Andrew Downes created a production reflection document detailing his processes for creating various pieces for his final major project. He took reference photos and gathered ideas before production. His pieces included bridges, sunsets, clouds, water textures, monsters, characters, and a final poster. He experimented with tools in GIMP like the pencil, paintbrush, and magic wand to draw, fill, and shade areas. Gaussian blur and filters were attempted but not entirely successful. The reflection discusses strengths and weaknesses of the tools used for control, precision, and layering.

1. Production Reflection
Andrew Downes

2. Process 1
I decided that before I made anything I should gather some more pictures with plant life and
structures so then I could take ideas and drawings from the pictures to make things easier
when it came to the production and then I would have an easy background practically already
there and I took about 83 pictures took effectively pick and choose details for the background

3. Process 2
I started by drawing the bridges
outline and then slowly adding more
detailed lines with different opacities
and different sized brushes to make it
look animated and then also I tried to
do the same brick drawing as the
second part of the drawing and it
looked as if there was no separation
between the two bits.

4. Process 3+4
Then I used the paint brush to paint in a sun set with the
peach, the very light yellow, the violet and then the indigo
which all have a lower opacity and also a bit of the
Gaussian blur tool used and then I decided to reuse some
of the clouds. I cut out the clouds and then I used both the
Gaussian blur a slight bit and also the opacity was lowered
and I used the curve tool to change the colours about a bit
to make them match the sun. The sun however was made
with a lens flare picture.

5. Process 4 continued
• Then to create the water I chose two
different shades of blue one light one to
give some sort of lighting measure and
then the dark blue to show the shading
which it seemed to be the appropriate
colour, then I started to add waves to the
water and tried to add some sort of
shading to all of it and by the end it didn’t
look quite right even with all the
Gaussian blurs I added and even with a
lower opacity it didn’t work too well and
so I decide to try and use some filters
from the filter menu and chose the cut
out filter to make it look more animated
and also then used the curves tool to
make it look more blue however that
didn’t work either and so I went back to
just having the original shaded areas and
it stayed that way for the final project
because everything else I tried just didn’t
quite seem to fit in with rest of the
image.

6. Process 5
• This was one of my designs from
the Experiments I thought it
looked great and thought it would
be cool idea to have him come
back to the final project and just
change up the design a small bit
by adding a red sort of mist where
the face should be and then use
clouds and turn them red using
the curves tool and then
duplicating the clouds until they
covered a enough of the black
area where the head should be
and then I also lowered the
opacity of the clouds to make it
match the ghostly appearance.
Then I added some shading and
tried to tidy up the image a bit to
make it look as if I had only
shaded the character.

7. Process 6
This was my attempt at trying to create a monster like
Cthulhu and as you can tell I went a bit overboard with the
detail to the face and the face ceased to exist and it only
looked like a mess of tentacles and other assortments of rope
springing from the in between the tentacles covering the face
of the monster however the wings came out quite well and
you can still tell where its limbs are but need more attention
to detail and muscle I didn’t use this in the end in my FMP as
it looked like a mess and probably wouldn’t make much more
sense if I had decided to colour it in and add some shading,
this could have been used however as the wings and the legs
were good but the main body design wasn’t.

8. Process 7
This Gargoyle was made by picking and choosing bits and
pieces from the other pictures from the internet that I used
for inspiration I slowly drew the gargoyle using the pencil in
different sizes not too many but 1,2 and 3 were the sizes
used to create the piece. Then to colour in the piece I only
started with lightest shade of grey still on the piece and used
the bucket tool to colour in the piece. Then to add the
shading I used the magic wand to select specific areas and
then used the paint brush in a large size to cover a large area
and then shaded in different shades of grey and black, and
as I was using gimp to create this piece when you rub out an
area its still classed as part of the outline of the drawing and
so I had to go over those pieces by magnifying the areas I
still need to colour in and proceeded to use the size 1 pencil
to colour in the small few pixels left out.

9. Process 8
This part of the final major project was actually part
of my experiments and so I did all of that and then I
did a little bit of shading before I put it in my final
major project and then just to make sure you knew
the background of it was that I wanted something
to do with horror and at that point I was busy
watching 2 TV series and a movie 2 of which were
to do with sleepy hollow and had the headless
horseman as the antagonist and then there was the
Marvel’s the Punisher that I was watching and
thought it would be cool to combine the two ideas.

10. Process 9
The hydra was effectively a vector of the original image which is
the first image on the left to make the vector I first drew around
the heads of the dragon/demon like monster and then added in
the detail with a size 3 pencil tool and then coloured it in with the
yellow and red colours using the paint bucket tool and then using
the magic wand tool to select specific areas of the drawing and
then used the large paint brush tool to do some small bits of
shading.

11. Process 10
The poster was created using some of my Production experiments such as the jack ‘o lantern punisher and the Nazgul type thing to the left,
and then there is the Gargoyle sort of design which was new and also the hydra in the background was also another new addition to the
ideas list and then the background behind the hydra there are lots of crows and at the top there is the title of the piece Faith Collapsing.
The Nazgul from the experimental projects needed to be shaded and I also added some clouds where the face should be to make it seem
that there is an apparition inside the cloak and the shading was to make it look as if it had travelled through some water and then I did
some of the edges to make it look as if it was exuding darkness and it was also shaded to fit in with the bridge picture. Then the Punisher
Jack o’ Lantern needed some shading too and so the shading does not fit in with the other characters. When it comes down to the Gargoyle
the shading was also made to fit in with the bridge picture and so the shading does not fit in with the jack o’ lantern or the hydra. Then the
Hydra heads were added behind the jack o’ lantern to take away the area of the hydra’s body I hadn’t drawn and so it looks slightly as if the
hydra’s heads are coming out from the jack o’ lantern and then there are the final touches adding the birds and crows to the background of
the piece to take up a certain amount of space and it also adds a sort of tense horror atmosphere to the piece and then there is the font
which was supposed to be a certain sort of medieval font to heighten both the suspense for the game and also tense atmosphere as most
times when you think horror quite a lot of the time you of this sort of time period and the last thing I did to the piece was to convert all of
this onto a t shirt and export it as a PNG which you can see on the next page. This piece becomes close to what I thought was good about
the Borderlands games.

12. Process 10 final piece

13. Process 11
The poster took a long time as the bridge took a
massive long amount of time to finish as seems as
there are so many small intricate lines to make up the
massive amounts of detail even in the dark areas I
have drawn in the bricks with a low opacity to make it
have even more detail than before. Then there was
the grass I wasn’t prepared to make lots of little blades
of grass and so drew outlines of where the grass was
shaded and I did the same with the rocks next to the
grass. The sky was shaded using the painting brush
tool and Gaussian blur using peach, lilac and indigo
and then to add the finishing touches I added in some
clouds and a sun which was made by using lens flares
and then there are the characters the gargoyle at the
top of the bridge and the nazgul type thing at the
bottom and both of which are waiting till the sun goes
down to attack the camera. Then there are the
captions it attacks at night and you will die both are
worn down and so look as if they fit in with the time
period this game is supposed to be set in the medieval
era also the worn down effect makes it fit in better
with the image as well as it should all mostly look as if
it was worn down.

14. Process 12

15. Process 12 continued
First of all I found a base for the piece which was the Ps4 game case template there were many to choose from there were
lots of different game designers and same goes for the age ranges and limits and so I decided to go for a low age however
it seems as if it should be a 12 or 15 and under but ubisoft seems as if it was the right choice when it came down to the
designers. Then I added some lines to make it look as if there was some sort of moss or something growing on the
background otherwise it would have just been plain and there wouldn’t be much else to fit in with the colour palate also
these lines were taken from the bridge in my poster and they were just turned green and dark green to fit in with their
purpose in the game case. Then I added in some ratings from papers such as the telegraph, the sun, the times and the daily
express and also added a sort of game description ( all written in the red maroon sort of colour to fit in with the colour
palate) underneath the second line of moss and I also then added the title of the game which is Faith Collapsing and it is
written in a dark green to fit in with the colour palate and then I added the main design the hydra’s heads behind the jack
o’ lantern punisher all of which have dark colours which creates a tense and horror related atmosphere.

16. Reflection
• What tools did you use/ how did you use them and discuss strengths and weaknesses?
1. I used the pencil and the paintbrush tool and I just used it as usual to draw an outline to the experiments and
also used them for a few of the smaller more intricate lines this was an easy to control tool as you could use it
free hand or you could hold shift and create straight lines using this method and then there was the sliders for
the line strength and the size of the lines you create this was easy to use when you used the arrow keys to
control it however if you used the slider the result can be unpredictable if you have a shaky hand as I do.
2. I also used the magic wand tool to select areas which had small little intricate details and used that tool to
select these areas however if at certain places if you didn’t complete the drawing and then it would select the
area you wanted to highlight or add shadow and then it also selected the rest of the picture and the design.
3. I also used the paint can tool to colour in large areas such as the background of process 2 and the shirt on the
same one and on process 1, almost all of the cloak is made with the same grey colour and that was all done
with the paint can tool it has quite a few down sides to it such as if you aren’t careful and complete the whole
outline of the drawing then it can colour in the whole product or character design also there is very little control
such as at the same time you can’t add shading unless you drew in the for the shaded areas.
4. I also used a tiny bit of Gaussian blur for the eyes of the pumpkin jack o lantern and also for the mouth however
it didn’t really work out and so I decided to remove it the one issue I have with this method is that you need to
have everything on different layers so that you can use the Gaussian blur and if you don’t the whole image gets
blurred.
5. To select the colours I used the colour selector tool to collect all the different colours I needed to use for the
different areas on the different projects throughout the production of all the pieces on my FMP there are only a
few issues I had with this tool such as when I first started to use it I had difficulty selecting the correct colour
such as when choosing a dark red sort of colour such as crimson it turned out to be more like a maroon sort of
shade however this was easy enough to fix as I enlarged the colour selector tool making it easier to see the
tools this could have been done through clicking on the small boxes which had the colours you were using and
an enhanced version of the colour selector tool appears in the middle of the screen.