Visual Design: Paintovers

This week we were educated in the use of paint overs and their purpose in the industry. As soon as I discovered photoshop as a kid, I loved overlaying textures over objects and making them my own.




This is pretty much an adult extension of that.




I tend to photobash a lot of textures in my concept work to get the desired colour palettes and realism I crave so this was a pretty fun and brisk exercise, specifically focusing on perspective on the first model.

Gameplay and Interactivity: Milestone 1: Pre Production

Next up was our pitch. We presented images of our development process so far in powerpoint and a paper concept which we recorded and showed in video form.


I wasn't overly happy with our pitch as it seemed scattered compared to how solidly our team had worked up until this point. It was clear that there were some big decisions that we still had to make in terms of gameplay and aesthetic.


Ewan made some great points with regards to our main characters being rendered in 3D. Most AAA studios spend 6 weeks modeling an rigging important characters. At this point in the course we had only just begun modeling human shaped characters and hadn't touched rigging them yet. It would be borderline development suicide, to model all of our characters in 3D and then rig them, whilst coding and designing levels in parallel.


Our grappling hook idea was proven in concept by games such as Bionic Commando, but it was made apparent that this would be a very difficult element to program.


Still, despite this slightly deflating us, it did reset our expectations as to what we could achieve within the timeframe we were given.


Time to get to work!




One Sheet:

Moodboard:



Proof of Concept Photobash:

Paper Prototype:



Gameplay and Interactivity: Concept Art

In preparation for our pitch meeting with Ewan we began to work on concept art for our main character.


We wanted to root our character in our world in terms of appearance and ensure that her outfit was utilitarian and didn't sexualize her at all. Another consideration was colour palette to prevent her getting lost in the background. The colour of her hair was a big factor in this and we also considered a scarf to allude to an arc of movement.


Out of the assorted art we compiled, a decision was made to have our protagonist have long and flowing ginger hair. This will provide a colour that will stand out from the other elements on screen and an arc of movement, negating the need for a scarf.

Ben:



 

 

George:

Brad:

Gameplay and Interactivity: Main Character Design

Another solid meeting with the rest of the team today. We wanted to decide on some important game mechanics and a visual style by the days end.


First up and most importantly was the game mechanic. Understanding the value of mobile gaming and its ease of access, we wanted to create a game that would instantly empower those who picked it up but would reward those that put time and effort in to mastering it.


This meant that the control scheme had to be simple and you had to feel really powerful whilst playing it. That way the player would come back time and time. A true pick up and play title.


1) Pick up and Play
2) Easy control system
3)Empowering


When debating how to make it interesting for the player to traverse the map, a grappling hook was repeatedly brought up by members of the team. This would enable the player to look and feel really cool when moving and chain together attacks at speed. The feeling of satisfaction when chaining together a swing, kill combo would be awesome. Perfect for what we were looking to achieve.


We need to further discuss if other modes of movement will be required in the game, but for now we have a solid start.

Now for the visual style. Being heavily inspired off the back of Star Wars Episode VII we knew that we wanted the main character to be a strong female. The question really came down to art style. After throwing a few ideas around, we started to lean towards a very clean, animated style. Something along the lines of DreamWorks concept art. Rayman was also a huge inspiration - It is far more beautiful than it has any right being. It would be a lot of fun to play around with the contrasting imagery of hyper violence and child like visuals.

Before getting started on concept art, we had to work on story as that would inform most of our character designs moving forward. Another solid meeting and no arguments yet! 

3D Art Production: Spring Term

This term we have to build a statue to fit inside our Battle Arena.


We were initially asked to comp a concept image together based on moodboards and other images that inspired us:

 

However, after having a chat with Phil, it seemed like project suicide to create a model with such extensive amounts of detail, when I hadn't modeled a human before. There was also just too much going on in terms of battling styles. The future can be merged with the past, but this maybe took it too far.

With that feedback in mind, I sketched out an amended model sheet with topology in mind. I spent a fair bit of time before the course watching Maya and Zbrush tutorials and correct topology kept getting brought up in order to rig it and animate correctly.

This concept will be FAR easier to model on a first timer and will allow me to put more work into the finer details.

Visual Design: Anatomy Studies

Not much more to add to the title of this post! Here are some muscle studies. I'm focusing on key areas before tackling the entirety of the body from different view points.

Please excuse the shoddy photography - My scanner is broken....honest!

Gameplay and Interactivity: The Spring Assignment Begins

For this term, we have been tasked with developing a proof of concept game demo. This meant getting together in to teams and following set development guidelines.


The main rule given was that the game must be 2D but can't be side scrolling. Side scrolling allows for poor game design so the decision makes sense. Building the team was relatively straightforward and we ended up with a strong team of 2D artists, 3D artists and coders.

Each team member had to produce one script and one piece of in game art.


Very early on we decided to work on a hyper violent platformer of sorts. We had a look at various indie games that have a wonderful art style and really take advantage of the relative 'cheapness' of 2D. Initial games we looked at for various reasons were 'The Cave', 'Speed Runners', 'Fancy Pants' and 'N+'.

This was a very productive first session and we managed to nail down some important decisions early on:

• The protagonist had to be female
• The game had to be easy to pick up and play, but difficult to master. Something akin to mobile games.
• It had to be a fast paced platformer
• We wanted a game device that enabled the player to feel empowered.