Environmental design 101

My maine focus concerning this master studio was to find a way to improve my discipline. Wether it's personal or universal it's a tougher task to achieve then it seems at first. My interest lay in conceptual design. To be specific my focus is in 2D environmental design. Apart from being interested in advancing my skills when it comes to designing, but also finding my weaknesses and coming up with a possible solution that could benefit not just me, but as well as my peers. There are few methods that i'm concerned with, the list goes as; form, perspective, composition and speed. Now my concern is how can i conduct a research with out making out to be a tutorial. Technique and tools go hand in hand so it seemed normal to take this route. I use two different softwares when i'm working, mainly it's a mixture between Corel Painter and Adobe Photoshop. They both offer incredible tools of trait for an artist to work with. It's a hole different experience when you work with either one of them. For instance what concerns speed and quickness Photoshop is the frontrunner. The ability to tweak and create an environment helps cause of the possibility to use different media. Crop, cut out, paste it edit and paint over will deliver quality work in no less then couple of hours. Now that's all fine and dandy as long as you'r a professional and have years of experience in this line of work. Since i don't i'm interested to research to understand better and find improvements on how to create environmental scenes using current and possible future software tools. There are different types of styles, methods and ways witch artists go about with their designs. Namely there are two category's; cartoonish and realistic environments. Both of these admit to different genre's but serve the same purpose. The second one can even be subdivide in; realistic and hyper realistic. In my case i would like to study both of them to hopefully come up with a better conclusion at the end of my research session. This would help to see the differences and resemblances between these genres and the way they get made. It's hard to pin point exact what tools are the righteous ones since they all of them can be applied. Brushes are one the most important tools when your creating a 2D image. Since it's the maine tool it works different ways. For example you have to paint a mountain you either draw stroke per stroke or you can have a brush that resembles a mountain piece witch perhaps gives the same or even better result. How do you go about buildings, flora and other elements in your piece. Allot of times it's a headache giving process figuring this out. Even tho there are allot of tutorials and other information alike, still it's not always the easy case creating the same…..

My work process would consist of ;

- article / tutorial / experience thru forums and online communities to gain knowledge on what there already is. This way i can analyze different approaches of different levels of peoples skill sets.

- conduct practical/theoretical research on tools that are mostly used. Meaning separate each one of them and go deeper in to understanding the value that they add.

- Dismantle piece by piece all the elements that i have named (perspective, color, design, effects..) and read up on them as to how they are applied. Most importantly apply this to my own practical research work. Since these elements are vital to know it's important to understand them correctly and to apply the right way to gain the maximum out of it.

- Conduct work in photoshop while applying all the knowledge i gained from my research. Possibly paint 15 + pieces of the same image but in different manners and in different time lapses.This way i could see the difference in between every time i would do a new piece and could pin point that momentum of change.

- Once i would have this analysis of how something works i could begin to gather the information i accumulated from all the works i've done and begin to draw conclusions on what i've discovered and learned and try to summarize it in theory.