Chances to upgrade a piece of art don’t
come along that often. After all by the time anyone gets around to
even thinking about it your probably several hundred years dead. On
the other hand Playmats are art that has to withstand the rigors of
constant use, occasionally they may require a bit of a spruce up. Thats
going to be the topic of today's post as we take a look at what was
involved in refreshing the Persona 3 Nyx mat..
Four years in the breaking
It's been a while Persona 3 Nyx mat,
how've ya been? Bearing in mind I had no idea about sealing mats at
the time I think it's done well for 4 years of use. What we are
seeing is that the colours have faded slightly and there is
understandable wear around the edges, both from use and living loose
in a bag.
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| A tiny bit the worse for wear but overal you've done well soldier |
It's the black thats faded the most.
Which is interesting since usually its the paler colours that are the
first to go, must have been something to do with the fact I was using
two different mediums. That aside the most striking change is the
loss of that vibrant neon.
Here's a little secret though. This
image, the contrast has been pushed up to make the blacks darker and
the image easier to read, the original was never quite this dark in
the first place. Why push the contrast so much? Well you see at the
time I didn’t exactly have all that decent a camera and it helps to
offset the low resolution. That said with this refresh I'm hoping to
get the mat up to this level of colour at the very least. Think of it
as finally matching the original vision. First though we need to know
why the mat looks as it does not after four years.
Why do things fade? Well there are two
main reasons.
Reason one: Wear.
Want to see what a mat looks like
without its backing? Any mat thats is, even the printed type? Heres a
pic.
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| Best not to ask why I have the fabric of a mat and not the rubber under-layer. There was an experiment... |
Yup its essentially just a bit of
fabric, not a particularity thick piece of fabric either and yet one
that has to withstand all the card flicks, elbows, greasy fingers,
and rubbing from other objects in a bag that occur during a mat's
life. It would be like if you only had one tshirt, You wear it wash
it then put it on again, over and over for four years. What happens
to any images on it or the seams and edges?
Thats right Wear, Luckily unlike
clothes the rubber backing of a mat keeps it from falling apart we
still have to deal with wear to the image though.
Reason rwo: light.
The sun is trying to kill the colours.
Over time light breaks down the
pigments, less tiny pigment particles less colour on the human eyes
scale. This is more like a river carrying away the individual
particles ,with less of them left behind its impossible to be as
bright as before the river appeared.
On the plus side unless you leave your
mat on a windowsill while your not using it light is less of an
issue. Also gaming stores aren’t renowned for their sunroofs.
On this mat what we are seeing is
mainly a wear issue. I can feel the fabric isn’t as thick as it
used to be and there are more frayed fibres around the edges. One of
the things we will be looking to do near the end of the process is to
bulk the mat back up a bit.
Beyond that it's a straight re-colour.
Well it would be but I've come a long
way in four years, I think we can do better than that.
The reunification.
In this image I'm about halfway done
with the refresh.
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| There are a number of things that still need fixing. |
I've been removing as many Tangents as
I could find, we've covered this before but to recap. Tangents are
where lines meet and form shapes they shouldn’t and in doing so
they confuse the viewers eye. In this image for example the way the
bow, spear, and Nyx's dress interact caused some confusion
originally, at least I wasn’t happy with it at least. Theres still
a bit to do to work them apart but you can see the beginnings of the
refinement of each object and my atempt to move them apart..
Another thing we can do to improve
readability is make sure that dark edges are followed by light areas
and vice versa. There are a lot of very small details on this mat,
for example the gold spikes, and we can increase the crispness of
their edges without putting a black line around them if we use this
technique. I've also changed the lighting, on the original I use a
grey to shape the black clothes of the characters but if the moon is
the primary light source then doing so leads to confusion, where is
the light coming from to make their backs lighter than their sides?
Just fixing this makes the figures feel much more a part of the rest
of the image.
Finally I've begun darkening the edges
of the image in order to create an oval of darker colour. This pool
into witch we are drawn should help to keep the viewers eyes within
the bounds of the image where before with all the figures at the
edges it could be quite easy for the eye to wander out.
At this point I'm not sure if I want to
outline the everything or not.
0.3 to 0.8
I've outlined the everything.
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| I'm not sure which I prefer this or the top image. |
Had to in a way. Ceaser is all grey, at
some point near the edge of a surface your going to need to go darker
to create the outline and once you've done that then you start
thinking 'well lets just see what the guy next to him would look
like' and it's all a bit of a snowball from there.
What I didn’t want to do however were
boring lines that were all the same width, you know like I did the
first time around because I didn’t have four years more experience.
So keeping the Rarity mat in mind I set about outlining everything,
making sure to vary the pressure of my stroke. To make doubly sure I
went back and added even more thickness to certain areas I wanted it
to be really obvious. Then I got an even thicker brush and drew big
black lines around the characters.
But that was too much so I undid most
of it.
I'm glad I did add the line-work in the
end, not only does it make those areas that had lines originally more
dynamic but it really helps to make the character pop.
I've been talking about techniques to
sharpen the image for a bit now so I guess it's past time to mention
colour.
Colour me unsurprised.
In the original image the sky is
something of a teal, one I no longer have access to. This turns out
to be less of a problem than it seems since the moon is green after
all and as I boost it back up to its neon glory I'm naturally drawn
to blending out from there using greens rather than teals anyway.
I want to bring more of the blue from
the dress into the left of the image as the right is a bit heavy with
it so start to tint the greys with a blue shadow. Th blue Itself has
held up well over the years, theres no real surprise there its what
blue does. Still I want to add in some dynamism so work the dress up
to a darker shade and blend out to create folds in the fabric
In the same way I want more blue on the
left, the areas that were red and orange before are all now shades of
one colour to draw your eye from left to right. There's a nice curve
there I think it should be used. Equally the yellows are better
matched now, I really wanted to cut down a bit on the number of
colours involved, less can be more after all and if it helps
strengthen the overall image all the better.
I debated weather or not to add purple
clouds. It would have had a nice contrast to the green but theres no
taking that back, the sky isn’t really the focus anyway so had I
not liked it I would have been stuck with at best very dark green
clouds.
Just to add to the eeriness factor I've
left Nyx's face without shadows, clearly she can self illuminate
somehow – perhaps she is a nightlight. I also altered the smile
and reshaped the head. It wasn’t that far off before but you should
have been able to see more hair on the right and now she looks like
she's enjoying herself more.
Deepen the blacks on Nyx. For obvious
reasons we do the black last (hint we don’t want to be trying to
put yellow over it) lets also sort out the boot on the right not sure
what went wrong there but its not the same size as the one one the
left even if you cant see most of it. I could go darker with the
wings but as we have learned we want things in the background to not
be as bright/strong.
Bring in some green shadows and
highlights to tie the figures and the sky together and we are done.
Not quite the same style as before but possibly closer to the
original anime intent overall, especially on the humans.
Next up lets do something to keep this
mat going for even longer than four years.
CFC Free.
With the colouring done its tim for
detailing.
Not as in adding detail, more the
polishing a car up to make it look as good as it can.
Here that involves:
Trimming any glaringly obvious frays:
Being fabric we don’t want to go to crazy it might un-knot.
Painting the sides of the edges of the
mat: if it's green at the edge we don’t want to see white over the
lip.
And adding an undefined number of
layers of sealant.
This last point involves a spray so you
will want to do this outside in calm dry weather. Here I've gone with
a mat sealant, mat as in not gloss rather than specifically for
mat's. As I mentioned earlier I want to improve the mat's thickness
so it takes a fair few coats to bring it up to where I am happy with
it. Adding the sealant helps for three reasons. First it locks in the
colours, second it takes the wear before the mat itself and third a
decent sealing product will have some form of UV protection or be
lightfast in some way.
Basically it helps slow the process of
ageing.
For art that is, I advising against any
attempts to use it in any other way.
Once this is dry your done and ready to
once again take to the battlegrounds.
...
I just wish I had a blacklight, see one
of the ways I got the brightness back up was to use glow in UV
colours. It woulds be nice to know if the sealing process turned them
off or not.
Obviously thats a story for another
time, until then remember art isn’t ever a finished thing theres
always room for a refresh.
Although I'm not sure how I would feel
about someone else messing with my art 100 years form now.
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