First Robots Concepts

 Here is my first initial drawing for my robot concept within our board game. Based on my research of futuristic robots, i came up with this design. I wanted to keep the shapes simplistic so it would clearly represent modern technology, in which robots are usually associated with. I also kept the bodily structure similar to that of a humans, so the parts could be recognized easier between the younger and older generations: Parts such as the arms having shoulders, elbows and wrist joints. Within using this form of design, my robot will now be able to be disassembled and rebuilt efficiently, without mixing up the parts due to confusion of body structure. I really began to focus on the characteristics of the robot, to successfully achieve an authentic feel. As our concept progressed, we came to the conclusion of mad scientists coming together to build the perfect robot. When i associated myself with mad scientists, i usually came up with the thought of 'evil' so i had to incorporate this into my design. To take this into effect, i thought the best way to portray evil would be through the eyes, as it is the main focus point in order to receive emotion.

From my research of existing robots, i noticed how certain designs used different colours and shapes to define the emotion of the character. By giving the eyes a inverted length, i was able to achieve the look of a 'frown' to highlight the sense of evil, or rage. I came up with this by also looking at the facial structure of us as humans when we frown or become enraged. Our eyebrows invert above our eyes and create contours that express that emotion. Here is an image i found to hopefully emphasise what i mean.

Once i constructed the basic shape of the eyes, i decided to colour them in a way that i believe represented evil the most. We refer the colour 'red' to describe many emotions, both good or bad for example, passion or love and aggression or rage. It only seemed natural to add this colour to the eyes of my robot design, as it perfectly represented evil.

This is my finished first concept for my robot design. I wanted to give my robot more texture than the previous sketch, so i uploaded the drawing into 'Photoshop' and began applying tonal and textured surfaces. Although my robot is a futuristic type, i wanted to give it a 'used' and rustic feel, so that the image had more visual depth and appeal. To do this i found a nice brush pattern online which represented scratches and rough surfacing. I applied the scratched patterns into sections of the robot's body, by using the opacity tool on a low percentage i could alter the texture to make it realistic. To add further depth within the surface, i used a small plain brush with both white and black tones. From there i also made the opacity quite low, and adapted the scratches so they had highlights and shadows. This allowed the texture to be embedded within the character's bodywork and made it look more three dimensional. Finally i selected a rustic brown colour for the soft brush tool. I changed the opacity low once again and began layering the tone over the surface of the robot's body. I really liked this effect, as it gave the character more personality and structure than the standard finish it had before.

Although i am usually against certain Photoshop filters, i wanted to experiment with a couple of them so i could obtain a greater perspective on the different tonal and art styles. This particular filter 'Fresco' really caught my eye because of it's emphasis on the texture and also how it contrasted heavily to make the character much darker. This whole concept of altering the darkness gave the character new sinister meaning, because of how it emerged from the darkness. Also how it's eyes stay bright and reflective within the darkness, adds an element of being watched even though most of the figure is concealed inside the shadows. With this one adaptation of adding a filter, it really changed the emotional feelings towards the character.

 

Here is the final filter i liked whilst looking for other styles. I really liked this particular filter because it defined the scratched texture more predominately than it originally was. I also admired the way the highlights and shadows mixed with the rustic brown in a vectorized format, instead of blended smoothly. It makes the character look more cartoon like which could appeal more to our target audience in a sense, as the younger generation watches cartoons more so than older people. However, the true reason in which i admire this filter is because of how it has adapted my shading technique into singular cell shaded colours. I simply applied shadows and highlights by using black and white with a soft brush at a low opacity, however in this adaptation you can clearly see how i have layered the shading, which i really like.

Bibliography

. Google Images

. Brusheezy.com