A whole days work is finally starting to pay off !

Life is worth living again.

So this week has pretty much been like a reading week seeing as everyone has reviews and we don’t have to go in for lectures or seminars etc. not the best way to tink of it

Buuuuut

Unlike last years ‘week off’ ive been up for 10am eeevvery day (sacrificing my usual 9 hours ) to be up and productive.

Ive made quite a lot of progress with work, the occasional speed paint and blog entry went down a treat, and I finally finished modelling my self-portrait so I could start unwrapping today. I just didn’t realise how frustrating spending my day with UV’s would become !

I literally spent from 10 till 4 trying to find the best method of pelt mapping.

I swear Max kept trying to piss me of. Replacing seems right after I had specifically deleted them, totally resetting UV meshes that I had painstakingly managed to create… I swear pelt mapping is the most complicated thing ever invented, or it just hates me.

Everyone knows the best way to create a mesh for the figure is to pelt map. But for the whole day, no matter what I did, the model always ended up was uvs stretched all over the body in some parts and too tightly packed in others.

It took me a while to figure out why my head wouldn’t unwrap properly. For some reason the stretcher, that goes around the outside of the uv to pull them out evenly, was only attached to the lips. Rather than encompassing the whole of the head.

I tried for ages to find a solution. Eventually I noticed because the lips weren’t attached together, a permanent seem has to be there ? so I extruded the lips inside the mouth and joined them together as kind of hidden geometry. 

And voila ! check it.

The seam disappeared. I re-pelted and it worked ! I actually couldn’t believe it, THIS made my day. I was so close to giving up aswell. Trying different ways of fixing a problem, always ending in failure had taken its toll haha.

I guess if I went to labs there would’ve been someone there to help, but no, im too ill ! Youtube will have to do.

Visual Composition

Composition is basically the layout of the image, deciding what is the most important part and organsising everything else accordingly

I guess its like, when youre taking a picture, you always aim to get ‘everything’ in and generally stand to where would be the most effective viewpoint.

Pieces of work representing good composition use all forms of technique, manipulating the image through use of lines and shape, colour, tone and space.

Using the Rule of Thirds is a good basis in creating good composition. The method involves splitting the canvas into 9 equal parts and dividing the subjects into them. It’s said to create more interest in the elements rather than world itself.

Composition is important, it’s something we have to consider as artists in both the 2d and 3d world. In a painting the artist has to create the layout of the painting from a single fixed viewpoint.

A particular fine art piece I like comes from Joseph Wright of Derby, traditionally a Chiaroscuro artist, painting both landscape and portraits.

The’ Vesuvius from Posillipo’ shows excellent use of compositional elements. Looking at this now I can actually see the rule of thirdsbeing used. The white of the clouds are separated from the red of the volcano, by the moonlight illuminating the night’s sky. This battle is then reflected down into the ocean broken up by landscape eventually leading to the silloheute of the ship.

The balance between light and dark really creates quite a haunting image. I find the use of red in this image interesting, although it is illuminate, it’s almost shielded underneath the dark plooms of smoke contrasted against the true light from the clouds.

Composition in paintings is tough to get right, and it doesn’t normally happen by chance.

However in the three dimensional world, the artist now has to organise the scene from every angle possible so that no matter where the player is standing in the world, the environment is always pleasing on the eye.

Quite a task id imagine.

I think its only from the most recent trash project that I’ve really started thinking about composition. Id always move the camera to a suitable spot and adjust the lighting for renders, but with this project was different due to modelling lots of different assets in one scene. I ultimately decided by creating 10 different trash scenes and picking the one that looked the best.

This method worked fine for a 500 poly trash scene, but it would take faaaaaaaar too much time to do this for a large environment (which is why planning and concepting is so important ! ! haha )

There are ways of getting around this problem. ‘Blocking out’ objects and landscape, adjusting them to get a feel for the scene.

This is particularly useful in creating cityscapes. Well this is what ive been told. Ive never actually done it before so ill think ill do one now to prove my point haha

So this is 20 minutes spontaneous work, but if you have an aim or a theme in mind it’s a good way to get a gist of the layout of the scene with a three dimensional perspective. This ones better than mine.  

Facial Topology

I thought wasting a day was bad, but ive wasted a week of precious 3ds max time, ironic just after watching 'In Time'

I thought it’d be best to get my act together and start work on the mortal engines self-portrait because there’s a hell of a lot to do in such a short amount of time. So over the past week ive put a lot of effort starting with  my head, modelling wasn’t to difficult but I put a lot of time into creating nice and clean geometry and I really wanted it to look like me.

 My efforts ending with this

It wasn’t ultil this Tuesday after alomost a whole days work at the labs when at 4 o’clock I found out that everything I had been doing was basically, wrong…

I was blissfully unaware of the rules in creating portraits.

Turns out every polygon has to have meaning and structure, geometry has to flow and circle around the head perfectly so it can be successfully rigged and animated.

From where I had got to the area around the eyes was solid, but from there down, everything had to go (except the nose, that can stay)

Rich suggested a good site from a previous student to aid in my second attempt at this project. I had to keep referring back to the pictures to see which line starts and finishes where, how many circles are needed in and out of the mouth etc, but eventually got a solid model which I hope is satisfactory (definitely need to check this with Heather !)

This has totally put me of character modelling for my final major project, and I haven’t even started to make the rest of the body yet, or rig it !

Looks like im gonna be spending a lot of my days at labs.

The worlds most fustrating puzzle...

And annoying, I forgot annoying.

The puzzle if you are wondering is punching packing UV’s into a texture sheet. It’s kinda like Tetris, but without the catchy music and fun. 

Seeing as we have to save texture space by making sure we use as much of the page as possible, I decided to go all out and literally cover the page with UVs. So I start to pack them only to realise my efforts have ended with many gaps and spaces.

So then I decided to make all of them bigger and try my luck squeezing them in. I went overboard, a little ambitious with how much I enlarged them, but no biggie ill work it out. 

I spent upmost of 45 minutes starring at green lines on a texture page (swear I could hear the tetris theme tune) But eventually after resorting/organising/scaling/spacing/prioritising/rotating, they all just slotted in !

Huzzah !

One thing I can be proud of, is that my UVs are MUCH denser packed than the computers effort.

1-0 to me ? computer cant even colour within in the lines ! 

Planning and Concepting

Compared to other courses, Game Art Design at DeMontfort has a heavy influence of 2d traditional artwork built into the course. The idea is that being a successful painter/sculptor will consequently make us a better Game Artist/modeller.

Also the guys at Blitz think having a strong traditional background is essential.

A games finished product is as result of a series of processes ultimately beginning with ideas and concepts. Concept art isn’t there to look pretty and make you go wooow it’s so beautiful, it serves a vital process in creating the overall feel and atmosphere of the game and ultimately, decides how well it sells

The important thing about concept art also is that we, as the consumers don’t get to see everything that is produced, just the finished painting. Despite how I (try too) digital paint, professional piartists spend a lot of time on planning things such as composition, subject and colour palet etc. so that they can create the best piece of work possible, everything is thought out.

Every brush stroke isn’t there by chance, it looks amazing because it’s been developed and fully planned out.

I think in the future ill have to start putting a little more thought into my digital paintings, I normally just go for it and hope for the best ! Probably not the greatest of ideas.

I guess it’s alright to do this as a digi paint for the scene we’ve been to in Visual Design, but when we have to create something from scratch ill have to do more research and development.

So what exactly is concept art ? well it’s defined as an idea, plan or an intention. It generally shapes the appearance of the game. Certain messages are conveyed in concept art through, use of colour and different tones used effectively convey an atmosphere or mood. For example you wouldn’t use bright primary colours if you wanted to create a post-apocalyptic landscape. Bit of an extreme example, but an example none the less.

viewpoints on the scene also depict and idea of what is happening. If something is needed to be portrayed as dominant & powerful then a low angle will be used. Looking up makes the viewer feel small compared to what is in front of them.

I think the concept art from Guild Wars 2 is stunning. LOOK AT IT, ITS SO BEAUTIFUL !!! I mean, from these images I can really tell that guild wars 2 will be really good ?

I really don’t know, never actually been a fan of the game, only heard good things though.

All the artwork carries a similar rolling theme. When immediately seeing a paint, the colour palet appears very simple, using just 2 colours accompanied with shadows and highlights.

Particularly in this piece where a strong sense of orange and blue are used. This also helps to separate up the image, using orange in the foreground and blue on the crane in the middle to identify different points of interest. 

One thing I noticed is that all of the painting has a strong light source, throughout the paintings there is always a strong contrast between light and dark .

Keeping the concept art in a similar theme and style helps to shape the game and ultimately giving it its unique appearance.

So yeah planning and concept art, its ruddy important !

Reflection of the first year & ambitions for the second

So taking another look back at the first year im pretty sure my opinion of it is still the same. I smoked too much weed and just didn’t do any work. Looking back it was really stupid risking not getting through the first year.

I did some work that I was proud of, the traditional masters study of Peter Howsons work and my version of my face done as a digital painting were probably my favourite pieces of work from visual design.

I aim to be awesome at digital painting by the end of this term. Its something id really like to do, just turns out I’m not very good at it atm. Practise practise practise

This year I’ve decided to structure/sort my life out. No more time wasting spending hours literally doing nothing. Spend my time wisely so I can relax occasionally.

I was terrible at 3dsmax at the start of the year. None of the program made sense to me. Once I thought I had modelling sorted we’d start texturing giving me something else to fail at. It wasn’t until the van project where I really started to know what was going on.

Planar unwrapping ftw – my favourite and worst part of 3dsmax.

My work majorly improved as time went on. It seemed that after every hand in id learnt a new revolutionary technique, or just generally improved my skills in certain areas. My best piece of work would have to be the summer project (im counting that as first year)but literally because it was the most recent thing I made, therefore the best ? plus motorbikes are awesome.

There’s still so much more I can learn from 3dsmax, I’m guessing I’ve barely scratched the surface of what this program has to offer. Hopefully over the next couple of years ill explore more of the software. Maybe just go mad and use every single modifier and texture space.

Actually looking forward to it, particularly using Zbrush. I dunno, It just looks interesting sculpting and painting over something you’ve already made.

I’m still abit foggy about how environments are made. Specially in games like Battlefield with HUUUGE maps. Are they all made with autodesk or another program ? something like the level editor in FarCry 2, that was fun

I feel (as if i) need to start thinking about what I want to do as my final major project. I remember (you, my only folower haha) Mike saying that the best idea is to choose what you want to do rather than what you find easiest.

Makes sense

I know designing characters would be cool but I’m not thaaat interested in that, 1 down. I find environments pretty daunting but that’s because we haven’t had much any experience with them yet. I’m actually a little surprised that so far none of the projects have had anything to do with them.

not even like a little scene or something

at this moment in time im sold on vehicles, but im unsure whether this is because I find them the easiest. I guess theres still plentyyy of time to decide what I want to do.

FREE CHAIRS ! ! ! !

Were given out today at the Newalk Dinosaur museum. Which I honestly found quite amazing, more so actually than the fossils themselves. Who woulda thought ?

Despite the initial joy of FREE CHAIRS, after about 10 minutes of drawing I hadn’t realised my leg had completely fallen asleep and I so very almost collapsed when I tried to stand up.

I looked a fool.

The museum was pretty interesting, but there was a lot of background noise. Forgot how large quantities of small children can be so annoying. For some reason, It being half term and all, parents take their kids to museums. Which meant it was super busy with over excited kids running around everywhere screaming (and learning )

The security guard didn’t look too impressed either when about 30 Game Art students strolled into the gallery setting up chairs all around the exhibits. He threw a bit of a hissy fit ( not really ) and we had to split into two groups, half downstairs drawing stuffed animals and the other upstairs drawing dried up fossils.

Loughborough

So this time I actually made it to the right station *pats self on back. This was right up my street, definitely enjoy drawing bits of machinery and mechanical bits and bobs over natural things. There was a such a diverse variety of things to draw so I could happily spend the day with my head in my sketchbook. I was blessed with the weather providing a lovely day of drawing.

All the staff were surprisingly nice as well. An old man approached me and asked if I wanted to see inside the shed

Bit dodgy ?

He said put a pound in the box and you can stroll round providing you stick to the paths. Inside were lots of machinery so I guess the shed was where the mechanics repair old engines and such. I also got some nice pictures from inside there which was quite a bonus *upload to flickr.

So yeah, great central railway IN Loughborough, MUCH better than Loughborough Train Station.

What A Waste of A Day

This weeks visual design task - trip to Loughborough Station.

But apparently Loughborough Station and The Great Railway Station IN Loughborough are two different places.

Well me and Steve where un-aware of this and ended up spending the day at a standard National Rail train service platform. I did think at the time that, suuuuurely we not meant to be drawing this place, there’s like, nothing here ! Turns out we had to take a 20 minute walk to find our actual destination.

It wasn’t until labs yesterday we’d realised the error in our ways. We were just casually talking to fellow Game Art people when we were like

We didn’t see any of you guys at the station yesterday

Really, we were there all day

Loughborough Station right ?

Yeah, with all the old trains

Then it started to click that maybe we’d gone to the wrong place. Everyone found this highly amusing. I was already upset about paying money for a train fare, but now I’ve got to pay ANOTHER £4.80 to hopefully not make the same mistake twice.

Back to School

It’s the start to a new year back on Game Art Design, which means a fresh start to the course where this year, I AM going to change my ways, complete all the work on schedule and not let it all build up putting me under extreme pressure and stress.

So far so good, judging from the first week anyway.. Actually went to all the lectures, which imho is quite an achievement in itself. After the trip to Abbey Park I managed to get the majority of the prep sketches done so I could swiftly focus on other areas. Chris wanted us to start using colour in our work so I took a trip to Dominos toy shop and invested in the cheapest pack of acrylic paints I could find ( poor student )

These are 3 attempted paints. Honestly… they’re not great. I just can’t paint for shit ( despite having an A level in Art ) I guess the theory is the more I do it the better I’ll get. So I’m not going to give up and just persevere through until I reach a marvellous breakthrough. The same kinda thing happened which 3dsmax. I noticed however my painting skills improved which each attempt.

TREASURE CHEST!!!

Is the name of the next 3dsmax task. Out of the 3 tasks ( Chest, Trash and our face ) the chest is the one I’m least excited about doing. Not completely sure why this is, maybe just because we’re all making the same thing and there’s not that much room for variety ?

Yeah I think that might be it.

Heather wanted us to personalize them, but at the moment im not completely sure how im going to go about this. So far I’ve made most of the chest and I just have to add the final details. Ive got plenty of tris left to do this so there won’t be any issues there. The only thing holding me back appears to be my imagination.

I struggled at the start making the chest, working from a single perspective reference was quite a challenge. My main issue was that I couldn’t figure out how the legs were meant to fit around the body of the chest. It was all mighty confusing, but after playing with the geometry for a while I finally figured it out. Yay.

I aim to completely finish the modelling by the end of the second weeks game production session, fully unwarp and maybe even start a bit of cheeky texturing as well. Ambitious.

I’m a little bit worried about texturing as it all has to be hand painted, and my digital painting skills aren’t really that great. My tablet has appeared to have fucked up overnight and isn’t recognizing the pen pressure which is a bit of a bummer. Will have to get this sorted out or most likely use the tablets in the labs.

Summer Project

Well first off I’m just gonna say I really should’ve kept up with my blog over the summer holidays, its going to be weird having to get used to talking to myself again, oh the joys of blog writing.

So… the Summer Project – the choice between an environment, vehicle, character or animal. I thought I’d go down the vehicle route. From here it was a tough decision what to model, but I wanted to create something from a 3d reference which I could see fully before my eyes.

So I went to various arts crafts and toy shops (Toys ‘R’ us bringing back so many childhood nostalgic memories, was so tempted to roll round the store in their electronic cars, but turns out they don’t leave batteries in them anymore ! how sad) anyways, I was trying to find an airfix kit which I could work from. Ideally I wanted to make a motorcycle, and eventually I found one, the Honda CBR 1100xx… Perfect !

It’s also like the daddy version of my CBR 125R back at home haha.

Making it was fun, it’s been a while since I sat down with the smell of glue sticking tiny bits of plastic together. But after a couple of days the model was finished and it was time to restart max and create the bike in the virtual world !

My first attempt was rather shabby, I started off modelling the side fairing but not really thinking about what I was doing. After a while though I decided it wasn’t working out and it was time to start again.

After this it went surprisingly smoothly creating the geometry ( I was actually thinking about what I was doing ) I think having the Model Airfix kit in front of me really helped as I could really see the curves and shapes on the bike and I was able to covert this into 3dsmax. I had the hardest time making the fuel tank, for a while I couldn’t get the right shape and when it did, it wouldn’t fit onto the bike correctly. Eventually though I got this sorted out.

I am pleased with the final outcome. The bike resembles the real thing and I also explored new techniques within texturing such as reflective maps to make the model nice and shiny. however there are small details which I didn’t manage to create within the tri budget, which I would’ve liked to have included. The wheels could also do with a higher use of polys, looks uncomfortable to ride in the real world !

Wheelie Bin Re-do

So I randomly decided to do the second week project again, seeing as my previous efforts were somewhat poor due to my skills at 3ds max. Shoddy modelling and an inability to texture properly lead this project looking like fail.

So heres a new version of the project, this time knowing how to use max, bin fully unwrapped & textured and I did all in 4 hours or so compared to the weeks we were allotted for this talk.

This bin is modelled much more efficiently using 598 tris out of the 600 allowed for the ‘low poly bin’ My original version was actually over 1700 tris, don’t exactly how I managed that as the geometry wasn’t even that complicated, probably just wasted tris all over the place.

I think a lot of them came from extreme chamfering everywhere to make courners look smooth, but at the time I didn’t know that proper use of smoothing groups can have the same effect and use less tris.

I guess it wasn’t expected to be amazing first time round after a few weeks lessons, but I really had no idea when we were doing this project. I remember being surprised at the time that it resembled a bin!

The texturing could be better on the new version tbh, its all hand painted as I lost my reference photos, didn’t spend that long painting it, because I got bored of doing a project id already done before haha

First Year Review

So as the course comes to an end, its time to take a critical look back over the past 6 months of my life as a Game Art student. I can say that overall Its been good! Difficult… but good.

Considering I was oh so close to switching courses to fine art at the start of the year, I believe ive made most progress in the 3d production side. The first few weeks or so were honestly pretty horrible as me and autodesk just didn’t get along, I barely understood any of the lectures and didn’t really ask for any help, just suffered in silence. What didn’t help is that a lot of people already seemed to be familiar with the software advancing through the lectures with ease, which just made me even more useless haha.

I think I started to get to grips with the modelling during the Building Project, however my texturing was still abit dodgy as at this point I was still using tile-able textures rather than unwrapping and using texture sheets, purely because I didn’t know how to unwrap properly. It wasn’t until the van project where Mike explained to me planar unwrapping and everything started to make sense.

What I found weird is that I got more assistance from people around me rather than from Heather, I guess its difficult to help a class of our size and keep everyone satisfied. At least you get to have a personal chat with her when she walks round with the register.

Also I never understood any of her tutorials at the beginning of the lesson haha. Didn’t know any of the terminology and she went through it so quickly I just didn’t take anything in.

I think my main issue this year has been my time management and work effort, often struggling to keep up with the workload expected from the visual design part of the course. Although we are meant to be ‘full time’ students so I don’t really have much of an excuse.

Im just abit jealous, it seems that all of my friends on different courses have it easier for the first year. When im in my room working, my flatmates will be in the kitchen/living room combo having a fifa tournament/getting drunk. It’s just not faaaaair haha.

I guess it is good however that the first year is to test our capabilities, to see whether we can handle the next 2 years of the course so its not a shock to our system. Just wasn’t expecting it to be as intense.

Ive enjoyed going to the various locations, drawing thumbnails to prepare for a final piece. Pumping Station was my favourite, would’ve been Bradgate Park but its too cold, windy and miles away. I think my drawing skills have improved since the first semester, particularly with scale and rendering techniques. I definitely still need to work on my digital paintings. Im not quite sure whether or not this is a skill we’ve supposed to have developing already? But anyhow they are improving as time goes on.

The life drawing classes are useful also. However I feel that it would be better if we got a little more tuition during them, for instance where ive done classes before the tutor would be drawing at the same time, describing the best way to draw the pose. Its good that Chris and Jack walk round everyone giving advice, but a little more general assistance would be nice.

I do enjoy the critical studies lesson, I like the variety of things we do such as talking around the table, watching selected scenes from films or just discussing interesting things. However I do think we should really talk about the blog tasks more, seeing as that’s what I assumed these lessons were about. Would be nice to have more of an idea how we should approach each task.

I’m definitely glad I decided to persevere through the hard times at the start of the year, the course is actually fun and very interesting learning a lot of new skills for a career I would like to pursue. Next year If there is a second year awaiting me, I definitely need to increase my work efforts and reduce the amount of money I spend on nights out and other recreational products. I will take Chris’s advice because I don’t want to become a lazy stoner who does no work haha.

What ive come to realise...

…what this course is doing to me

Whenever I see an object, set of speakers, a Kettle or even an in game asset I automatically think, how would I model this in 3ds max? Haha

And I literally can’t help it. Subconsciously it seems I start to think - hmm yeah id start with a cylinder, extrude there, yep that can be a separate object, until about 10 seconds in until I realise what im doing. I guess its kinda good because its helping me to visualise geometry and how I would re-create it in 3dsmax

So im thinking what I might start doing is over summer, whenever I start thinking these thoughts, when I get a chance ill load up autodesk and model & texture whatever occupied my mind. Just for abit of fun and It will also keep me up to date with the software so I don’t forget how to use it.

Game Design

Graphics and sounds effects aside, lets focus on a games Design

So what is it? Well Game Design covers a lot of aspects such as; the players interaction in the game, the general story and characters, the players connection to it/them and various challenges which the player has to overcome to continue on their quest!

So yeah quite a lot

The process usually starts from initial ideas, or developments from existing concepts, which will then be expanded and developed under 1 or more of the many gaming genres.

Game Design incorporates so much of the final product, that it seems fair to say the best design team are the ones which are most successful , selling most copies (seeing as its all about the money right?) and by this logic Treyarch are that team releasing black ops becoming the bestselling game, EVAR!

This however looking at a single game, but the most successful company overall is… Infinity Ward

What? Great… Call of Duty isn’t that good! Well I guess its all down to opinion, and hype.

Infinity Wards development team working on Modern Warfare 2 (cough its shit, what?) would have been fairly large, and nowadays the number of people working on a game can be anywhere from 20 to 200 depending on the scale and demands of the game.

Although back in the days when video games became a viable in the commercial market during the 1970s, a single programmer could design and develop a full game. Its only nowadays where games demand much more time and money meaning the task cannot be undertaken by one single person.

Well it could but they’d have to be a very talented individual willing to sacrifice a lot of their life to meet the modern industry standards.

I guess to some extent all game genres follow the same design principles, as they all have to consider the same general elements which make up a game.

And if you think that most games are based on something, that has been inspired by something else from the beginning of gaming history, then all titles are deviations of the same thing (if that makes sense? Does in my brain, kinda)

Although I’m not sure if a games genre is decided before release in the early stages, or after so designers can have more freedom when developing the game?

When deciding to fork out money for games, I do appreciate titles that have a strong single player component, preferably something that has multiple replay value through the solo campaign. But overall I ultimately sold on the games multiplayer component, as that’s where I tend to spend most of my time. It’s just nice to have a solid single player as well.

I prefer the player to player side rather than interacting with NPC’s, they're just not real and kinda freaks me out a little bit. Driving at stupid mph round the Nurburgring In Forza 3, id rather race against real people in another country rather than a car which has been programmed to go round a track.

The same goes for FPS games, shooting wave after wave of AI isn’t as satisfying as earning a kill online where it has an impact to someone. The human element side to the game makes it kinda feel more real.

Game Review

After a long hard think about what game I should review, It dawned on me, as a game art design student, I play nowhere near as many games as I used too. Back home before university I swear I was playing at least 2 hours a day of whatever I fancied.

So what game to review…? I think it’s gonna have to be between something I used to play regularly/the last game I played.

So a review of… Limbo yaaay

This the premier title from independent games developer Playdead studios. Limbo is a sidescroller platform puzzle game which uses a physics engine to challenge the player.

The game opens with the unnamed character waking up in a cruel and sadistic world where everything and everyone wants to kill him. The aim of the game is basically to go right, when a puzzle emerges, solve it, and 'keep on a running.’

The game is paced very well, getting progressively harder as you venture through its world. Its also extremely addictive. With no loading screens just one continuous level, I found myself extremely immersed in this world not noticing the hours go by playing the game.

Get used to dying a lot, the developers described journey through the game as trail or death! How pleasant. Some of the deaths are absolutely gruesome, ever seen a small child decapitated by saws at least 5 times larger than him.

Its weird as even after knowing Ive failed a puzzle, I always found myself trying to keep that little boy alive as long as I could before his inevitable disturbing death.

I particularly hated seeing him get electrocuted, grim stuff.

The games sound track is basically made up from noises made from ingame objects. They succeed to add to the general disturbing atmosphere of the game. Particularly in the later levels set in the factory. These sound effects are also key in solving certain puzzles as you can use them to your advantage where timing is needed.

Considering the game is completely monochrome it still manages to look aesthetically pleasing. Just goes to show that you don’t need thousands of polys and texture maps to make a game look beautiful. The silhouette of the foreground cast in front of a descending eerie landscape makes even just walking through the level is an experience worth while.

The only criticism I found is the water physics. For instance when the water level rises around set terrain it doesn’t always behave realistically. But really I’m just nip picking here, I’m sorry.

The game is full of black-humour. Moments when you’ve thought you were safe after avoiding a fallen man trap to be finding yourself running into another. As the game progresses some of the puzzles are just incredible – switches and levers which control objects, gravity and even the weather always leave you contemplating what challenges you will face next. And the game never fails to disappoint.

Except however for the rather abrupt ending, literally just didn’t see it coming. But I still remember the first time I played through to Limbo’s epic final moment, sending chills down my spine and standing my hairs on end, has to be one of my favourite game endings ever. Although there definitely could have been more or a build up to its climax. Definitely hoping for a sequel as the ending suggests, hopefully ICO style with the girl (apparently your sister) as your accomplice.

Limbo offers something original, atmospheric and totally enthralling. Although its campaign is somewhat short you will love every minute that this game has to offer. The verdict - if you have an xbox 360… BUY THIS GAME! If you don't, get one!

an interesting article also about the game, worth a read.

Environment

There are lots of different genres of games which change the layout of the environment. Platform games are traditionally set on a 2d landscape, literally meaning there’s just lots of platforms and you have to jump a lot to get to them. Or you dieee

But as time went on and technology got better games moved into the Third dimension, meaning environments could be more expansive, and better!

It seems in modern games there are two different types of game genres which influence level design.

Sandbox games and rail shooters.

I guess there are some games which do create a balance between both. Bad Company 2 for example. Yes you were lead through a straight path from one checkpoint to another, but the game was kinda split into these big sections where you could choose which way you wanted to go through the level. Giving a small extent of freedom. The game also had gorgeous scenic backdrops.

These two types of level design are better suited, and can be used to influence the style that the game strives to achieve.

Horror games which want to scare the player usually force them through corridors conforming to the rail shooter genre. They are also normally heavily scripted so that certain events will happen when the player walks past a trigger.

The environment is usually adapted so that the player will be more likely to see the event. Moving/falling objects, lights and sounds can all be used to attract the player’s attention.

Then to scare the shit out of them…

Plus games are generally scarier when set in small dark corridors. A zombie stumbling across a field isn’t half as scary as one jumping out of a vent infront of your face!

Compared to purely sandbox based games such as ARMA II and Just Cause 2 where the player has complete freedom in the games world. The sandbox genre suits these games really well.

Seeing as ARMA II is a realistic modern military shooter, the sandbox suits this games aim really well

The game places you in its virtual world and gives the player objectives. How you get to and complete them is entirely up to you. For instance you and your squad might be asked to infiltrate a village of a known enemy position and retrieve a key asset. How you get there and what approach you take to achieve your objective is entirely up to you.

The game feels realistic and is always tense due to the fact it doesn’t take a lot to down an enemy soldier, or vice versa. You always feel vaulnerable standing

This game is definitely suited to the more hardcore gamer. Playing COD to prepare yourself for this game is not advised. You also need a really good PC. I can play Crysis on very high but my brain starts to hurt after playing ARMA for more than 10 minutes due to the stuttery frame rate rape…

Whats interesting about environments is that developers can create stunning landscapes which can only be seen and explored in games.

For this world to be believable I think there needs to be a high level of immersion into its world. A game which does this really well is Bioshock. Set in an alternate 1960s the player miraculously survives a plane crash to discover the massive underwater metropolis that is Rapture.

SUCH an amazing city.

Rapture is essentially based on the Manhattan borough of New York with a network of reinforced (waterproof) tunnels connecting buildings.

Some of my favourite levels come from Battlefield 2. I think it was the scale of the game, not just the 64 player count but how huuuuge the multiplayer maps were. Wake Island Particually stands out. I believe that Forrest Dowling was lead designer, after hours (not hours) of searching the internet his name seems most prominent.

The map is a remake of the original from Battlefield 1942, which was based on an of shore Japanese island where attacks took place simultaneously after the bombings at Pearl Harbor 1941. In both versions the maps are littered with wreckage from downed planes, boats and vehicles.

I think for a career path environments seem a lot more interesting than characters. But never know might change my mind.

Gladiator Project

Well here’s what I think is my worst project so far this term from the 3d side of my course. The gladiator. Well ill first explain why I think it went o so horribly wrong... not enough time…

I left a week for texturing the body and rigging the model. Didn’t realise how frustrating rigging would become.

This is my gladiator anyway. As we had a limited amount of 300 tris to add additional weapons and armor, I thought I’d try and cover my gladiator in as much armor as possible. Was pretty pleased with my efforts. But when it came down to putting an animation on him, bit of body were coming through the armor everywhere. I didn’t really understand the enveloping. Something about keeping bits of geometry within the envelope so they moved together.

But despite my efforts, nothing succeeded in working.

So in heinsight… I should have really spent less tris on armor and more on weapons (and made a baddass helmet).

The pose in the above picture is pretty much the only one in the animation where his skin isn’t through his clothing and bits of elbow left behind.

Up to this point however everything had gone smoothly. The first thing to do was to search through the many pictures of Heathers naked men on K drive, to find suitable ones for front left and back to model over. Then follow tutorials on blackboard for the best way to create the human form.

This project was after the van, so a jump from creating a box with wheels to modelling a human figure was pretty big, but ive become a lot more confident with the software and to my surprise I didn’t find it toooooo difficult to complete this part.

Next step was making a head separately to the body. Learnt another new technique here to add to the bag - Box modelling, yaaaaay. This worked out well compared to my first attempt before looking at tutorials. I did find it difficult however to create lips, still unsure of how to this properly.

I am pretty pleased with how the head turned out. Thought he was gonna be an ugly mo fo, so I decided to cover most of his face with a helmet. At the time I thought we were allowed to spend leftover tris from the body to use on props and armor. Turned out, we weren’t. So I had to begin the task of cutting down geometry on the armor to stay within budget.

He actually has no ears but shhhh he doesn’t need them :P

I also followed the tutorial on blackboard to create low poly hands, using a similar method to creating the head. I did have abit of trouble making these but nothing to serious and they turned out alright. Although I have learned from looking back on this project, there are lots of verts which need to be connected together. I didn’t know at the time that polys can only be 4 sided.

Texturing was abit of a nightmare, visible seems literally everywhere around arms shoulders neck, everrrywheeere basically. But I just didn’t have time to sort it out if I wanted to get the thing rigged. Ive learnt my lesson from this one. Don’t leave things last minute

Time management is crucial…

Characters

It seems that after the COD period, focused on trigger happy killing, more and more games have started to focus on a story driven element.

Some games, such as Heavy Rain, have even gone so far as to have a completely story driven game where you control multiple characters actions. The game is basically like watching a film but the player gets to decide upon the outcome, resulting in multiple endings and fair amount of replay value. Except for the start however where you’re just responsible for hauling the guys arse out of bed and brushing his teeth.

Characters are what drives a story forward, whether in books, TV or films. The personalities created can make the viewer feel all kinds of emotion towards them.

Some of my favourite characters I’ve encountered come from the film ‘This is England’ and 86’ the mini TV series which followed. The plot tells the story of a 12 year old boy Shaun, raised alone by his mother during the Thatcher period. Having a hard time at school, Shaun joins Woody and his skin head friends and is essentially adopted by them.

All is going well until Combo, the darker, more political side to the gang returns from jail and re assumes his place.

Woody represents the happier side of the skinhead movement, up for having a laugh and listening to SKA. Compared to combo who is the grim underbelly representing all the negatives of the skinhead movement.

Shaun looks up to combo, idolising his strength and power as he quickly becomes a figure of authority due to his sudden & dramatic entrance. Soon Shaun starts to follow in his footsteps. Mimicking his every move, spray painting racist slogans, attending political rallies and issuing threats to Pakistani shop keepers. Totally unaware of his actions and events which would later unfold.

Milkyyyyyy noooooooooo :’(

The film is mainly a story of coming of age and a great depiction of right wing nationalism which emerged from the Thatcher years.

Great characters don’t always have to be nice. One of my all-time favourites is Jules Winnfield played by Samuel Jackson in the movie pulp Fiction. Killing shouldn’t be cool, especially not whilst quoting the bible . Actually no this scene was on scale of epic proportions.

Each character in this film represents a different way of viewing the world. Jules’s perspective is from spirituality. He make decisions based on his innate feelings, causing a lot of arguments with his parter Vince who takes a more logical approach.

When a hiding gunman emerges from a door, fires at them and misses all 6 shots, Jules disagrees with Vince’s logic, arguing this is an act of god, divine intervention. Causing him to leave this lifestyle and seek redemption.

So what makes a good character? Script, acting, appearance?

Well I think I combination of all 3. How’s that for sitting on the fence. I’m actually surrounded by 3 fences and don’t know which one to jump over.

Well If an actor’s appearance suits the part they play, not necessarily acting like the stereotype of what the media expects them to be… but can adapt to the role they have been given and act realistically to the situation, then a believable character can come from it.

And decent characters don’t even have to have that many lines… Let’s take The Terminator for example. His script is so small and yet an amazing character has come from it. Making the Terminator utterly terrifying and seemingly invincible.

Just if youd like to know, Mr Schwarzenegger for fact made $7.1 million per word! throughout the terminator series. Not bad ay.

I think that stories from real situations makes for better story telling. Creating believable characters from events which once took place can make the audience relate to them and make them think, what would I do in that situation. Or WWJD ahaha. But yeah this doesn’t necessarily just mean dramas, but can include thrillers, action and war films. Band of Brothers - I’ll say no more.

Art Direction

Art Direction in games is very important; its main purpose is to immerse the player into the games world. This is done by setting up scenes in the environment, and using colours and textures correctly to convey a certain mood/atmosphere.

An Art Director basically crafts the desired feel for the game and is responsible for how this is communicated to the player. Making sure that from every possible angle environments are correct. They are basically responsible for everything in the game, the presuuure…

A good example where art direction has a great effect on the game is Fallout 3. The environments are very Grey and dull with rubble from destroyed buildings littering the landscapes, subways which are dark and gritty creating a very threatening atmosphere.

The game is set in 2277, 200 years after the nuclear apocalypse. Washington D.C has never progressed passed the 1950s.

However without even knowing the story, just from playing the game you can tell where and when you are. Particularly with the use of propaganda posters - which have a very distinct Art style from that era. Also all of the buildings and assets in the game world all look as if they have survived from a 50s apocalypse

Another good example is Red Dead Redemption, when im roaming the West on my trusty steed there was not one occasion where the surroundings did not look absolutely stunning. Hats of to rockstar.

Environments, props, textures, colour, lighting – all decided by the art director. The use of colour is very important. Colours can be assigned to characters and environments to convey a certain message/feeling. This is also very similar in film as art direction helps a film to develop its identity. Creating a unique style to distinguish itself from other titles.

Although Art direction doesn’t necessarily make a good film, acting, script and story line are generally more important, it could just be a bad film that looked nice. I often remember certain scenes from films purely from a visual perspective.

I think the art direction in Wall – E is amazing. This film relies heavily on visual ideas as there is very little dialogue between the two main characters.

The contrast between a destroyed Earth covered in towers built with rubbish to the pristine spaceship with technology controlling everything. In this way an Art Director working on a Game is very similar to the same position working on a film, as they will have to make the same decisions based on artistic judgment.

The main difference in art direction between these two mediums is that where a film is a 2d image where the director can force the viewer the information, a game has to stand up against a fully playable 3d environment.

So is art direction for me? Well I do like art :P but what skills would I have to develop to accomplish a career in this area? Well I think already having a good eye in spotting techniques which games and films use, so that they can then be used in suitable situations within games. Knowing the atmosphere and creating a suitable environment to fit the scene.

Art directors should also have good communication skills due to their position leading a team. Even if they have the right ideas, but cannot convey their message correctly, then the outcome may not be as good as the directors intensions.

Assessment numerous 2

What a fucking waster

Well reaching the end of semester 2 and the end of the year, it was once again time for assessments. The one thing I was glad about was that my work wouldn’t have to be presented in front of the first second and third year game art students. I think I might have died.

The day started off in the labs, working on my gun project as the deadline was that day (managed to finish with plenty of time to spare and actually write a half decent design document)

I was surprised that people were being called in in alphabetically in order of FIRST names. Which meant I had like no time to upload my work to Facebook. I was still editing pictures before my name was called and I was summoned into room 8.7.

I’ve progressed slowly but surely in game production which is nice to hear seeing as I was close to dropping out of the course at the start of the year. I’ve felt my work on 3dsmax improving over the year gradually becoming more comfortable with the software. Although there are still a lot of things I don’t understand. But over summer my aim is to go through all of the tasks on blackboard and bring myself up to scratch, and also not to forget how to use max over the ridiculously long summer.

After this was Chris’s turn. Honestly I’ve been a bit of an idiot this year. Finding it difficult to find the time to keep up with the workload and I wasn’t at all surprised with the outcome of – I need to do more work, or I’m gonna fail! So I’ve got 30 days to catch up and so far so good. My aim – to complete at least 1 or 2 pages a day which should hopefully bring me up to date, hopefully. Oh and take Chris’s advice about my habits. If you’re reading this, yes I am gonna cut down, and not let it become an issue. Get high AFTER I’ve done work.

Things just got worse from here. Over the year ive been neglecting the blog, and to no surprise I ‘achieved’ a fail grade for that. Sorry Mike. Not only have I got to complete the mandatory tasks but I only wrote about lectures once in the whole year. So im gonna try and catch up on this too.

I can tell its going to be a nice relaxing Easter. Hahaha nooooo chance. Ive really got to work my arse of if I want any chance of staying on this course next year, which I really do even though it may not seem so at the moment. But I do, really. I need to sort my priorities life out.

New Games Journalism

There are lots of different types of Game reviews/reviewers. Whether it’s published in a magazine, video reviewed on a website or posted to an internet blogging site. All reviews strive to the same purpose, to analyse and criticise, usually ending in something out of 10

A term for this is ‘New Games Journalism’ which incorporates any material which has been created as a response to a games experience. This can include the gamers thoughts about its playability, experiences within the game world, interaction with other players online and even the gamers anecdotes.

So, this week’s task - to review a review, very inception like! Except without all the guns and mindfuck.

I guess I shall start with this article from eurogamer ( as it is the most amusing)

A review of Project Gotham Racing 3, by boomboxdan

He does point out at the start that - ‘this is my first review so go easy on me!’ but I’m sure he won’t read this so… let’s not. The first thing I noticed when reading through was the complete lack of correct punctuality, making it awkward to read, and his opinion less valid :P also ending sentences in, ‘and all that’ just seems a bit half arsed, and all that…

I found it amusing when he was talking about the how good the visuals of the game are, and as further evidence, ‘his two mates, Woody and Scott’ also agree, which means they must look good! Using technical specifications in this situation would have been much more appropriate, rather than opinions from his friends.

However this is just a consumers article so it does not have to stand up against a professional review which would be expected to meet much higher standards. Hey, it’s not like he’s getting paid for this shit. But it is however a good example of NGJ

There are opinions that NGJ is affecting sales magazine companies such as PC gamer. Magazines are used primarily for looking at games to make a decision before you buy. Kind of like a catalogue for games. However why pay £5.99 for someone’s opinion when you could go on the internet and find this information for free! I guess if you’re a fan of glossy pages, and the cds with game content and patches may swing it.

(I remember I used to get my mum to buy them for me, but the cd’s used to just pile up in my room, and then I discovered that pretty much everything is on the internet!)

So where do professional reviewers earn their money from?

Well let’s use PC Gamer as an example. Their articles are typically written by in-house editors and free-lance writers, publishing the final product monthly. Earning money from advertisement and sponsors but mainly sales.

PC Gamer also has various websites, forums and even blogs which help advertisement.

The company has worked its way up to becoming the bestselling PC game magazine in its respective countries (UK & US)

I think that NGJ is good in the way that it allows anyone to express their opinion and also make a name for themselves and be recognised against their peers for something which they presumably enjoy.

However to some extent yes it can have a negative effect on professional companies which review games to provide writers with an income. But if these companies adapt to the situation and provide fans new ways to enjoy their product, such as blog writing then NGJ won’t be so much of a threat to the larger more successful publications.

Trip to Bradgate Park

The aim of going to Bradgate at the end of the year as our final project from visual design was to show how much we have improved (or should have) however as I was probably too hungover last time (sorry) so i missed the first trip there and never found the effort to go.

We got to the bus station but couldn’t for the life of us find C14, our desired stop. But after lots of confusion and a sandwich we eventually found it.

I was stunned by the park, and also by the prices in the café (£1.60 for water!! What a rip, but as I was hungover I gave in, desperately needed water)

We got a few sketches done but it was way too windy. Seriously need to invest in some clips for my sketchbook so it doesn’t flail everywhere whilst I try to attempt work. eventually I surcame to taking pictures . Heres a couple of prep sketches I did that im particually proud of. My final at the moment a WIP from this image. I started the final sketch there and I plan on using this image to fill in the detail.

The day did turn pretty catastrophic at the end however. We knew the buses came over hour but not sure when. But wating at the bus stop for 40 minutes I started to get a little suspicious about wether or not it would come. So I decided to ring the travel company for the bus times. After describing where I was and where I wanted to go, I was horrified to hear the woman respond ‘sorry no buses till tomorrow morning’

Oh, shiiiiiiit…

So great, stranded in Cropston, 8 miles away from home, cold, tired from walking the whole day, penniless due to a pint of Peroni and it was getting dark... I need a cigarette. We contemplated walking, hoping we’d get picked up on a dual carriage way by traffic police. Luckily I was meant to be going round my friend’s house from Leicester of uni, i got a phonecall from him as at this point it was getting late. I explained the situation and he agreed to come pick us up, yessss. Just had to wait another hour for him to come find us.

Heres just a few of the photos I took from bradgate.