Week Summary

This is the first week back from the Easter break. On Monday morning we had a meeting with two of the tutors for how our progression has come along with our game since we have been off for the Easter break. Most of us attended except one of our team members. We spoke to our tutors about this and the lack of communication with this member, they told us to give this person a task that is small so they do not feel completely out of the team, so we did, we messaged this member and said for them to 3D model a simple boat for the game, we gave them a image to go by and said to them can we they get this done for the middle of this week, we are yet to see this model. They also looked over our Trello they had no problems with it, it was up to date. I check it often and check off the things that I have completed once in awhile and some members of the team do this as well but Olivia is the one who takes charge of this more than any of us she keeps it in place.

On the Tuesday I met up with the team with Olivia we only went in for a short while, we went to see how Ben L and Curtis were getting on (He was not available for this week). We also saw one of our tutors just to show our progress so far, we are on track with our game so far, still we need to add a few more things yet, for the art side of this project me and Olivia are yet to add a piece of art work for the title screen, win and lose screen. While we were talking to our tutor we mentioned about the tribe characters after having a discussion on Monday with our two tutors we were told that the tribe character in it's design could come across as racist (We did not realise and think the design through enough as a group in the past), as it is based of real life people. As this game will be displayed to the public we have decided to change the design of the tribe character to something less tribal. We spoke to our tutor about this on the Tuesday and told them it has been changed, they agreed with the changed result.

 Original concept tribe character design.

The new enemy character design, it still has elements of tribal but I have changed the shape and colour. I have also made the character quite creepy looking zombie like, as our game has quite a dark, creepy atmosphere to it.

On Wednesday we had a Contextual studies lecture that was titled 'Making connections; Being an active research (and an inactive player). In this lecture we were given good ways of finding research and how to go about it and finding ideas, you could use a spider diagram to give you direction, and exploiting bibliographies by looking at the inside of books and where the reader got their resources. I will take these tips to mind when I next do some research on my research report. 

On Thursday I could not make the group crit as I had a doctors appointment, Because of this I went to see my tutor on Friday as I was struggling with an idea for my research report. After the the meeting on Friday morning I felt more confident and had a stronger idea on what I could theme my report topic on. At the moment I am working with what information and ideas my tutor gave me by next week I believe I will be able to gather more of a final solid idea.

(These are just some books I got from the library earlier this week to give me more of a perspective for my report, I may not need these anymore as my topic is changing).

In the Easter break I did produce a personal  Z brush sculpt piece. I bought Z brush core around 2 months ago and haven't really used it. After doing some work related to the games project I felt like modeling a alien character piece, I had been playing Mass Effect Andromeda a few weeks before, this inspired me to do this piece.

 This image shows the front and side view of my alien head model.

This image shows the back and top view of my alien head model.

I have wanted to get back into Z brush for a while now and have stated this before that I have wanted to improve my skills with Z Brush but didn't really have the motivation to do it, as soon as I did I decided to do this. I did not use any reference imagery and managed to create this in around 4 hours. I played around with different brushes to build and develop the design. I am very happy with the piece and believe it is my strongest Z brush piece yet. I still have a lot to learn especially with the technical side of Z brush but I think the more I produce pieces like this one I will only become more confident and learn more from it.

Also during the Easter break for the game project I did produce some pieces of art work, not as many as I had hope but from me doing this we now have a final idea on what the title screen should look like.

This is six rough thumbnails that I had done over the Easter break for possible title screen designs. I showed this to some of the team when we met up during the week we all decided on number four, with the plane crash, we chose this as it shows the player a part of the narrative, the start of the story.
In the Easter break I also completed two of the treasure pieces, I designed a gem/gems that could be used as pieces of treasure to collect in the game.  I also finished a concept piece for the treasure, it is of a wooden statue that can be collected in the game, maybe if you collect this piece you gain more points?, rare to find only one in the level?, I did briefly discuss this will the team but we are not sure if to add this to the game as of yet as well as Olivia's finished pieces of treasure, it depends on how much time we have left.

 
 These are the gems all in different colours to give the player some variety.

This is the the gem in Maya with it's UV's near ready to be added into Substance designer and into the game.

This is a screen shot from our game with the treasure gems now added this is what Ben L managed to get done this week. I like how he has kept to the original concept designs in shape and colour. He also modeled and textured the spear pit trap and is now in game.

 This is another image of the gems within the game.

 This is the production of the spear pit that Ben L has been working on earlier this week.

This is the spear pit ready to be placed into the game.

Spear pit trap with dead dummy model inside.

 This is the statue treasure piece that we may create a 3D model for and place in the game.

Olivia did finish up her treasure designs in the Easter break/ early this week. Below are images of her finished concept pieces.

At the end of the week I did sketch out a few rough button ideas for our title screen. Me, Olivia and Ben L all decided on going with the stone effect buttons which is number eight, we wanted to go with something simple that wouldn't over power the title screen to much. Also Olivia started with the environment for the title screen we plan to get this done next week, I will add the character to this piece when she has finished with the environment part.

These are just some images of the game progression so far.