The Evaluation (Final Major Project)

My project this year has been a challenge for me, in placed I’ve taken on new skills and new ways of thinking that I’ve never tackled before, to coin a phrase, i may have “bitten of more than i can chew”, but that being said, i feel i handled certain elements of the project well, and others could’ve been more detailed, or i could’ve worked harder on them to get them up to a standard i might be more happy with now.

The initial part of the project was really the idea generation phase, I’ve known i was going to make a game from the start of this year, so i had a head start since my last two projects were both oriented towards this project, one being posters from the game world and the other being a model of Paris using the 3DS Max system. This stage was also more about creating the story, the setting, and choosing the designs I’d use. There was a lot of tweaking to the story line in this part, often events were rewritten since it was based off our reality, but about 60 years into the future, by far my favourite section thought was deciding the architecture I’d base the future buildings off, i could really go wild since i knew some of the buildings would’ve been destroyed over time, i found it a challenge to imagine what sort of styles i could use, since new styles are invented over time, and you really have to pull all you know about architectural and cultural progression into it, but i feel my handling of this task was good, the outcome may not have been as fleshed out as I’d wanted, and in the future i hope to create a more in-depth story and architectural designs before i go and start making (i feel i jumped in too early on the making process). My initial sketches had a good amount of detail though and i tried to show how a future London may have concerns about the environment, and how they may have adapted to a changing climate and the incorporation of trees into buildings.

The next stage was the making, and in my past blogs I’ve stated how many problems I’ve had, especially since I’m still a novice to 3DS Max, often I’d find large glitches and missing polygons on the project because I’ve edited or added something on one side. I feel in terms of 3DS Max i have a tendency to overuse a specific tool called the Boolean operators, which causes all sorts of problems down the road, but a tip i got from a tutor on another course who’s familiar with the program suggested a different way which would create a much smoother, less buggy model, feedback from my project which i really appreciate now and will likely incorporate into my work next time. Overall though i feel my work in 3DS Max was much better than last time and i produced some far higher quality models, and since i had more time to work with it this time, my skills developed far more than i expected, and if i had to do this stage again, I’d be confident in doing so, but i would probably ask for more feedback as i go through the process in order to get more high-quality work. In terms of the game engine, i think for my first time using it, it went well, even though it really was only a day of use, if I’d had more time, i would’ve been able to correct a few things and make a far better presentation model for the show, and possibly had finished the first set of coding for the game, allowing a flyable plane model in the game, and possibly have it shoot weapons too, Time management was a huge problem in this section, and indeed across the entire project, and i think next project I’ll really need to plan my time carefully, since i know how far i work in certain areas, it should help me in the long run to create a far more efficient project outcome.

In terms of research, my creation of a mood board to flick through and get inspiration from really helped, the collection of images were a folder on Google drive, and thanks to the idea from my tutor to do such a thing, it really helped to inspire me throughout the project. A lot more of my research this time was focussed around sci-fi, ships games, architecture in fantasy and science fiction that i could apply to the game, the real life architectural research was mostly taken from the last project in order to cut my workload so i had more time for other things, this actually helped a lot, because i don’t think I’d have got half the work done if i had to do all the research again, but overall i think i did well on the research section, it could’ve been more in depth, but by the end, i had a good amount of ideas to work with, and it really helped with pushing through the project.

In conclusion, this project wasn’t a failure, but much more of a steep learning curve than i expected, and in the future I’ll plan my time, have all items i need on hand for inspiration and set out a clear plan of what i want to achieve, and what the time scale of that is, and how realistic it is for me to achieve it to a high standard. I feel I’ve learnt an awful lot from this project, and hopefully I’ll be able to put it into practice in the future.

 

The Game Engine

Once I’d completed the models, as mentioned in the last post, i moved on to placing the models in the game engine and starting to code it. Unfortunately for me, when i was doing this i had about a day to complete it, my planning throughout this project was rather bad, but I’ll review that in the evaluation. The game engine took ten attempts to load all one model in before it contained no holes or glitches, since I’d never done this before, when i exported the model from 3DS Max, into a “.OBJ” file (the type of file, or one of the types the Unreal 4 Engine would accept) it would come up with several errors stating there were “rat’s nests” in the mesh of the objects, i didn’t know what this was (there were 14 on the first attempt) so i pressed through it on the first attempt and found half of the model missing when i loaded it in, i foolishly forgot to take screenshots of this, but sufficed to say, this occurred 10 different times until I’d fixed it completely, whittling down the problems bit by bit by using the engine to identify the colliding polygons, removing them, and then reattaching them in a way that didn’t cause collisions (i should explain that a rat’s nest in 3DS Max is when two different polygons intersect and cause collisions, often the result of Boolean operators or a bad cap tool (cap tool being a tool that caps a hole in the object when you’ve selected the border to cap).

Once in the game engine, I started working on shading the project, because even though it wasn’t textured, i could easily apply shading, or so i thought, the engine struggled to build the lighting on the project since there were still some errors i hadn’t fixed, so to quickly fix the problem I added a different type of light that didn’t need to build the lighting in, and left it at that, only changing it by adding some of the planes into the skyline to paint the picture of what i wanted to show.

Making the game

From the start of the project, all I’ve been doing while researching is imagining the various possibilities of this future, what it could be, art and architecture styles, are there loads of plants, no plants, how would the politics of the country affect it, etc. and finally after designing it all, it was time to make it, this is by far my favourite part, and I’ve really enjoyed learning more about 3DS max, the software i used to create the project’s models. I decided on a repeatable structures system, i designed several base buildings with various small variations in the designs to make it all a bit more interesting, since this was the future, i expected there would be a huge mash of different old and new styles in the skyline of London, especially with the setting of a post-revolution London with greater influences from the cultures inside the country and abroad, and a almost step back into the American 1950’s interpretation of the future, with simplified art deco buildings and a huge amount of idealism, that influence was used in parts, to recognise and show this future as a bright one that, although has had turbulent times, has come out as a better, near-perfect society, and this’d be mirrored by the architecture, the lighting in the scenes especially (i was going to use a technique where all the bad and evil ships would be duller shades of the same colours in the scenes, to show a difference and a contrast between the two. I was even going to have enemies in the later levels that would challenge even this, to really make the audience think about who is an isn’t the bad guy.

The first model was to be a simple building, about 5 stories high with various variations on the patterns. i achieved most of the curves using the tool called “chamfer”, allowing me to choose the depth or the curve as well as how many segments i could use. the windows i found to be difficult, i created a gridline pattern on the model, and cut out the windows, but on the corners i had to readjust them to get a nice, even finish on the window sill. each doorway has small steps going into the street, accept on type which featured an overhang cut into the building with supporting pillars, the last model i made used a small “street café” style with small fencing and an overhanging shade over the dining area, this was also my first use of the Boolean tool in the engine, I always struggle with Booleans, because half the time they delete the project, and the other half the like to create all sorts of funky and strange problems that i have to deal with further down the road.

The next building was based solely off my workplace, with a  few additions, i got inspiration from just looking around Callington, and i noticed a building, the one i worked in, the design, the shapes, it looks a little outdated, which is what i wanted, and as inspiration goes, i felt it was quite good. When i built it in the engine, i curved some of the windows in a way to make them look like they’ve been updated over years even though the rest looked much older, i even added a large aerial on one of the designs, even though you can’t see it in the screenshots, in the final model, they’re there, I’m really happy with the outcome too, i think it fits in perfectly and it was fairly easy to achieve due to the size of the designs.

The third building i built was something of an experiment, i didn’t even know if it’d work. It was the first of the larger buildings, and in fact, since i haven’t finished making all the models yet, this particular building is the largest building in the game, or, at least the tallest. i found this one challenging as it was the first building to incorporate a curvaceous design, and also had some odd and interesting parts and assets. This design was a small nod to my Cornish heritage, specifically the Cornish mining heritage found in my home town and across the whole county, the entire building is based off an engine house, with a large aerial filling the space of the chimney stack, this design also would have trees in the gap at the top of the building under the roofing, most of the buildings here incorporate some form of nature into their design, but i wasn’t able to display this due to the lack of knowledge of the game engine and the lack of time.

The fourth building i’m very proud of, it’s based off a true London building, it’s not ridiculously common, but it’s very beautiful, and probably the one i enjoyed making the most. I found the base structure fairly easy to construct since it was made from a cuboid initially and the moulded using the various tools the modelling programme gives me, it’s also a fairly nice-to-repeat pattern that fits in well to the London Skyline, especially along the river Thames.

The 5th building i made was another echo of the past, this time a Victorian-style warehouse. This building i based off the Youth club in Callington, since it was build around that time, but i also combined it with some photos on google, the end result being this, if i do say so myself, Smashing piece or architecture that illustrates the design just as i had in my head, it really fits into the skyline and makes it a little more lively, the character it adds alone really picks up the scene and makes it truly unique, that is, not meaning to pat my own back or anything.

(Sidenote, apologies for the window on the side of the screen, my home computer has two monitors)

The last building i made was the Houses of Parliament, also known as the palace of Westminster, I really enjoyed creating this model, it was challenging, and that’s something i love, in total, it took me five hours to create, and the most challenging part i found was attaching all of the parts together at the end of the project using the Boolean operators, mainly because half the time they wouldn’t work together properly and would just cause errors for me to fix later or make the model disappear. The model itself isn’t a fully accurate, nor is it completely detailed, I made it by eye, judging proportions based off models of the real thing on Google Maps, and pictures on Google, I could’ve downloaded the picture and placed it in the modelling studio, but instead decided, since i didn’t know how to do that, to just build it off images on the internet (and also the time constraint, learning how to place an image in the game studio could’ve taken a lot longer, i know now it’s incredibly easy, but when i was making this, i didn’t know). the model was less detailed to save time, and also part of the style, the game was meant to be simple colours and designs with simpler shapes and dynamic lighting to offset it, i did intend to texture all the buildings, but found UV mapping (a method used to create a skin you place over the model, containing the texture) was extremely difficult to do, so i stuck with making the models and creating the scene.

Aside from the models, the only other model i had time to make was the Swift, the main ship you fly around in the game, in the lowest of the screenshots above you can see the finished models flying around the scene, the plan was to create an almost 1950s style plane with some sci-fi elements to it, the plane was also designed to fly in space in the lore of the game, a small nod to Doctor who (Season 5: Victory of the Daleks), these planes were supposed to be playable, functioning sprites in game, but since i ran out of time, halfway through coding, i put them in the scene in the game in still positions to simulate them flying around. They also contained a small grill at the front which has turbine blades under them, of which were supposed to spin, but after many attempts (all of which time consuming), i left them still and moved onto the next project. i’m still happy with the quality  of them, and plan to add small weapon pods each side of the aircraft.

 

Designing the game

 

When it comes to designing the game, i’ve been pushing through hard on creating base sketches for ships and building found in the game, i had to think about the potential future this game is set in, what’s happened, how the setting has changed from not till then and the cultural background of the setting. In a lot of my buildings, i thought about how London might have changed after a revolution, a more devolved government, Scotland and NI leaving the UK and how a more culturally diverse nation might look. In a lot of the designs i tended to incorporate the old and new, just smashing them together to create something new, a lot of the new buildings have crosshatched windows, some are based off older designs, and after researching some for the buildings in London, i made some basic, older designs from various periods, and some of my own designs that i could easily replicate across the city. I took some inspiration from an artist called “imperial boy” (an artist i’ll do a piece on after this post), and played with incorporating nature into the designs of the buildings, including trees and waterfalls, and also how the buildings would have to cope to London flooding in places because of global warming, leading to some almost “Venician”-like pictures.

Easter SMART targets

 

-To create concept art for my game, including concepts for weapons, ships, the London level, assets and characters, recording it by scanning the concepts on the computer and annotating them, including the storyboards.

-Create a colour pallet for the game, once created scanning it on and using it in the game, taking in to account the atmosphere, the weapons and the characters, recording by uploading it on to the blog and annotating with some illustrations to demonstrate it in-situe.

-Form the stories behind the earth currently, along with any backstories of the characters and possible scenes involving these characters relating to this, record it by scanning on storyboards and annotating them.

-Gather primary source inspiration, go around recording the landscape with a camera or a sketchpad, look at current architectural styles and try to get inspiration from them. Record and annotate on blog.

Doris Carrascosa

Doris Carrascosa is a French game designer working for Chucklefish games in London. Her Work includes, most notably, Starbound (her joining the project to replace the old designer who left after the 1.0 version of the game) and other titles such as “The old man and space”, “Sandmoon” and “Crispy Adventure”. her work is light and colourful, looking at her work, i’m mostly interested in the cell shading she does, she uses blank colours, often pastel shades, with little faces drawn on to the characters, and simple polygonal models. The colours she uses helps to create a friendly, happy environment which is inviting, i feel this playful style would help appeal to anywhere from 10 to 30 year olds, and possibly older, mostly women.

Her work will be incredibly useful to me, especially her methods for cel-shading, i also love her art style, the little faces she draws on her characters help to liven them up, they seem more innocent, and more friendly. i want to do more realism in this project, but Doris’ work reminds me to make it a little more open, a bit more inviting and welcoming, especially in the environment, i’m planning now to have a bright sun in the background, like a unset, over a deep blue river thames and bright green trees. I think in areas her work could improve though, and things to keep in mind for my work, is the low polygon count on some of her models, i think they’re incredibly detailed, but they need a little more smoothing out, these are her earlier games though, so i can’t be too critical, but for the sake of it, here’s one more, some of the texturing on “Sandmoon” could do with a higher pixel count to give them more detail. Other than that i love her work.

 

The legend of Zelda: Breath of the wild

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the wild is the newest game in the franchise of the Legend of Zelda. Released for the Nintendo Switch approximately three weeks ago, it’s quickly become one of the most popular in the series. I’m researching this game in particular, because it uses an art style very similar to the one i want to produce, and the fighting mechanics they use in this game would also go a long way to understanding what makes a good fighting/flying game, and what doesn’t.

The art style of this franchise has always interested me, up until Wind waker, the style was semi-realistic, semi-cartoony, wind waker broke that with a more cartoon-like game, followed by Phantom hourglass and Spirit tracks, even the prequel to the entire franchise, Skyward sword, adopted this style, although it dialed it back, to a style that i’m trying to emulate, one which was made slightly darker in colour in breath of the wild, as they mixed more realism into the game. Something i’ve loved about the more carttony styled versions is the energy effects they use, especially in wind waker, the swirling tower of lava or water looks just as i imagine energy weapons would in my game, and are, in fact, a big inspiration of them.

I also find the Zelda franchise has mastered the art of hand-to-hand combat. Where in Skyrim you’d just hack and slash at enemies, in Zelda, you use something called targeting, nicknamed that because you’d hold the Z button on the controller to lock onto an enemy, and then attack, allowing you to single out enemies in a fight, so you can just attack like any other game, it adds a new dynamic to the game allowing for more in-depth combat, and ever since nintendo came up with the idea, many other games have used similar or the same method of combat, something i’ll consider using if i make a ground combat part to the game.

Breath of the wild has continued both of these trends, i’ve mainly picked on it though for the architectural styles used, the blocky swirls and patterns, bright colours, and the sense of scale of the world, it’s really a breath taking game, and something i’d love to consider when making my game, especially with the simplicity of the models, and yet how complex they actually are in design, it’s really inspiring for me. i also like the semi-steam punk style they’ve gone with, a sort of ancient fairytale/steampunk world, i really like this style, and i think it’s something i might explore as i design the characters costumes, and the buildings in the cities in game.

 

Proposal discussion

So i said the next post would be Breath of the wild, that’ll likely be the one after this, since recently i sat down with my peers and my Tutor to propose my project to them and them to suggest suggestions. I got some good feedback but some of the things i’ve taken from it are to include a specific theme, and story, something that defines it from the Genre and makes it truly unique, Because of this i think i want to carry through the social action project into this project, by challenging female stereotypes,  and the politics of the world today. it’s an interesting idea, and given the news currently at what’s happening in America, and indeed the rest of the world, it would be a fun concept to challenge the people on both sides of the argument, maybe even use the game to show how childish or strange the whole situation is.

Borderlands concept art

As i’ve said in posts before, i’m taking a good amount of inspiration from the Borderlands franchise, because of this, i’ve been doing research into their concept artists, and two caught my eye, Kale Menges and Lorin Wood.

 

Kale Menges:

Kale’s work seems to be oriented around icon design, achievements, buttons, and what seems to be poster ads, he’s work is reminiscent of old American and British propaganda posters from the 1930’s-50’s, and i like his semi-cartoony style. i Thought it best to study his work because it’s similar to work i did on the propaganda posters project, and since i’ll be modelling those posters in game, i wanted to look into his work. i like the block-colour, intricate designs he’s done, using simple shapes to make up a complex picture.

 

Lorin Wood:

Lorin Wood’s work is really interesting to me, his work is what i expect of concept art, but it’s also very retailed, he does a lot of annotations, and uses a lot of real-world inspiration. he seems to design more of the machines and landscapes, things like ships, robots and cities, which is right up my street. something he also seems to do is mix his mediums, some time’s he’s sketched on paper or photoshop, and other times it’s a concept 3D model he’s created himself, i like this method since it allows you to test your idea, and tweak it if you want to.

After the next post on Zelda Breath of the Wild, i’ll be looking into reference material, much as Lorin does, and using it to try and plan out the environment i’ll have in my game, so i can start making the concept art for this game.

James McDermott

James McDermott is a prominent 2D artist in the sci-fi fantasy genre, well known for his work on tv shows like Rick and Morty. His artwork is colourful and creative, and helps flesh out the characters in the franchise, and i love his cartoony, Simpson-esque style. I also like looking at the designs he didn’t use, his concepts help to paint the way he thinks which in turn helps me. The reason i’ve chosen to look at him though is because of his style, and how it reflects the characters and their personalities, he has a way of perfecting the right expression for every moment, making the character look alive, and feel alive. I thing i noticed as i looked through his posts was he had to consider the culture, the architectural styles, some were themed on specific human eras, and others just on one particular building, in an episode where rick enters multiple micro-verses (tiny universes), he enters one where the entire civilization’s city is based off Fallingwater, a building designed around a waterfall in rural Pennsylvania, 45 miles from Pittsburg, and built in 1935 (architect was Frank lloyd Wright).

His work is reminiscent of the Simpsons and he mostly specializes in environments, fulfilling this remit with a huge array of zany designs and out-of-this-world ideas, involving the backstory of the landscape too, be it a city, town, or just a planet. He often incorporates simple shapes with a fine outline and a simple colour fill shaded with a few basic colours. His work, although incredibly cartoony it is also incredibly professional, with intricate details that fit with the shows he works on, especially Rick and Morty, a show that prides itself on making littler connections with forgotten things from earlier or later in the series.

I find his work colourful and vibrant, it breathes life into his work and makes a fun and interesting world the viewer can get involved in, but can also illustrate a particularly gruesome or disgusting scene, creating a juxtaposition against his art style.

Here’s some other Shots from Rick and Morty:

Lastly Here’s some concept art he’s done too: