This weekend has been a really good one. I've thoroughly enjoyed it, going home and seeing my family, and going to Eurogamer at the NEC Birmingham!
I bought a ticket for the Saturday, and had a brilliant day of going to developer talks, playing games, and checking out the merchandise. My only real regret about this day was that, as I found out far, far too late, two of my favourite members of the Yogscast were there. I didn't pay extra to meet them, because by that time, these tickets had sold out. *Sigh*. It was still a brilliant day though.
The first developer session I went to was about Dying Light, given by Maciej Binkowski. I'd watched videos about this game before, and the talk re-sparked my excitement towards it! Maciej talked about how players would experience a new way of playing, with the Natural Movement System. It's a survival horror game which heavily incorporates a lot of parkour style climbing and such. If something looks like you can climb it, you can. During the day, you can go about your missions, gathering resources and so on, and at night, you simply need to stay alive until day time. The thing is, at night, the 'zombies' change, and can run and climb just as fast as you can. Here's a video of the game from IGN.
After this, we looped straight back round to queue for the next session! This was for the game Alien: Isolation. I didn't know much of this game before the talk, but I'm very glad that my boyfriend had wanted to go because I am now very excited for it too. The developers wanted to capture as much as possible the original essence and atmosphere as the 1979 film, with the same suspense that keeps the audience on edge as the crew desperately evades the dark threat of the Xenomorph. This exciting, survival horror game has also been announced for release on the 7th of October 2014!
After this, we started to wander around the hall, seeing what was there. There was an awesome section for retro games, and there seemed to be a section for every console ever made, even old pinball machines! There were plenty of really amazing looking games there, but there were two in particular that caught my eye.
The first was Infamous: Second Son, which was visually very striking. Neither of us unfortunately for a chance to play it, because we were both ultra British and too polite to push forwards or express to the guy spending way too long playing through the ENTIRE demo that it was now our turn to give it a try. 'Really gotta' work on that...
Either way, what I watched of it looked awesome. Here's a trailer for this one also.
The other was Murdered: Soul Suspect, which is due for release on the 6th of June this year! Just in time for Summer! So I am 100% getting this game. Here is a trailer for it.
This game is about some one who was murdered, trying to track down his killer. I think this seems like a brilliant idea for a game, and I am really drawn to the dark, supernatural visuals of this detective thriller. Playing it was brilliant too, it was a lot of fun and I was instantly pulled in to the storyline. I definitely want to play more.
I really enjoyed this event, I will definitely be keeping an eye of what's going to be on at the London Eurogamer in September!
As of last week, we first-ies of DMUGA have been presented with a horrifying task. We are to give a presentation, following a sort of 'Pecha Kucha' way of presenting. Working to such specific time lines feels quite daunting, especially when I, at the moment, have no idea what to talk about.
I suppose I need to think now about what interests me? What, when I look at it, sparks an intrigue in me, making me want to take a second look? What do I look at, with a growing urge to pick up a pencil and draw? The list is too great to even begin, so I suppose the problem isn't being that I can't find anything, perhaps more that I need to be more selective in my choosing.
At the moment it seems to be one of two things, which can often intertwine. I like things that are maybe a bit unsettling, like Victorian post-mortem photographs, for one example. Well, actually, I hate them. But I am strangely drawn to them at the same time. I have no idea what that is about, it's the same impulse to watch movies that you KNOW will stop you sleeping, but you go ahead and watch anyway, because you secretly love the thrill of the uneasiness you feel. What I mean by this is that images that seem slightly spooky are very interesting to me. Not if it's in an obvious way though.
This photograph for instance. It's haunting and beautiful and I feel like there's a story somewhere here. I don't know, it may just be a thing personal to me, but I love the unsettling feeling in this, even though there is nothing actually.. wrong here- wait! What's that shadow at the the top of the stairs? A fantastic video to maybe watch is a video by YouTube channel Vsauce. In this video, he explains about a lot of what we find creepy is because of ambiguity. Same as all of Vsauce's videos, this is very interesting, and yeah.. a bit creepy.
On the other hand, I like history a lot. Yes, in the sense of textbook learning, I am unashamed to admit that history was one of my favourite subjects, and actually one of the things I miss the most about school. Visually though, I mean history more in the sense of decay and abandonment. This in part is actually where my fascination with the Chernobyl Disaster comes from. I love looking at photographs of long ago deserted places, places that are still littered with relics of their past. I don't know, this may be part of that uneasy feeling they cause perhaps? Pinterest is filled with fantastic examples of this.
I absolutely love images like this because I think they have a fantastic atmosphere. They're so derelict and empty and it truly looks like it was just abandoned over night. I mean, in this case it was, but there's an eerie sense about them that truly gives the indication of a ghost town.
It's not just this though. Some of my favourite inspiration comes from artists that I love. Keith Thompson for instance, the subject of my previous post, has been a favourite of mine for a long time. It's a strange thing that only now do I notice I use the same key words when discussing his works. EERIE. STRANGE. UNSETTLING. Maybe I need to broaden my views.
Other artists I love.. hmm. Well, a lot of my favourite art is from games. I LOVE the art in a game by Arcane Studios called Dishonored. I think the whole game is beautiful too, but the concept art is especially brilliant. I think, actually, that I like pretty much all the design elements of this game. Even down to small elements of the game, like in game posters and portraits, are just so beautiful in their own right.
These are some of the character pieces for the game, and what I love about them is that they're a little bit stylized. This caricature kind of style is something that is carried through into the game and I think it makes it more intriguing.
A good example here with the 'Outsider'. The model even seems to carry across the same painting-like quality that the concept images have.
The poster art is beautiful throughout too. I think I like the posters so much because they remind me of vintage advertisement posters, which in my opinion are way more pleasing to the eye than today's advertisements.
See what I mean? They have a more illustrative quality that really appeals to me. They're dreary, but written with the same sort of upbeat, urgent kind of advertisement. Now! Do this now! You need this now! Compared to the style of the adverts of now, they're way more visually appealing. Of course, it may be because they have that kind of vintage look of old fashioned posters, which makes sense because for some reason or another, vintage INSTANTLY seems to be quite attractive. Maybe because around the 50s, culture was becoming more adventurous and sex was becoming fashionable. Back to Dishonored though.
Art Direction Task
How would I write about this game, or even start to present it? I should try and understand WHY it has appeal and to do this, I need to consider composition, shape and form, colour, lighting, mood, personal appeal, etc.
This is an environmental piece for Dishonored, showing The Golden Cat, which is a pleasure house in the game. This bit is actually quite grim, as the back rooms, where the girls live, are dingy and dirty. The composition of this piece is quite subtle. It vaguely uses the rule of thirds, which is good because it means that it's not central and symmetrical. If it were, our eye would be drawing straight to the centre, and probably wouldn't stray around too much. This is only really good if you want your audience's eye to be drawn straight to the centre, if that is your obvious subject. The balcony section curves round, which takes our visual field across the whole of the image. A lot of the other shapes in this are curved or circular, the seats being in a cylindrical fashion. The colours are in parts quite rich with reds, golds and greens, but also a little dark and dull. I think that this reflects well the nature of the place, because it's made to look quite grand and luxurious, however a lot of dark deeds go on here. The lamps are the brightest section of the image, so our eyes are drawn to that. They illuminate the plants below, but cast the figures in shadow. The other point of light in the image comes from the woman standing against the wall on the far side, where the light hits her. The mood is calm, but as I said previously, the darkness in the image indicates the dreariness and depravity in which these girls live, and the other dark happenings that take place. It seems to be a way of saying, on the surface, all is good. It appeals to me for these reasons, and I just love the lighting and subtle detail in this piece. It achieves a lot of complexity with less marks and shapes than it would actually first appear.
Last week marked the end of the Gladiator project and the beginning of more stressful beginnings. Meaning, we are now learning how to use UDK.
Back to the Gladiator though! I adored this project! Apart from rigging. That can go away. I think part of the reason I enjoyed this project so much though was because I was starting to incorporate some of the concept and design techniques that I had learnt in Visual Design. I started by researching classes of gladiators and creating inspirational mood boards to help me whilst designing my own.
From here, I started creating some simple designs to build on, picking my favourite variation and taking it straight to orthographic designs. I was working out the problems as I went along where possible, but I didn't want to labour too long on these possibilities because I knew that time was draining away with this project.
I drew a very quick digital final, eager to get on with my model. I enjoyed the modelling process, because I feel I am becoming quite comfortable with that now. It certainly doesn't cause me the same stress that it did in the beginning! UV unwrapping was a bit tricky at first, but that worked out fine too and I was really proud of my textures once they were done. The design of my model changed in very minor ways as I went along, so I did another final piece. I spent longer on this, and drew it to look like the model I had created.
The only thing I really didn't get on with was rigging. That's unfair, I suppose. The main problem with rigging was that it felt kind of like treading on eggshells. The labs were filled with voices of 'Whatever you do! Don't collapse the skin modifier!' and someone groaning when trying to reset the x-form and the model practically imploding. Those groans may or may not have been from me.
I think that really, like with the rest of Max, I will become more comfortable with it in time, and with practice. Which is what I intend to do! Practice practice practice!
This is a final presentation of renders for my model for this project. I am most proud of the textures on this model, and although it isn't perfect, I can honestly say I have enjoyed this project more than any other in Game Production so far and raised the question in my head... someday, could this be what I want to do? Be a 3d character artist? I would have to practice like crazy to nail the rigging down to a T, but conceivably, I think it would be something I would enjoy doing, and is something I'm starting to consider for the future.
This is yet another terribly overdue post, I am very sorry about that. However, I loved this project so much, I really wanted to cover it.
This project was really open in terms of what boundaries we could push. Our only rules were that it had to be realistic. This is to say, it had to be somebody, a person, who would conceivably live on earth. Taking into consideration that this is pretty much your only boundary, you could invent pretty much, well, anyone.
I started off by going out and drawing interesting people that I saw. In parts this was quite difficult, and I had never realised how difficult it was to pinpoint what makes a person interesting. I think it's not so much how people look, but more how they act. For instance, I ended up watching one man walk hurriedly up and down the street past the window I was looking out. He didn't only pass once, and I think that's why he caught my attention. He was hurriedly walking back and forth, his eyes darting about, looking behind him every so often, covering his mouth. Or maybe he was biting his nails or something? Either way, that right there is a character! If a bit of a nervous, suspicious one.
I went home for one of the weekends, and decided to try and find more 'interesting' characters. It turned out on that particular day, there were musicians and buskers.. everywhere. There was an amazing group of jazz musicians, with people dancing all around them which was just fantastic.
I was still stuck for an idea for my character though, so I decided to look through my drawings so far, at the key elements that struck out to me. The jazz instruments and massive oversized coats of the musicians reminded me distinctly of the Swing era. This filled me with excitement, as I rushed to my dvd shelf to find one of my favourite films, Swing Kids, and to the internet for research. Swing Kids is an excellent about German youth rebellion in Nazi Germany, with some fantastic music in it. Here is a clip from the movie.
Also, at this point I'd already kind of mapped out what my idea was. I enjoy creating the back story for my characters, although they're usually not happy ones. I wanted my character to be this nomadic, emotionally exhausted old man, who having lost his family many years previously, (perhaps in the war?) wanders from town to town, donning his threadbare swing clothes and spectator shoes, clutching an old saxophone or something.
From here I did a few silhouette studies of some of the dancers in the film and drew up some quick costume studies. I then drew up some concepts of what I thought the character would look like young, so I could progress and turn him into an older man.
From here, I drew more silhouette type sketches focusing on outfit, and when I'd decided, went on to think about colour etc.
From here, I was actually happy with my character. I then drew some orthographical views of my character, then a final presented one. If I were to go back to this or re do it though, I would have definitely done another piece, focusing on the character in a specific environment, making him more part of the real world.
I'd like to make a record of some of the artists or resources that inspire me, and I thought I'd start with one of my favourite artists, whom artwork I have loved for a very long time. His work has always been a source of great interest and inspiration to me, because of its illustrative nature. Here is a link to his blog!
Keith Thompson is a freelance artist, who has worked on films, games, and produced beautiful book illustrations. He drew all of the illustrations for Scott Westerfeld's Leviathan trilogy, one of which I have read. I have yet to read the others, even though I really enjoyed the first.
These are some illustrations Keith Thompson did for the book 'Drakia'. I think they're fantastic, I absolutely love the atmosphere he achieves in his work. Especially in the bottom image, I love scanning over the picture and seeing what creepy additions can be seen in the scene. That's actually another thing I've always loved about Keith Thompson's work, it is so detailed and I enjoy looking closely at his work to see if there is something I didn't notice the first time. I could seriously just sit and look at his work for ages.
These are some of my favourite pieces by him, because they have a dark but still quite beautiful nature about them. The Urban Faun, for instance, is eerie and haunting but still soft and gorgeous. I think this feeling is achieved by it being black and white, with the mood being achieved with the tonal qualities. The character is very much the subject of the piece, with the background being subtly hinted at in the background.
Ooh! Something I didn't know that I only found out the other day, Keith Thompson created the creepy creatures in a film called 'Don't be afraid of the Dark'. I haven't actually seen this, but I've seen an advert for it, I THINK on the trailers on the Chernobyl Diaries DVD. I will have to cover THAT another time because, how interesting I find the Chernobyl disaster is a whole separate issue.
Anyway, these things are horrible. But I can totally see elements of Keith Thompson's style in there. This illustration for the movie that goes alongside these is so creepy, but beautifully drawn.
It made me really happy actually to find that a 3D character artist called Alex Stratulat, who has made a model inspired by the above piece by Keith Thompson called 'The Thief'. You can look at his other works here; http://alexstratulat.com/
This model is very beautifully made and very detailed. Alex Stratulat uses a vast range of tools and programs to create models such as this, like 3D Studio Max, Softimage XSI, Maya, ZBrush, Mudbox, Unfold 3D, V-Ray, Mental Ray, KeyShot, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe After Effect, Corel Draw, Corel Photopaint. This makes me realise the competition that is out there, and that I must strive for every bit of knowledge I can, and learn all the time, wherever and whenever possible!
