inspirational people

Viktor Antanov, the art director on noticeable title such as Dishonored and  Half-Life 2. I really like Viktor's art style, i feel it is very stylized but still retains a high amount of detail giving it a unique feel.

Scoot Sinclair, the art director of the original bioshock has an amazing artist i find the strange yet kind of graphic look to his art style very interesting.

Jaime McNutty is part of the team at irrational is one of the environmental artists their. This is the career i would like to aspire for when leaving uni and maybe into a art director role later on in life

Environmental artist job role

A environmental artist is in charge of creating the environments of a game under the advisement and leadership of seniors and an Art director. The job position could compose of creating 3D assets that will create the world that the player will explore and placing them together in the engine.

An environmental artist earns an average salary of $46,000 (2011) for less than 3 years experience which less than a programming job. With more years experience and a promotion of an Art Director role can earn an average of $107,000 which is a big difference.

facts have been found in this article on the salaries of game devs: http://gamedeveloper.texterity.com/gamedeveloper/fall2011cg#pg27

This forum was also found useful:
http://eat3d.com/forums/general-chat/what-it-takes-be-environment-artist

My plans after uni

My plans after university are to hopefully start off at a UK company as a junior environmental, I have a strong interest in this subject and find it really entertaining creating the worlds the player will be exploring.

After working after i while i would like become a senior environmental artist and hopefully maybe even become a art director after a few years. I wish to work for irrational studios (well know for the bioshock series) as I find the art style and worlds that they create very unique and very interesting and think that the art style is nice chance to get creative while staying working for a large company.

Their are a few people in this field that i wish to aspire to such as Viktor Antanov, Scott Sinclair and Jamie McNutty.

Each of the areas discussed will have blog posts that go into more details following this.

My job role.

In my group I had to come up with the card designs and all the mechanics that go with them. I started with a few idea's and play tested each to see how they would actually work with our board game. This required a few different session to get a final idea on how the final game would work.

the final idea worked using a different set of cards with separate illustrations and comments demonstrating what each of the different cards worked, these were only used in combat against other monster such as the junk titan. Their were also environmental cards which did not work as well as intended as it got difficult to track when it had been 5 turns and events cards which could either help or hinder the player depending what card was chosen.

Future Job role

When i finish university I aspire to be an environment artist. This job role requires a good understanding of 3d software to model assets to be levels but also requires strong 2D art skills for texturing, both hand painted and photographic. Look at a job in this role for an idustry stand would require a high end portfolio showing a range of skills using a selection of these software, primarily 3ds max and photoshop.

Aswell as these skills it would be nessesary to have a strong understanding of lighting within a scene to add depth to the environment.

An environment artist can develop upto even becoming the art director of a project.

"examples of Industry standard environment art"

 

Example of job advertisement for sony

http://www.gamesrecruit.co.uk/JobDetail.aspx?id=13948

combat idea's

These Idea's are for combat mechanics that could be used within our board game.

• Dice based attack and defend system

This sytem works with 2 dice, one die represents defence and the other attack. The difference is taken off the players health. This mechanic removes most of the skill and stratergy from the player, this will more than probably make the game quite repetative so another combat system will work better. this however could be usefull during the early prototyping stages.

• Equipment cards

The player will be given an equipment card everytime they spawn which is most times a weapon but always will be able to deal damage.

• Attachment cards

These attachment cards can be placed upon your current equipment to give the player different effects wether it be enhanced movement to increased attack range.

• Character HP

This is amount of health that the player has. When this deplieted the player has been killed. the player can only attack once per turn aslong as they are in range.

• player re spawn

When the player dies they miss a turn, lose their current equipment and if they are holding the artifact they lose it to the person who killed them.

• Event cards

The event cards can be played at any time after being picked up from certain place on the game board. These can either help your player with things like speed boosts or hinder the other players with things like alien attacks that kill them.

Zombies!!! research

Zombies!!! Is a board game that make players work together in the zombie apocalypse? This is another cooperative game where player’s work together using teamwork and strong communication, but this time the aim is to survive and escape the city.

The game uses figures for the survivors and zombies as game pieces. Zombies!!! Works using events/item card that the player can use at certain points to make or break the game. The effects of these cards can vary from tied shoe laces that tip up your opponents to get eaten, to doubling your ammunition. Playing these cards at certain points lead to interesting gameplay that can be a complete game changer for players.

"Zombies!!! cover art"

"The game's contents"

Gears of War board game research

The gears of war board game is a spin off the xbox video game of the same name. I am mainly going to look at how the combat is simulated from the video game. The game is completely a cooperatively experience where the aim is to defeat the locust using teamwork and real life communication.

The main emphasis of the game is replicating the standoff style fire fights of the video game. This is done using a mixture of cards, dice and player position. The player is able to roll a die that tells them their defence, if the player is positioned within cover they are able to use more dice, increasing their defence. The player is able to fight back against the locust using weapon cards that deal a certain amount of damage and have a number of ammo which resembles uses, also some of the weapons have special abilities that work off rolling dice so have a random chance of happening.

This combat seems fun as it gives the player strategy to which weapons to use as well as how to use them. However this seems like it could be a little difficult to keep track off with different weapons.

"Weapon cards"

"Board game in play"

Breakdown of the rules of 21

Constitutive rules of 21

·         The player can only have 5 cards at once or the game will end

·         A game of 21 technical last one round unless agreed upon more

·         Dealer busts everyone wins

·         Played with a standard 52 card deck excluding jokers

·         If 2 or more players have same highest total player with the least amount of cards wins

Google Glass Research Notes

How it works

·         Head mounted display

·         Augmented reality

·         Hands free

·         Uses simple voice commands/ gestures

·         First seen prototype from 2012 uses a normal set of glasses

·         Will be available to developers in early 2013

·         Runs using google’s android system

Potential

·         Change the world as we view it

·         Interact with the internet where-ever/ when-ever we want

·         Easily compare real item prices

·         Interact with magazines and newspapers

·         Real life augmented gaming in vision

Cons

·         Potential for constant advertisements

·         Distraction from real life tasks

 

Researched from

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Glass

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2097879/Google-glasses-sale-end-2012-cost-250.html

http://kotaku.com/5887742/google-glasses-to-augment-gamers-reality

Blobitecture

Blobitecture is form of architecture, the study of buildings and their inner workings, which use strange smooth structures that are usually built up using blob like shapes, hence the name blobitecture. This style of architecture derives from blobism which was the original term used for this form of architecture and was mainly seen around the 90’s.

These kinds of buildings are in most cases considered works of art as they mostly unique buildings, however there are a lot of architects that would disagree as they are created CAD (computer aided design) software to create the strange the shapes. I think this is good way of designing buildings using this form of architecture as it allows for a lot variety within the structure of the buildings themselves.

The buildings are mainly built using smooth glass surfaces to mainly create domes, even though they don’t always use domes. This makes the buildings stand out in an average city which sometimes makes look a little out of place.

This if used in games could be very useful as it could allow to build a very interesting environment and even levels, using just this architecture style is what would make the environment unique as nearly every city in real life uses a vast number of architecture styles.

"city hall in London uses Blobitecture"

Theory and practise of deconstruction

Deconstruction is a graphic design theory that is present is some of modern day designs. Deconstruction revolves around the concept of rearranging and misshaping letters and shapes to create a new piece of design work. This movement also takes slight elements of futurism in the aspect that it uses bold shapes and lettering but were as futurism usually use the lettering as their actually meaning deconstruction.

Some examples of artist’s/Designer’s that commonly use this style of deign are:

•   David Carson

•   Ellen Lupton

•   J. Abbott Miller

I really like this design style as it allow for great variation within the graphic design sector. This design style is also easily taken to other media such as architecture and games as texture work or even buildings themselves within the medium.

This is very rarely seen in video games but it could be useful to create a very interesting environments and maybe even textures within models creating a unique experience.

"David Carson work example"

The "EyeWriter"

This device was created by a large group of people for the graffiti that is known as Tempt1 aka Tony Quan. He was diagnosed with ASL which caused him to be completely paralyzed and unable to paint anymore and had to communicate through technology such as computers. The device made it so that Tony was able to paint again using his eyesight and the negative from a laser pointer that a camera attached to his glasses picks up. The group got funding of $18,000 as a starting budget to programme and manufacture these devices, that is only made up of PlayStation eye camera that has been hacked a part, a laser pointer and a pair of cheap glasses. The hardware can made cheaply and effectively and all of the software is free to download and install, make it readily available for anyone how is paralyzed. Everyone thought that this was impossible task but through hard work and a team of people from different fields they managed to make the impossible possible and change the world around them.

This technology is amazing as it has so much potential to help people. The way it was made also has the potential to imagine new and fresh ways to solve problems in real life with technology, this in a games design sense could be new mechanics or even consoles or technology to run them. It even has the potential to bring amazing artists and designers that have been forced to leave their career back to doing what they love.

"A diagram of the EyeWriter"

The art of awe

I was watching this TED talk by Rob Legato a major film director. When people have certain feelings their perception to whatever is causing those emotions changes, this causes them to remember things slightly different. Instead of replicating the actually thing if we replicate it the way people remember it can cause a greater emotional impact, so the audience think they are seeing something but they haven’t actually seen anything like that before. This can used to create a building of tempo and tension that will give the audience a greater emotional impact.

This could then be used into video games, during certain events within a game the player could experience the build-up and tension that the effect of awe can create. This could be used were the player views the events of the game in a dramatic way using certain camera angles, or even by playing its events in a reverse order making them figure it out as they play through the game.

Bad Design from other media

This is Bolton's Marketplace shopping centre. The architectural for this building I would consider bad design. The building on the outside is still a traditional looking building as it has always been where as the interior is a modern looking shopping centre. I feel that these two very different styles don't work together as well as they should. They contrast too much drawing away from potential good design on both parts. The modern interior works but there is too much empty space where stalls could be.

The market place traditional outside

The market place modern interior

Good design from other media

This is the logo for a package deliver company that is commonly know as Fed Ex. The logo was designed by Mr Lindon Leader of Leader creative. I think this design is really well thought out as it shows were the name of the of the company but illustrates it in way that suggests movement, shown through the arrow that is seen within the negative space that is between E and x. This stands out more prominently in the illustration bellow but the colour differences are what bring it out subconsciously. The way that the movement is suggested subconsciously suggests to people that the company has something to do with delivery makeing this design instantly effective. Once someone has noticed the arrow they are automatically draw to it again and again afterwards.

  The Fed Ex logo.

The Fed ex logo with the arrow pointed out.