/ic/ - Artwork/Critique

>>3008118
Eh, I don't completely grasp designing yet, so not a streamlined answer. It's like trying to give an answer to "any tips for fundamentals?” when I just started. This is mostly parroting the FZD teachers:

The little details like bolts do indeed come from studying, that's why we did so much sketching. Feng critiqued my term01 homework as having too little reffed detail, but at the time that was the max of my skill.

- shape design: push it until you break it, then dial back 10% (I'm still learning shape design myself)

- Ground your designs. If you think about games like Assassin's Creed, they are 80% based on the real world. It's tremendously difficult to make up an in-depth history and culture on the fly.

- relevant to previous point, there's a lot of crazy stuff in the real world that's not well-known. Just use it. Check these plants my aunt posted on Facebook. They'd fit right into an alien-world design. I don't do this even though I should, because I got sold on the idea that everything has to be new and made up. It's a mental hurdle that I need to get over.

- I thought there was a Design Cinema about designing shortcuts, but I can't find it right now. Like, take something and make it huge (think about how many giant trees pop up in games and movies and books), reskin (mech that is actually a spider body with armor plating), taking the real world but changing one thing (Ancient Egypt has space travel), ... Maybe it was a Feng presentation somewhere else.

- Entertainment touch. Say, you got a rhino. In a video game his horn will be a lot bigger and pointier. Or whatever. He will be the real thing, but cooler.

- In entertainment design, everything has to be visual. Your aircraft got a special radar? Needs some blinking visual to show it's working. Also, functionality. Always be able to explain WHY you made a design decision (like my beetle cab design is completely based on applying the evolution of pigs and horses to potato bugs).