Task 12: Personal review of the first year

This first year at university has been great and I am glad I made the right choice to study here at De Montfort University because my course is brilliant and it was just like I was expecting and even better. I really like the ways the course has helped me progress with my traditional art skills and in turn helped develop my Photoshop skills. We visited Bradgate Park twice once at the start of the year and just before we left, we had to complete finals for each visit. Here are my finals first one is a water colour completed on the first visit and the second image is a digital paint from sketches and photo references.

As you can see I have improved on my composition and in my colour theory. I have also given the digital paint a lot of atmosphere which the water colour doesn’t have. A suggestion that could be helpful for students in all years could be a couple of hour’s session of critiques and feedback once a week as sometimes I found myself wondering if I was doing enough work as I found time management hard. In my second year I want to keep up the same work rate and even produce more work, personally I would want to see a tutorial or maybe a quick talk on bounce lights as I have not got the hang of getting them correct in my images.

Having come to this course without any previous experience with using any 3D modelling programmes I think I picked up 3dsmax quite well. When there was complaining about 3dsmax from others, I was enjoying and learning about the programme. It is very rewarding when you get to see your final product in 3d on the computer and I really enjoyed the Gladiator model as we got to rig it and we got to see our character move around an environment. I did think for a couple of the tasks we were given too much time was given. I then started to ease off of my work flow and not keeping to my schedule due to the long production time, but this only happened twice. Going in to the second year i would like to see more of our last project which was the gun project, as we got to come up with an original idea and develop it so it included all 3 sub sections (visual design, game production and critical studies). Here is and image of my Gladiator.

The size of the groups for our critical game studies is just right as it is not overcrowded and we can all have a say in the discussions going on. At the start of the year our group wasn’t talking or discussing that much and I think is due to people not knowing each other enough, a suggestion to get around this is could have been a casual presentation/talk at the start of the year which was about the individual i.e. what games we play, what inspires us. Another suggestion is we could have organised to all meet up in one of the rooms for a general chat or even a trip to a pub for pint. I found the talks to be helpful as I have learned more about the industry and what a job in industry entails.

Task 11: Elements of game design, part four: environment

As you can tell from the title this week’s blog task is to talk about the environments in games. To start getting a working environment you need an idea now this idea needs to be well thought out and the best ideas are based on real life. You will need good visual reference i.e. photographs or videos and good sketches so you can visualize the overall level normally you would draw a lot of different designs from all angles.

You would then draw a floor plan for each level on the map depending if you game has multiple levels. Floor plans can help you decide where players will go through the level or how the map will be played. The floor plans can then be taken into engine and a white box can be created, this white box will allow you to scale and build your level in 3d so you can run around the map so you can see if it works. A white box should be a very simple overall design so you can iron out any problems that may occur when you play the map.

After this you should add terrain and a sky if your map is open and also add basic lighting so you can see the overall atmosphere of the map. The next step is to create basic textures and apply them to your white box so it gets rid of the flag texture, so it is then easier to take away parts of the map that will be static meshes. Adding objects is next and will always want to start working from big to small and you want don’t want to focus on a small part of the map the whole map needs love. You would then go into the texturing phases and then finally you would tweak the lights and start making them a bit more complex.

I’m saving my money for a game called brink it looks to be a really good game and his heavily stylised it is getting compared to team fortress 2. I believe as long as you don’t go wild on stylisation, you keep everything consistent and always reference things from real life the player should not loose belief in the game world. Brinks environments are really well made and look amazing they have got the atmosphere just right and looks just like their early concept art. An area called container city looks just like the slums in Brazil and India lots of corrugated metal all rusted and decaying there are areas with neon signs quite like blade runner but the lights could have been influenced from other cities i.e. Japan. Brink has a key feature in its game called the smart system "Smart Movement Across Random Terrain" this allows players to run, jump and strafe across the environment to get a better view point on other players and the maps. This means all the environment has specific collision boxes and each object has been placed in the environment with thought and precision.

Task 10 Elements of game design, part three: Character

Hey people this week I’m going to be talking about characters and what they can bring to certain types of media.

When I read books (which isn’t often) I like to visualise the character in my own way so a book with important descriptions of character in it is perfect for me. Normally when I read books I can emphasis with the characters more than in films. I’m currently reading a book by Andy McNab called Zero Hour, I really like Andy McNab books due to the realism, language used, important character descriptions and history behind the main character. In Zero Hour as you find out about the character. (Spoiler alert) as I continued to read I found out that the main character has a terminal illness, this made me empathise with the character more due to the raw human emotion that surrounds terminal illnesses.

A film that I really liked and found it easy to empathy with the characteristics was inception to be a really good film due to the script and actors. I started to believe that the dreams and its intruders could actually happen due to the great acting and also that our dreams are private and the script bends that theory completely. Also Leonardo de Caprio plays the main character because he has lost his wife which is very traumatic experience.

The Directors/Writers use our human emotions to empathise with the characters, also putting the characters in certain situations will provoke different responses.

When Directors/Writers choose to create a character they need 6 key points and here they are.

1.       Speech: The content and manner of speech can help evoke personality such as shy, aggressive and anxious.

2.       Motivation: The character ought to have good reasons for their actions.

3.       Concreteness: Everything has to be realistic your character, giving your character specific beliefs is one way another is to create more information about your character for instance, specific brands from certain supermarkets this could show his social background and income.

4.       Change: A character should react to their responses either by changing or avoiding the change. The character needs to grow and develop throughout the story by adapting to situations.

5.       Behaviour: A good way to show a characters behaviour is to put the character under stress which can reveal certain traits. The behaviour of the character needs to be regular with what we already know of the character.

6.       Symbolic association: The mind associates meaning to an image/event thus making it symbolic. So if I was to choose the colour red as the colour of my characters jacket it could show that he is angry.

I’ve recently watched the whole series of The Walking Dead and it is a fantastic TV show, but it was first a comic book and I’m looking to buy them to. The Show is directed by Frank Darabont who is also known for directing The Green Mile and The Shawshank Redemption. The camera angles used help me feel as if I could be in the show its self. The character Rick Grimes is played by Andrew Lincoln who is an English actor and plays a quintessential American cop his acting is amazing in the show. The main story line is Rick is a cop he wakes up one day from a coma to find the earth is overrun by walkers (zombies) and he doesn’t know what has happened to his family so he tries to find them.

So overall I believe that a character needs a history and we need to know a bit about it to fully understand a character. Using traumatic or stressfully events can show a character in another light and can also help us empathise with the character.

General Chat

This week I am going to chat about the course that I am studying which is Games Art at De Montfort University. In the past week we have been studying some of the master artists of our choice.

I chose to study Egon Schiele I found out about his work from a book called “the art book” the book contains lots of influential artists and was published in 1994.  I really liked his portraits due to the realistic look to the figures but on closer inspection you notice how he distorts the human form and proportions. I also love the colours he uses for the skin tones these colours to me seem quite dirty and on purpose. We had to recreate the masters piece of work in any media we liked it had to resemble the original trying to emulate the brush strokes, here is my final outcome.

We also had to complete a painting on the study of another master, I chose Frans Hals. I really liked the quick, precise brush strokes and the very similar colour tones. I decided to use traditional media for this piece as I haven’t painted on a canvas before. I am really pleased with the final outcome, if I was to change anything I would use a similar pallet to the original.

Task 9: Elements of game design, part two: art direction for games

This week’s task is to write about art direction this involves what is an art director and what’s the difference between media with art direction.

An Art director in the media of games is in charge of the art team and what the team produces. The art director makes crucial decisions like which way should the art style go, what visual elements should be used, what the team should be working on and a lot more. As an Art director you need to lead your team into creating concepts and then forming them in the media. The art director will be in charge of lots of smaller groups normally managed by lead artists he/she would arrange frequent meeting with all groups to see if they are heading in the right direction he/she is looking for. The Art director will look out for anything that does not merge with the art direction he/she is looking for, and you would have to change it to his specifications. Art directors are responsible to the Game designer and the publisher.

I believe that the Art director has a very creative role in making a game. As the Art director gives critical analysis and feedback on the way the assets look, to the overall art direction. This analysis should be given back to the creator responsible and should not be negative unless the object in discussion is completely wrong haha. When I say the feedback should not be negative I mean that you shouldn’t be rude and impolite, you still need to give crits telling them if something is wrong. The Art director needs to be positive otherwise the studio will be a horrible place to work as the staff will not put any effort into the assets.

The Art director in films is a very important job you would work under the production designer and you would be in charge of the whole art department and collaborating with the Set director. If you were an Art director in this field you would have more of a managerial role. You would have to work with other departments such as Locations Department and Special FX.

In advertising the Art director is not the head honcho but is a part of a coalition with another role called a Copywriter. They collaborate with each other creating the initial concepts, the Copywriter is in charge of the textual content and the Art director is in charge of the visual design. The overall outcome should be a joint effort.

As of now I’m not sure if I would want to be an Art director as it seems to be more of a managerial role in the games industry but down the line in my carrier this might be more suited to me? Who knows haha? If I wanted to become an Art director I would need to have impressive skills and experience in video games and I would have preferably been working in the games industry for a while. Although there are some circumstances in which people have got the job even if they haven’t studied or worked their way through the game industry they have studied courses such as fine art and photography.

Controller layouts and custom mapping

Hey guys, this week I saw a video from PAX the video showed a disabled man asking developers why a lot of their games was not catering to him and other fellow disabled gamers. The reason why the gentleman could not play certain games on consoles was due to the button layouts they provided he could not press specific buttons at certain times. His aim was to get the console developers more aware of people in his situation or similar situations.

PC developers have a reputation for allowing their players the freedom to customise their setup and even the game its self through mods. Games like Call of Duty and World of Warcraft allow their players to customise their own control schemes, for instance there is a mouse from razor that has 17 programmable buttons that means if you mapped all the controls on to the mouse you wouldn’t have to touch the keyboard for certain games.

Games like Call of Duty and Halo have been giving their players control pre-sets for a while this has been helpful for players, especially those that play other games with similar pre-sets. A new game from Bethesda/Splash Damage is called Brink, Brink will have custom mapping for consoles. This is great news but why is Brink the first game to do this? As it seems stupid to alienate a potential consumer.

Here are my thoughts on why game developers might not want to allow custom mapping for consoles. Consoles have game controllers with a specific amount of buttons and the amount is normally quite small, therefore the developers could be thinking that they are giving to many options to the player who then could get confused. Other developers believe the layout they have given the character is the best layout to play the game.

Overall I believe all games on consoles should allow custom mapping but I believe we should still keep the specific pre-sets, they should be packaged together.

Task 8: Elements of game design, part one: from Pong to next-gen…

In this week’s Blog post I am going to talk about Game design and some of the choices made in the process. 

Gameplay is the interactive aspects that a player is allowed to execute in a game. These aspects could be obstacles tasks or others, you need good instinctive controls that help the gameplay. A good plot/story and if the player can relate to at least one character in your game you are on the winning path. I see good gameplay as, the player fully immersed, felling emotions like empathy hatred, with a well thought out control system and new/unique more complex challenges to keep me playing and entertained. As a player I like rewards and being punished for the decisions I make during a game, unlocking weapons/upgrades keeps me playing a game due to the changes.

Here are some of the most recognizable and talented game designers, I have chosen these designers due to me loving there work. Hideo Kojima was best known for the series Metal Gear Solid, Hideo in 2008 was given the award show's first ever Lifetime Achievement Award for a game designer at the MTV game awards and was also honored with a Lifetime Achievement Award at the 2009 GDC. Clifford Bleszinski helped create one of my favourite Xbox 360 title Gears of War. Here are the obvious Sid Meier and Will Wright both talented guys between them making games like Civilization and The Sims.

Game design takes can take occur in a number of places, you will need a quick over view of your game this is thought up by your lead designers or an employee this will then be shown to the publishers and may follow the constraints set by them. The programmers and artists then go away produce design documentation so that they can set them self-goals to achieve and so they know what they have to complete within the specific time schedule.

If you are a third-party developer you will usually work with game publishers to develop a multiplatform title. The publisher and the developer both have a say in the design and content of the game. The publisher's normally has the final say over the developer's due to the fact that the publisher is paying the developer to create the title.

I am a first person shooter fan and yes I like call of duty but I also play lots of different genres and styles of games. I am waiting for Guild Wars 2 to come out so I can play my first massively multiplayer game as I’m interested to find out how MMO’s keep the players immersed in the game. As I find FPS get me involved a lot more and I also feel empathy with characters in the game, a 3^rd person game doesn’t normally have the same effect with me. So I would say that different genres of games have different design principles.

When I play a game I look for a good story that keeps me interested hours through the game and the story must make me empathies with the characters. I hope that there is no on the rail sections as it breaks the level of immersion for me.