Angel-A Revisted

Watching Angel-A again, I have to admit I didn’t enjoy it as much as the first time I watched it. This time upon second viewing however I got to look more at the Art and Design side of it. Basically the whole thing from start to finish is greyscale, which is unique for a more modern day film to have such a colour palette to it. It makes me want to see a full colour version of the film to make comparisons. Anyway I knew the story this time, and basically its set in France, when you think of France you think about food, fashion, love etc. and the two characters have a connection between them which is really fitting for the scenery because it is (simply put) Paris, city of love and everything is romantic etc. and the settings such as the bridge at the beginning of the movie, the cityscapes, cafes and clubs all look beautiful, they look really unique, perfectly designed and it’s all about the aesthetics!

This is one where the characters clothes really represent who they are I think, for example Andre is wearing a coat that sort of says what he is, he has been a criminal, but wants to start over again, his facial hair sort of suggests that to, he looks kind of rough, he owes some guy 20,000 euros and he’s going crazy even to the point where he tries to turn himself in, that’s just my opinion anyway.

It also describes French culture (I think) because it shows much more in the scenery for example, there is a scene were Angela supposedly ‘sells herself’ to make money for Andre at a club and the amount of money that these rich looking people are willing to pay her is over the top, it tells you about how expensive it is to live in Paris and sort of about what the people are like i.e. their life styles etc.

All in all I’m saying it does a great job at capturing the City of Paris as it is. The film is unique because it feels like you are watching an old black and white film but in the modern era like it’s brought back the classics into the modern age. It feels whimsical to, as it is like a love fantasy thing and everything is beautiful in this ‘perfect’ world that it appears to create and as it seems to me as a viewer.

Game Evolution

Basically all games are made up of repeatable objects or textures etc that make up the levels and virtual worlds they live in. Older games are great examples of where you can see this kind of stuff, but even newer games have repeatable elements, but maybe they aren’t as noticeable as hardware and software has evolved?

You only have to look at Minecraft to see what I’m talking about.

However that is a very simple game, though it is a new game, as soon as you step foot into the world you can see repeatable objects and textures. Older games you see them as well such as your classic Mario or Sonic games etc.

The reason I always come back to these kinds of games is that they are the ones I grew up with, but they show expert level design (if I do say so) and make great games that you want to play over and over again, I do say that I personally can’t stand dark games like CoD, World of Warcraft, Dead Space, Final Fantasy, Halo, Skyrim and the rest of them and I say how they are kind of a cliché, and people will say the games I play are a cliché to, which I have no problem with, the reason I continue to play these games is because I think they are classics, and no matter how many times you play them they never get boring (or at least not for me).Maybe one of the reasons I like older games also is because they are simple and easy to play, simple concept, you know what to do to beat it and the replay value is very high, I mean the whole purpose of making a game is to play it (and earn tons of cash) but once your done I think older games even today have aged well and you see tons of people still replaying them today, which is a sign of a great game and also a sign that it is well made.

Games when you are younger sort of embed themselves into you, because you play the same ones over and over again and when you’re younger you sort of soak up all knowledge told to you and what you learn, what I’m saying is it’s one of them things that sticks with you until you maybe reach an age where you let go. Growing up in the 90’s like I did games at the time were very simple, you’d have you Nintendo or your PlayStation, because they were the main two things at the time, the games for these consoles were very easy to pick up and understand possibly partly because they are very limited in terms of technology, for example the PlayStation or Nintendo 64 could only handle so much and thus it possibly had a reflection on the games, making them somewhat easier.

Now a days with the new PS3, Xbox 360 and Wii etc, feel somewhat harder, not just in terms of difficulty but by the way they are played. The technology has advanced meaning we now can create and design new ways of playing games and coding them so the difficulty and challenges within them that test the player become harder. Just look at PS3 or Xbox achievements so people are very addicted to gaming and have to have to have everything within a game and achieve everything possibly and some achievement in games can be just cruel as you attempt to gain them, the achievements are possible, but at a very low percentage that you’ll achieve it at any attempt you make.

They are even sites online that are dedicated to achievements and people suggest what their hardest ones.

http://www.xbox360achievements.org/forum/showthread.php?t=165729

I’m not trying to say that all classic games are easy, but I think I would say they are easier than most new games.

What I’m trying to say is that gaming started out as something that was your basic design such as Pac Man or Space Invaders where you would play them over and over trying to get the highest score which is a simple goal trying to beat your friends etc, now they are much more where you can play against not just your friends but take on the whole world online, try to gain all the achievements and beat ‘legendary’ difficulty settings.

It feels as if what started out as ‘challenge your friends’ as now turned into a bigger competition, ‘You VS the World!’ and every man is for himself... or herself.

http://www.xbox360achievements.org/game/fifa-12/leaderboards/

What I think I was trying to get across at first is that games have evolved over time yet you can still see the similarities within them one thing I think EVERY game shares is that even after all this time you still see repeatable elements within them that make up the game itself. Even games that are 2D still need assets and have repeatable elements just the same as 3D games.

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.