Week Summary

This week on the Monday in the morning we had a meeting with two of the lecturers to go over our game so far and how well we are collaborating as a team. Some of the team members could not attend so me and Olivia went in and had to show what was produced so far. We could only show our concept work, the pitch document and our Trello. When they looked over our Trello they could see that it was not very busy, and that the communication within the team wasn't as good as it should be. Me and Olivia were quite surprised by this as we thought we communicated fairly well as we use Facebook and thought we met up fairly regally, but since going to the morning session to discuss our game we could see clearly that we do need to improve our Trello and communication. We improved the Trello and made it a lot busier and easier to work with.

Improved Trello, this will only improve each week when we add more and check off what we have finished for our game.

After this I had to go to the lecture theater and meet my Fine art group to present our film. It was interesting to see how the other groups presented their films and what they produced. I liked how the films were all so different. Me and the group presented our film, after it was shown we spoke about its meaning and how we developed the idea and how at first it was going to be about another selected topic that we discussed before. It seem that it hit people and that they liked how it was made, especially how the audio gave it that chill factor. I was happy with the results.

Also, this week on Wednesday we had a contextual studies lecture 'Finding a question'. The lecture was going through how to find a question for an essay and how to go about it, through brainstorming to what we might be interested in now such as video games we are playing or even what we are currently designing.

On Thursday I had a group crit in which we were talking about our research reports again, this week I have made a rough list on what topics I could talk about in my report some being: 
1.Relationship within video games such as Mass effect and Dragon age 
2. Why is sex and crime common themes in video games.
3. Violence in video games, do they cause violence players?
4. Gender roles in video games, does it play a big role?
5. Character development in video games.
These are just a few ideas, but I worry as I feel like these are topics have been spoken about a lot before. I will keep my mind open and keep thinking of possible topics to research. 

With the game project this week I have met up with my team once or twice to go over what we have all been working on, communication we are still trying to improve on but I believe that by the end of this week it has improved.

Ben R who is our level designer had drawn out some rough sketches of possible level layouts.

As a team we discussed that we all preferred the 2nd level design as it gives the player more than one option to travel when starting the game. 

This was a quick level design Ben R put together this week. The trees in this were modeled by Ben L, the trees still need to be textured and added with leafs. 

 This is the tree that Ben L modeled this shows the tree in substance designer.

Also for the game I and Olivia have started to create some concepts drawings for the traps that will be featured in the game, we have decided as a team so far to go with, Mud puddles (Sadie), quick sand (Olivia) this will slow the player down if walked on. Spider (Sadie) that will kill you if hit by it. Snake pit (Sadie) and Spear pit (Olivia) Spear wall (Sadie), bear trap (Olivia), Blow dart (Olivia). Maybe not all of these will be present in the game but it depends on what we can get done in the time we have.

The images above show what we have completed this week with our trap designs.

 These blueprints show how one of the traps work in game play, done by Curtis.

 This is just what we had to use first for our trap.

Curtis also put in a basic title menu this week.

 Blueprints Curtis had done for the basic menu.

Curtis put together a rough menu for now with added working buttons. Later me and Olivia will work together on a title screen concept piece.

Week Summary

This week has been a lot different than what I'm used too because this week is a cross - course collaboration project which year 2 fine art students. We were placed in a group of 5, on my team we had two fine art students Jo and Shin and three of us from games art which were me, Michaela and Elly. We were give the task to make a 5-60 second film, we where then given a object to based our film around which was 'Rabbit' we had a image to go by, the image was of a Angora rabbit. After the lecture we met up as a group and discussed our ideas for the film. At first we decided to go with a cute idea about a fluffy rabbit that symbolized a dandelion flower that was in a field and when the wind picked up it would blow all of the fur off the rabbit. Below shows drawings that I drew to show a short scene for the film just as an idea.  Also we decided to make a rabbit each out of clay or what anyone could get together, these will be used in the film.

 

Each one of these drawings are in order for the scene.

I went out and bought some pink plaster - seen and some felt wool to make the rabbit. The idea was to build a clay rabbit and place the felt wool on top which can then be blown off in the video using a hair dryer or fan. The images below show the rabbit that I built.

  Rabbit with the felt wool, I wanted the fur to be able to blown off easily.

During the week we all met to film with our built rabbits. When we spoke to Jo she said that she did not have time to make a rabbit model as she was busy with her exhibition which we understood but she did say she and Shin did research into the Angora rabbits and what happens to them during harvesting of their fur. It was awful what she told me, Michaela and Elly and how some of the rabbits are kept and how the fur is ripped from their bodies while they are a wake. So we decided to change our idea and theme our film on this. We put all of our rabbits together with the fur on and then film a few shots of our hands ripping the fur off our  made rabbits. With our video shots done Elly offered to edit the film, I told her I would get some sound effects for her from www.Freesound.com that she could place into the film to give the film a deeper effect and meaning, to make the viewer unconformable while watching our video.

Above are some images of our rabbits together with and without fur, and the wool and cotton balls.

This is the final finished video.

I have enjoyed doing something a little different, something I would not usually do. It was nice to meet and work with distinctive students from fine art as it has given me an insight in how they process work and how they portray creative ideas in a way that game art students may put across  differently.

Also on Wednesday I had a interchange session to attend, I chose the UI/UX design in which we were given some tasks to do during this morning session. At first we were put into groups and were given some 'Lego'. With that we had to 5 minutes to design a swimming pool out of Lego. It was a fun exercise. After we were given another task in which we were given a photo of a person, we had to write what this young boy and what we think he would want at there local swimming pool and who we think this boy is. Below is a image of what we had at the end of this task.

Also in this session we were shown how eye tracking technology works while promoting a product. Two groups from the session were place into a room with an eye tracking system and one of the team members had to play a mobile game while the other team member had to read out questions about there experience while they played the game. We watched this on a screen, it was very interesting to watch how the technology worked. This session did give me more of an insight in how to promote a product (Game) to an audience. 

Also this week we had a guest lecturer, called 'Gina Jackson' from The imaginarium studios.This was one of my favorite guest lecturers who has spoken at the university, she spoke about what she does and how things work at the studio, she was honest about what she thought about concept art and how the industry runs and how hard it can be. The studio is a motion capture studio that the actor 'Andy Serkis' owns. She spoke more about motion capture and different roles that you can take in the industry from artist to PR.

Because this week has mainly been taken up by the Fine art project, I feel that the game project has been pushed back a little. Because communication hasn't been so strong this week I am not so sure what the others have been up to as much, I only know that Curtis has managed to get a coin shape object in the game that the player can collect. The object does light up in the game this is a nice touch as it could be used to guide the player around the level more easily. I have done one concept piece for the game which is a treasure piece, a coin that you will collect throughout the game.

 
 This will be one of the treasure pieces in the game.

The above images show the blueprints for the coin and the blueprint for the coin to be destroyed while collected, and the coin itself with the light added.

This is a short video of the player collecting the coins within the game, this video also show well how they are lit.
  

Week Summary

This is the first week back since being off from university for two weeks. On Monday, we had a lecture which our tutor gave us details on what to expect this term. We were given our first project which is to make a game in the next coming weeks in a team of 5 (Olivia,Ben L,Ben R, Curtis). Our polished game will then be playable at the Norwich gaming festival for the public to play at the end of May to June. I managed to make a team quickly, we are a good mix of concept artists, environment and character artists,3D modellers, blueprinting and level design, I am happy with the team. We decided after Mondays lecture to go to a pub and go over some ideas for our game. In the end, we decided to set the game theme in a rain forest/Jungle we also decided to not do a first-person game but a 3D top down game instead. We had a few ideas on Monday but nothing was set in stone.

On Tuesday, me and the team all got together to go over our game idea a little more, after this meeting we had our idea which we have stuck with. Our game is going to be called 'Treasure Trials' (This could change). The aim of the game is that you play as a treasure hunter who has crash landed in a rain forest island, you will need to collect as many pieces of treasure to get a high score but there will be a time limit. The player will need to find their way to a boat that has been called to rescue you. We aim to place in obstacles to such as tribe people that will block your way and stop you collecting their treasure, traps will also be added like spear walls, pits you can fall in and others. In the game, also we were thinking of making the game set in darkness and only a torch is to guide you around this will give the game a creepy atmosphere and to give a challenge for the player.

On Wednesday, we had a Contextual studies lecture 'Creating your own quest'. We looked at how to structure academic writing. A 1000-word written research report will need to be written and submitted at the end of term. This is themed on what my dissertation will be written about. At this moment of time I am still unsure on what this will be.

On Thursday, we had a group crit we were discussing ideas that we may have in mind for our research report and our collaboration game project.

In the week I put together a mood board for the game for what the characters and the style they may be. I took this task as my main focus is character design.

 Some references for the main character (Treasure hunter).

 These are some references for the tribe people.

These image show some different styles that our game could be, we wanted to go with a cartoon like theme.

During the week I drew some character concept pieces for the game. Below are some rough head designs for the main character and body silhouettes for the tribe character, also I drew two final concepts for the two character types.

 As a team we decided to go with design number 5.

 As a team we decided to go with design number 1/3.

Main character final, we wanted to go with the typical dark haired male inspired by Uncharted video game character 'Nathan Drake'. 

 This is the tribe character final design, these character will try to stop you during game play.

Others on the team worked on other pieces for the game. We also set up a Trello account this is very handy for as we now can keep updated with what we are all doing and it keeps the tasks for the game organize. (https://trello.com/b/cHqTftv9/treasure-trial).

 Our Trello.

During the week Ben R offered to do the pitch document and put it together, me and Olivia gave him some concept art to work with to place on the sell sheet, As a team we didn't have much involvement with this. 



The concept piece in the background of our pitch document was drawn by Olivia, as she will focus on concept environmental pieces for our game below is the original drawing.

 This piece gives us a idea of how we would like the environment to look for our game.

During the week Ben L modeled and textured a torch for the game and Curtis had done the blueprints to get the torch working during game play. It works well. Alt to turn torch on and off. Curtis also done some blueprints for character movement.

This is the torch in Substance designer, ready to be placed into the game.

 This image shows the torch in it's final state all textured, placed in the hand of the character.

This image shows the torch working in game.

This image shows the blueprints that Curtis had done for character movement.