Production Art

Production Art

Once the design  is more fixed production art is required so that the design can be given to modellers, texturers and animators to be produced and put into the game(or created to be animated rendered and integrated into a film sequence say.)

Production art could include orthographic views (front side top, 3/4 front and 3/4 back) often called "turns" .  these are the plans for the character or creature. Sometimes skilled sculptors only need one or two views to create a model of a design, but generally all of the visible form needs to be described- particularly if you won't be around for the sculptor to ask what you had in mind for bits you didn't have a drawing of.

When you are drawing the different views the aim is to try as much as possible to make the views match up or line up. Which can be tricky with curved things or radial symmetry or lots of legs like a spider- drawing a spider from the top is ok drawing from the side or front to match the top can be tricky.) When doing things with pencil and paper its handy to do the roughs on graph paper sometimes. These days of course people would do a rough model in 3d- even one made up of cubes cylinders and spheres and extruded shape- and cheat(Hooray). If an object is symmetrical you can save time by doing half and flipping the drawing and drawing the reverse side using the flipped outline. Its also good to have in mind which of the views is your "hero" view . So what I mean is a key, more accurate and reliable view to refer to if for some reason you've made mistakes in other views- so for something like a dragon that would be a side on view because its an easy view or draw and shows how everything is laid out- whereas the front view might have a lot of foreshortening(like the head),and  is tricky. Sometimes people will 'remove' an arm or legs on a turn and put them next to where they are attached if there is important detail on the body that needs to be seen in a drawing.

With things like the folds in clothing (I guess you call it drapery) its important to try and get the major forms/folds  lining up and to draw them so they look like cloth (and for extra points the type of clothits meant to be).  However  you should keep in mind that for a lot of the cloth detail the sculptor  will probably create their own based off your plans- so bear it in mind before you work out that drapery and project every minute curve and fold across 3 views and go mad or blind or both. 

The degree of detail in the drawings  is greater when the work is to be sent outside the company for others to do, because the work is to be done without direct supervision, and in general  the idea is for the people to do the work not spend time asking what needs to be done.