Y1 S2 T9 - Elements Of Game Design - part 2: Art Direction For Games

What an Art Director does, is he/she tries to define the way in which a game should look like. For example the Art Director’s main focus would be working very closely with the game designer because the game designer is the one with all the ideas of how the game will plan out (its overall structure). The Art Director would then lead a team of Artists within a company to achieve what is wanted for the game, such as how should the characters look, how should the maps, cities, buildings, landscapes and even skies should look. The level of detail that should be in everything is another thing that should be gotten across, in particular if the game is based upon a certain culture, how it should feel?, what time of year is it?, maybe even what time of day, and also what type on genre is it. All these questions must be first answered to then try and communicate this to rest of the Artists for them to finally be able to communicate to the target audience which can be anyone and everyone depending on what type of game is being produced. The most important factor however of any game is the visual side, (in my opinion) simply because without design, there would be no game, and what I think usually attracts a lot of people to gaming is the appearance of it, because every game has design, in fact the way I see it is that everything in the world has design no matter what it is, and quite a lot of the time what makes gaming appeal to most people is how appealing it is aesthetically, however this does not justify the game is going to be good and it’s right up yours and the next persons street. There is a lot more to it than that, because everyone is a part of a team, which is where good communicational skills come in and that’s a very big important factor towards making a good and successful game. I mean a game can have the most beautiful graphics in the world but if that’s all it’s got it’s not going to get very far. Just as an Art Director would manage a team by communicating ideas, the entire company they are working for, must communicate in some way what they are trying to sell publically to people all over the world, so if anything it’s a huge responsibility no matter what the job role. It’s completely huge, especially now-a-days in gaming as Artist roles are growing increasingly popular with each passing year and even salaries are very high for Artists in the gaming industry, simply because it’s such an important role. Without aesthetic appearance a game just couldn’t simply exist, even Pong (as simple as it is) has an aesthetic appearance!

Some things that are different from Art Direction and Art director jobs in film and gaming is that an Art director working in games is in charge with the overall look and feel of the game, trying to visually communicate the best way for the game to look which can sometimes effect the way in which it plays. In film is more about keeping track of the overall Art department making sure everyone is on top of the tasks that the Art director would assign to everyone. An Art director in film would also try to get things done in a way that is sensible and sufficient meaning that they are in charge of the budget, so they have to be careful and think about what they want and need to use, which will include reading the actual film script for a better idea of what they’ll need. They have to prepare for every scene and before everything starts filming so they have to think well ahead, but this does have its similarities to gaming because in gaming they have to work to deadlines and manage teams to get across their visual ideas. Another thing they do is work with producers and tries to determine whether if the producers ideas will work or not, in which the Art director may try to come up with new/better ideas. I won’t get into every detail, but basically I think that the roles in both film and gaming are very similar, there are minor differences here and there but overall they both manage and work with teams to create ideas and assets, working closely with different people. Like I said before communication is essential and having a good knowledge and understanding of visualisation is key. An understanding of lighting, scale, proportion, perspective, colour, volume, shape, form (and the list could go on and on) are all a good thing to have, because if you’re not creative and able to come up with ideas you wouldn’t be able to get the job, but the same applies for film. You’ve got to have a strong passion for them (being films or games) so a really good knowledge of how games work and what they are made up of, and along with this a good portfolio would get you a long way, not even of just 2D visual ideas but also some 3D, since games are primarily 3D now-a-days. Understanding all this and being able to apply it to different types of gaming genres.

War of the Worlds - Extras

While watching the extra parts to War of the Worlds, we saw how they came across ideas for character designs, similar to what we have been doing lately. One thing I’ve learnt during this week is how you have to be inspired towards creating the work you do, else there’s not much point in wanting to become a game artist or designer if there’s nothing that influences you, but why would we be here if we didn’t want to do this?

Anyway we saw how they came about ideas for what they wanted in the movie, the director Steven Spielberg said he wanted the audience to be terrified by these alien creatures that are like 50 stories tall. In which having only seeing them briefly it would scare the hell out of just about everyone if they saw one of these in real. But what was interesting is how they like us are taking real life aspects and turning them into something that could only exist in a fantasy world in the film or even a game. They saw how they could give these alien things just 3 legs but still make them able to walk in a way that is of a giraffe. They would pool their ideas together and then the director would decide on what he liked and what he didn’t like in order to capture the biggest feel of fear and realism into the movie. Of course what we have on earth is all we’ll ever have, and so the way I see it is basically just taking what you like and love most and try to find that inner quality and the passion you have towards it to inspire you. It’s funny though because we were shown how one thing can lead onto another through your own journey of life. The way you think and feel about something brings out what you want to do in your life and therefore you make your own path and follow it, along the way however from an Art point of view it can change what type of work you do, and there is quite a lot of inspirations for different kinds of Art and design.

From what Chris showed us, he’s been all over and done everything, and when he was reflecting back on it, it was amazing how much he did and all the different types of work he’s done, from traditional Art, to sculpting, photography and many more. I first started out using pencil, and tried the different various things through school etc, but I was never really inspired by anything until recent years I’ve done painting although I’ve always tried to avoid painting, I’ve tried it and now I’m much more confident using it, I’ve used things like oil paints, charcoal, pastels etc and now I’ve I’m even doing digital painting.  What have always inspired me is simply video games, playing one after the other over and over right to the present day, I knew from an early age I wanted something to do with video games, but I didn’t know what, then I thought I wanted to be a designer of them but nothing really opened up in terms of degree programs, so here I am on a course that is a bit of everything to do with gaming, which I couldn’t ask for more. I’m still following that path now and getting close to the end of it but the thing is I’m still as inspired by video games as much, if not more then what I was back when I first started playing them. The same goes for designing characters and such, take inspiration from what is around us and then turn that into something interesting. I remember when I was young, I used to draw my own level designs, though they weren't very good I had ideas and an influence.

Y1 S2 T8 - Elements Of Game Design - Part 1: From Pong To Next-Gen…

What I think is meant by game play, is that the interaction between the user playing the game and what’s actually going on, on-screen. One of things I think about is how the game designer wants a game to look and eventually play in a certain way. Whereas the consumer who actually buys the game wants it to play a certain way but also eventually wants it to look good. I believe that a game and the way it plays and pans out, is not quite directly down to the game designer but down more to the Art used to create it. When I think about it, I feel like whatever is created by an artist must then be passed down to the animators to then function it properly within the game it’s self and to what the game designer(s) have suggested. I think that the Artist have one of the biggest jobs alongside the programmers simply because everything you see in the game is down to how they have created it and made it look. Of course the game designer will plan out first what they exactly want but then the Artist sort of have to give life to what the designer asks for which is then followed by what the animator does with the game ready Art and then eventually the programmers will program them into the game to be fully compatible to the design brief they will have. I personally like nice free flowing game play that’s not stiff to control, in recent years game play in just about all games has become a lot better, this will be down to the way how things have become better over time and the technology, but another thing could be to make a new game or more particularly a sequel, they have to scrap the old ideas from before and make a completely different game engine for it to run on else it would be just the same game. Could be getting off topic, but generally it’s the interaction of how one plays the game, which then can be defined good or bad by many people with their own views of it.

In recent years, I found out how big the Artist actually is in gaming, they even make more money than the actual game designers themselves (on average). The game designers I think are the one who just sort of say “I want this and this and that, now your an Artist/Animator/Programmer etc now go do it!” to be honest I don’t think they have as bigger role as the others working on the game simply because the others actually put in the time and effort to create what is been asked for which is a hell of a lot of work considering that they must work to tight deadlines constantly etc. I think the Artists are possibly the most important just as an opinion because I feel that without them they would be no Art design for any game, no feel, nothing to make sound, nothing to animate, nothing to program and especially no game at all. But I do feel like the animators, programmers and even the musicians are equally as important.

Not just one game designer but a few or even more the merrier game designers working on a team would be beneficial. Simply because their job is to come up with ideas for the game, simply put the more designers, the more ideas, the better the game will be. It isn’t all down to just one person, although in the past it probably started off that way with places in the games industry being very limited at one point when it was a fairly new thing. Developers in games have to have a good if not excellent understanding of gaming if they are to help develop them. If you’re given a task, you have to complete that task to specific standards that are required but at the same time you’ve really got to think about what you’re doing and stand back from it for a moment and look at what you’re achieving and ask “is it working?” “What’s wrong with it?” and “what’s right with it?” What I’m saying is that game design has to be a part of everyone working in industry because without it there’s not much purpose of making a game, you’d just keep being told what to do and completing it day in, day out and moving on to the next thing without even thinking about what you’ve achieved. Game design puts together all the elements of a game in a sort of mind map and links them all together as one, so I think where game design comes from in a developer is how they interoperate what they are doing and how that fits in with everything else.

What’s important to me when I play a game can vary all the time. Sometimes I end up buying games and playing them just simply because of the title of it. I quite rarely buy new games now-a-days, but when I do what’s important is not the title but the style of the game. What I mean by that is what kind of game is it? How does it play? Will I be playing it over and over again? Is it smooth in terms of graphics and animation? And finally sometimes it can be generally the title of it. Different types of games operate in very different ways, in example a sports game will play completely differently from an adventure game, so for a sports game I would like it to be quite fluent and the aim of the game to be quite similar to that of real world sport. Whereas in an adventure game I would like it to be quite straight forward with tasks and objectives to complete, fluent also but the aim of the game to be more of a fantasy world type situation you are in, I think mainly this is because sometime you just want to get away from the real world things within games, else we might as well go outside and have crazy adventures and play sports for real instead of being lazy and sitting down to play it on a TV screen. I like quite a lot of different genres, like RPG, adventure, sport, action etc but one thing I’d say about them is that they have slightly different goals, what makes a good game to me is trying to incorporate as many different factors into the game as possible, for example every game has its goal but try to expand it a bit, not meaning have as many goals as possible because it would be too tedious not just for creating but to the person plying it as well but having some sort of variation to make it interesting. If you are designing a role playing game then It’s going to be more about a story line and the many possibilities that can happen with the limits of the game, whereas if you were designing a sports game the object is very simple every time you play (to win the game) and it would be more about the aesthetic approach to it rather than story because it doesn’t really require a story at all. It’s like comparing an adventure game to a puzzle, the story is vital in the adventure but the strategy to challenge the player is more important to the designer and to you as a player.

So to sum up, when I play a game it has to look and do exactly what it says on the box. Over the years gaming has evolved from the simple 8 bit designs were hardly any artists but many programmers with a great knowledge of science to make a game work, however now it’s more of a different story as you can now gain a degree in game design to allow you to get into industry, meaning there’s a lot more creativity and inspiration rather than knowing how something works and not have a good knowledge of making stories etc, when now you look at game now-a-days with their fancy new graphics, music and animation, back in the days of Pong it was as simple as two sticks bouncing a pixel ball back to each other until one misses and there wasn’t really any need for an artist/animator/musician, now there’s a million and one reasons to have them and that’s because game design and the elements of it have evolved over time. It’s gone from knowing how to make simple things on complicated hardware and software (at the time) to now knowing the hard and software inside out and really opening up the possibilities of what we can do. It requires a lot more thinking and skills such as drawing, knowledge of 3D software and good storyline making etc.

Angel - A

My first impression of this movie was that is was going to be some old 1940-60’s movie as the first scene appeared in black and white. What was surprising was that I was watching a French movie, one thing I hate about foreign films is that your always concentrating on the subtitles at the bottom of the screen trying to make sense out of what is being said, which is distracting from the actual footage and action going on above. But this particular film, I didn’t seem to mind it, as it went on the black and white scene didn’t fade away, at first I thought the black and white of the first scene was just a flashback of some sort and would go into colour after it was over, but it stayed the same, which was interesting because I have never watched a film made in the twenty first century that way before. Surprisingly I enjoyed this film, the story was about a guy called Andre who has an Olive oil factory in Argentina? (I’m guessing) but he’s American just back in Paris to make some money but he ends up running into the wrong guys, and owing them €20k which he needs before midnight sometime later that week? The bad guys in all this ask the money to be in Euro’s not dollars, at which I thought the story would have turned out that he’s back to life in America trying to get the money as Andre explains that he needs to take care of some things. Anyway he goes crazy and asks the Police to lock him up for a few days but they more or less tell him to get lost, so then he resorts to killing himself by jumping off a bridge, as he does there’s a strange woman (Angela) about to do the exact same thing right beside him, she jumps off and Andre goes after her in an attempt to save her. Afterwards she tries to re-pay him by helping Andre for rescuing her life. She helps by getting some of the money Andre needs to pays his debt, he isn’t sure of her at first but when she gets some of the money and helps him out of his situation he gains her trust. I think this trust is gained even more when she tries selling herself to gain Andre’s money for €1000 a go... enough said...

One thing I noticed in this movie is that they are always using the word beautiful, like Andre calling the woman beautiful and when they are looking at the scenery of Paris they always call it beautiful, I think this could be a reflection of how she’s trying to help Andre pull out the good side that she knows is in him. Andre and Angela’s relationship is sort of portrayed to that of a married couple, always having little arguments along with here and there funny moments throughout the film. Eventually we learn that Angela is actually an ‘Angel’ and to prove it she makes the ash tray float and her cigarette grow longer... at this point I kind of thought they spoilt the whole movie making it unrealistic and more fantasy like.

I never really got what went on towards the end but like all films everything works out and Andre I think grows to realise that there is good in him, which Angela has shown him, they eventually end up kissing at which point Angela grows wings and is about to go back to heaven? (I’m assuming). She talks about how she died? (I think) and that how she has no past, but because Andre has fallen deeply in love with her he goes after he which results in them falling back into the same river like the start of the film (they also kissed at the beginning) once they both climb out her wings are gone. Angela is able to know anything and everything about Andre, even his future telling him he will marry someone else and have 3 children, but he tries desperately and succeeds in his attempt to be with Angela for good and giving her a future as she doesn’t have a past.

It’s kind of a sloppy love story but with a bit of drama, action, comedy and fantasy all mixed in, which I think makes it really good. One other thing is how Angela has the strength of a Man, which could explain her constant eating habits? And how she tells Andre he is more feminine then masculine, which I also think could reflect on how in France they have masculine and feminine words and Paris is the ‘city of love’ or whatever. They talk about how things are beautiful and I think they were sort of destined to meet on that bridge on that particular day (being a Sunday morning) when Andre is really not up for anything except lying in. Angela explains how she a fallen angel and her wings are burnt but she sort of has the ability to make anything happen still and helps Andre, When they kiss she is ready to go back as it were and that’s why I’m a little confused as to why that kiss made her ready to go back? I think she may have had something to prove while back on earth such as being loved? Forgiven? By helping someone?

Maybe I’m getting too much into this now.

Gaming In 2010

2010 has been a long year, especially in gaming. The definite highlight of 2010 has been the Xbox Kinect, it was revealed in June at an E3 convention in America. I didn’t honestly think much of it at first; I thought it was just another copy of the Nintendo Wii but without a controller. I wasn’t originally going to buy it but I thought I’ll get it anyway just to see what all the fuss was about. Since the first week I got it I never hardly used it much, it was good for a couple of hours then it jut got kind of boring, I’m glad I didn’t but PlayStation move now, I mean that’s just a shear copy of the Wii right there, cause it come with the controller, we’ve seen it all before. I thought the Kinect would have been a bit more fun, the only good thing I can say about it is that you don’t have the burden of carrying the controller all the time like you do the Wii, but unlike the Wii you’ve got to have a big area in the room your using else you’ll end up banging into stuff... trust me I would know. When I went to pick it up, I was literally standing outside the GAME store waiting for it in the queue; I thought this must be good; I’ve never had to wait outside to get my hands on an item before, it’s early days yet and the better games are yet to come, if you ask me.

The was only one console out this year and that was the Nintendo DSi XL just a bigger version of the DSi really, but being me I have to buy it, and it being Nintendo means I really have to have it. It’s good that it allows you to get a much bigger screen for all your games etc, many people believe that it’s not worth getting, especially if you already have a DS but once you count all the extra features they have worked on it sort of adds up in the end, like a bigger stylus, bigger screens, better Wi-Fi functionalities, better battery life etc. What was interesting last year though was that they also revealed that they were working on a 3DS to be released in spring 2011. From what I’ve seen so far all they doing to this new one is making all the graphics 3D , adding a analogue stick and have a slider to turn the 3D on and off however it’s going back to being a smaller DS so my guess is they going to do what they did to the original DS and make it either lighter or bigger and better, possibly to make more money, sometime I think they just purposely plan out how they could make it better in the future so they can feed off more people buying them, but I’ll still end up buying whatever’s next.

There’s been lot’s of games out in 2010 but one thing I noticed is how they have continued in a lot of the old works of the past, for example they brought Donkey Kong Country back on the Wii, Sonic 4 continuing from Sonic 3 15 years ago! And also Pac-Man championship edition, which is a better updated version of old classic, which apparently the original designer for the very first Pac-Man game came out of retirement to help make it (Interesting Fact). It’s great to see these games back with updated features and graphics etc which was something I was talking about not long ago how they should bring back the old games into the new age of technology we have now. I would hope this year that 2011 sees more of this, but I can see this year being all about Kinect and the 3DS, I wonder what Sony is getting up to in the meantime.

The Course So Far...

So far the course has been very good experience. I’m still trying to get to grips with the 3D side of things but we’ve covered quite a lot of the basic skills now so it’s all coming together. It’s not as hard as I thought it might have been, but once you take the time to learn all the tools and techniques etc it starts to get easier. Some of the projects we’ve done so far have been quite challenging and it doesn’t help when Heather goes through what we’re doing each week like lighting, but at least what we are doing is on blackboard as well.

In visual design we’ve been all over Leicester so far sketching anything and everything. From the Canal to the archway, Bradgate Park and the National Space Centre. It’s been quite an adventure so far although I just wish that I had known from the start of how hard this part of the course was. We’ve been asked to do 12 sketches each week (or near enough 12) yet even though I’ve done all of it and uploaded it all to FaceBook it’s still not enough...

We were told in week 10 that what we’ve done is only adequate and for quite a lot of others inadequate which is worrying. No point of worrying about what others are doing though, it’s my own work I’ve got to be worried about, I think only a few people got a good, which shows how hard it is, but I just really wish that we could of been told that doing the minimum requirement amount of work isn’t good enough then I would of made sure I’d of done more. I honestly miss playing my games consoles; you literally have no time for it what so ever anymore, even now at Christmas I haven’t had as much time as I thought I’d have to play them, it really hasn’t been a holiday having to re-do all the work I’ve done already, at least I got most of it done before the holiday however. We were told that 1 credit is equivalent to 10 hours of work and we need 45 credits, that’s easily do-able by the end of the year but I’d still wish I’d have known that 180 hours had to be handed in by the time we get back after Christmas, I just thought we had to complete the tasks. At least we’ve got a idea for how hard it is though...

With the blogs, I find it to be the best part of course, simply because you can just rant about what you think of something no matter what it is. The blog I think is there to show our understanding of games, because there isn’t much more than 2D and 3D to teach when you’re studying a gaming course, but once I get going on a task I can’t really stop, I have write down everything I’m thinking of about the task at hand. You get you chance to have your own say in it but its work at the same time which makes it the best part of the course.

It’s been really enjoyable so far but for the next 13 weeks ahead I’m going to have to be up for doing double if not triple the amount of work, from now on I’m not getting distracted and sticking to it, no matter how much I miss my Xbox.

Happy Feet

Over the Christmas period, I watched the animated film Happy Feet. First of all before I go on, I must say that I really don’t like animated films cause they are just all the same but I had nothing better to do! It’s mainly because there’s always some sort of problem that occurs where they have to get themselves out of it and they always do in the end! I just wish for once that it wouldn’t happen, but no because it all fantasy everything always works out in the end, I mean the last Harry Potter film isn’t even out yet and I mean you know what’s going to happen, the good guys always come through and win and live happily ever after! So there’s not much point, the previews for these types of films are enough to see really. But anyway the story is about a bunch of penguins and in their world they all have the ability to sing, it’s more like a musical then it is a film, it may as well have been called the ice caps are alive with the sound of penguins, SERIOUSLY!

They try to rip off real songs throughout the film, I mean it’s good but it gets a bit tedious and they are practically singing about everything, it’s rare to hear them talk normally. Anyway it’s about a penguin named Mumble but before he was born his egg was dropped and now he is believed to be dumb because he can’t sing, but he does have one ability to move (or tap dance) very fast thus allowing him to create sound as sort of an alternative to not being able to sing. This in turn creates the problem that he won’t be able to find a mate because in this made up world the female penguins choose a male penguin if his song completes the females song and she of course likes him. The colony of penguins believe that its Mumble’s dancing that is causing a lack of food and is told to leave the colony because they all believe it’s his fault, in the end Mumble discovers that it’s the humans that are causing the famine and tries to warn there others, he first tried to convince them that’s it aliens and that there’s something else out there beyond the boundaries of the Antarctic. In the end the humans realise what they are doing and that they see how the penguins have been trying to communicate that to them and of course the penguins win and everything turns out fine!

You know for ONCE I would fucking love to see a main character die! I mean it would be so awesome, why it couldn’t have been that they all end up killing Mumble or better yet they wipe out the penguins all together and the bad guys (the humans in this case) win!

Besides the odd story line, one thing about these animated films is that I notice how the graphics are always slightly better than the ones in gaming. I mean don’t get me wrong but some games such as Super Mario Galaxy have all these big bright bold colours etc like they do in film but why is it because you’re playing a game the graphics don’t look as good as how they are appear in a running film? Like for example in cut scenes in games they always look better then what they look like in the actual game play? I never got that. Rant over.