Year 2 - Week 21 - March 19th - 23rd

Finished my text project. Thing about this is I had to get the help of a friend to find me a book and a piece of text that describes a setting. As explained I don’t read that much and struggled to find a book with a descriptive piece of text, but eventually found one describing a scene from a book with no visuals/illustrations which was perfect.

The text (top left).

I wanted to go for the illustrated look/style that you would find in sort of fictional book, maybe more to that of a children’s book as the book is based on a child.

Anyway the assessment is coming up, I really don’t want to think about it but however I will predict what I may get like last time:

Game Production - Inadequate

Visual Design – Inadequate

Blog – Adequate /Good?

I’m not being as optimistic about this one, all I’m going to say for now is I don’t know if I have completed all the work and if it is to a sufficient standard but I do plan to do a ton of personal work over the Easter holiday to submit.

 

Without text.

The year is coming to an end now and I want to make sure I’ve done everything I can and set out to do.

 Green Apple.

Year 2 - Week 20 - March 12th - 16th

Finally finished my cultural project. In development of this I looked at parks and looked at some existing parks first hand.

Basically I got my inspiration from the clock tower in the centre of Leicester itself. It’ a proven ‘miniature landmark’ if you will that has brought people together. I wanted to have some sort of path or symbol around it to make it more of a memorable place that people would come together. I wanted the image to appear bright and colour so it would be more attractive to people as a place to meet which would turn it into a popular area.

I made it in colour however decided I would grey scale it, thus sort of learning from the mistake of the Paris Project.

In life drawing I was told that I need to be faster when doing blind contour work etc, now the problem with trying to work fast is that the quality of the work tends to be poorer in that case and to be honest I’ve learnt from that in the past. I can’t work fast, I can only work at my own pace in which if I take my time the better pieces of work are produced.

My ideas for the project.

Personally I prefer line drawings/outline drawings, I don’t mind rendering but it’s certainly not my strong suit, I want to possibly try work on my textures over the next month, not just in 2D but 3D as well with personal work which I’ll post soon.

Y2 S2 T17 - Elements of Game Design - Part 6 - Documentation

1 - For my game, I would like (for this task) to create an adventure based RPG, this kind of game would be for a Nintendo Wii or 3DS for a younger audience aged 3+.

Technology to create the game would be 3DS Max, PhotoShop, Crazy Bump and UDK to help create game assets and textures etc.

The game will work in the way that the player would be able to choose from a young male or female character to play as (so it isn’t gender biased) and basically the game would work in a similar way to a typical Zelda title but would be turned based (as in battling). So obviously the young adventurer would have to make his or her way through a world map exploring things like caves and buildings etc to finally reach the end of the game where they would fight the final boss in an attempt to save the land (let’s say). They would have to make their way through puzzles, by moving and destroying objects etc in order to unlock new things, collect money, upgrade weapons to become stronger and take on each enemy as they get progressively stronger throughout start to finish.

Obviously the land would be full of other people that you would meet, enemies, bosses and assets for weapons and props for objects etc where needed.

2 – Lead character is obviously who the player chooses, in this case it can be either male or female.

Male_Character.max/Female_Character.max

9000 Triangle limit.

Texture budget: 1024x1024 D/N/S

3- None player character. Would probably be the lead characters mum or dad for starters, obviously there would be many of these throughout the course of the game.

Main_Character_Mum.max

9000 Triangle limit.

Texture budget: 1024x1024 D/N/S

4- Vehicle would be a bike for the main character; this could be something the player acquires mid-way through the game to navigate easier through the game. As it is a young character it couldn’t be anything more than a bike.

Bike.max

2500 Triangle limit.

Texture budget: 1024x1024 D/N/S

5- Environment would probably be a level in itself like a cave that the player explores. It would have to be look cluttered, possibly dusty, cracks on the walls, holes in the ground, doors to pass through and final/sub boss room.

Cave.max

100,000 Triangle limit.

Texture budget: using either 1024x1024 for small rooms or 2048x2048 for larger areas. D/N/S

6- For a prop, one of them would be a house that is not enterable just to decorate the environment, for example the starting area of the game could be based in a village and have different variation of the same house.

House.max

Texture budget: 1024x1024 D/N/S

2000 triangle budget.

All in all if this were not a hypothetical game I would go into further detail about everything, but for the purpose of this task I don’t want to ramble on, as I’d go on forever. There is much more to explore such as all the props, the Art style, the world of the game itself, characters, levels and other vehicles, weapons and things the player would collect not to mention the story etc.

To be honest after researching and writing this I want to develop this idea further into a fully working game!

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/3384/the_anatomy_of_a_design_document_.php

http://www.dwgames.net/Files/Run/Run%20Design%20Document.pdf

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/1709/design_document_play_with_fire.php

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

Y2 S2 T22 - Creativity, the talent myth and craft

Creativity is something that allows us to solve a problem or make up something that is new as a form of entertainment etc. Creativity is the way we perceive something, ideas generate from things round us or what’s just in our heads (on the mind). I believe that talent doesn’t exist; maybe people are just lucky at what they do or just have their own way/style of doing something that is good. Just because a person is said to be good at something doesn’t necessarily make them creative. When we look at Art for example, people can just pick up a paint brush and colours and make something, weather it is good or not is judged by others around them, a person that knows nothing about Art should not be looked at in the way that they could not ever do it, because anything is possible. It wasn’t so long ago we looked at the ‘talent myth’ and hard graft, and what you have to look at is that a so called ‘talented’ person is producing a piece of work that is to a ‘high quality’ where as a person that works hard will achieve the high quality outcome but however it may take them longer and they may take another route about it.

Look at our course for example; it is set up in a way that it teaches you about perspective straight off the bat, immediately from learning about perspective I became better drawing, drawing objects and environments and even organic shapes that I may have struggled with in the past. I believe anyone who doesn’t know a thing about Art could easily come onto this course and succeed with a degree by the end of it weather they have college and school qualifications or not. Building your skills from level 1 to 100 can be done in no time as long as you work hard.

Building up skills to create things is the way forward to get better at something, take 3DS Max for example, I had barely touched a 3D program in my life before it and now I can pretty much make anything I want and throw it into a game engine. Once you have a basic knowledge of something it’s all about taking the time to learn the advanced techniques, once you become better at something the possibilities start to open up more of what you can do and thus stimulates the creativeness that can be brought about by it.

Gaming is an outcome of creativity; you only have to walk into a entertainment shop to see what creativity is, whether it’s through gaming, music or film etc.  What’s displayed on the shelves is the outcome of creativity. Creativity is allows you to either limit yourself to something or enhance what it is you have, for example you can build upon what you’ve got for example a video game can be made better by fixing, adding or taking out things within it, so I wouldn’t say it’s limited. The whole team that works on a video game has got a creative job, because each person whether they are a designers, Artist, programmer, musician etc has a creative job on at hand to produce (or in other words make up) something that is going to be a part of the game itself, so ideas (creativity) come about to make it happen.

I think creativity in gaming is not just about how it’s made however I think that even the players themselves can have an impact on creativity in the actual gameplay themselves. I remember once watching something on TV about the game Spore. Spore is basically a monster creator (as far as I’m aware) and basically they had millions of people all over the world creating monsters that the actual designers of the game couldn’t even think of themselves. In which proves games allow the player to be creative just as an example it shows how games are creative.

http://replicatorinc.com/blog/2009/02/75-creative-uses-of-the-spore-creature-creator/

Like I explained in one of my previous blogs I said how Super Mario Galaxy used that odd physics engine, Nintendo never cease to amaze me by what new thing they can come up with next, looking at how they used a touch screen to play games and now we have motion plus to play them they really have always shined above the rest to me.

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

Miyamto the creator of Mario, Donkey Kong and Legend of Zelda etc have all been hugely successful and show different ideas and styles throughout which is extremely creative, you could say that Nintendo are a company that experiment on video games and they do it right.

I think that being an Artist, you are creative in the way that you express your ideas through drawing them which is a creative process. When you think of an idea you convey it on paper or to a canvas, I would like my ideas or creativity to be acknowledged by other in that they are possibilities in a development process to a final outcome or to see a meaning behind it. I am definitely skilful and not talented as I said it doesn’t exist to be successful in the gaming industry I would say that you need to have ideas and put them into practise as it’s essentially all about development and of course be hard working. 

Year 2 - Week 19 - March 5th - 9th

Finished my Paris project. Problem was that I wanted to do a grey scale final piece in Photoshop, however it didn’t go as planned.

I don’t know what went wrong it just didn’t go as I had imagined in my head, so I found myself rendering the final sketch I had drawn.

I went for the typical street café scene you usually find in Paris, or pretty much around France itself. I looked into Art Nouveau, in which is something I had studied back in college. 

Everything with Art Nouveau or even Art Deco is that everything is over decorated. Basically when looking at Art Nouveau inspired designs you’ll find that everything is form over function. Everything is made to look pretty and not do what it should as good because of it. Paris itself is probably the ‘prettiest’ city on the globe, with everything based on ‘romance’, ‘love’ and fashion etc. Everything must look beautiful almost, just like watching the film Angel-A. Everything in that film is designed to make it look good, everything is expensive and over priced and everyone and everything is based upon looks.

This brings me to a sort of question about Game Art and Design, I personally believe something should do what it is meant to do rather than look amazing good. But it sort of asks the question of do you go for something looking great by focusing more on textures or go for something just doing its job, via modelling? We learn both, we want to make models but we also texture them, it’s like we’re constantly asked to balance things out which is difficult and makes our work hard enough.

I go for function more, but as an Artist you should be looking at your form, but because we’re making in game assets we’re forced to try and balance it out in a way, sometimes it’s asking to go more with looks and sometimes function. What makes things more appealing to us is when an object hits both of these things at high detail.

Take the iPhone for example, everybody wants one because it can almost do anything but also looks sleek and smart, it’s almost a stylish and is a part of ‘hardware fashion’? Maybe I’m getting way to ahead of myself. I think understanding these really help within the gaming industry because we’re essentially working together to produce a product to sell to the world.

I want to be a game designer and work on level design hopefully and I think that knowing these types of things is a sort of fundamental skill that helps in the process with coming up with ideas for games. We’re looking at how a game works (function) but also what it is going to look like (form/aesthetics) as the two combined together. 

Queens Project - Week 8 & 9

Finally all assets are now finished. We’re in the ending process of throwing everything together properly. Now I’m not the UDK guy so I’ve not got much clue about what’s going on with the level, I just sort of keep updated via screen shots and file updates of the level itself.

My final assets:

The assets haven’t been too hard to make, the light maps are easy to make once you’ve done it once. It’s now time to piece everything together and check for bugs etc. I’ve seen a lot of concept work but not much of the final thing, but seen some prototype images of what the final thing will look like. There’s not a lot to say again because it’s been just a matter of time of piecing things together, making up the rooms, adding final details, a few extra assets where needed and lighting.

Personally I’m not an expert on lighting especially in 3D, I’m still getting to grips with UDK, but when you look at game levels now-a-days you see game engines being able to handle all kinds of lighting conditions. Game levels are a lot more complex now-a-days so I think it’s fair to say we needed a bigger level with a touch more complexity, especially since this is a horror level based on a first person shooter. I’ll finally be able to lay down more thoughts on the level after next week once it should be finished.

The reason why I’ve pieced together 2 weeks on this entry is because again it’s just been more asset making, we’re at the final stage so they’ll be a lot more to talk about once it is complete.

Y2 S2 T23 - Life Changing or Career Building?

When you look at education, I believe that a subject or a course should teach what it title of it states.

When trying to get into the gaming industry I think it’s becoming increasing popular to get a qualification/degree in a relative field of gaming. For example you want to be a game animator, then you study animation, you want to be a programmer, you study at a programming course. However this is not always true, back in the earlier days of gaming there we’re really any courses that could get you straight into gaming, only in recent years gaming has found its way into education as a form of entertainment such as music or film making. Basically back in the day if you wanted to work on Art for games, then you would probably need some sort of degree in fine Art or graphics etc, for programming then maybe a computer programming degree etc.

A lot of games companies want people to be good for the job they maybe applying for, and some may want to see that a person has good soft skills. Communication in games companies is important since it is essentially one massive group of people working towards making a finished game, so soft skills is good however you may argue that you’re not being face to face with your target market/audience because you’re selling the finished product to the world without really meeting the consumers themselves. I think soft skills come packaged within a person themselves, which is good to have, but in which I don’t believe education can really teach that.

Education can teach the technical skills needed to do a job however. I think what we should be doing is concentrating on what we have in front of us but however plan for the future so in the long run we can prepare for what possibly can be ahead of us. What I mean is in the gaming industry you’re always trying to keep update with the latest thing. Technology is constantly always improving and so is software, therefore we must understand it how it is. Games companies are always going to be constantly changing by bringing in newer technology and updating their hardware and software used. It’s kind of an argument; in example does a games company want someone highly trained in an area or someone is creative and understanding?

I think that gaming within education could cater to both these, if it gives you the option to, so basically students would have the freedom of picking an area they would want to specialise in, in education, so for example in the first year of study they would be learn the basic skills in everything as a generalist, then second year, go into a more specific area by giving them the option of choosing eventually building up to a final project or their chosen area perhaps? Almost an alternative of what we’re doing right now. By the time you get to industry, your confident with the job you’re applying for a you at least have a basic idea of other areas and can be creative?

Looking at this as a whole I think games companies should be solving the problems that are in front of them but looking towards the future and planning ahead of what they are and will be looking in applicants of the future. We can’t exactly predict the future so I think that we should wait for what kind of technology is being developed to be actually produced and then possibly set up methods of teaching about this new advanced technology so students can become updated in the ways in which they work, therefore keeping updated and also prepare to cope with the future?

http://www.rit.edu/gccis/gameeducationjournal/

http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/video-game-designer1.htm