of art, but a whole page of artistic concepts.

Target Audience is something I had to take into consideration, while I believe that the old Batman most likely attracted the younger generation at the time, the modern Batman of today seems to peak interest of people of all ages, I decided that I wanted to take Batman from this kind of area and place him in a more adult sector, which is familar with such concepts as die hard, punisher, kill bill even in some concepts of violence. As I made Batman more violent in this concept, I have to take into considerations age ranges, for this I reccomend 16+ at least, as I have taken quite a violent, war based concept with my new design.

Unit 13 - L05 - Digital Portfolio

Overview: For our Unit 13 - LO5 we was required to create a portfolio of our work and provide some details on our skills, attributes and interests, which would go towards creating our final CV. We had to also show awareness of different sectors within the industry for future reference.

Unit 69 - Storyboard Design

Over the course of the project for Unit 69, we was required to plan, design and develop storyboards within the industry. After some selective research into trailers, storyboards and characters, we where challenged to choose a character from the previous project we has done during our induction. I first selected Stewie, but in the difficulty of trying to find information and background on the character, I decided to switch to a more challenging piece, which was to create a storyboard based on the character Batman.

With my character in mind, we was told to practice drawing them, and try to take them out of context, go crazy with our designs to find something unique, something that was our own. I came up with the following designs.

These are my quick design sketches or trying my hand at alternating the appearance of Batman, the top full one, is sort of a replica of the 1999 Batman cartoon.  (See Right) I also attempted to create a more robitic batman, and see if I could attempt to create man in a more droid based individual, while it worked, it didn't really fall into the storyline I wanted, mostly because it fell more down the RoboCop line and wasn't out of context enough for my liking.

This image was anither pratice at trying to find a good way to draw batman, after having some trouble with the jaw and mount of the character I decided I would develop a character that cover most of the face and allowed me to focus on the actually character itself, rather than the long details. 

These are my final chaarcter designs, I have chosen to go for a rather rustic looking bartman, instead of all the high-tec gagetery, I have select a more Post-Apocplyptic element, with a scarf covering his face, and goggles to help him since the dusty envrionment. With this I also managed to creaft a new storyline. Batman works a s a world war 2, mercenary fighting for the side that pays the most.

And below is the final design, I am rather happy with the outcome of this, at first I have to say on paper it didn't strike me as anything decent, but once I got it in Photoshop, and started to apply the different concepts, it quickly turned into something I am rather proud of, and would happily recreate again. 

I used a wide array of concepts, for this, such as applying filters like CutOut and turning up the attributes to create a more stand-out effect for what I really wanted to accomplish. As well was using images from numerous sources to help added the effects, such as the fire and explosion which I found was too time consuming to attempt to do in Photoshop myself, unfortunatly. 

I now begin my evaulation on this project and look back at the development process and discuss what I liked, and what I did not like, what I would do differently, and of course explain the tools and concepts I used to end up with this final design. 

What did you like about this project?

I particularly liked the design and creativity of it, it allowed me to explore a depth of imaginative concept drawing that I haven't delved in much before, it also allowed me to futher my skills and attempt to do something that bit more challenging in order to get a better outcome and something I am rather proud of creating. 

What I like about the actual storyboard, however is mostly the colour contrasts and how interesting the mode of colours make it, dragging your eye to the scenes, that interest you, such as for example my favourite scene, the last one. Which I found very cool, and all I simply did was apply a cutout to that scene, increasing the Fideility to increase the thinkness of the lines, and also the Simplicty to create a more abtract designed look. Finally, I applied a plaster effect with a red tone, to get the  view that I wanted, it was mostly by trial error, and worked out very well.

What don't you like about the project?

Other than the fact it's incredibly time consuming, mainly the basis of which my design was on. Originally I attempted to recreate Stewie Griffin, but in realising that in doing soo I was limiting myself and possibility of increasing my skills (As well as the fact there is so little history on Stewie Griffin), I opted to create a more defined approach, and went for Batman. Of course this proved difficult to replicate, and although the re-design was to my liking in a story wise aspect, I believe I could have developed him a lot more, and worked more on designing him, and the aesthtics of it.

This of course, is something I would like to work on more, if I had the chance to do it again.


What difficulties did you face?


There are numerous difficulties, one was actually drawing a design that worked, which is suprisingly not easy, even with an idea, trying to get the aethetics of it correct, proves difficult and time consuming, also trying to become more familar with the painting side of Photoshop, its all well a good learning how to manipulate images, and apply various filters and effects, but it becomes really difficult when you try to use Photoshop in a way that the professional concept artists do, it is quite a challenge to learn how to move the brush better with a mouse. (Should have use a graphics tablet really...)

What tools did you use when creating your project?

Well, apart from the pencil and pad of paper, we had to use the computers and the program called Adobe Photoshop (For your reference, Photoshop CS3). You can purchase a copy of this program from the adobe website, at www.adobe.com if you require it. 

Comparison

I have compared my work to that of a professional example. I have chosen to compare this to an example of Batman I found online, apart from the basis that the comic here is based on the actual Batman while mine was based on my design of Batman, thier is still alot of concepts which they use in the artistic and layout side of the story.

The layout isn't overally that much different from my own layout, and seems to provide a structure quite simple and basic. The use of figures and colours are pretty static in my opinion but work well for this basis. Compared, to my use of colours I have gone for a bright range of contracts and gradients to be used throughout. One thing I do like about this though is the use of movement, and stylising. Such as the sweeping of batmans feet in the second frame which are complimented by the use of sweep stripes in order to repict movement, I myself use this in one of my frames and something that seems to be a standard practice when creating comic/storyboards.

 

I

.