Introduction

Heya,

My name's Damian! I'm a second year student studying Games Art at Confetti. Before starting my course, I had a passion for art and character design which led me to search for courses in this category. I enjoy drawing both traditionally and digitally though recently I've found myself favouring digital over traditional. What led me to choose this course is simple. I've always struggled with liking the outcome of my artwork and I know I'm too hard on myself. I took this course to help me better my drawing skills, understand the industry and to help me out with deciding on my future career. Despite the stress, I enjoyed my first year and learned a lot when it came to anatomy and the art fundamentals. I have an interest in learning 3D but in my first year I really struggled to navigate Maya. I found it hard to use and didn't like the work I produced in my projects. This year I am determined to understand how to use Maya and Zbrush.

In my spare time, I enjoy gaming and drawing. My favourite games include Bioshock, Dishonored and Hades. Recently, I've started playing Cult of the Lamb, Elden Ring and Remnant. I love the atmospheres in all the games listed and I hope to use these as inspirations to improve my environmental artwork. I've also played quite a few tabletop games namely Gloomhaven and Dnd. I started playing dungeons and dragons around 2020 and it changed my life for the better. This is what helped me discover my love for character design. 

Below are 2 of my dnd characters that I designed last year.

This is Brin. He's a tiefling and hexblade warlock. I wanted to base his appearance on his patron, a being of green smoke dressed in a plague doctor outfit. The green eyes on his body belong to his patron. His patron, Curse, isn't a well liked deity so I wanted to design an outfit that would conceal the eyes leading to the mask and the long sleeved tunic. I knew that I wanted the end of Brin's tail to be smoke like to represent his deity being smoke. I liked Brin's design a lot because it's simple and easy to draw. Over the course of the dnd campaign, I got to roleplay Brin and figure out his personality a lot more and he's become one of my favourite original characters.

This is Zoran. He's a fallen aasimar and oathbreaker paladin. Zoran's name means dawn/ daybreak symbolising a new beginning. I always wanted him to be a kind soul who was tricked into making a mistake leading to him falling and breaking his oath. His original patron, Esyn, was the goddess of the stars so I wanted to show this in his design. I gave him star freckles and I included a lot of stars in his armour. I used the colours gold, blue and silver and they're commonly associated with stars and space. Zoran's design was quite challenging for me because I've never attempted to design or draw armour. I do eventually want to revisit his design and redesign his armour since I now have a better understanding of how to draw it and I feel like I can now definitely improve his armour. The symbol he's holding in his hand is to show his connection to a new deity who's helping him on his journey to redeem himself. Throughout the campaign, Zoran battled self hatred and eventually learned to love his fallen self as the time he spent fallen led to some of the best moments in his life.

This year, I plan to manage my deadlines so I have plenty of time to produce artwork I feel like I can be proud of. 3D drives me mad and I want to finish this year being less intimidated by it. I want to spend this year focussing on improving my work and overall be less critical of what I create :D.