Week one of daily design

Today marks the first day of my weekly design challenges. What better way to start this weekly challenge than to incorporate my nerdy hobbies into my designs.

I started my process with using a generated 3D character model in Blender from a game called Final Fantasy 14 Online (FFXIV). I really wanted to take the time to experiment with a different type of overlay and experiment to make that clean Y2K feeling that was going around in the early 2000’s.

For this design, you must know a bit about the game to understand some of the design choices I have made in this collage. The massive MMORPG follows the main cast (and OC) as they fight off darkness, as they follow the warriors of light. I tried to incorporate a cool design

This model was solely made for posing, I did not alter any of the design choices of the character. This project is solely a personal project and is not meant to be used for commercial. One thing I really do need to work on as a designer is to really label my layers… That is a task for another day.

As you can see, I experimented heavily with all the different filter options. In my time during my undergrad, I rarely had the opportunity to explore with the different filters, as most of my projects used vector-based graphics. This is not a bad thing, I’m glad to have spent a long time honing those skills. My photography class rarely focused on these extreme filters, so I am so happy to experiment and find some of these settings!

The way I got these drastic colors was to alter the Image > Adjustments > Levels layers. I drag the slider so that the duplicated copy of the original is “sunburnt” if you will. Adding gradient maps and exploring the different overlay styles really sells it. Even building more than one copy can help elevate it, even masking certain parts (I opted for the blu-ish section to not show up on the face, as I wanted a more highlighted framing).

I’m sure this breaks quite a few different rules when it comes to designing in photography. I love the way the colors are so drastic but are in the same area. Her cool no-bullshit level-headed mentality really shows with this one (if you’ve played the game before, duh).

I decided to incorporate the ESRB rating and the logo in the bottom left corner to pay homage to early 2000’s box cover art. I loved looking at all the game cover art in GameStop or Block Buster (blast to the past!) since most covers are unfortunately becoming entirely digital. I’m sure it makes sense since it removes the need for printing out and disposing of materials when they inevitably return to the landfill, but I miss having these cover arts. If only I still had my stack of PS2 disks over the years, they were certainly unique.

Thanks for reading up on my process for this. Next one will be posted next week 🙂