Blackflame Dragons Custom Playmat

This time we are going to look at a mat full of dragons, go through the general steps involved in this mats production .and go over the general Yugioh dragon style guides, but first.

An aside on the nature of mat relocation.

Before that however i must first note that the owner of this mat had it with them at YCS London this past weekend (October 2014) where it was stolen, while there are a number of my mats that I know of that have gone on to explore the world with people other then those who they were originally designed for, in this particular instance its obviously not an ideal situation so if anyone comes across it in their own travels I would be grateful if you let me know, either on FB or the contact form. 

Going forward in addition to the logo, date, and unique number on each mat i will most likely be adding this sites web address. As I have mentioned before i cant help thinking that it would be quite nice to have some way to track mats, even if its just a web form that people can fill in,  it occurs to me that had I known this when I was working on my final year project at university it would be the sort of thing that would be a relatively easy First, assuming of course you could get enough feedback.

And now back to our regularly scheduled program.

Musings on potential apps aside this mat called for the cramming of as many dragons of both Yugioh and Pokemon verities as possible into the space available, while simultaneously maintaing enough room for a complex background. As discussed last time theres a scale limit to how small you can go doing the Pendulum mat first definitely helped get me in the right frame of mind. Design wise Its relatively straightforward to take a group of characters and squeeze as many as possible into the available space, i have done it before myself with both the Vampire and another mat I don't believe I've talked about yet. It's mostly a process of Tetris-ing everyone until you find poses that look right and fit the correct scale while working within the golden ratio layout for example. On the other hand having to get sixteen characters to fit on a background that the viewer has to be able to parse mentally as an actual object is a tad more difficulty and requires slightly more in the way of design preparation

Your initial sketches are going to have to take into account things like how the creatures wings have a tendency to make them at least twice their body size and can obscure large parts of the background for minimal gain. theres a good reason a number of dragons are placed around the edges of the mat for example.

All the colours of the rainbow, well five anyway, if one of those is dragon.

Thumbnail sketches done the first thing I started on was the background. Strangely it felt a bit like I was working on a cycle of basic land for Magic the Gathering. Admittedly though that may have had something to do with both Yugioh and pokemon also having element systems and the fact that the background needed to feature a mountain with ice fire earth lightning and sky areas.

Even all the way back at the twilight mat you could say I have a particular style when it comes to drawing crumbling rock. The glacier, mountain, and lava areas on the other hand did require me to spend some time looking at actual reference material, the way the trees and grass on the lower slope gradually become more spares as the gradient increases or the way the snow and ice build up at the edges of the glacier are not just things I've made up but are actual physical phenomena that I have noticed looking at the world around me and reference images.

Most of the time when I'm doing mats these days I'll work on the full scale sketch that includes everything in it and go from there. In this instance however I wanted to make sure I had a real place fully designed before I started adding the dragons. Doing it the other way could have meant large blank spaces opening up in the background if i suddenly decided that I didn't like the placement of one thing or another which would have then needed filling back in and thats just more work, also you cant always guarantee you will get the same look.

After the jump we look at turning Pokemon into Yugioh dragons and finish going through the process of describing how I went about making this mat, theres pictures and everything.

What a big nose you have. All the better to impale you with.

With the background done the next task was to go through and Yugioh-ize the Pokemon. its actually a relatively easy process in some ways, at least when it comes to dragons because Yugioh's particular brand tend to follow a pretty strict style guide which seems to read as follows, assuming the person who wrote it is mildly sarcastic:

If you have wings you will likely have some sort of bizarre protrusions from what on birds would be the wrist joint. It could be anything from spikes to engines and/or assorted gems or other paraphernalia. In addition the chances are quite high that the bones that make up the wings will be highly visible and/or made of metal even if your not a skeleton dragon.

Next up we come to the head area and if your a Yugioh dragon you can look forward to having either some sort of pointy nose protuberance or a large angular chin and/or some sort of spiky looking assemblage of horns or skull extensions. Like the wings chances are you will have at least one gem inset into your head somewhere.

In terms of the body chances are high that no mater if your made of metal, stone or some from of sentient plant you will have an overlapping armoured section somewhere about your person even if its just the tail. Theres also a high chance that this armour will cover your chest and again your likely to be covered in gems, or spikes or some sort of lined area that just so happens to be a complementary colour with the rest of your colour scheme.

Finally if your a fire monster you will either be literally made of fire or your background will make sure that concept is clearly apparent.

Sticking to these principles I worked my way though the Pokemon that would be on the mat. Gradually nudging them more into line with the style we are going for. This Tyranitar for example gets his normally rounded edges made angular with added spikes (1). The various holes in his body get adjusted slightly I wanted those on his legs to be more vent like (2). He already has lines on his chest so we can just extend that element all the way down and along the underside of the tail (3). Obligatory gem in the forehead, the head gets a slight shape change (think Blue Eyes White Dragon) which lets me add the ridges above the eyes (4). Finally we dd a pointy chin and fill the mouth full of needle like teeth (5).

When i was finally done with everyone I had a large pile of sketches that could be scanned in and added to the background design.

Gestalt mode.

The next phase was slightly complicated by, as you may have noted, the fact that the various combatants are mostly fighting within elemental groups, if your aligned with the ice element for example chances are your over in the glacial area mixing it up with other of your kind. It took some time to move things around scale and flip them until i was happy with how everything was looking, just play around in your image editor of choice moving layers about until you get things roughly how you want them. Next up we print the resulting image out and redraw the whole thing in an attempt to make sure the various characters looked as if they were in the space rather than pasted on top. which as it happens is the main downside to this approach.

A few more passes between the computer and physical sketching and finally I had the design laid out on the mat. I could finally start on the colouring.

You've got a point.

My comment about pointillism last time wasn't just a throw away remark.After initial colour being applied to the background i spent a great deal of time drawing dots all over it to add an element of texture. The benefits are that you have more control of the flow of the materials if your only applying tiny dabs. On the other hand you do have to be a bit careful of RSI, not so much on individual projects but if pointillism is your whole deal then yeah get a wrist brace or something I guess. The trees were done in much the same way, darker dots were set down and then a lighter colour was applied over the top to give the impression of depth.

The design probably doesn't need trees and houses but they help to tell the eye what the scale is, much like the Pokemon in the background work a bit like scale birds, the artist is trying to show the audience that something is big by showing them something they should know the size of to compare it against.The use of little dots also extends to the reflections in the water and some of the scale textures on the dragons themselves. I'm not sure of the likelihood of doing an entire mat this watt though.

Blue is the new orange.

For once we also have a blue sky, mainly due to the fact orange and green were off the table because of the colours I had already used in the image. The way it lightens towards the center is mainly an attempt to draw peoples attention inwards, while the creatures are roughly placed in a spiral the main layout is just a straight rule of thirds grid.

Once the main colouring is done I work on the spell effects which in this instance is mainly just the ice beam attacks so thats quite straightforward, even if it does seem a bit unfair Trishula gets three beams to everyone else's one. all that done its time to seal it and we are done.

For a few dragons more.

If this mat doesn't turn up i will likely be called on to create a second version which will be interesting since I don't normally do repeats. Luckily I tend to keep all the working files and materials involved in a mats production so I wont have to start over from scratch. It will be interesting to discuss what changes and differences there are between the two images so that will be fun. As to why I call it the Blackflame mat thats mainly due to the fact Horus breathing fire seemed like he was one of the inspirations behind the who project.

Next time either skeletons or more Pokemon. Until then keep your style guides handy.

Pendulum Custom Playmat

Almost every piece of art starts from a different place (assuming you don't keep working from the same style guide). Its as if there's a large panel of dials, sliders, buttons, flashing lights, and each time you start a project they are all in different positions and states. In this instance the slider for teeny tiny details is set to max and the dial for 'theres a very specific set of parameters required' is at 11. This time I'm going to be talking about the first mat I've designed with the pendulum zones in mind, covering the various restrictions I had to work under and explaining the outcomes those restrictions produced.

The main details for this mat were all locked down pretty early in the process of discussion with the person who had asked for it. Sometimes people don't really know what they want beyond a vague topic or initial set of characters (and we will be looking at one of those in that category at some point within the next few posts) This can give you a great deal of freedom but equally can cause a bit of a headache when your trying to figure out what sort of things they might like or are trying to form a nebulous concept into something solid.

On the other side of the coin we have designs like the one we are looking at today where the person knows exactly what that want right down to the placement of the individual elements. In instances like this you have a very solid foundation and have to find the best way to implement it and any of the design flourishes you may come up with along the way into a cohesive whole. I would imagine most designers, much like myself, like to start from a position somewhere between the two most of the time it is however nice to be forced to mix things up, to be forced down avenues your wouldn't normally consider, restriction as they so often do create new opportunities.

In this instance our restrictions as follows are:
The zone layout of a typical Yugioh field including the new pendulum zones.
The fact that specific artwork has to be at specific locations.
There needs to be a skull near the graveyard
That it would be quite nice if this design in some way referenced an existing mat, most likely in the form of the colour scheme of the background.

So lets work out way though each element

The zone layout is straightforward enough. Most of us should be relatively familiar with it if we have spent any time playing Yugioh. I wont mention what I think of the choice of placement of the new pendulum zones but it is what it is I suppose. I will however point out for a game with no other limiting resource system the fact that they haven't used the way the field can naturally limit things is a bit odd, for example what if Syncro/XYZ materials remained in their zones and the monster replacing them sat between them therefor taking up two zones, how powerful could a creature that essentially reduced your zone count by 1 be? would you risk playing a powerful monster that said the spell zone behind it couldn't be used?

And breath.

My thoughts on game design aside this part of the process is all about measuring 9000 times drawing, well, more than once as it turned out, What really helped was setting real cards out on a blank mat and moving them about until you think you have the placement that seems about right. Through this process  for example I realised that the 5 Monster and Spell zones would have to be closer together than I had originally thought if everything was going to fit. It also solidified my belief that it was best to keep those zones away from the top or bottom of the mat, the top because that a bit far to reach and the bottom because people have a tendency to rest their elbows there and things can get lost or fall off the table by being brushed by arms.

The zones on the outer edge of the design also went through a number of placements. I could for example have aligned the main deck with the exile zone above it, however that didn't feel quite right from a number of perspective most notably the mat's overall design balance, I didn't want the right side with its extra card to 'weigh' more than the left than it really had to.

Similarly putting a boarder around the central section servers both to emphasise the main play area and means that while keeping that area relatively clutter free to help prevent mental fatigue I could add a more complex border area.

In this image I've blown up a number of the elements from the mat for a closer look

The most tricky element of this design was that the materials I use have something of a minimum scale they can work at, basically once you start getting down to trying to draw the little stars and write the element names on the circles you start to find the materials want to flow more than you would like and have you actually looked at Xyz Universe? I was seriously considering doing it in pointillism,

My favourite element is probably the Soul Release, not only partly because its one of my favourite cards but also because I think it turned out really well in terms of matching the original, perhaps it has something to do with digital art these days being done at such high resolution in comparison to back in the late 90's early 2000's.Luckily for me the issue of real estate for the card art itself was somewhat alleviated though the use of the anime style boarders otherwise things would have been even more tiny. It did however requite me to spend some time working on making sure they looked right in their new scale, a oblong Seal of Orichalcos would have been a bit odd.

Its always a little surprising how much material plain backgrounds can use up I almost ran out of blue working on this one. Design wise while in this case I'm riffing of the colour scheme of the original mat the center point this time is in the bottom right and spreads out in rings from there, these quarter ring segments come together to form something of a linear rainbow gradient that with the help of the pendulum pulls your eyes across the image. The interference patterns caused by the crystals are mainly there to break up what would otherwise be a much larger expanses of colour and again add an element of movement.

I could have gone with a more standard skull design for the graveyard however after deciding to have a clean central area and a more complex boarder I couldn't help thinking that perhaps everything should be tied into each other a bit more deliberately. 'Well'  I thought, 'theres a tree right there why not extend the art out of the card and have that area of the boarder made of vines? what do we have on the other side, artefacts huh well then gears seem appropriate'. Admittedly the circuit board design element of the bottom around the extra deck is a little less obvious as its more of a reference to the design aesthetic of the Yugioh Zexal cartoon but still. Finally these elements are fused together with vines morphing into lines, flowers becoming gears and the pendulum bringing it all together with a mix of everything.

In the end I can say it's a design I wouldn't have necessarily ever considered creating by myself which is one of the best parts of doing designs for other people. It definitely pushed the limits of where I was in terms of level of tiny detail at the time. But as we will see later this month (well November probably) it certainly was a valuable experience for what would come next. So until next time embrace the restrictions and see where they may lead you