Research and Development: Posterised Nottingham

I decided to make landscape images for the end-credits of a Nottingham based adventure game I’m creating for my FMP at Confetti College.

I began with the photographs of the locations my family took on walks around the city, and drew out five small and very rough pencil sketches, which I then redrew to fix any aggregious issues with the first drafts.

After I drew the pencil images I drew off of the photos again in black ink for better contrast, and added more detailing.

Once my pen sketched second draft was complete, I drew a larger image of my three final chosen images: the Council Hall, Adams Building of Nottingham College, and a picture of a Nottingham street. I drew the Nottingham street directly in my digital software, using the ink drawing as reference.

I made digitised images of my three chosen illustrations on a digital tablet in Procreate. I used single colours, and small accents for shading. This was to develop slightly abstracted versions of the locations that could still look like their real world counterpart, but also fit in a bit better with the game’s blocky pixel characters.

The first image of the Council Hall was drawn as a more polished third draft in 4B pencil, done over with a darker pencil for extra detailing, then was scanned into Procreate, redrawn, and coloured in digitally.

The Adams Building was drawn roughly in a 4B pencil and then, without extra detailing, was scanned into Procreate, redrawn, and coloured in digitally. This was to see if there were any changes between the image sets.

The third image, of the Nottingham street, was scanned into Procreate from the second pen draft, redrawn, and coloured in digitally

I’m happy with the work, I believe it will fit well with my game as an interesting visual for an end credit. I think it turned out better than I expected, though next time I would invest more time in my initial drafts because they are so important as my base of work.

Here’s the original reference photos.