Persona 3 Nyx Playmat

I'm nothing if not dedicated. Like the Reborn mat I put quite a bit of time into researching this project, luckily I already had played about a third of the game so I had a prettily good idea what I was getting into.

It was a good thing I did too since If I hadn't we would probably be looking at an additional character and totally diffrent personas. While its not alway possible I find playing, reading, or watching the media the mat will be based on is usually the best way of getting a feel for the characters involved, how they move, interact, their personalities, and drives, which in turn helps inform the overall design and layout of the image.

Which in this case is based on another of the spirals I am so fond of with a serious consideration for trying to fit as many characters on the mat as possible while still making sure that Nyx was the main focus and that she loomed over our intrepid heros. These are probably some of the smallest characters I have done and as such have to mostly be made up of blocks of colour, the in-game art style really informed this look and was a big help, and its also one of the reasons why they are facing away faces at this size being little more than dots and lines, not that that stopped me trying to do the really tiny details and checker pattern on the death card. Doing the designs for the personas was also quite interesting as you don't really realise it while your playing but you never really see their backs in the game, which made orpheus and his harp slightly tricky and Isis very much so.

The colours are probably my favourite part of this mat though, from the heavy use of black to the creepy green sky and sickly lime coloured moon, from the tiny gradients in the characters hair to the almost right but a tiny bit suspect lighting (mainly the global illumination could be a tiny bit stronger in places, the dynamic lights are fine). Most of which was possible due to several new tools that I had just acquired, especially in the areas that have turned to out to be particularly bright, something that will turn up again in a number of the later mats.

Still haven't quite finished the game totally though...

Hellsing Playmant

After our detour into something more recent earlier in the week lets head back in time a bit and finally talk about the Hellsing mat.

As mentioned previously this was the project on which I figured out how to get black to actually look black. Which was handy since the anime and manga'a style relies quite heavily on the use of it and it could have looked quite odd with blacks tat looked grey.

This is also one of those images that have been stuck in my head for quite some time just waiting to get out, I'm not sure where the pose came from exactly having watched so many programs over the years, though it may even have been one of the two Hellsing series themselves. 

After completing the initial sketch there was something not quite right, something I knew was wrong instinctively but couldn't put my finger on I put the image aside for some time to work on other projects then when I came back to it the problem hit me immediately, the hands were on the wrong way round, even someone as flexible as Alucard would have found it quite painful. A quick flip during transfer to the mat and things were more anatomically correct.

In direct contact with the hands were the guns, like the Walking Dead mat I spent some time researching weaponry trying to get them to look right. The most interesting thing I discovered during the research lead to the reason that you can see both ejection ports in this image which is because the guns were designed to be held so that the casings flew off away from the user when both are used at the same time (If you were to use two of the same normal handgun for example one of them is going to eject casings across your body). The fact that while the guns have set amounts of ammo they will go infinite from time to time if the animators can't be bothered to animate a reload was also quite amusing.

Ever since my first mat text has been a major element of my mat designs and this mat required quite a lot at quite a small size, the white text on the black gun proved especially tricky. In the end both guns text were added freehand, the entire time hoping not to make a mistake. the text on the sigil on the glove is even smaller which was also somewhat precarious if anything went wrong especially on a white background. As for the logos I quite like both the one for the original series and the ultimate version so they both got added.

Having coloured pretty much everything else I was left with trying to figure out what colour to do the background, that was until I started colouring it yellow without really realising it, apparently my subconscious had been looking at the colour of the glasses (having been one of the first details I coloured) the entire time and figured that they would be reflecting the environment around them. When my conscious brain final caught up it felt kinda silly for a moment then agreed flames were indeed cool and that way the way it should go.

Definitely one of my favourite mats from the use of colour to the overall design as well as the techniques I picked up in the process, the only slight problem being that now I have used this design I will have to come up with something different for the next Hellsing mat, I have a few ideas already but nothing as solid in my mind as this one was, its not often an idea makes it all the way through production this intact.

Good vs Evil Star Wars Playmat

c'est ne pas une lune...

Ah puns within puns, art puns, Star Wars puns and even references to how many moons seem to appear in my mats, still as the first sentence points out its not a moon so clearly its time to look at another Star Wars mat!

Lets start by mentioning that I have gone with a photo of the mat rather than the usual scan this time for two reasons, firstly that it means I can have higher res images on the site so you can see more detail, the jaunty angle somewhat preventing the image from being reused plus just generally looking more professional. Secondly it allows me to talk about some of the special effects scanning tends to hide which I will talk about a bit more later.

This being the third Star Wars mat I have done means I am getting quite used to drawing Mr Vader and stormtroopers the rest of the cast were more tricky especially at such a small size but I let the shading and lighting effects do most of the work and am quite pleased with the results. Darth's outfit especially had to take into account the various light sources in play and I like the effects on his helmet both because of how it turned out and as it is somewhat of a callback to the first Star Wars mat. I think that maybe the small characters could have been a little bigger in hindsight, theres a bit of space in the triangle they inhabit that could have got a bit more use though increasing the size would have started to infringe on the fight scene so its tough to call.

I always like to try and get some sort of narrative into the design of the mats, when you only have one character to work with it tends to be a bit more difficult but thats not really an issue here where we have the main fight scene, the ships preparing for battle in the background, the trooper making an arrest and so on I wont describe them all here its always best to let the viewer create their own storys.

Finally lets talk about special effects, this image will be the first one where they are apparent but a number of the other mats I have already talked about use the this particular effect to some small degree and a number of them that I will talk about in coming weeks use them more heavily and take them further. I discovered due to the interaction between the mat material and the various products I was using to draw on it that I could create a sort of simple holographic/lithographic effect. From certain angles and under certain lighting conditions I could get details to appear and disappear, luckily one of the angles things are most visible is when you are sitting down with the mat in front of you on a table so most of the detail should be visible while your playing (though lights do effect the overall strength of the effect)

Here the effect it used on the stars in the background and to pick out hi-lights on the ships and that thing that isn't a moon but more importantly on the lightsabers to make them really pop. Its also used to a lesser extent on the characters eyes and Lela's gun has a really feint smoke effect, the question being who did she shoot?

An amusing story has us talking about the mat part way through production and realising it should have been lego Star Wars, a dramatically different layout probably, just because of arm length and body shape more than anything else but the moment it was said we all knew it would have been epic, everything should be logo'ised.

Perhaps for Star Wars mat four...

Dark Magician Girl Playmat

Another look through the archives, this time where I find a mat that I didn't think I had any images of as its one of the few I forgot to scan in before handing over the final piece. Which explains the weird angle and why after some slight editing it looks a bit like its being shown on a large TV,  an interesting look if nothing else.

The other interesting story about this mat is that I also lost the original sketch which would have been fine if it had been after finishing the mat but as it was before it meant having to start over, something of a accident prone production process then though the end result probably benefited, giving me a chance, as it was, to improve  details and adjust the pose slightly.

Large areas of white space and a quite basic background denote another mat from my early collection, the major difference here being that the person who wanted it asked for his name on the mat, which if you were wondering explains the blur. The logo as a whole is probably my favourite part, being the sucker for a good logo that i am, combining a simplified version of the Yugioh logo with the silhouette of the dark magician girl and the persons name in a suitably Yugioh like font, the colours used matching those used in the character to pull the two together.

Probably the most tricky part of the character itself was the wink which is also the reason it turned out to be quite useful having to redo the line-work, the original having a tendency to look odd at some angles.

Something I hadn't considered at the time while working on it but that was pointed out to me afterwards was that I could be sure the mat probably wouldn't wander the would much, theres only so many people who are going to want a mat with someone else's name on.