7/4/2023 - 12/5/2023 | Week 1 - Week 6
Game Art | Bachelor of Design in Creative Media
Shofwa Alyadiena | 0350019
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Lecture Notes
Week 2 - Game Identification
Just as an early disclaimer, we don't need to create a whole new game. We simply need to focus on the art of the game. The idea is that we make a new level- but what is in a level? each level is a map with a goal or task, then a reward to give players for overcoming those tasks and challenges.
Duration and difficulty play hand in hand. Depending on the difficulty, we can decide how long a player should stay on a level and how many obstacles are on the level. After that, it's time to consider the size of the map for the level. The reason challenges exist at a level is to add fun! The immersion comes with how much we can empathise with the story, as it's a form of escapism.
Next, the characters play a part in the game art. We have to consider what skill, archetype, and class the character has. A new character might have a set of base skills, which could progressively become more powerful or useful. We have to add a call sheet for the characters, which includes the sprites, angles, and a model for the character.
To create pleasantness in the UI/UX as well, we have to consider how big the screen size is. There are the fonts, the safe zone, the buttons, and even the loading screen which takes up an entire screen.
Week 4 - Sketches
Some environment sketches to show our skills that will eventually be fitted to the game. The sketches are to show our style. The second step is to plan. In Game Art, we have to plan the whole thing in terms of its art direction.
When you say cultural design, we aren't changing every single thing. We take components that are identical to real-life examples. If it's a pillar for example, what are the pillar assets that we're looking at? What are the components that we want to carry into our art?
Instead of doing a whole world, we can make a rough map that will be focused on to narrow our work. Although we're focusing on a smaller scale, we have to make sure it's consistent and relatable.
Next stage we could start to work on our characters. When we do character design, start with silhouettes. Don't create a silhouette from a flat straight-front view just yet. The reason is that it limits our perspective and it's unable to bring across the persona to the audience. It's better and more dynamic to find a 3/4 angle that would generally show off their character and personality.
Week 5 - Unity
For this week we're getting a lecture-tutorial on how to use Unreal
and Unity. Not everyone could handle Unreal, so we opted for Unity.
Few things we can work with if we have a folder of all the characters
that's been created. We started to learn how to add objects into
Unity's 3D plane, and to add colours and control a little bit of the
lighting. I've learned a few shortcuts or controls from testing this
out.
[Spawn a 3D Object] GameObject > 3D Object > Cube; Sphere;
Cylinder; Terrain
[Move the Camera] Right Mouse Button Drag
[Move
around the plane] Middle Mouse Button
[Move the angle of the
plane] Alt + Left Mouse Button Drag
[Zoom] Scroll or Alt + Right
Mouse Button Drag
Instructions
1. Research
1. Time
2. Era
3. Ambience and mood
4. Back story
5. Crisis
6. Culture – design component representing their race, worship, colours,
materials used, etc
7. Ecosystem – who lives there, what do they do, animals, creatures, flora
etc
8. Geolocation – plain, mountain pass, dungeons, temples ruins, highlands,
sea, river, forest etc.
9. Architectural design – structure, monuments, relics etc
10. Resource – nuclear, oil, crystal etc
11. Genre – Horror, Comedy, Drama etc
12. Target audience – range max to 8 years
13. Theme - Fantasy Sci-fi, Post War, Post Apocalypse, Medieval, etc.
14. Classes/hierarchy
15. Transport – man-made, animal, hybrids, portals etc.
I chose to do one of the few 3D games I know and love: Inscryption.
2. Character Design
I wanted to make 3 antagonists, a main boss with two mini-bosses. Each of the bosses has their own special moves.
The main boss is inspired by Kuyang, a limbless folklore creature. In this universe, the character is The Scrybe of Flesh, named Baudka (a mix of the meaning Grandmother and Limb). She creates cards by quickly knitting organs and limbs with strings from her intestines. Similar to The Mycologist's and The Angler's power, every few moves she combines one of the player's cards with her own. Below are the early sketches of her character.
Starting with the silhouettes, I quickly drew up 5 ideas. The first thing other than having messy scattered hair is the detached limbs because it was difficult to imagine her playing cards without anything to hold them with. Of course, the option to use her hair was there, but the hair was already used as a sort of link to the other characters. Idea number 4 also didn't make it as it was too similar to a pre-existing character in the game.
I sketched out the fifth silhouette first as I really liked the idea of the clear limbs hanging down. That's as far as it goes, though, before I moved onto the next.
The second character is named The Harvester. This mini-boss is stationed in the woods and is based on the Flatwoods Monster. I wanted to keep the original silhouette of the creature and focused on elongating the arms while adding some 'forest' elements to the character's head. It was either the forest or organs to connect with the main boss. The special move this character does is based on the folklore, where the people who have "witnessed" this monster smell pungent gasses that makes them nauseous. In game terms, the 'gasses' appear and lower all the player card's power by 1 (believe me, that's quite a lot).
I opted to focus on the second silhouette first. there wasn't as much information or addition that I've made.
The last character is The Seeker, a mix of ideas from both Tenome and Kuchisake Onna. The main focus is the character's hand-eyes and stretched or sliced open mouths.
All the ideas I've created and made silhouettes of so far were creature-like and too similar to the adaptation of Tenome and has little elements from the Kuchisake Onna.
Therefore, I made a second set of sketches that focused on combining their elements. In the myth, Kuchisakke Onna would slice or cut open her victims, so as the most humanoid character out of the rest, I made it so that the most noticeable part other than the head was the scissor arms.
Further refining the character sketches, I proceeded with colouring the first two bosses and adding the textures I had in mind. There isn't much to add to the main boss, so I only added the colouring mostly.
For the Harvester, I enhanced the details with the tree texture, as the mini-boss would be stationed in the forest centre. As I mentioned previously as well, the character would use gasses to decrease the player's character's power, so there are pipe-like shapes on the body with the idea that the gasses would come out of them.
For the Seeker, I've made a number of adjustments. I drew the side view of the character from the original idea while considering the shape and how I want the arms to look. After seeing the ideas, I wanted to incorporate the Japanese element a bit further and refined the shape of the outfit based on kimono references.
I chose the arm where the scissors are wrapped tightly to the sleeves. I've also decided to have it be as if the severed hand is pocketed into the mouth slits.
I proceeded with adding the gradient same with the rest and consider the main focus of the character by adding only small details to the tattered cloth.
Feedback
1. Don't use A or T-Poses during the silhouette phase, as finding the
character's persona is difficult.
2. Best use a more stylized art
style than a hyperrealistic one.
3. Best to proceed with The
Seeker for a 3D model.
4. Exaggerate The Harvester's eyes
5. The
main boss could have thicker hair or more 'rooty'. Create a stronger base
for the bottom of the body; maybe add the spinal cord and the intestines
come after. Reference can be taken from Quintesson, Fran Bow, Resident
Evil, and Silent Hill.
6. Maybe try representing pain and
scariness.
7. Figure out how the gameplay will work, and how it can
contribute to how scary the character is.
8. Adding colour might
contribute to the scariness as well.
Next course of action
1. Identify Game Type. simplicablenew.com/games
2. Mobile, PC,
Console, VR Headset.
Submission
Reflection:
Experience
My experience with world creation was pretty bland. I feel like we repeated the process over and over again to the point where it was hardly enjoyable- but it could've been a personal misunderstanding of what the prompts were. Otherwise, I was excited to start a project that was outside my usual style.
Observation
Most of my observations were focused on how to create a character that was "scary". It was difficult finding references that were usable.
Findings
Although there were few usable references I could take, I was able to come to a conclusion about what creates a character scary, outside of giving them a backstory to go off of. Usually, the character would have marks of blood on them, and funnily, lots of the physical appearance were taken from old people. I couldn't seem to find out why that's a running theme with horror characters. Otherwise, marks of blood is a good indicator of danger.
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