Look back at first year and plans for this year

Looking back at the First year I think Improved a lot since I started but, now I really need to work on learning more on how to improve my work and to make it a better quality.  I really want to try harder in 3D max this year and move on to getting zBrush skills and more use to speeding up my work. I noticed last year I spent a lot of time just messing about on 3Dmax as I was really sure what to do half the time. From the first 2 weeks, I feel a lot more comfortable with my 3D modelling, Helping the first years with advice on their dalek projects has made me feel more confident about it and I really do prefer 3D now to 2D. (Note: It wasn’t just girls I was helping! Thanks for that heather! -.-) =P

Over the summer I gave myself a little project of digi painting people’s faces from photo graphs and I think I’ve learnt a lot from it.

 

I wanted to do it in black and white as I’m not too confident when it comes to colour. I think it has improved my attention to people’s faces.  And what makes them them. I think I’ll find this useful when doing the character projects. Which I’m more tempted to try and do now. I understand its hard to get in to but, it shouldn’t mean I should just give up on trying to do it.

This year I really need to work on my planning too I think I need to work more of my prep sketches than doing finals as I think I lost a lot of marks for that last year.

I really need to work more on my artist judgement this year I did a scene over summer and my dad pointed out so many floors that I never even realised. It made me feel I need to research a lot more and plan and concept more on what I’m trying to make for my final outcome.

I was really happy with the lighting to the lamposts but like I said before my dad pointed out a few things that never came to mind. It  was surpose to be an old street scene. But heres some points that were made that made me realise how bad my judgement is.

·         Too many lampposts (doesn’t need one at every opposite side of the streets.)

·         Windows in old houses are exactly above the below before they are never to the side or a different shape.

·         Lamppost has 8 sides to the glass. Old lamp posts normally have 4 as it was cheaper to build and make back then.

·         The lampposts are like a old London style and don’t match the buildings.

I felt if this is viewable to its fault before even textures are added then I really need to work on  getting my basic ideas write first before even bothering with 3D.

There is a list of things I want to improve or learn this year. I’ll probably write a blog about them once I feel I’m comfortable with them:

·         Better planning/ time management

·         More colour in 2D work

·         Better compositions in my finals

·         More prep sketches.

·         Better design documents about my  3D work (They feel pretty rushed looking back at them)

·         Understanding of zBrush.

·         More 3D work outside of the projects.

·         Cleaner unwraps/ Better packing and checking my uvs before adding texture to them.

I’m really looking forward to this year and improving myself more than what I had done this year. The group projects

Personal review of first year.

From the start of the year I’ve felt like I hardly knew anything about drawing from when I started the visual design and the teaching from Chris and Jack has taught me a hell of a lot. I feel more comfortable about drawing now but I still find I have a problem with sitting at a computer and drawing digitally. I feel my motivation to digital painting is quiet low and I struggle to finish finals on Photoshop. I guess it find it’s because when I do traditional I draw from life but when it’s a digital it’s either from a drawing and photo to refs on colour. It just doesn’t seem to flow as well for me personal. I think I need to practise more in the summer, but it’s the fact I can’t combine real life with digital for most cases.

I’m really happy with the way I’ve progressed with my 3D work from when I first started I knew hardly anything about 3D and from tutorials I’ve done before found it quite long and boring in a way to create something but I think since I’ve started this course my motive towards 3D has grown more than my 2D and I’m more interested in 3D now than 2D. I feel more proud of my work once I’ve completed it and you can see this and move around what I’ve created. I guess I like the idea of something I make being in a game than the actual design side to things.

I originally came to this course wanting to do people but I feel it’s so hard to get in to I’d be better off starting with environments, but I’m not sure. I’m going to do a scene over the summer and see how I feel about it after towards. I do still enjoy doing characters I find it more enjoyable being able to do sculpey models and I also did enjoy modelling them in 3D max. I would kind of like to try being more into design creature like that resembles humans in future but I know there isn’t exactly a job for that.

When I started writing this blog I had started it over a month ago and since that month I have focused hugely on my digi paints for my 2D and I think I’ve improved a lot since when I started this year on my 2D. I use to get frustrated with Chris’s teaching; I didn’t feel like I was learning much from his methods. From looking at my work now though from when I first started Chris has taught me a hell of a lot and I feel it has paid off a lot.

My only constructive crit for the teaching would be that there is more communication over facebook. It would be really handy I feel to have more advice from the staff on how to work on our directions. I don’t know what’s happened this year but it seems like the year before all the years got quite a lot of advice on facebook, but I’ve hardly seen anything this year.

Environment design

Level design can direct players through a game in quite a few ways these being actual barriers or simple markers on a map. Depending on the type of game there is different ways navigating a player through a level. First let’s look at how a racing game does this.

Most racing games use tracks to race on. This leaves them with a path to follow and is assisted with signs with arrows pointing which direction to go, or it has a mini map telling them what’s coming up.

As you can see from this picture you can see a mini map on the bottom left and arrows directing the player around the map. Not all racing games are like this some of them are sandbox racing like Burnout Paradise (Personal favourite. )Burnout Paradise is an open world street racing game that uses a mini map to points you where to go in the race but it also leaves you to chose how to get there like you don’t have to take the same road as every other car in the race you can take shorts cuts to help you get there faster, this is mainly up to you to find them though but they do have flashing bollards indicating them while racing.

Also another thing you’ll notice in this video is that the cars indicator will blink when a corner you need to take is coming up you can chose to take or take a longer route or shorter. I really do like this idea because it not bluntly pointing it out to you but, it is there if you notice and want to pay attention to it.

FPS games use mission narrative to guide you through levels and also use Marker points on mini maps to guide where to go.

This video of battlefield bad company 2 shows a good example on how the mini map has highlighted area in red where to attack and also has characters to follow around. They also called you to help them go a certain way to get advantage on the enemy

Most games in general have paths in the game that lead to places having a open level with nothing there just leaves a player lost and confused where to go unless there are giving a direction where to go. But mainly most games this generation have a path to follow which makes most games quite linear.

Environments have to create atmospheres in games to create feeling and to suit the game.  Like you wouldn’t have a horror game in a sunny beach place to say (not unless you Dead Island). A horror game is classically a dark gloomy filthy place that creates a fear of where are you and makes it creepy.

I think depending on the game you want to play realism and stylised comes in to consideration. At the moment I’ve being playing a game called moon diver which is like a old style arcade game where your run right through this 2D level to the end of the stage fighting enemies this game is very stylised and doesn’t have much realism to it apart from psychics like gravity and stuff but they are nowhere near realistic.  But most games have a balance between realism and stylised as when you get a game that’s completely real if that ever comes to be one it will be more of a simulator and that’s not a bad thing but when a gave has a bit of stylisation to it, it becomes to me more interesting and fun. And environment I really like is Burnout paradise city it’s really stylised and less realistic but I find the stylization of this game makes it why it’s so fun. It also brings realism in to it with crashes

I really like how it uses construction sites to make creative fun places to drive and do stunts around. Like whenever I see a construction site now I wonder what could be move about to make a fun place to drive your car around.

Character design

What makes a character good to me is that it grips my attention from the start, mainly it to do with looks and if the character looks cool or something about the character that shows a meaning to them.  For me a lot of the time a character gets my interest from his clothes and his hair. The face never really grabs my attention much. I think this is mainly because when you’re playing a game you’re hardly ever looking at the persons face. Nearly all games you play a character and see from behind so when to me it makes sense for a character to grip your attention from behind and then be able to turn a character around to see they’re front.

 Don’t get me wrong faces are very important for cut scenes when you’re in a game you can get very bored if your character isn’t very interesting to look at. I think it helps that in some games like RPG’s you get unlocks for clothes/armour and to me that’s develops a character for me I love being able to see my character develop.

I think one of my favourite characters of all from the films and the games is Batman. We all know the story about batman so I won’t jump in to why that interests me but it’s his suit. The way his mouth is left open and the rest of his head is covered up. It kind of reminds me of like the helmet in gladiator that Russell Crowe wears. ( just a little bit though) but from whatever angle you look at batman you can tell its him he stands out so well and to me it looks freaking cool. His cape is another thing that makes his character interesting for me. The way it spreads out like batwings is a really cool concept. It’s like those millions of concepts of people with angel wings but it’s nothing like that they aren’t real it’s just a cape which I like.

I think quite a bit of what makes a character interesting is based on the script like Zack out of final fantasy 7 he basically teachers cloud in the original game how to be a solider before he dies but in the PSP game you play the story of who he was and how he became a soldier and how he taught cloud and also how he died. I think the script to this character was amazing. When I actually finish the game i felt really sad because I felt like I’d come all this way and I die and that’s it. Which is sad you grow this bond with this character only for him to die? I think that’s what makes his so interesting. It’s only his hair and sword that makes the character interesting looks wise but everything else is down to the script for this certain character.

Mainly I think it’s got to have an even balance of both the script and the looks of the character to make a game character interesting so it sells. If a character looks cool but doesn’t have a good script to them then it’s probably going to suck Mind Jack being a good example of this.

Art direction

Art directors are pretty much one of the most important jobs for games they are responsible for setting the visual tone, quality and style of the game They are not responsible for making anything but they have a indirect responsibility for every object, texture, level, character and effect in games which is a pretty big deal they have to be involved in nearly everything in a game which is a huge responsibility. They have to decide how everything looks in the game in which to make it suit the scene better. This is important as you would want the wrong props in the wrong level and this is because the art director has to make sure everything looks right. You would want like a dust bin in the middle of a ruined building? Or a toilet in a kitchen of a house (though that maybe a good idea for lazy people)

 I would say an Art director’s role is very creative in the sense that he has to decide if everything looks good and how it should be if it’s not. If a character doesn’t look right to the art director he has to be creative and decide what would make him look better even if it’s a quick drawing or notes next to the character on what he thinks the character designer should do to make this character look more  interesting. A art director would also have to go over and be creative about all the props in a game like where tree’s go where a crack on a wall would be places and even the objects that a near a character like a NCP. To make the NCP more believable the art direct would have to decide what would be suitable for the NCP like if it was an Alchemist in a RPG the NCP would have scrolls and books around him to suggest he’s been studying them.

To me the difference between An art director in a film compared to a game  is that in a game the art director must consider props and views from every angle where as a film is only base on one camera angle that is in a controlled environment. Where in a game the camera angle is left mostly to the player so everything has to look good from whatever angle the player decides to look at stuff.

If I was looking to be an art director in the future I think you need the following qualities:

Good judgement from real life scenarios

A good Understanding of Physics 

A good knowledge of 3D programs and how to model and how to create good textures

A good understanding of market trends and styles

There is a lot more I could add to this but for now I think these are quiet important as to make a game believable it has to seem like real life in most cases.

A good understanding of Physics on how effects will look in games like if something explodes then gravity will have an effect on the explosive and cause rubble to fall to the ground. Along with wind and lighting.

I think the 3D program explains its self as you can’t be a good director unless you know how someone make the object you see.

A good understanding of market trends and styles as overall the game has to sell and if the game isn’t what the market is asking for then it most like won’t sell.

Game design

Gameplay is one of the core elements of a game if you don’t have gameplay then you don’t really have a game. Gameplay is every experience you have while playing a game. From navigating the menus to playing and watching every cut scene.

Game design is nearly always started off as an idea for a game it takes few people to get the game rolling these are designers.  Like lead designer, level designer, a writer and a game mechanic designer.  These basically come up with the overall point of the game like

• What the games about
• What genre the games going to be
• Art Direction

The leader design will come up with a design brief after they have worked out the bases and this brief will contain the small concepts of the game, the basic story features in the game, the setting.

The game design process is happening nearly all the time throughout the making of the game even when testing games the design of certain things can be changed. Socom 4 is a good explain of this during its private testing they found that the grenade arc for throwing grenades was too time consuming and it has been a problem all through the series. The design of the grenade arc was that your soldier would hold the grenade and arm and a yellow/white arc that would indicate where your grenade would land so you could easily aim in to windows and on top of buildings. So during testing it was taking too long to do, so they changed the design to it by making it that when you point your cross hair that’s where your grenade is roughly going to go. Of course this changed with distance but generally it worked well and quicken up game play.

Depending on the type of genre of the game i do think the design principles change, comparing a game like final fantasy against guitar hero. For example you wouldn’t really need a level designer as such for guitar hero as much as you would for final fantasy as one of the core elements of final fantasy is the game play of the levels. Where as in guitar hero they are more set scenes as you don’t have any role in using the level to do anything but stand and play your guitar in.

For me when I play a game it mostly depends on if I’m having fun which would mainly be due to game play. Graphics can have a role in what I like when playing games but it’s not exactly needed. Crysis 2 is a example of that for me the graphics are amazing but when I’m playing the game i don’t find it that fun for me. I find it mirrors ideas from Call of Duty and when I play online it’s the game play of others really that ruin my game play as I find a lot of times you run round a corner to fine a person camping invisible there waiting for you. And that ruins the fun for me.

I know I keep bringing up battlefield bad company 2 but that game to me has nearly perfect game design for me at the moment and I love the fun I have on it. The graphic of the building being blown apart just amaze me every time. There is nothing more satisfying to me at the moment of blowing the hell out of a building with a enemy in, maybe it’s my guilty pleasure I don’t know.

An idea for the cool shit folder

I had this idea after a lesson with Mike when he told us to create a cool shit folder. I just find it cool that every person has an object or something that means most to them so I asked a few people what theirs are and these are some of the responses:

·         “My first pair of ballet shoes that I got when I was like 3”

·         “The locket my boyfriend bought me”

·         “A bunny teddy that my dad won me at Alton towers”

·         “I always wear a silver necklace with 1 chucky heart and 2 flat ones that my boyfriend gave me for my birthday the first year we was together”

·         “I have a little white bear hold a pink flower on a keychain that my Nan gave me before she died.”

·         “The harmonicas my granddad gave me”

·         “My bass guitar / vinyl’s and travelling”

·         “My iphone”

When I read these I really found them quiet inspiring and cool. Like each one gives a sense of a story behind that and I find that quiet interesting. I kind of think now that if a game character had something like this it would bring them more to life because nearly all game characters have a sudden beginning about them and not anything that develops their past as such.

Battlefield bad company has a kind of a good example of a good back story to a character in a more quirky way. During the upcoming weeks to release DICE made small interviews with each of the 4 characters that are in the campaign. The main character Preston Marlowe got put in to the bad company after he took a helicopter for a joyride.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nGYCaHO-ncs

I personally think more games should have stuff like this it makes them more interesting. Even though I do think they could have developed the characters a bit more on background but, none the less though the 4 characters in that game work amazing like well together. I think this video shows what I mean.