L.A. Confidential

L.A confidential is one of those films were you have to watch it maybe a few times to understand it better. The first time you’ll try to understand the plot, the second time you’ll probably understand the environment and settings more and then the third time probably the characters is what you’ll understand more. What I mean is at first you’re always just going for the plot really but after this you’re looking for other things and asking yourself why all the time. As an Artist you would sort of questions things all the time just by looking around yourself, questioning the visual elements in front of you.

In this film, straight away like the Machinist, I noticed the colour palette, it was before the film described to us as very bleached and simply put, it was. The more notable colours in the film were yellows, oranges, browns and reds; it really gave it that 1950’s feel. The first few scenes were enough to draw you into the 1950’s decade set in Los Angeles.

It sort of felt like me as a viewer was there in the scene with them in the city as they captured a really strong interpretation of the time it is set in. When I heard the word ‘bleached’ and saw the different tones of colour throughout the film it felt as someone literally threw a lot of bleach over the finished outcome and what I mean is it felt as if they had captured the footage in a modern specific style with a limited colour palette and then the colours were faded to look less vibrant.

The Art direction was very good, this week we talked about how it’s hard to pull off certain things within a game but how because all the questions in film have just about been answered it a case of picking something you like or want to do and just film it from A to B. In gaming its quite different however, we don’t use real actors or environments or anything real, we have to take environments and characters and re-create them in 2D and 3D were there are certain limitations. In gaming for example it’s harder to re-create and make a character act to how we do in real life.

The characters in the film just sort of float onto the stage without even saying anything they give an almost immediate impact on the view telling you about them. For example the way Danny Devito or Russell Crowe just show up and just from the way they are dressed, their body language and the way they talk tell you their characteristics which again can be very hard to pull off in gaming. On which the costumes were really good in capturing the feel of what a L.A. police officer or detective would look like in them days, it shows that good costume design can show a lot add to how the character is portrayed. It had great Art direction and a great story line to go with it, one I’d watch again.

Year 2 - Week 3 - October 17th - 21st

Since missing it last year due to closure, this week kicked off with us going to the New Walk museum. It in honestly wasn’t as fun as I’d imagine, and what I mean by that is it was full of kids... screaming kids. We just had to go during the half term break didn’t we? Well my idea of what would have been better was if it wasn’t full of kids and was a more peaceful place to draw, it was too crowded, too noisy, too uncomfortable environment to draw in, I prefer something more peaceful where I can sit and concentrate, it just wasn’t possible though. On top of all that there really wasn’t much we were allowed to draw either, there was practically about 5 dinosaur structures we were limited to and a few dinosaur heads to. With it technically being first year work we were meant to look at rendering techniques as this would have come just after one and two point perspective it was nice to get back to a bit of basic stuff actually however since our heads have be bombarded with looking at colour a lot lately. I’ve caught up in visual design though after last week being stressful, my train prep sketches are complete, I’ve worked out the composition, blocked out the colours and ready to go in and detail my final piece, which is a digital final again.

In 3D this week, I continued to unwrap my treasure chest, it’s really tedious as the legs to the chest are annoying, I ended up having to pelt map them which seemed the easiest way to do so, and I had to look at a video tutorial on how to pelt map, to my surprise it’s really easy, I thought it was something complex. I’ve gotten the point where I’ve pretty much unwrapped the full thing and gotten most of my textures done and it’s just finalising it. I managed to even take out a lot of triangles from my previous model and got it down to about 1300 triangles used on the model itself, which in terms of trying to use as least triangles as possible, I’m happy with but I could of used the extra triangles to add more detail in, I definitely want to revisit this project soon. It will be nice to move onto the trash project next, just to do something different and maybe a little easier by the looks of it? I think the next project will be an easier one I think, so I think that getting it done quickly will allow me to catch up on other work and hopefully get more time to do personal work I’ve been wanting to do.

In critical studies we talked about planning and concepting again along with Art direction. Art direction is what is coming up quite a lot of recent. We talked a lot about selling things visually, for example how can we tell a story without actually saying anything/talking about what it is or what is going on. How can an environment have an impact on the viewer, how do we give an impression of what characters are like immediately without having to explain it. We looked again at how we manage time this week, looking at how much time we spend doing something and how much it adds up to, I think a lot of people found out in the end that they wasn’t spending enough time working in the week and was forgetting what they were doing at certain times. I myself am constantly working, even on the weekend; it just feels as if when I’m not working, I’m constantly falling behind. We was told how on a weekend we shouldn’t really be working and we should be having some free time to yourself, however for myself I get up and all I do is work though having a break every now and then. I’m not complaining or anything it’s just it feels like all I’m doing is working and not having the time I want to do some personal stuff.

Anyway I did manage to draw a piece of fruit this week. I’m using the fruit as a way of trying to get me to work faster, as in the past I’ve spent ages on drawing a single piece of fruit, this time I didn’t spend as much and I was really happy with the result. I’m also using it to improve my colour theory as well, one technique this week I’ve looked as is using darker tones of a colour to make shadows instead of always going for black which is what I usually do. I use black to darken things up in areas but I had again I used a small colour pallet for this.

Tangerine, not an orange!

After a couple hard weeks in visual design by the end of this week I’m glad that I’ve finally been able to get quite a lot of work done, I feel better for it to and ready for next week.

Working Time

After writing a list of allocating myself time to work, I’ve found that my working timetable comes up to about 60+ hours...

On a Monday I have visual design from 10-1pm then again at 2pm but usually we out and around so I basically just continue working with a few small breaks in between until about 3-5pm. When I get back home every day I usually take about an hour out for dinner, relax for a bit and get ready for some more work, though I might note this is what I usually do each day around the same time, 5-6pm is usually an hour break. I’ve planned my timetable to give myself something to do on the night. Everyday I’m trying to do some visual design weather it maybe just drawing a piece of fruit or an object to keep me going or getting on with my final piece for my projects. I take the time to also maybe write a blog if I find there is time.

On Tuesday it game production, all day, literally. Second and third years are not allowed in the game labs on a Monday so we are limited to 4 days in there each week from 9am-5pm giving a maximum of 32 hours per week, so I am trying to use that time as much as possible. We’re there at 10am on a Tuesday from 10am-1pm then again at 2pm-5pm but I just stay there the full day. I take a couple of minutes break here and there just to have a rest from doing work as continuously working can be extremely stressful and take about 10-15 minutes for lunch, so maybe I’m losing a little bit more time there, maybe half an hour to an hour when you add it up? Afterwards I will work for maybe another 3-4 hours on a night doing visual design work and or doing blog work.

Wednesday pretty much works the same way as Tuesday except about a couple of hours out to watch our film at 2pm, usually the film will end about 3:30-4pm so I can make it back to the game labs for an extra hour of work until were kicked out. Again I repeat the same thing on a night doing visual design or blogging, though this is quite repetitive if I need to work on my game production making textures or just tweaking some geometry I’ll find the time to do that to maybe take a break from visual design.

Thursday again is just like a Tuesday/Wednesday though we have an hour for critical studies. Basically sitting in the game labs all day, I should also mention that I may take a few minutes out to scan some of my drawn work in. Again on the night I will go through what I need to, I’m attempting to balance it out almost.

Friday, again will be in the game labs all day which I should also mention that our FaceBook network does seem to get in the way, but however it’s not really in a bad way as we are looking and commenting on our and others colleagues, though there is some time taken out for that maybe up to an extra 20 to 30 minutes possibly? On the night I’ve allocated some time to draw a piece of fruit which is what I’ve wanted to do each passing week so being the last day of the week I’m drawing one piece and basically ending the week with that.

Its odd how this week we were told that we should be having free time to ourselves on the weekend however when I wrote my timetable I tried to make everyday count. I’m basically letting Saturday’s be my blog day; I do pretty much do nothing on a Saturday so it gives me time to think about things more. We were told that the internet is the biggest distraction ever created and I strongly agree, in 3 weeks I’ve worked out that I’ve spent about 60 hours on the internet alone which averages at about 20 per week which I’m quite astonished by. If that’s about 80 hours per month that’s about nearly a 1000 per year though these days I’m not using the internet as much as I use to, but in total that about 1 and half months a year spent on the internet alone which is quite phenomenal. If I try spending about 8 hours sleeping per night plus maybe extra on weekends, I have to take off about 60+ hours from my 168 hour week leaving me about 100 hours. I spend about an hour each day eating then take off another 7, now we’re down to about 93 hours. If I spend some time on our FaceBook network and have little breaks between working in the labs each day I need to maybe about another 3 or so hours off, so we’re about down to 90. If I take travelling or walking to University everyday it takes about 15 minutes each day there an back, I might go out into town to so maybe about another 4 hours off down to about 86 hours. If I take organising things and doing things such as washing, I might spend a couple of more hours do that so about 84 hours left, I maybe even also take out about another 10 hours for time spent on things I want to do in my free time, not forgetting our weekly film either which is about 2 hours extra so about 70 or so hours we’re down to. What’s amazing about all this is that I’m struggling to find out what I’ve been doing, but by the looks of it I am making about 60 hours a week, which is more than the average/standard 40-45 required of us each week, it just feels like I’m not doing much work when in actual fact I’m probably putting in all these hours to be more accurate and careful about my work.

On Sunday I originally wanted to spend this day doing some personal projects of my own but I’m sort of finding that instead I’m doing the mandatory work in this time. Sunday is suppose to be a day of rest but I’m not resting, it’s odd really but as I’m doing the work I don’t think about the time that I’ve spent doing work, it constantly feels like everyone else is working when I’m relaxing making it feel like everyone else is getting further ahead and producing more than me and I’m constantly falling behind. I’ll probably do another blog upon what time I’ve actually spent in a week maybe to be a little more accurate and further develop on what I’ve written.

Year 2 - Week 2 - October 10th - 14th

This week, to start off began with us going to Loughborough train station. Again like the previous week we are looking at colour again. What’s interesting about the train station is how old it is, a very good place to pick up a lot of textures for our 3D work. The was lots of old rusty metals, old decaying wood, in fact pretty much everything was decaying, none the less it may be helpful towards our group project work coming up shortly. We were looking at scenery of a 1940’s train station; it much looked like something I’d seen on TV, being an old black and white film.

It’s been quite a difficult week in visual design, I’ve not been feeling by best and just not feeling like I’m producing the work I know I am more capable of achieving, I sort of hit a low with it, thinking I know I can do better but I need to find more time to do so. We’ve been talking about planning a lot in this week in our critical studies and saying how such have good time management, the thing is I am good at managing things, time is something I can manage I just end up spending more time trying to perfect something more when what I’ve already what I’ve done is fine the way it is. What I’m trying to say is I spend way too much time on things, well over what I should but I’m sort of one of those that tinkers around with things over and over but ends up ruining what I‘ve done and then having to do it over again. I’m going to write another blog upon my time management so I’ll save my words for that. I’ve sort of come to realise that maybe I’d like to take more of a management route however...

This week I’ve given all of thought about which direction I would like to go in, I remember someone saying about ‘what you’d like to specialise in?’ ‘Cause this is the year to do it’. I sat there and thought out it a bit, but wasn’t entirely sure of my options. When choosing a University I wasn’t sure of Game Art or Game Design, ‘cause I wanted to do both though at the time none of the Universities I found had a really good accreditation for Game Design. I applied to Teesside University for Game Art to though the place was horrible and had really bad reviews which I found out after my bad interview there, which I was pleased to hear afterwards I might add. DMU looked 100 times the place Teesside is, not to put it down much but honestly being there I did not like. The thing was I’ve always been good at Art and I knew that Art is required for game Art and a bit for game design to, so it’s a good fundamental skill to have, though it’s probably one of the only sort of good skills I have so it’s good to be on the course to develop it in which in the last year I have and I’m happy with it. I’m hoping that by the end of the course I’ll have gained enough experience and creativity to be either a Game Artist or something related.

Coming back to management, I remember being told earlier in the year about how one of the best students on the course in the past was into managing things; I think I’d be personally good at that to be honest. I’d love to manage things like level design for example or going onto making games themselves. I love gaming so much I just can’t decide a route. I’ve said that I’d like to maybe go on and further develop my knowledge of gaming after University weather that be doing another degree or progressing to a master’s degree if no job opportunities comes up, what I’m trying to say is that it all depends on how I feel after I have gained my degree and I hope that by the end of this year I’ll have found and hopefully chosen a  route I want to go down and I’m happy with or even find a few different routes, try a little bit of each see what I do like and keep my options open. I know the group projects are coming up shortly and I would actually like to plan out our game level given the opportunity of the group I’m put into, I’d to have the roll of planning out the level itself, and planning little extras that would make it more enjoyable to play as I know that making a game fun is essentially what makes the user want to play more and rewards the player, but of course alongside modelling and managing a blog alongside it to.

In my Game Production this week, it’s just been about editing the model I first initially created, tweaking it a little bit and finally unwrapping it, which I may add took forever. The chest legs are something I’m dreading to texture, really it’s something I think I should get out of the way first since it will be the most complex. This 3D project however unlike my previous ones I’ve worked out what I’m going to do first, what I want to do and how I am going to achieve it. I’m on time with it to were as last year my projects were all over the place and I was rushing around to get things done quite a lot, however with this I’ve planned it all out and stuck to my deadlines I have given myself. The thing is I am good at planning things out and that’s why I think I’d be good at managing, designing and planning games. Level design is something I’d quite like to experience to, but we’ll have to wait and see until the group projects come because then we’ll all get a real taste of what it’s like to make a real working game level which will be exciting and will make us Game Artists.

Overall it’s been a tricky week, and it feels as if maybe I’m planning a little too much and losing time on producing my work, I need to balance things out more at the moment.

The Machinist

The Machinist I thought was quite a unique film, looking at Art direction within the movie the first thing I noticed were the colours of every scene and shot. The film has a dull effect to it, but not in a bad way in a more unique way, something in which I haven’t seen before. It used very few colours like just green, grey, blue and the odd yellow tints along with black and white for negative and positive areas. It’s kind of odd though, and what I mean by that is that last week we looked at how we can create images with a small colour palette and this movie seems to have been created with a limited colour palette to. For some of the scenes, even when outside in the open looked dull even though you could tell it was a bright sunny day.

One particular scene I recall is the route 666 one, very gloomy dark atmosphere in which the route was portraying Trevor’s (main character) actual incident with a hit a run murder of a small child (Nicholas) in example the route 666 is filled with red lighting indicating Trevor not stopping at a red light on route 66 while driving, in which is the start of his insomnia and starvation. At the start of the film it sort of makes you wonder why this guy is the way he is, being so skinny, not sleeping and it makes you want to watch on. Strange things start happening to Trevor like meeting a guy called Ivan who nobody knows off, yet he works for the same company as Trevor in which eventually Trevor starts to believe he is the one that killed Nicholas as he keeps popping everywhere, like in a red sports car in which Trevor follows him and take the registration number in an attempt to track Ivan down he finds that the car belonged to himself but was destroyed a year ago. It adds horror to the film as it goes on and all these strange things keep happening, especially the notes that keep popping up in the form of a hangman game. Trevor sort of hallucinates a lot I feel, but it’s these hallucinations that are trying to tell him that he murdered the child and it’s sort of a way of attacking him as he can’t face the truth and reality of it because of what it’s done to him.

Coming back to the route 666 scene however I like how they made everything in that scene relate to everything Trevor has done and Nicholas also with Trevor indicates has a seizure while holding an ice cream which portrays how he was killed while holding an ice cream when he was hit by the car. Eventually at the end of the movie we see what Trevor should of done by helping instead of running away, there was one part I distinctly remember in this scene were there’s two options of turning on the carnival ride, Trevor tells Nicholas to go right but instead goes left to ‘hell’, in which shows Trevor knows he has done wrong. At the very end Trevor completes the hangman notes that pop up throughout spelling: Killer, despite his other attempts of mother, being mother’s day early on in the film and then: ‘Miller’ which is a guy who lost his arm due to an accident that Trevor caused at work.

The dull looking Art style is made to use in this film as it suits the story line. The lighting and colours suit what Trevor is going through since his accident a year earlier, as everyone tries to avoid him because of his appearance and paranoia, his sleeplessness because of all this, they way he thinks this Ivan is a murderer and trying to attack him, but in actual fact it’s a reflection of himself and it’s not until the end we see that the car Trevor saw was himself and faces the reality and turns himself into the police, though he finally sleeps for the first time in a year after all that.

The film sort of reminds me of Memento which we saw a year ago, which the sticky notes and trying to remember things and it all doesn’t make sense until the end until you work out what has been going on and the order of things that are happening and why they happened. The Art direction in that film too reminds me of this.

Y2 S1 T14 - Elements Of Game Design, Part Five: Planning And Concepting

Having read through the Merekat PDF about planning concepting, I’m quite literally scared about industry, I’m also starting to ask myself what made me want to do Game Art as an academic subject.

The thing is the PDF was really interesting and showed the thought process of what happens when trying to create a concept, but what I didn’t like was the way it was criticised so much. It took 35 hours, which was stated that it usually takes about 40-70 hours typically, so you have to bare with that, and a lot of thought went each specific part of the overall image for example looking textures, the human form, the birds, clothing folds etc and just overall what the artist wanted to convey, but in the end it just was just mediocre... I mean that to me is really harsh, 35 hours is quite a long time on a piece of Art work, it wasn’t quite the standard amount of time as explained but I personally think that saying is wasn’t that good was being out of order... I could only dream of producing a piece of Art like that, I know I’m light years from that at the moment, but even when one day if I do produce a piece of Art like that it’s not even going to be considered as good, in which case all the work I’ve ever done must be total shit.

I didn’t read the entire whole thing, I cut a few chunks out but, it was good reading about how this one particular person showed their progression of how they come up with a final image and the research they put in, it really helped me a lot as now I’ve got a whole new perspective on how to go about coming up with ideas which I wish I knew about in the first year of the course to be honest. It showed how when you’ve got an idea you can research and find images related and suitable to use in what you have in mind for the final outcome and then be able to use that as reference when planning and actually putting your plans into action. I thought that is showed it really well but I’m just disappointed at some of the comments made, for example this ‘Merekat’ person stating that is basically good and a nice try but next time I expect to see better...

We’ve talked about planning and managing time this week, obviously in industry you will have deadlines to work towards so it’s important to keep on top. I heard one person say this week that one person maybe really good at drawing and get things done quickly but another may not be as good but spend more time on a piece of work in which is where it’s making up for it. I’m personally taking more care with my work and trying to produce more, I want to get faster at producing quality work but the only way that’ll happen is if I practise more. Some people will not bother with thinking about things like correct perspective, depth, texturing etc and just get on and do it quickly and it might look good but not totally correct when you go into detail, where as me I’m trying to plan out and put more quality into my work now which is helping, though I may not be good at rendering things correctly I’m putting in the effort to make things look how they should be shown through planning. I think going back to the basics is always an essential part of any drawing, getting off topic and trying things that don’t seem to work is never going to get you anywhere. It’s like what I talked about last week about how if you go straight into painting an image with no drawing which is the essential part of planning it’s more than likely going to look shit. We got told this week that it doesn’t matter whether you are good or not and that we all seem to think that Art is down to talent and you have to just be born with it to be good, which is not true, you could take anyone who is total rubbish and turn them into an amazing Artist within a few years. It’s amazing to see how much I personally have improved in the past year.

Coming back to the document I read though I, I liked the techniques they used in developing their image. I like how they said it helps to overlay a 50% grey layer in Photoshop to help pick out the areas that are darker. Some parts of it were quite long and I didn’t understand what was being said, it did get a bit tedious with it being 40 pages long, another thing was that it said research into things does pay off in the long run. It was only last week we looked at how when we look at how we only see light bouncing off things that makes us see whatever it maybe and like how in this document they this person has done their research into materials obviously and looked at how the light would bounce off the things like the clothes and snow and how the lighting in the image would be effected by this which is very in detail I have to say. They went on to explain how knowing all this pays off so I guess researching is something I need to do more off when wanting to create an image in future, it’s a lot of stuff to take in for everything you want to do but I guess once you know these things there’s nothing you can’t do, it is how we talked about driving this week, it is a lot to take in at first but the day comes when it all pretty clicks in and it comes natural, it’s just a case of learning, no matter how long and hard it’s going to be...

To sum up it’s all been about planning this week again, I feel like I’ve started to do more but I need to not do too much. I have never played Uncharted however I stumbled across this video when searching planning and concepting:

One thing I like about this is how in the interview, one of the guys who works for Naughty Dog said that it’s great to work with people they can trust, who are top of what they are asked to do and do great work even f they have very minimal direction and goes onto explain that they are kind of spoilt in that way because they are getting the job done even if they are not the best, which obviously means that they are putting in the effort of planning etc and getting the final outcome they hope to achieve. He goes onto explain how it’s a bit chaotic but they all get along together which as we know is key as games are made by not just one person and communication as I’ve said before is important. He says that when you’ve got a modeller working with a texture Artist they are communicating all day, which is good because also can bring a about new ideas that way even if you don’t implement them in the game it’s their to put forward for next time. The people in the company enjoy their work and are able to come up with ideas, which is more of the kind of environment I would love to work in because it allows you to get your ideas across more and be heard. They say how they gave everyone three months to come up with ideas and a lot of those ideas in that time made it in the final game. I like the way he says being creative without restriction.

I remember last year when I was planning and concepting for my character projects. I created a lot of ideas just using a simple method of creating the same shape body form I was going for and creating different designs looking at sea life as it were a reef character project. Thing was I did the exact same for the interesting character project, I took one pose I liked and experimented with it, I don’t know if that is the actual professional way to go about it but I saw it that way, went for it and followed it through to the final model.

Ideas.

Concept.

Final Model.

Now I take my time with my work and be more careful about making decisions, I’ve gotten into the habit of digitally painting thing a lot more, I layer over colours in pretty much everything I do now, to bring out more colours just like the in document of the woman in the snow, separating things layer by layer I think is the best way to plan and concept were as putting everything on one layer can be quite tricky as I have found out in the past.

Links:

http://www.ehow.com/how_4889041_make-concept-art.html

http://www.gamecareerguide.com/features/455/becoming_a_game_concept_.php

www.ConceptArt.org

Pac-Man

Pac-Man is just quite simply put: a classic. I love it and so do millions across the world. It’s been out for over a good 30 years now and it still never goes out of date or gets to boring. It’s very simplistic but addictive game design, just like many of the classics such as Space Invaders or Pong to name a couple of others. Recently I’ve been playing the new championship edition, it’s still same old Pac-Man and ghosts trying to chase you but has little differences that make it just as, if not better than the original 1980 game.

Pac-Man 1980

First of all the game has 6 different game modes, championship mode, two different challenge modes and two different extra modes as well. In Championship edition you are given five minutes to gain the highest possible score you can, just the same as extra mode 1 to. The different in this game however is that the screen is split into two sections (for every game mode that is) and that you must work yourself (or Pac-Man) through the maze eating the dots, once dots are cleared on one half of the screen a fruit will appear on the opposing side in which you need to reach and eat to make more dots appear on the side you just cleared (if that makes sense). Each time you clear one side and you eat the fruit not only will more dots appear but the maze changes as well adding more challenge to the game. It’s very cleaver and challenges the user by making it more complex than the standard maze used back in 1980, so even the experts at the original game will be put to the test especially with a time limit now set. Championship edition of Pac-Man is essentially the ultimate game for Pac-Man players around the globe to compete to see who the best is because in the original 1980 version there is a way to basically cheat which proves nothing. The cheat is in which taking a certain route every time around the maze to complete it without fail (sounds like someone with way too much time on their hands must of found this by analyzing the coding of the ghosts and the routes they take if you ask me).  When they made Miss Pac-Man however they changed the layout of the mazes sort of causing people to work out a totally different strategy, Miss Pac-Man is just the same as Pac-Man except they made more maze layouts.

MS. Pac-Man 1981

I think the highest ever score on the original game I got was over 50,000 which is a good score since most people I know struggle getting 10,000. When I play Pac-Man however, my main focus is eating the ghosts. The power pellets as they are called are placed in 4 corners of the maze which is good game design since you can get caught or trapped easier in the corners. I basically try to wait and round up the ghosts in a corner, (which is a tip I saw on a video once) in which when they come close to you, you can eat the pellet quickly and they are no trouble trying to catch. The power pellets slow them down to but as the game progresses the speed of the ghosts gets higher and higher and if you make it high enough (most preferably through cheating) it gets to the point where the power pellets don’t even do anything because the speed of the game is going so fast.

Pac-Man Championship Edition 2007

If you were to make it to the 256^th level of the original game there is a coding error making this level essentially the last in the game as it is pretty much unplayable?

Coming back to the ghosts however, the creator of Pac-Man Toru Iwatani said in an interview that he coded each ghost in its own specific unique way, basically the red ghost (“Blinky”) trys to chase Pac-Man normally where as the pink and blue ghosts (“Pinky and Inky”) try to position themselves in front of Pac-Man’s mouth, and then there’s the orange ghost, (random one) being Clyde, you can tell it’s random because it’s name doesn’t fit with the rest, is basically programmed to go in random directions, though looking closer at the game’s code reveals it does chase Pac-Man most of the time but interestingly moves towards and hangs around at the bottom left of the maze when Pac-Man is facing a certain direction. What’s good about the ghosts is how they are programmed differently to give the game a more interesting style of game play rather than the game being programmed to chase Pac-Man all the same way else it would be boring. It’s basically the coding what games this game what it is, it sort of asks the question what is more important graphics or coding, in my opinion they are both as important as each other, coding is needed to make a game work in a certain way however coding is useless if there’s nothing to work with, which is where the Art to gaming comes in.

Back in those days however, in the late 1970’s when Pac-Man will have been in development there was none of the equipment that we have today, it was all basically coding to make the game do something and the Art was extremely simple. They would have had to work 8 bit graphics and not having to produce much in game Art as you do in today’s world. Back in them days the programming would have been heavily relied on I’d imagine making a game work, and not that many people working on a game, especially Artists.

I remember not so long ago in my blog talking about how I think we should revive old titles on new consoles, there’s so much potential I think and the next generation is ages away so why not to fill up the time? I personally could go on forever about how you could improve some of the old games, and I think that Pac-Man championship edition is a prime example of this. They’ve taken (at the time) what was almost a 30 year old game and turned it into something new, still being the same old Pac-Man but sort in a new age if that makes sense. What I mean is better looking graphics, new ways to play the same game and different style of controlling the game as they now have added these little extras in. This type of game would sell well with people that have been playing Pac-Man for years and still love it, it’s kind of like the Mario series, it’s still going today and they have the same style of game play as they did back in 1985 but adding different things into it in the new modern age we live in now. The new graphics, the new controllers, new interfaces, it’s pretty much the same thing from 1985 but now in today’s world we have the opportunity to take that and make what it was back then better with the technology that we have now as its advanced. I like to sort of call it the games that never were, or could have been back in the past, taking an original game but sort of updating it, putting the retro classics that everyone seemed to love so much back in the 1980’s when gaming was at it’s peak into the new age of today.

I think now a day’s more people put more emphasis on graphics in games and the way it looks seems to be the most important thing. It is important to have an Art direction, but at the end of the day all areas of game development are important because they all make up the game.

Year 2 - Week 1 - October 3rd - 7th

Since coming back to University, I’ve quite enjoyed it. Its fun coming back and seeing everyone and getting back into a routine again but at the same time it’s not all fun and games. Visual design this week showed and taught us more about what Art is and the processes of it. It’s really complicated, first of all, everything is upside down, our eyes just reverse it, it’s a complicated process, we all take for granted what our eyes allows us to do (see things) but the thing is in education Art is seen a lot lower down on the list. The reason for this is that I think a lot of people don’t see it as something big or important, but in actual fact it is extremely important, without Art and Design there would simply be nothing, because nothing would have design, even we as human beings have a design to our bodies. Let’s face it, without being able to draw and plan things it would be quite difficult to say make a house without planning. It’s like what I was talking about in my hopes for this year, if you don’t plan a drawing and go straight into painting it from scratch you probably find it really difficult unless you’re some sort of Art wizard? People don’t appreciated Art as much as other academic subjects, but let’s just how the world would cope without houses or building, electricity, gas or food. I mean even food has design, something needs to be made to hold and store energy that we all need, else we wouldn’t survive and not have anything we have today. I might be getting too much into this but if the lord gave us problems, design is one of the best ways to solve these problems because we make things that help us solve them. What we’re doing is complicated, the receptors in our eyes are taking light that’s there in front of us turning it back around in which we are able to apply that to paper etc using different media.

Don't believe everything you read on Wikipedia but Art on many sites I've seen is described as a mode of expression though all kinds of things such as music, film, photography and literature etc, basically all the things we take for granted cause everyone has something they like and whatever it maybe is a way of expression. For example everyone has their own taste in music pretty much but would you call the music wrong? I don't you would since you take a liking to it, no matter what kind of form of music it maybe. What I'm trying to say is Art can be pretty much anything, and pretty much anything has some sort of expression or emotional impact on you.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art

http://arthistory.about.com/cs/reference/f/what_is_art.htm

http://www.fortunecity.com/victorian/picasso/500/Meaningofart.html

(They all pretty much say the same thing)

This week we was shown about how Artists like Claude Monet were obsessed with colour yet let it be known Monet couldn’t see colour we all normally do and eventually found out that the colour in all of his works were wrong, but the fact is this did not ruin his work at all, his works were still great pieces of imagery, the thing is it showed what these real life scenes looked like to him through his vision. It’s interesting because the colours are different, and the thing is we all see things differently so it doesn’t make it wrong, it makes it unique if anything. This year we are going to have a much more creative year I think and we too are going to be obsessed with colour, I have studied colour theory in the past too but pretty much picked up the basics of it, for example different colours have different meanings towards us all, for instance yellow could mean joy and happiness and the colour of the sun, red could be danger and violence, green neutral, blue calm and beauty and pink love etc. A lot of Artists explored different colour, I think Picasso and Monet are particularly good examples, they used many different colours throughout their works exploring the brighter and darker colours. Some Artists express their feelings and emotions through the use of colour for example using darker colours such as blue and blacks when they were feeling down and depressed, but used brighter colours such as reds and pinks when they were in love which is interesting as Art obviously can be used as a way to express you.

I think that paintings like these are good examples of expressing emotion and feelings:

Claude Monet - Poppy Field

(Happy and joyful with brighter colour)

Picasso - Les Noces De Pierrette

(Sad, darker & colder)

This week we went to Abbey Park for the day, it (in total honesty) got kind of boring after a short while. We’d been to the same place back in April on a bright sunny day to so it really was just looking at the same thing, the only thing different was that it was a different time of year so the colours of the leaves and trees were slightly different. I’ve written how I’d like to go further out to different places or just other places in general around Leicester. It’s was really just a repeat of the last trip but this time trying to find a different scene to draw. Me personally, I like to draw the buildings (though there aren’t that many) and structures around the place rather than the trees. Tree foliage is something I’m dreadful at and will avoid at all costs, though in my sketches they are always lurking in the background no matter how hard I try to find a non green area around there. In my final I wanted to try and take all the things we talked about in our lecture, basically looking at the rule of thirds trying to bring the eyes back around the painting by placing the main focus point to one side. I found a small building there which this worked quite well with and I was able to make use of proper perspective. I also used a colour swab to create the image using just 3 colours being green, an orange like colour, yellow and of course black and white. I’ve wanted to try creating an image using this method before but I can say it’s amazing what you can achieve using just a few colours (though I didn’t struggle to make a blue colour out of it). I layered the colours over in my final digital painting but and I gave it my best shot on trying to create the trees and bushes. I used some different customized brushes to help create the effect, which I think went okay in the end.

In game production, we’ve been given 3 different projects to do, first being a professional brief from Blitz studios to do a treasure chest, the second a trash project and the third being a self portrait in which I am dreading. I hate photo’s being taken of me let alone drawing myself or even people drawing me. I’ve already finished the modelling for the project, so all that’s left to do is the texturing although this time the texturing comes with a twist, being paint it yourself, which is quite fun because this allows us to be expressive in our work creating different patterns etc to place on the model, the style will of course be the same cause we all have our own ways of painting. It’s allowing us to use more advanced techniques in which we make and apply texture, because we are pretty much free to do what we want on that as long as it resembles a treasure chest. Getting us use to professional briefs is good to as last year we were told to pretty much model this and that and get it done, were as this year it’s a bit more open and free and not strictly limited! This year we have been told that when we model, we must think about the shape and form of everything, make sure that every polygon or triangle has a purpose and is doing something, as last year I can admit that I had a lot of useless polygons everywhere doing nothing, good mesh flow is essential!

 1986 triangles.

That’s about all for this week; one last thing is obviously critical studies. First and foremost I was disappointed and quite annoyed to hear that I was one of the ones that fluffed the first year but they are going to give me another chance. I can’t complain because I’ve got the chance to put what went wrong last year, right this year. I’ve been worried all summer long about making it back and I’m here now so I guess I’ll just shut up. Anyway we were basically introduced to what goes on in the second year and how this year we are taking a massive leap forward towards becoming Game Artists. We are not Game Artists yet, but we will be once we hit the end of the year so we are told. Looking back at last year’s groups projects, there is a lot of work involved producing a good game level asset, I’m expecting for all of us to be told what we are doing is boring and to add more stuff into our projects, I remember being told that adding extra tiny features into the asset makes a game more fun and the user will enjoy it more. I can relate to that, in fact all of us could relate to that in all the game we have played, but before that I think the main purpose is to get the mandatory parts finished first then add the extras. It’s kind of weird put in all areas this week, its all come down to planning. Planning has sort of been the theme of this week, the best work is produced when the planning is perfected I believe.

Gaming On Different Platforms

One thing I’d like to talk about is how gaming changes between the consoles it is played on. For example when building a game on one console will obviously be different on the other, because it will run differently to suit the needs of the technology used on various machines. Take an all format game such as the new FIFA 12 game just released. The game is available on all consoles, ranging from Xbox 360, PS3, Nintendo Wii, PSP, Nintendo DS, PC, Mobile, so right there is pretty much everything.  What I think is quite interesting is how they different from each other. The Xbox 360 and PS3 versions will be similar, they both use online capabilities similar to each other and they both use an achievement system were by the user is rewarded point for completing different objectives within the games, they both use standard wireless controllers to control what happens in game and the game modes will be the same, they both have HD graphics on top of all that to so they are much similar. Now take the Nintendo Wii version, much  different, for starters the game uses a totally different controller system in which were the user can move the controllers around to control what happens on screen using the sensor bars that are used in conjunction with the controller, the graphics cannot be in HD, the game modes will be different. What is different about this version is that they take all the things the Wii can do that the other versions can’t and use it to their advantage. For example they have extra game modes that allow the user to play more different activities with the different controller system. The PC version will be possibly be similar to the Xbox and PlayStation versions however, the thing with the PC is that the controllers can be different as not everyone will want to play with a mouse and keyboard, the graphics can vary as different PC’s have different graphics cards and there are different versions of operating systems that games can and cannot work on.

FIFA 12 in HD

If we were to take a look at the Nintendo DS, PSP or mobile versions they will be extremely different. First thing about these is that they are obviously on a smaller console, as these do not (and like the PC version) do not need to be connected to a TV to display and run properly as intended. They are essentially on a smaller system, with again their own capabilities such and own way of displaying the screen with all its interfaces. These consoles will be limited with them being smaller and not as capable of holding the kind of technology found in the larger consoles. They still could have all the same game modes etc, online play and with Wi-Fi enabled be able to play against friends, but you can expect the graphics to be of lower quality and most often than not the game modes will be different where there won’t have as many features then a full console version of the game. You often find now-a-days mobile versions like on an iPhone for example have lite/mini versions of the game which are a sort of shortened down version of the full game but made that way so they are compatible with the hardware it is to be used on, this way you can still play your favourite games on the go, which is quite clever.

FIFA 12 Nintendo 3DS

I remember back to my earlier days of gaming when I use to have a GameCube, the thing with the GameCube was that it was compatible with similar games that could be used on the GameBoyAdvance console. You could connect a wire from the console to the GameBoy and connect them together to interact; you could even use the GameBoy as an extra controller that way which is very clever. I remember back in these days Pokemon was a massive thing and that you could connect the GameBoy games to your GameCube using a connecting cable and transfer your Pokemon back and forth between, something was quite similar with the Sonic the Hedgehog series to if I remember and you could play extra games only available through this connectivity.

Now-a-days you can now do the same thing using a PSP to a PlayStation 3 and an Nintendo DS to an Nintendo Wii, of course as technology has advanced it’s all done through wireless connections, its clever and effect, and as I think I’ve said before it’s an added boost to marketing games as some options and modes within games are only available through doing things like this.

Y2 S1 T13 - Reflection On Year One, And Ambition For Year Two

Now, I’ve already pretty much rambled on about what I’m going to do for year two but now that we’re back, settled in and been told a few more things about what this year is about then this is a good way to reflect back on what I said previously and perhaps change things.

In the first year, it was a good year if I had to submit it up in one word however it was a bit of a scramble. In my first post I think I had said that no one in my family has been to University previously and for me to go having no knowledge of what it’s like it was extremely scary especially when you’re on your own living away from home. I was panicking about anything and everything quite literally, worrying about this that and the other all year long, asking questions constantly in case I’d get anything wrong etc. The point is I’m a worry head and worried too much and it barely got me through, I can’t go down that same route again obviously. I was literally a split centimetre from being kicked off. My hopes for this year include doing more work obviously, more personal work and self directed studies.

Over summer I’ve had to re-sit and had to do a 3D project, which was good because it got me back into modelling and texturing etc think I was enjoying my time off too much. Hopes for 3D this year is for me to develop more understanding of 3D skills, especially in texturing for 3D work as that is something I still hate, I’m more use to unwrapping now which is good I need to get out of the habit of making tillable textures and just mapping them on. I hope to do more self directed/personal projects in 3D this year; I have a few things in mind. I want to get use to adding more bump maps and specula maps to all my projects as it gives them more of a realistic feel as I guess it’s required for everything now. The problem with my projects last year was that they was too (how do I say?) flat, and could of been improved a lot more. I would like to try and understand lighting a bit more in 3D and more about rendering. Obviously getting use to using Unreal will be required at some point but that will come in time, I just want to focus on improving my 3D work for now. Found an interesting website that can help in visual design and 3D areas of the course actually.

www.thegnomonworkshop.com

The group project is coming up ever so shortly so I need to be producing my best to contribute to the team I’m thrown into, which won’t be an easy challenge.

MORE DEPTH!

For visual design, there’s a lot more emphasis on colour this year, but I have already done some colour work before which helps because painting things has never been my strong suit, but since coming to university learning to layer over colours to bring out a mixture of different colours has helped me greatly. My painting in recent years however has improved a lot more for me so to expand on that will be good. One thing is that I want to do a lot more still life studies, a piece of fruit each week is what I’m hoping to achieve so about 40 pieces by the end of the year will be quite nice, I’m going more down the digital route with my drawings this year though. Though I think practising some traditional will be good now and then. Looking at different styles of painting will help and master Artists will help bring out a better quality in my work. Looking online at the work of Van Gogh it even states that before you can become good at colour painting you must first become good at drawing, well personally I think with the skills I’ve built up in the first year I am now good at drawing I just need to become good at painting. One thing that it says that is interesting is that Van Gogh said much drawing and little colour is the right way to work, more colour and less drawing is wrong, well it’s obviously true else you’d have no planning for your work and end up with a mess of colour? Pretty sure I’ve gone wrong like that in the past when I smaller of course, but the point is I’ve pretty much mastered perspective now and need to expand painting a lot more, because up until last year pencil was the only thing I ever dared to use.

http://www.vangoghgallery.com/painting/

Drawing the human figure is something else I want to get better at, planning is essential...

As far as blogs go, again it’s just more personal work, writing about things I want to talk about, the movies we watch, visual design, game production, and I’m going to attempt to keep a diary of each week as it goes by. The thing is I need to do more research, and post more links and images. I’ve got a few things In mind that I want to talk about and I think it may even help if I write down the things I want to talk about so I remember and can do so later. I did really good in my critical studies last year, it’s where I shined most though I have the feeling this is where a lot people shined most. Last year I got 40/40 for game production and visual design and in critical studies 55/30 so obviously done something right in this area. For a first class degree I will need 70+ on each so basically it’s all about doing double the amount of work in each area basically, except in critical studies I need 15 more points which I am easily capable of achieving.

This year it’s all about doing more as we were told at the end of last year you know what you’ve got to do and it’s just a case of doing it for 2 more years.