Lighting
By Katja Belotchkina
Firstly I did some study on how to actually do lighting in that style. My teacher made a YouTube video (https://youtu.be/ob898nQ-RrU) which I tried to follow as close as possible and got these three shapes to look like this. I did however forgot to make in-between shots of me shading these three shapes which is quite a shame really but I promise I only used the medium soft paint brush just like in the video.
Secondly, I studied this shading style further but with a material that could show up in the game. I knew that there would definitely be some cloth as the character you play does ware clothes and so I followed another YouTube video on how to make this.
While making it I actually used more of a darker background like this so that's why it could look a little weird in the image above.
After doing this research I finally began with sketching for the poster. To sum up the game from my other project, it's a 2D game where you move around as a little guy (let's call him Jared) through the human body putting things in the corrects spots as fast as possible and not letting the timer run out. Also the things that you need to put in the right places are parts of energy drinks so that's why the game is called Energy Manager.
For this poster I really liked the idea of showing Jared running around through a hallway. To make it look more interesting I made it curved with a step and also decided that I wanted to have an alarm to make it look more dramatic and panicky.
Then I drew in Jared and it went kind of smooth. Did have some trouble on how he would hold the energy sphere but settled on the forth position as the sphere wasn't blocked off as much and it gave a more worried cartoonish style which I think suits the situation and the character more.
I then gave Jared his base colors that we use in the game and tried to start with putting shadows on his clothes.
I stopped working on the clothes quickly though as I thought it would be better to finish the background first because the lighting from that would impact the lighting hitting Jared.
Finally getting to the foreground and I firstly rendered the energy ball as it looked the easiest.
I then went on to render Jared´s skin. I switched the base color to something much darker as that is how I learned it earlier and thought the original color will be seen eventually but that kind of didn´t work out I guess. I am still happy with the result overall though as the color still suits the rest and doesn´t look off putting.
I later also did the same thing with his clothes. Honestly, I myself am surprised by how good it looks because I thought it would look more like the skin.
For the shadow on the ground I first thought it would look better to make the shadow a bit darker than the background but that looked off so just went with the darkest shade from the background even though it blends in a bit.
Lastly, I put some more dimension into the sweat. I was thinking of putting wat lighting in the eyes but keeping it simple feels more like the character and compliments the surprised lines.
For the final result I just put the logo of our game on it and here is the result.
Lighting
By Katja Belotchkina
