Deadnaiadd - Art and TTRPG stuff!

 What will I do this year? This year I want to create a professional portfolio and begin posting more across social medias to build my reach. On top of this, I would like to attend more conventions and networking events to build my industry contacts to help me improve my professional presence. What will I commit to? I will create an art station, post to my LinkedIn, and create a BlueSky to post my work to, this will hopefully boost the amount of people who see my work. On top of this, I want to improve my own artwork to better meet the standard to be able to work within the games industry, I have also planned to visit a games convention later in the year [also another market to sell some of the TTRPG games I and a friend have made]. I will continue to add things to my blog to keep followers updated on my work, this is something I have been trying to do for the past year and a half [I will also start posting about my personal projects too]. Where do I want to be next year? This time...

 Mood Boards- The next client I created was Obie the Fearful, who prioritizes Comfort and Safety. For their design I wanted them to feel very bulky and cozy, with a lot of fur accents, layers and padding to make them feel very secure. In my moodboard I collected images of clothing that fit this very "bundled up" look to it, i especially like the poncho on the bottom left [second image] especially the colours on it. I think as both Gremmie and Grug have more warm colours making up the majority of their colour pallet, i want Obie to have more cool toned colours to make them stand out in the lineup. I also added an image of a Pachycephalosaurus skeleton [ a type of hard headed dinosaur] as I thought it would be interesting to implement the skull of this somewhere in my design, as one of my peers mentioned later on "acting as a type of prehistoric hard hat". Thumbnails- My first set of thumbnails explored these ideas further, I tried to implement many layers and differe...

  Neil Roberts :  A Career in Games Art, Concept Art, Comics, and Illustration I attended the Creative Futures event with Neil Roberts discussion careers in the creative industry. Throughout this talk I gathered some notes specifically regarding what sort of things are beneficial to beginning your career in the games industry. The first thing that is crucial to put together [before even applying for any jobs] is your Portfolio, in this, you should keep several things in mind:  Consider what you want to do for a job, If your interest is concept art, show concept art , if you want to focus on environments, show environments. With this in mind though, companies are looking for good artists with a breadth of work, show off your core skills especially when it comes to communicating your ideas. Even if your work isn't totally polished, getting a feeling and idea across is absolutely vital when it comes to games. Keep your style open, try some new things, and make sure not ...

Mood boards - The furniture cards within my game will be how the players level up their cave's attributes. They are crafted using energy and materials and each item of furniture awards a different boost [or negative] to certain stats. Visually, the furniture should be exaggerated but still recognisable, combining both modern and prehistoric visual elements together. I am taking a lot of inspiration from the flintstones and how they make prehistoric materials feel more modern. I also like their usage of living creates in place of furniture, for example the baby mammoth vacuum cleaner and the dinosaur lawn mower. In my mood boards I have included examples of both real historical furniture pieces, modern furniture in the "Caveman style" and some other assorted concept art that had interesting shapes to them. Colour wise, I am aiming to stick to quite a natural colour pallet [browns, greys, beiges] with occasional pops of desaturated colour. Much like the Cavepeople I have be...

After presenting my FMP Proposal to my class I gathered some useful feedback on my work, some of this feedback pertained to the general art style of my game and seeing how I can implement the Neolithic painting styles into my work.  One of my peers suggested that I could perhaps use the style for both the motifs and the box art of my game to supplement the style I have already developed, this would help me keep the more lively style that is more appealing to younger audiences whilst also reinforcing the prehistoric theming of my overall game. My tutor also backed up this idea especially with the box art. This is something I am going to try out soon to just see how it looks, at this stage, if I don't end up liking it that much, I won't have lost too much valuable time.  Some other feedback I got was to do some research into how the Flintstones create furniture that fits both a modern and prehistoric theme, this is something that will relate to both the caves and the...

The differences between Copyright, Patents and Trademarks - Board games contain many assets from unique pieces, illustrations, titles and mechanics, and it's important to know how to protect your IP from potential copycats. Generally, the most popular way to secure IP is to place your work under a Copyright. Copyrights cover all artistic works such as illustrations and formats of your game, but not including your game's logo(Founders legal 2026)(Griffith 2024). Of the three options, Copyright, Patent and Trademark, Copyrights are the easiest to obtain [Within the UK] with all physical versions of the game immediately falling under copyright upon its creation. To secure it further, Consider uploading the manual and details of your game to Boardgamegeek to create dated proof of your game under your business name(Board Game Bonkers 2023). Patents aren't usually necessary when it comes to board games, they're usually quite pricey to obtain and only cover unique physical ass...