ImagineFX

The importance of props in artwork can be underestimated. Yet weapons and other items are essential in convincing onlookers that your characters are living, breathing things. Brian Yam spends his working day getting such details right, so he’s eminently qualified to show you how to create props that look great and feel right.

The first 30 minutes of his video make an inauspicious start, though, with Brian going through his Photoshop settings. Yes, there are some useful tips, but this segment could have been much shorter and remained just as useful. It’s better suited to Photoshop newcomers.

The following chapter, explaining different types of perspective, shows similar signs of being pitched too much at beginners… until Brian turns things around brilliantly by showing how using one-point perspective helps you relate your design to first-person shoot-’em-ups, and how working in two-point perspective helps you provide your game developer’s modelling department with better-quality information. Now we’re talking.

The video just keeps getting better from there, as Brian explains how to establish a design for your weapon via research and thinking your way into how the character uses the weapon. Sketches and value studies lead to one weapon being developed into the finished article, ready to hand over for modelling. By the end, you’ll have formed a solid and coherent sense of how to design weapons, particularly for games, in a way that makes them believable and ready to be converted into 3D. Brian’s delivered all the basics you need to get started.

The video is available only as an online stream, which may not be to everyone’s taste. But our experience of the website video player was of smooth, consistent playback, with only occasional, tiny skips in the audio.

Rating: 4.5/5