2.3 - Tonal Referencing

 In the previous post we looked at the process of gathering references and applying them in design work with our coral-based architectural example. In this post we're going to be continuing on with that project, now looking at the idea of tonal referencing. 

Tone and Referencing in Concept Art

Alongside working out the physical designs of things/characters in the game world, the role of a concept artist can also entail exploring and providing indications of tone - the mood/feeling of a location or sequence in a game. Just as with design work, tonal exploration benefits from the reality-based foundation that referencing provides. Our surroundings convey plenty of tone in real life - just think about how cloudy, rainy weather make us feel compared to a clear blue sky - and it's important that we use that to our advantage in the form of reference.

Introducing the Exercise

Following on from my coral citadel design work that we looked at in the previous post, the next step was to begin thinking about an environment/scene surrounding it. I've generated some grayscale thumbnails exploring the potential avenues from which to approach this environment concept, and we'll be going from here with today's discussion/exercise.

Using one of the compositions above, we'll be creating four quick variations of the same scene, each conveying a different tone through colour palettes and other adjustments in the environment. The iterative process of creating thumbnails and other rough concept work is something I intend to discuss in more detail with an upcoming post, but for the purpose of this post I just needed to find an effective composition to use as a basis for our exploration of tonal references. 

As a quick note, it's not always necessary to do multiple tonal passes when conceptualising an environment (unless a client is looking to solidify a direction early on). I'm doing four tonal variants here as an exercise to demonstrate the potential that strong referencing has to completely change the way an environment feels, but only one might be needed when a clear direction exists already. Doing multiple is however very useful for practice, so I would encourage learners to try this out along with the example in this post.

Tonal Research and Referencing

From the thumbnails above, we can establish a general sense of story - a diver discovers the coral citadel, perhaps a relic of some deep-sea civilisation of the past. To get started, we first need to decide on some tones to work with in our scene; should this moment of discovery invoke a sense of wonder, mystery or unease for example? After a quick brainstorm, here are the four general tonal directions I've decided to work with for our exercise:

• Hostile
• Mysterious
• Ominous
• Warm

With these target tones decided, we need to do some research to find things that infuse our setting (in this case a seascape) with each of them. A good way to go about this can be to think of things that are commonly associated with certain feelings (ie darkness and fear/discomfort), and contextualise them within your subject matter. In the case of my underwater location, some of the solutions are fairly straightforward: the deep sea/abyss provides the darkness/emptiness that many of us find ominous or unsettling, while clear, bright waters invoke the idea of a holiday location such as the Caribbean, which brings with it connotations of warmth/paradise and comfort. Other links, you might have to work a little harder to find, but that's where the value of research shows. It's all about finding real world examples that bring with them implications of the desired feeling. 

With this research done we then need to gather the reference images that best convey the ideas we have found, just as we did in our design oriented work from the previous post. In my case, here are the tonal references that I gathered for today's project:

As you can see, through these references I've establish a general colour palette for each of my four tones, as well as found some elements that could also contribute. For instance, grass beds and kelp forests could conceal the citadel, adding to a potentially mysterious feel, alongside murky waters. Similarly, vibrant coral provides a feeling of warmth and life, whereas a graveyard of bleached coral indicates a former glory that turned to desolation. 

Exploring Tone Through Colour Thumbnails

With references in place, it's time to select a composition from one of the thumbnails above, and produce our tonal variants:

As you can see, the general composition remains the same across the four variants. Now however, with colour added alongside some adjustments to overall lighting and set-dress elements that are based on the findings of our research, we are able to provide four very different interpretations of how the environment could make the player feel. 

I also actually ended up quickly doing colour variants for a second of the compositions, because I liked it and wanted to see how it would turn out:

Through this experimentation with a second composition, I found that its severe perspective was particularly well suited to a darker, ominous tone (bottom left), whereas the first composition worked well in general across the four tones with its more neutral perspective. This goes to show that you can always find value in taking an additional idea further if you think it has some potential, and who knows, maybe something will come of it. Regardless of whether or not I make use of this second composition when it comes to producing a final concept, I will still have learnt something that might help in future. Whenever you make something that ends up scrapped, just remember that it's worth the effort as you long as you learn something.

Summary

In this post we've looked at an example of how we can use real-world references as a basis to generate distinct tones in our concept work. Hopefully this demonstration has shown that even without altering a composition, we can control the overall feeling that a concept conveys through the use of lighting, colour palettes and set dressing. 

With the last three posts, we have now covered the essentials of research. We have looked at the role and benefits of referencing, as well as its practical application in both design and tone oriented concept work.  

In a professional scenario, the next step for this coral citadel project would typically be to produce a finalised concept piece based on the outcomes of this post's thumbnail experimentation, but that's a topic for another day. In upcoming posts, we're going to be moving onto a new mini-project in order to look at a new set of topics, beginning with a discussion of the role of iteration in concept art.