Introduction
Within this week I am going to be looking at the personality tasks that I went through in the previous weeks that underline and iron out my personality and skills that I posses. The reason for this task is to identify what my strengths and weaknesses are, what my aspirations/goals are and how these skills are going to help me obtain them.
Who am I task
Doing this task has helped me realise more about the main things that I think make me who I am, it’s given me a broader incite of what I actually know about the four main areas that I have chosen and on what I actually do know about them. It helped me see what certain aspects make me who I am and the reasoning behind these life choices, in why I have chosen to do what I have done within my life.
The Myers Briggs test
While doing this task I found out he type of personality that I have and the strength and weaknesses that com from these types of personalities. The first time that I took the test it said that I was quite level headed and that I an rather creative in the work that I produce, making every little fine detail perfect as I progress along to the end of the task at hand.
The second time I took it was said that I was rather fun and enthusiastic, curious and rather spiratic to what I choose to do which to me is the opposite in some ways to when i took the task for myself.
The strengths and weaknesses that I go from the first test were:
Strengths
- Creative – I agree with this strength and that is because I do think at times that I can be rather creative when I really would like to create something either for a FMP or for a privet matter I do like to get a bit messy and creative.
- Insightful – I think that I am rather descriptive with what I am doing and explaining in-depth description.
- Inspiring and Convincing – I don’t think that I am Inspiring or convincing and this is because I don’t think that I am too confident and not very good at some of the things that I do which is why I disagree with this.
- Decisive – At times I do think that I can be rather decisive when it comes to certain circumstances, generally on a topic/project or subject that I like I think that II can make up the correct decision for what I think would be best for my current situation.
- Determined and Passionate – I can relate to this because I have been doing martial arts for over 4 years and I’ve given up my time to train and progress in it.
- Altruistic – I can relate to this one too because I do care for those who are around me.
Weaknesses
- Sensitive – I cannot agree with this weakness as I’m not the sensitive type.
- Extremely Private – I slightly agree with this because I do think that I have a personal life out of the sight of the people that I spend time with in college.
- Perfectionistic – I do think that I can be a perfectionist when it comes to my work trying to make it as perfect as I would like it to, to every define detail and I’m not happy until the piece of work or art are complete.
- Always Need to Have a Cause – I don’t this that this is me personally because I am rather flexible when it comes to my goals and my tasks that I or others set me. As well as this it says “if routine tasks feel like they are getting in the way, or worse yet, there is no goal at all, they will feel restless and disappointed.” This is not the case I am somewhat pleased because it means that I learn from what went wrong and why I didn’t like the outcome.
- Can Burn Out Easily – I don’t think that this is me, I tend to take my time and try not to over work myself leading me to “burn out”.
I found it quite interesting about the results that I got and the strengths and weaknesses that I got, I thought that some of them were really on point and they described me to a point and on the other hand others didn’t really go to what I personally think about myself. If I was to say it was about 40-45% accurate to how I perceive myself as an individual.
The strengths and weaknesses that I go from the first test were:
Strengths
- Charming – I think that I can be pretty likeable to others that are around me and people have told me that I can be rather approachable and easy to communicate with.
- Sensitive to Others – I believe that I can be very in touch others around me making sure that they’re happy and well.
- Imaginative – I can agree with being imaginative because I tend to think of wacky and eccentric ideas for concepts, ideas and projects, often thinking of other worldly things.
- Passionate – I can slightly agree with this because I can get passionate with a few tasks or goals that I set myself and I can get very into some of the tasks that I do.
- Curious – I am slightly curious with some things that I do.
- Artistic – I can agree that people would find me artistic because of how I draw and how much that I draw and do things that are related to art.
Weaknesses
- Fiercely Independent – I don’t really agree with this because I am independent in some circumstances but the majority of the time I like to work within groups because I think it is a more flaunt and enjoyable experience.
- Unpredictable – I don’t really think that I am unpredictable I like it when things are structured and well thought out and not doing anything courageous.\
- Easily Stressed – I don’t think that I am easily stressed at all in any situation.
- Overly Competitive – I don’t think that I’m overly competitive because personally when I’m doing something I don’t see myself as being better than the other player of person, I would rather have fun in the experience rather than winning.
- Fluctuating Self-Esteem – I can sort of agree with this weakness because lately at times my self-esteem has fluctuated from good to bad.
Current skills?
The current skills that I currently have are:
- Communication skills
- Team working skills
- Computer skills
- Martial arts
- 3D skills
- Organisation
- Punctuality
Ambitions
In the future my biggest ambition is to become a lead 3D or a lead Environmental artist. Seeing that my passion is to create world and explore different possibilities to what I can do within the world I think that I can aspire to thins.
I would like to be a lead 3D or environmental artist, creating the digitalised world of what the game could be souly based upon. I would like to create the assets and the world in which the player can freely roam around within.
What are the skills that I will need to get a job like this? There are many skills that will be needed to acquire such a job. I wasn’t 100% confident that I knew all of the skills that are required so I did a little research and found out this:
Responsibilities
This lead artist will be required to:
- lead an effective and efficient environment art team;
- work closely with the Lead Artist to ensure quality and consistency of art across the project;
- create and document environment processes and pipelines
- communicate and collaborate effectively with other teams; and
- explore new techniques and technologies to achieve best possible results.
Required Experience and Skills
- Demonstrated visual flare and artistic talent
- Skill in 3ds Max/Maya/Modo/zbrush
- Skill in Photoshop
- Knowledge of games development pipeline/environment/engines
- Self motivated approach to work
- Great communication skills complemented by a positive can-do attitude
- Experience of working effectively in a team
- Demonstrated passion for visual environment creation
- Proven experience implementing game environments
Desirable Attributes
- Formal art training
- All round art ability
- Love of games
- Knowledge of Substance Designer and Painter
- Concept art skills
These are the abilities that I have to have in order to go for such a job. To get a job like this I will have to work more un my 3D skills and widen the programs that I use to develop my skills within each individual program. Also increasing my Photoshop skills to help with texturing and mapping.
What would I like to do?
I would like to go into the 3D and environment side of the gaming industry. The reasoning behind this is because most of my work is focused on this and I see it as one of my stronger skills. I rather enjoy creating realistic and fictional objects and the world in which they will be placed within.
After college I am hoping to get a job within retail that relates to the gaming industry and with the money and experience that I get form this job I will look into producing my very own work and them moving up and pushing forward to get a job within an industry working at the bottom and working myself up until I get the 3D modeling job that I hope to get.
Bibliography
Lead environment artist- 27/04/17
http://www.creative-assembly.com/job/170307/lead-environment-artist
Future career choices
Introduction
Within this section I am going to be organising my next step within my career choices. Whether it being going to a university or going into a full time job line within the media department.
University choices
I have chosen three different options to where I could progress within my specialist within the role of education and these are:
Hertfordshire university was one of the first university courses that I looked at. It is a three year course that entails; 3D work as well as 2D, Narrative and interactivity and conceptual art development, in the three year course.
The requirements to get into the course are:
Teesside University was the second choice that I chose for one of the educational pathways that I was going to be choosing for after I have finished college. The course entails that I will be working with Programming in both 2D and 3D over the course of the university. Although with programming I haven’t had a lot of experience with, however this is another step towards the media pathway that I strive for within a future career.
To get into Teesside University I will need to have the following:
A typical offer is 96-112 tariff points including at least one A level (or equivalent) in a technical, science or numerate subject such as computing, physics or maths. GCSE maths (grade C or equivalent) is essential. Key Skills Level 2 in Application of Number isn’t accepted as an equivalent.
You are invited for an interview, which also gives you an opportunity to visit our facilities and ask questions regarding the course. If the course is unsuitable for you, you may receive an offer for a related but more suitable course.
The third one that I looked at was The Birmingham City University. The overall course is longer that the Teesside University. The overall development of the course and what it entails is an awful lot. 2D and 3D game development, CGI modeling and animation, group work and AI development.
The entry requirements to get into this course are much higher than that of the Teesside university and these requirements are:
Entry Requirements
We accept a range of qualifications, the most popular of which are detailed below.
UK students
| Essential | ||
|---|---|---|
|
At the point of application, you must have GCSE at Grade 4 or above in English Language and Mathematics. Equivalent qualifications will be accepted. |
||
|
112 UCAS tariff points from A/AS Level with a minimum of 2 A Levels |
||
| Typical Offers | ||
| UK Qualification | Requirements 2017/18 | |
| GCE A Level/ AS Level | BBC at A Level or 112 UCAS tariff points from A/AS Level with a minimum of 2 A Levels, at least one from a Science, Technology, Mathematics or Computing subject. | |
| Access to Higher Education Diploma | Pass overall with 60 credits, 45 at Level 3 and 15 at Level 2, including with a minimum of 12 credits achieved from any Technology units awarded at Merit or Distinction | |
| BTEC National Diploma (12-units not including early years) | D*D* or combined with other level 3 qualifications to achieve a minimum total of 112 UCAS points | |
| BTEC Extended Diploma (18-units not including early years) | DMM – 112 UCAS points | |
| BTEC Subsidiary Diploma/ National Award (6-units not including early years) | Combined with other level 3 qualifications to achieve a minimum total of 112 UCAS points | |
| BTEC Diploma in Foundation Studies in Art and Design | Distinction | |
| International Baccalaureate Diploma | 1. For students who complete the full IB Diploma: a total of 14 points or above from three Higher Level Subjects.
2. Students who do not complete the IB Diploma will be considered on the basis of their IB Certificates. Students must have grade 5 in Maths (Standard Level) |
|
| Irish Leaving Certificate | 112 UCAS points – Higher Levels | |
| Scottish Higher/ Advanced Higher | 112 UCAS points | |
| Welsh Baccalaureate (core plus options) | Combined with other level 3 qualifications to achieve a minimum total of 112 UCAS points | |
| Other qualifications | ||
| If you have a qualification that is not listed in the table please refer to our full entry requirements on UCAS.
Further guidance on tariff points can be found on the UCAS website. |
||
EU/International students
| Essential | ||
|---|---|---|
| EU/Non-EU (International) Qualifications | Requirements 2017/18 | |
| IELTS | 6.0 overall with 5.5 minimum in all bands | |
| International Baccalaureate Diploma (or equivalent, including internationally accredited Foundation courses). | 1. For students who complete the full IB Diploma: a total of 14 points or above from three Higher Level Subjects.
2. Students who do not complete the IB Diploma will be considered on the basis of their IB Certificates. Students must have grade 5 in Maths (Standard Level) |
|
International students who cannot meet the direct entry requirements can begin their degree studies at Birmingham City University International College (BCUIC).
Additional Requirements
As part of the application process you will be invited to attend an applicant visit day where you will undertake a short one-to-one interview with an academic member of staff. This is your chance to show us how passionate you are about the subject and it will help us make a decision on your application.
This will provide you with more information about the Faculty and your course. In addition, it will give you a chance to meet and our staff and students to gain a better understanding of what it is like to be a student here.
Part 2
There are a few traditional ways of progression within the media industry and these are the following:
An apprenticeship, where you working within an industry from 6 months up to a few year. You work within a certain specialist that you would like to go into and you get to work and learn about the specialist that you want to go within and you get paid to do the job that you are learning about.
An internship is much like an apprenticeship where you work within a company for a certain amount of time, learning the ropes of the company and the role that you want to go into for your future career. However, they are harder to get because have to have a diploma in the field of which you’re trying to get, so it isn’t obtainable until you have a diploma or a degree where as if you was going for an apprenticeship then you wouldn’t need this.
You can apply directly to the company where you will be fully working for the company or you can work within an agency for another traditional method.
Apprenticeship vacancy here
As well as traditional ways there are also nontraditional ways of progression and these nontraditional ways of doing this include:
Competitions – You could take up competitions to do with the specialist that you are wanting to progress into as a future career. For example if you wanted to go into concept work you could take competitions of drawing a piece of concept work for a gmae of something and if it was to do with 3D or environments then you could create a 3D model or a world.
Social media – Social media is a good one because a huge percentage of the population is on social media. Social Media sights suck as Instagram and Twitter are good sources to get noticed by someone if they think that you have potential or good work. You can post images of your work on these social medias to show off what you have created and hopefully you will get noticed by a member within the industry.
Instagram – Here is my Instagram and as you can see there is a lot of pieces of my artwork that I have developed and produced over the space of a year. This is going to help show people what I can do and how I have progressed throughout the year of me drawing. Hopefully this is going to be noticed by artists around the world and within the industry and this will give me the push I need.
(Show screen grab of Instagram page)
Twitter – Here is my Twitter page and yes it is a little empty at the moment but it is going to be used and is used to show off both my artwork that I produce and the 3D work that I develop and create. This is going to help show people what I can do and show off my skills and works development. Hopefully like my Instagram this is going to be noticed in the near future and help give me the push needed.
(Show screen grab of Twitter page)
Final week
Extended diploma
Within this post I am going to be going through the stages of my creation of my FMP ideas. I will be researching three different types of ideas that range differently within genera, techniques, styles and over all game play stylistics and approach. The three ideas that I have in mind all differ in all of these field, however they are all steel related to my specialist study which is environments and 3D modelling. I am working within a group of three who of which are: James R., Michael E. and I and These three ideas that we have though of are;
Introduction
In this report I am going to be discussing what I have done throughout these 6 weeks, talking in detail what tasks that I have undertook and their importance to me and future tasks I wish to undertake, as well as the unit as a whole. I will be explaining the processes that I took to achieve the end goal for these tasks and what I could have done to accomplish a better outcome and what these changes would do and why. Running over my specialist study (discipline), what it is and how I can achieve a final outcome and how doing these asks is going to help with it.
Throughout this report I am going to do be critically analyzing each individual task and discus both my strengths and weaknesses, explaining why I think this and what I could possibly do about these to either make them a strength or to improve on them.
Main body of report
Personality tests
At the start of this unit I undertook three different tasks that each underlined different aspects about how and what they say about my personality, as well as what I like and how this defines me as an individual. All of these tasks had a different methodology behind them that they used in order to find out what interests me and what making me who I am. The first task that I undertook was a spider diagram that was composed of the things that make me who I am and I had to explain what I knew about them.
Throughout this task I was understanding what I knew about the make things that make me who I am and how this relates to what I’m currently doing now. The second task was an interview where another class member devised and asked question to find out more about myself and why I am where I am today. The third task was a personalities test (Myers Briggs test) where I had to answer roughly 60 questions to round up my personality, at the end of the test we was given 1 of 16 different personalities which all have different letters to signify the different personalities. This helped me understand more about myself and why I act the way that I do.
Out of these three tasks each of them had different cons as well as pros that give off a different result about my personality, as well as giving me more of an understanding of what makes me who I am and how these tests can be helpful in helping me with future tasks.
Spider diagram
For the spider diagram it didn’t really tell me about my personality because it was more focused on what I personal like and what I know about them, this to mean didn’t really help with figuring out what specialist study was going to be. However, it helped me understand that what I do know about certain subjects and how they impact me on my everyday life. This information can be used as Primary research within my FMP or future tasks.
Interview
The interview was good because it gave us an understanding on how to properly ask and perform an interview as well as composing questions that weren’t too one sided or too forceful to gather the information that I wanted to find out. Devising the appropriate questions was a little difficult to do as crating these questions meant that I had to make sure that they wasn’t too touch into their personal life as if I was forcing it upon them.
The skills that I learnt during this is going to help me with future projects because it is going to help me to create questionnaires that aren’t one sided or forceful on the people that I am trying to gather he information from. Building an understanding of how to properly structure an interview in order to utilise the information that I would like to gather.
The personality test wasn’t as good as I expected because some of the results that were given weren’t all completely accurate because of the way that our personality is decided is through a series of questions, that might not accurately describe my personality.
Research tasks
Skateboard tasks
For the third week we was given the task to research a subject that wasn’t relevant for the task or our chosen discipline at hand or towards any of our specialist that were planning on going into. The reason for this task to be set was to make the research that the class was going to be doing even because it was a subject/object that wasn’t relevant to anyone in the class so we all had an even amount of knowledge on the subject.
As well as giving the class an even stand point on how much we all know about skateboards it also helped us with our communication and researching skills more so than it would if it was something that was relevant to some of us and not all. We were put into teams of 4-5 and we had to underline and discuss what we knew about skateboards and how we could expand on this by doing further research improving our communication skills which is going to help me when working within teams.
I thought that this was good because it got the class involved into groups to combine their knowledge that they know and to work together to understand more about them.
Personal study
For the other part of the week we were discussing what kind of specialist study that we want to focus on for this week and about the evolution of this certain study that we are going to be basing our FMP around. I chose to do environments for my specialist study looking at the changes within environments within previous and modern games of today and looking at the similarities and differences of both.
I have learnt a lot about what has changed about environments within games especially in the game Mario, the simple blocky background and foreground had changed operatically through the years of development becoming more complex making the Mario games stray away from the 2D and work on more of a 3D and rotational look.
I was looking at other games that look at more of a free roaming world utilising their environments, games such as GTA, Fallout, No man sky, Skyrim, etc. This also branched off from previous games that I’ve looked at (Doom) and how he creators of this game has changed to create another game (Skyrim, Fallout). This soon led to me onto VR and how games have changed and adapted to this style of gaming as well as the graphics and engineering of the games.
All of this information is going to help me with my future projects as well as m FMP and the reason for this is because it’s going to help me understand what worked well with environments as well as how it is changed so I can develop and create my work around them.
Human emotions
Within week 4 I was given two different tasks in which we are given an emotion and we have to do research upon the given emotion and then we had to show the research that we looked at and based it around the specialist study that were choosing to go for. After this task we were allowed to choose another emotion of our own choice that we had to do the same type of research and experimentations with.
Fear
At the beginning of this task I was a little low on the knowledge of fear and about what makes fear as it is, based on what is needed to create these types of environments and how to portray this within both visuals as well as sound within the environment.
I started off by gathering the proper information about games that involve fear and this was games such as: Evil within, Until dawn, Outlast and Resident evil 7. All of these games have a different approach to the way that they give off fear to the players and how that is executed within their visuals, understanding what each of them did in order to evoke fear into their players helped me in understanding how to do his within my own work.
The information that I discovered about the games and how they give off the sense of fear to the players and they all had different ways in giving this feeling on the way that they approached and executed it. This is going to be really helpful when creating future assets or tasks that involve any level of fear, by breaking down the way that they have done this and using the best parts for my own tasks.
As well as this I looked at movies as well as books get a feel on how they have evoked the emotion of fear upon the viewers and readers. One of my biggest inspirations was the movie ‘The Woman in Black’ because of the eerie scenes within the mansions, with the sounds, lighting, placement of object and the structure/execution of the situation.
Memories
For the other half of the week we were allowed to touch upon another emotion of our own choices and experiment with the type of specialist study, continuing and adapting on these skills by referring to the exact type of experimentation and research. The emotion that I decided to look into was memories, although this isn’t an emotion entirely it still gives of a wide range of emotions that can range from a variation of things: Fear, happiness, sadness, anger, etc.
To convey memories within a 3D model or within an environment I looked at the different ways that emotions could be given to people through flash backs or remembrance. I looked behind the psychology of memories so that I can have an understanding of what memories are and how I could give an object this kind of meaning that I wanted to give it.
I looked into games that use this kind of method, one of which is Fallout 4. In the beginning scene of Fallout 4 you are greeted to our son “Shaun” who as a mobile above his crib and this is used after the initial nuclear blast as well as your son being taken away from you. You go back to the house and the main character that you have chosen plays with the mobile that was once above your sons crib.
I decided to create two different items that could be used as a trigger point of a memory of some sort – that is possibly relating to loved ones as well as sadness/happiness – and I did this by looking at toys that were made with the 1940s that children had as their toys around that time (I had this time zone because that’s when the story design was based around).
I decided to create a paratrooper doll and a wooden plane, my reasoning behind this is because they both looked as if they were handmade which to me gave more of a memory based experience, once you know the story behind it.
This is going to help me with future projects because if there is a certain place or item that is going to evoke a memory feeling upon the player then I now know how to interoperate them within the locations or the locations themselves.
Experiments
The fifth week were given the tasks to go off and to experiment in various ways for either our specialist study or interoperating it in another type of media. In my case I could create a gridded layout to show an environment or a model that shows an environment. Throughout this task I created four different experiments that I could use for my stud towards my FPM or future tasks, as well as this I looked at practitioners in different mediums that have experimented and I looked upon what they have done to develop this idea.
An artist by the name of Evan Roth did an experiment on the game called Angry birds where he painted with his thumb every movement of ever movement that he played out throughout the whole game as a piece of art.
Experiment #1
My first experiment was creating an over view of an environment where I mapped out and organised the sizes and the placements of each object, in my case was laying out a bedroom that was around the time of 1940-47 main because of the object and the theme that I was going to be working towards. This is going to help me because it is helping me understand spacing between objects as well as the sizes and placements.
Experiment #2
The second experiment that I conducted was to do with textures and marking lined on a piece of paper doing a different motion, pressure or style that I approached the texture. The reason why I was doing this is because I thought that experimenting with the different texture and styles could be helpful when creating certain types of textures within creating models and environments. As well as this I can scan in these textures –if any are close to what I would like to have on a certain model- then they can be used on them.
Experiment #3
The third experiment that I undertook was to create a model of one of the environments that are within the project making the surrounding and the main props in detail on what I would like them to look like for the final design. The location that I was hoping to re-create was ‘Ministry of health in white hall’ and he reason from this is because this location was very important to the time line that my running project/theme is (WWII era).
I did some research on the building and the surrounding area to get an insight of what it looked like around 1945 so I could get a brief understanding on what the building looks le as well as the surrounding area around the building.
This is going to help me because it helps me improve my researching skills as well as helping me with reference when creating the environment in 3DS MAX
Experiment #4
The forth experiment that I did was texture based within Photoshop and 3DS MAX from the models that I created within the previous post I decided to add some overlaying decals that are going to make to models look worn, dusty, bunt and overall more authentic to the situation that they are in. I looked at pieces of wood and fabric that have either been burnt, torn or dirt because of what has happened in the recent events of the era that my models were based around.
Doing this types of experiments are going to help me when creating the decals and the authenticity/ accuracy with the decals that are going to be around the modes and the environments.
Practitioners report
For week six I was looking at people who have practiced in the same sort of specialist stud which I want to aspire to in the future or within my FMP. I looked at two different people who did environmental work and how they used formal elements within their games go make them what they are.
I have created an infographic to show key dates of both of the practitioners that I looked into and within the post I describe what they have done within these games and how it has developed throughout the years that they have worked on their games.
The information that I gathered is going to help me out substantially by giving me an idea on how these practitioners created their work, what went well with their work and how they have touched upon and improved on the techniques that they used. I can use this in my own projects by utilising the key information that I found and develop it to my own specifications.
Conclusion
Throughout this unit I discovered a whole bundle of new information that is going to help me with future tasks as well as helping me towards my final specialist goal. I have found out more about the importance of doing correct research as well as discovering more out about my desired study that I am going to be focusing my FMP on.
Going through the initial personality tests help me discover a little more out about myself and why I have chosen to do what I would like to do within my previous tasks as well as more behind the reasoning on to why I have chosen the course as a whole. This sort of information is going to be great when looking for things that I general like through my personality and interests.
With my emotional tasks I found out a lot more about people’s emotions and how to interoperate this within my own work and making it to my specifications. The modelling that I managed to produce at the end of either one of these tasks I think that they went rather well, however there could have been more improvements based around the creation of these models could be tweaked. But I was happy with my improved texturing capabilities.
For the experimental stages I managed to expand a lot of different types of medium which I think is going to be a huge help within future products. The overall creation of my experiments went rather well because of their execution, because it was my first time sing these types of medium to create something that was related to a 3D model. Next time I could give more examples on each of the experiments to further validate my research into each of them, so I can make sure that they work well and that I could use different examples.
Shauns crib
Who am I? (Week 1)
Introduction:
I am going to be creating a mind map based on who I am what I like and what I know about them. I am going to be looking at what specifically I know and what I don’t know about of the subjects that makes me who I am as well as touching upon why I think this. We were given only three things that we think best fit who we are and what we like the most, the reason why we’re doing this is to understand what makes us who we are and what we like so we can use this information to develop our ideas around.
I have created a mind map that Labels all of the things that I think make me as an individual by what I like and what I know about them.
There are four distinct things that I think best suit me the most and I like these above all of the other traits. The other reason why I chose these above all because these I think are the four aspects that I know the most about and that I find most interesting.
The four things that I chose were: Knowledge, Martial arts, Nature and creativity
These four I think most interest me as an individual, so what do I know about them? And how can this help me in my FMP:
Knowledge: I like to learn and explore new things using information that I already know to explore further, to find out new information about a certain subject. Knowledge is a wide subject so it is hard to say what I know and what I don’t know about the forever expanding world of knowledge. I do know a wide variety of information that ranges from physics to art styles but I do know that I do not know everything about both of those subjects and there is far more information to find out.
This is going to help me with my future projects by knowing about various subjects can help me when starting something that relates closely to what the project is based around, whether it being a historical location or a physics-based environment this will help me.
Martial arts: Martial arts has been in my family for years and I have been doing it for a few years myself and throughout that time I have learned and discovered a lot of new things. I know about the origins of many of the martial arts as well of proper movement of the human body. This type of information is going to help me – as it did in the previous project – with animating a humanoid figured fighter, on how each limb will move and the extents each individual limb can move without stress.
There is a great deal that I do not know as well, more experienced movements and parts of the histories of some of the martial arts I still do not know of, as well as this, proper terminology of some moves and techniques.
Nature: Nature has been around me all my life, by having elders who own a farm and a mother who loves to garden I have always had the nature of this world free at hand growing up, exploring the world around me. I know a fair bit about how nature works and the things that live within it, whether it being a tree or a mouse I will know something about it. There are however still lots that I do not know about and that I could find out about more.
This can help me if I want to focus on making a forest something that is nature orientated this is going to help me.
Creativity: When is comes to creativity I do know a bit about different types of mediums both technological and paper based. There is a lot that I still have to discover about creativity and how to use the different types of mediums in different ways. This will help me when creating concept art for the designs of either 3D models that I want to create or just creating a conceptual art piece.
Evaluation:
Doing this task has helped me realise more about the main things that I think make me who I am, it’s given me a broader incite of what I actually know about the four main areas that I have chosen and on what I actually do know about them. Knowing more about this is going to help me when choosing and developing an idea for my FMP by giving my an understanding of what best suits me I can develop my ideas around this.
Who am I? – interviews
Introduction:
For this session we were given the task to create and perform an interview with someone within another Media based class and find out why they have chosen this course that they’re in and the type of direction that they are going for within their course. As well as this we will be taking down notes to create a wider understanding on what he other person wants to do in this course and after the course as well. The reason why we are conducting these interviews is to help us with our future research for our FMP and just for general research for other tasks. As well it is giving us more knowledge and preparation for other interviews.
Preparation
Before I could conduct my interview I had to think of questions to ask my interviewee, about what I specifically wanted to find out about them. In this case I was trying to find out what specialist study he was going to be looking into, what his FMP would be based around and what brought him to this point in time, his interests and wanting to do what hes doing.
So the questions that I asked were strictly professional because I wanted the interviewee to be as comfortable as possible and not making them feel awkward or uneasy by what I ask them. The was that I did this is that I structured my question so that they wasn’t too pushing to the answer that I wanted and that they wasn’t biased (one sided) questions so that would lead it to them answering the way that I want them to answer.
Interviews
The interview that I am going to be talking about is the interview that was conducted by Dan from the media department, I have never met or spoken to so they knew nothing about me, nor I did about them.
I started the interview by introducing myself and making sure that it was alight whether I could record the interview. After we was equated I asked my interviewee some questions that were based off of the overall topic that I wanted to find out about him. I asked him about what interest I’m and why he is interested about these subjects and he told me that he was interested in sound, more broadly he likes to create sounds for different types of genera’s. As well as showing an interest in sound he also mentioned an interest in many different cultures which includes: Indian culture, African culture, Spanish culture and Chinese culture.
The reason why he likes these cultures and how they interlink why he likes sound as well is because he like the individual and unique music that each of the different cultures have and they all convey a different meaning and individuality.
Throughout this Interview I found out that most of my life I have been mostly focused around doing more of the creative side of things weather it being on paper or expressively out loud it has bee mostly related around the creative side of things. I didn’t learn anything new about myself while I was in the interview as well as the questions that were asked I didn’t find out anything new about my personality or how it has developed throughout the years it come to his point.
As the question were asked I found out that I did in fact have a relation between what I am doing now and what I was doing in the past. There wasn’t much of a change within the goals that I wanted to do It has always been something creative. However, it has changed from being something that was more of animation that has evolved into more 3D and creation type work throughout the years but my motivation has always stayed the same as it is now.
(Add audio and video here)
For the interview that I was giving him I asked him question that weren’t too personal to him or to his lifestyle. The sort of questions that I asked him were question that were based around what his interests were and what brought him to this point of interest in both his life chooses and this field.
Also with my questions that I asked him I made sure that they weren’t one sided and pushed towards him answering the way that I wanted him the answer the questions that I asked.The reason why I asked him these questions the way that I did is because I didn’t want to make the interview forced or too one sided making my interviewee feel uncomfortable with both what I was asking him and what I wanted him to say.
(Insert his audio here)
Evaluation
Throughout this interview and the task I found out pretty much the same information that I already knew as well as the change within my type of profession that use to be something that was more animation (clay-mation, stop frame, etc) to something that if more of a 3D based goal. Asking the questions to the interviewee was a difficult task to do because everyone reacts differently to every question and I didn’t want to ask a question that picked up on something that emotionally effects them.
As well as this it was a little hard for me to ask as well as answer the questions that were given to me because not being very confident it game me some nerves when undertaking the interview because of both what was ask and what I was asking about.
The information that I found out could help me with my personal development because of what I found out I could see what my strengths and weaknesses are as well as my goals and I can work on both of these to help with my development within my specialist study as well as my FMP.
Personality test (Week 1)
Introduction:
Within this session we was looking at what type of personality that we have and whether it reflects us the way we and the other around us think of us and the results that we got. We are going to take the test called the Myers brigs test that is going to calculate our personalities based off of a series of questions. After this was done we would do the test for one of our peers on how we see them personally and see if it is how they perceive themselves and they’d do the test for us to see how they see us.
The reason why I am doing this task is to further understand what my personality is and how this is going to reflect on the type of work that I create for my FMP.
We was given a set of 60 different questions where we could answer whether we agreed with what the question was asking or whether we disagreed with what was asked (ranging from agree/disagree to strongly agree/disagree) or if we was neutral. After all of these questions were answered we was given a personality type. I took the test three times and each time that I did the test another set of result would turn up each time and the reason for this is because every time I took the test I concentrated more or less on what I was answering depending. Also by spending more time thinking about a question produced yet another set of results that was different to that of the last time I took the test.
This is the link to the test that I took: https://www.16personalities.com/free-personality-test
The result that I was mostly in common with was the Advocate personality and this is what it said:
Personality type: “The Advocate” (INFJ-A)
Individual traits: Introverted – 58%, Intuitive – 69%, Feeling – 71%, Judging – 64%, Assertive – 56%.
Role: Diplomat
Strategy: Confident Individualism
For this test I was being as honest as I possibly could, answering them to what I see them to fit how I think the most and the reason why I had to be brutally honest is because it would have given me the best result to how I think I am rather than what I would like myself to be. The written results that I got, told me about my strengths, weaknesses, what my career could be and what my friends and relationship would be like.
For the strengths and the weaknesses I agreed on some but not all of them that I got mainly because I didn’t think that I personally relate to some of the strengths and the weaknesses.
Strengths
- Creative – I agree with this strength and that is because I do think at times that I can be rather creative when I really would like to create something either for a FMP or for a privet matter I do like to get a bit messy and creative.
- Insightful – I think that I am rather descriptive with what I am doing and explaining in-depth description.
- Inspiring and Convincing – I don’t think that I am Inspiring or convincing and this is because I don’t think that I am too confident and not very good at some of the things that I do which is why I disagree with this.
- Decisive – At times I do think that I can be rather decisive when it comes to certain circumstances, generally on a topic/project or subject that I like I think that II can make up the correct decision for what I think would be best for my current situation.
- Determined and Passionate – I can relate to this because I have been doing martial arts for over 4 years and I’ve given up my time to train and progress in it.
- Altruistic – I can relate to this one too because I do care for those who are around me.
Weaknesses
- Sensitive – I cannot agree with this weakness as I’m not the sensitive type.
- Extremely Private – I slightly agree with this because I do think that I have a personal life out of the sight of the people that I spend time with in college.
- Perfectionistic – I do think that I can be a perfectionist when it comes to my work trying to make it as perfect as I would like it to, to every define detail and I’m not happy until the piece of work or art are complete.
- Always Need to Have a Cause – I don’t this that this is me personally because I am rather flexible when it comes to my goals and my tasks that I or others set me. As well as this it says “if routine tasks feel like they are getting in the way, or worse yet, there is no goal at all, they will feel restless and disappointed.” This is not the case I am somewhat pleased because it means that I learn from what went wrong and why I didn’t like the outcome.
- Can Burn Out Easily – I don’t think that this is me, I tend to take my time and try not to over work myself leading me to “burn out”.
I found it quite interesting about the results that I got and the strengths and weaknesses that I got, I thought that some of them were really on point and they described me to a point and on the other hand others didn’t really go to what I personally think about myself. If I was to say it was about 40-45% accurate to how I perceive myself as an individual.
Second test
For the second test we got a peer of our class to take the test for us on how they perceive us and we did one for them. They got a different result to what I got for myself which means that they seem me differently to how I see myself.
The result that they got for me was:
Personality type: “The Advocate” (ISFP-A)
Individual traits: Introverted – 64%, Observant – 58%, Feeling – 89%, Prospecting – 53%, Turbulent – 72%.
Role: Explorers
Strategy: Confident Individualism
These are the strengths and the weaknesses that this personality relates to the most. I can relate a little more to the results that my peer got when they did the test to show how they perceive me as a person.
Strengths
- Charming – I think that I can be pretty likeable to others that are around me and people have told me that I can be rather approachable and easy to communicate with.
- Sensitive to Others – I believe that I can be very in touch others around me making sure that they’re happy and well.
- Imaginative – I can agree with being imaginative because I tend to think of wacky and eccentric ideas for concepts, ideas and projects, often thinking of other worldly things.
- Passionate – I can slightly agree with this because I can get passionate with a few tasks or goals that I set myself and I can get very into some of the tasks that I do.
- Curious – I am slightly curious with some things that I do.
- Artistic – I can agree that people would find me artistic because of how I draw and how much that I draw and do things that are related to art.
Weaknesses
- Fiercely Independent – I don’t really agree with this because I am independent in some circumstances but the majority of the time I like to work within groups because I think it is a more flaunt and enjoyable experience.
- Unpredictable – I don’t really think that I am unpredictable I like it when things are structured and well thought out and not doing anything courageous.\
- Easily Stressed – I don’t think that I am easily stressed at all in any situation.
- Overly Competitive – I don’t think that I’m overly competitive because personally when I’m doing something I don’t see myself as being better than the other player of person, I would rather have fun in the experience rather than winning.
- Fluctuating Self-Esteem – I can sort of agree with this weakness because lately at times my self-esteem has fluctuated from good to bad.
I was quite surprised with what my peer though about be based off of how I act around them as well as how they perceive me as an individual.
Evaluation
Throughout this task I didn’t find out too much about myself then I already knew about myself so there wasn’t anything entirely different with the information that I discovered throughout this test. However, I did find out that there was a few things that I didn’t think were me at all mainly to do with the traits and how I am as a person.
I don’t agree with this test purely because of the fact that I show equal amount of traits that are in numerous types of personalities and I never really side with one or the other of the results that I got so for me I don’t agree with this theory and test. It was quite an interesting incite on how my peers and other people think about who I am and how I act around them.
Throughout all of these tests they all gave me different results and I think this happened because they all used a different method of getting information and presenting that information as well as getting the information. Out of the three test that I did I think that the best test which I though was the most accurate was the Myer Briggs test and the reason why I think this is because the other tests didn’t give the as much information as the Myer Briggs test gave me.
The first thing that I did was the spider diagram describing what I love and what I know about it most of which was just relaying what I already knew about the things that I love and relating them to future ideas. The second was the Interview that I though was like the first task but instead of doing it about yourself you were asked questions that the interviewer as well at it getting into a more personal level going back to why more.
Whereas the Myer Briggs test looks at all aspects on what your personality is like telling you how you behave as well as you attitude to certain things. The test also touches upon your strengths and weaknesses that you may portray which is helpful because it can show you what you are good at and what shows as a weakness which will help in further development of both yourself and your projects to come.
Skateboard research (Week 2)
Introduction:
Within this session I was asked to write about what I know about the well known object ‘the skateboard’ creating a spider diagram consisting of 6 questions: What, Who, When, Where, Why and How. After this we are going to be watching a documentary as well ad going and doing extensive research on skateboards to expand our knowledge about the skate board. The reason why I am doing this task is because it is based on a subject that isn’t related to my specialist study and it is something that I am not too firmilar with which makes it a good task to do.
For the first part of the session we was given the task to gather in groups and write down what we knew between us about skateboards to see what we really knew about them and it turns out that my team and I didn’t know that much about the skateboard as we initially though we did.
We knew very little about the skateboard and about its origins and choice of style, look and make that they were based around and why they were designed like this which is why we watched the documentary about the history of skateboarding to see how the skateboard came to be and how it has changed overall as time has passed.
Throughout the documentary I gathered a few notes that I though were rather helpful and that they were a good incite of how the skate board has changed as well as how they are used from then up until now. Some of the information that I found out was that the skateboard was really closely related around the sport surfing, the way that the original boards were shaped and designed rather close to that of a surf board as well the colours that were used on the boards themselves.
This also lead into how they were used, it explained this by showing the story and progression of the ‘Z-dogs’ that were a surfing group that later evolved into skateboarding because of the free time that they had after surfing. They implemented the way that a famous surfer surfed by being rather close to the waves spinning and swooping around on the spot and this soon because a trend and rocketed the skateboarding legacy that it is today.
After we found out more about skateboards as a whole we set off to find out more information that the documentary didn’t give us and this is what we found:
We found out that there has been an addition to the wheels and the under part of the board by making it easier to make the board turn as well as making new wheels that add less friction which is what the clay wheels did.
Trucks for the wheels
http://www.skateboardingmagazine.com/top-5-innovations-in-skateboarding-history/
We also discovered that they have added different types grip that was added to the top of the board as well at the bottom of the shoes people wear when riding skateboards.
Grip for board
Skateboarding.transworld.net/news/the-evolution-of-griptape/
Advanced searching method
After we watched the documentary and gathered the information off of it we further dove into more research about skateboards about the information that we didn’t quite get from the documentary and we wanted to know more or we didn’t find something out and we’re just curios to what it could be.
gathering this research was a difficult task to do because of the amount of results that cropped up within the search engine and the amount of websites that didn’t relate to the information that we wanted to find out. So, to make it easier to gather the correct information I used something call the Boleen method of searching that takes out most of the unwanted web pages that clog up the results that are given to you.
The way that this kind method is used you need to search up the topic that you need and add extra words like: NOT, AND, +, – to give you different results and to make my searches more direct to the specific information that I want.
Second spider diagram
After we did this research and watched the documentary we created another spider diagram to see what we had learnt from doing this research and we made a big improvement for what knowledge that we learnt within this task about skateboards.
Evaluation
Throughout this task I managed to go from not knowing a lot about skateboards to knowing a lot about them to finding out a huge amount of about them, this is going to help me when researching for my FMP because it is going to be similar in the processed that I do and how I will execute what I would like to find out. Maybe next time I could get each individual member of my group to research a certain question that we would like to find out and we could gather more information this way.
Throughout this task I found out a lot about skateboards, a topic that wasn’t even related to my specialist study which has helped me with my research skills and the advanced search technique that we used (boleen technique) helped find out information more related to what we wanted to find out about the wanted subject that we wanted to find out about.
Old skateboard
Unit 2 specialist study (Week 3)
Introduction
This session I am going to be looking into the specialist study that I am hoping to progress into later on in the future as well as for my FMP later on this year. I will be creating two spider diagrams one before and one after I have done extensive research into my chosen subject much like the previous task that I have under took.
My chosen specialty is environmental design, I created a spider diagram on environments within games on the knowledge that I have on them already and what I think makes a good environment I worked on categorising different aspects of environments within games things such as lighting, point of views, different uses of the environments and the different moods (horror, comedy, adventure, etc).
Environmental design
Mario of 1985 was one of the first game that added backgrounds to the levels and to also have a foreground where there was an interactive (In the later games) and they move along with the music unlike the background that is static and doesn’t move along with the screen this was the trend throughout a lot of the earlier games such as: Super Mario Bros 1-3 and super Mario world.
This changed when it hit 1996 when Super Mario 64 came out and added a whole new perspective on the 3D environment that was around you and the character, by giving you a 360 degrees view of the world making it a whole different experience for the players adding lots of different aspects to their surrounding world. Super Mario Galaxy have added more high qualitied animations and environments to the world giving more movements and interactions than ever before.
Now going back to the 2D based games they brought out new Super Mario bros Wii and new Super Mario Bros U, these games added both backgrounds and foregrounds to the environment and they added moving and interactive foreground objects to move as well as the background slightly changing.
Going back to 1980 there was another game that had a similar environment to what Super Mario 64 has and this game was Battlezone (1980) and this game done this by having very primitive and simple shapes the objects that are within the environment and having them get bigger/smaller and giving the visual effect that they change as the player model goes around them.
The people who created Battlezone in 1980 was Atari by Ed Rotberg, Owen Rubin (exploding volcano), Roger Hector (tank & enemy graphics). The audience in the 1980s was mainly around kids of the ages of 13-16 because of the arcade stores as well as having not so many to process within these games.
A game that helped pave a way for more realistic environmental exploration as well as graphics was Wolfenstein 3D by adding a whole new perspective to the environment of a game by adding a huge range of colours and perspective on a 3D environment much like Battle zone In 1980. The reason why these type of changes have happened is because of the advances that have happened within the storage and the technological side of games has increased throughout the years, in turn making the environments of games better and more complex.
The environment of a game has changed so much throughout the years way back to the early 1980’s all the way to modern day and they are still improving. They’re becoming more diverse and innovative in the way that they’re created, laid out, textured and even given to the audience.
In the early development of games in the 1970’s there was only limited things that game creators could do with their games relating to the games background. At first it started off as just a plane black background that the game was played upon and then it started to developed further in 1980 a game company going by the name Atari created a game called Battlezone that had a basic development of an environment.
And shortly after this Wolfinsteine 3D opened up a whole different experience with the environment within games by giving you a completely roam-able area in which the surrounding move around you according to what directing you are facing it will change the environment to go that way. WOlfinsteine 3D was revolutionary to the gaming world by its unique approach on the environments of the worlds within games. This was also shown within the game DOOM because it had a really similar layout and design.
Environments have still changed throughout the years getting gradually better in graphics. Introducing open world environments where the whole world is explorable to the players, this opened up a whole new look upon the environments within the gaming world.
There has been many different ways within games that they have explored and shown off their environments. In some games they have simple colour and shaped to represent objects within their world and in other games they have very intracute designs for their objects making it more real world based. As well as this they have introduced many different ways that the environment is displayed (i.e. top down, landscape, open world, etc).
One of the most up to date and innovative environments that have been within a game/ within a form of game play is VR environments they have introduces a completely different view on the environments within games by giving the player a virtual reality headset you can go within to the environment yourself making the game more “realistic” than it would be if you was to play on a computer. VR has changed games and their environments forever because of the realistic graphics that they have within some of their games. As well they’ve made it so the headset is tracked so as you move your head the in game view will change as if you’re within the game itself.
Free roaming worlds
Free roaming games allow you to explore a potentially endless full of so many possibilities that can be done in any order that the player chooses to do. Some of these games are games like GTA, Skyrim, Fallout and Runescape all of these games have a free roaming world that is filling with endless possibilities that could happen at any given time giving the player countless amount of hours of game play.
Games like this have to have a lot of props to fill up all of the space in which the games come with and this means a lot of ever changing environments within the games. A lot of work has to go within these games to make them exciting the more you explore their worlds, rather then just having a world that has the same design and build in a lot of places which can make the game repetitive and boring.
The environments for these games have to be well though out to both portray meaning and story with every part of the surroundings which makes these games environments one of the best within the gaming industry. Countless amount of props have to be put within the environment to tailor for their surrounding and events in that area entails.
A game that really wanted to push the boundaries on this is “NO mans sky” in the fact that it wanted to have a forever spawning galaxy that added millions of planets that all have different environment from each other making them all unique to one another. However this was not the case because as found out that most of the planets were just duplicates of other with just different lighting textures of the surrounding life and of the planets texture.
So this shows that they were only just experimenting with this kind of this of making a forever spawning and forever different universe and it didn’t go as planned because of this very reason.
Talk about other games that use open world features like GTA, SKyrim, etc.
Evaluation
Within this task I have found out a lot about my specialist that I would like to go into and how it has changed throughout the years of game development. This is going to help me with an understanding on what would work best within an environment as well as what goes well with on another and within my FMP it will help me create the perfect environment by using the information that I found out. As well as this it will give me a better understanding of what is good within environments as well as what is contrasting against one another.
Mario history
http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/origins-history-mario-geek-history-lessons/
https://www.pokecommunity.com/showthread.php?t=322236
Battlezone history
Steps to planning level design
Human emotions ‘Fear’ (week 4)
Introuduction
Within this session I am going to be looking at how convey fear within my chosen discipline within games and how other artists/developers have done this through their work and how I can adapt and bring this into my work in the future of my projects. Later on I’m going to create a 3D model that shows off the research that I have done.
The over all reason why I am testing out new ways, techniques and methods that I can use to create something that relates to fear is so that I can both develop my skills within modeling and world design as well as having more of an understanding the work that is put within different mediums to invoke fear.
The question that I am hoping to answer by the end of this session is how to create a horror environment well enough to invoke fear to the players? And how I can use this within my own work.
Research
I am going to be looking at many different artists and how their work interporates fear within what they have done and how they have developed this through their projects. As well as this I am going to be looking at games and how they use their props, textures and layouts to portray fear to the audience.
The first thing that I looked at was a game and that game is Dead space 3 and the reason why I have chosen this game is because of the colours and genre that it is. Throughout the game you are met with lots of gruesome scenes that are covered with blood, rust and decay, which helps with the aesthetics of the game by making the scene scary.
Throughout the game you are met with a lot eerie scenes that use sound as well as visuals to give the player a sense of fear as it happens. The video below shows examples where they have used sounds within some of the scenes to invoke fear to the players by using high pitched noises as well as deep and dark tones that adds a sense of intensity to the moment that can give a feel of panic to the players within this scene.
Dead space scary scenes
Other games that I looked at were resident evil and Layers of fear. Resident evil 7 midnight uses light to its advance a lot within the opening scene by only lighting up a very small amount of the surrounding area making the game really difficult to look around and navigate the surrounding area. As well as this they use a great deal of decals’ on the objects that are strategically placed around the environment (which makes it hard to move around when the enemy attacks you) to give off a story to the player that is exploring, sometimes adding more and more questions to why they are here and for what purpose.
The Woman in black
A movie that shows the type of fear ha I was trying the evoke into my audience and the inspiration for my idea for the rocking chair to be placed at the end of a creep and old looking hallway. The whole theme of this task was based around this movie and how they evoked the fear onto the viewer at this given time and it is why I decided to incorporate a hallway into the project that I was doing.
As you can see throughout this video clip the rocking stars off quiet and it gradually gets louder and louder as the character get to the door. This kind of idea of the player looking away or moving backwards was going to be an extra feature to add a fearful encounter.
Creating fear
I have decided for my task I was going to first create a 3D model of a rocking chair to be placed at the end of a hall that I believe is going to add suspense to the player making them feel uneasy as they approach the rooms ahead, going towards the rocking chair within the dark room ahead.
To start the process of making the rocking chair as well as the environment I looked into some movies as well as real rocking chairs and how they differ frim one another, what makes them stand out and what is it that makes them evoke fear on people.
I looked at the well known ‘The woman in black’ at the scene where the rocking chair is within the child’s room and it begging to rock frantically and the sound that it produces as it is rocking back and forth veraciously smacking the ground with a loud thud. This gave me the idea to put my rucking chair at the end of hallway making it rock back and forward smacking the floor getting progressively faster and faster as you walk towards the room.
So to start off this chair I decided to get the overall shape of it by creating basic rectangles that were positioned at the correct positions to make the shape of the chair. I made sure that all individual pieces of the chair were colour co-ordinated so I cold easily create one of the models and simply copy it over.
After getting the shapes in the correct position on the model I decided to make all but one of the shapes transparent (by pressing CTRL+X) so i could work on the individual parts with out the others getting in the way too much when I rotate around the chosen part.
To get the shape of the part where you sit I added a champfer to the edges to give it a shaven look to it as well as adding extra lines in the middle so I cold adjust then to make the object warp inwards (as shown above).
I started to work on the rocking chairs legs. I used a different method, instead of shaping the rectangle that I already had I decided to use the line tool and the ‘Lathe’ to give it a curved look to it, this however didn’t work and it made the object deform and not match up correctly. After not being able to make it this way I decided to create a cylinder and shape it that was instead.
After sorting out the front legs I sorted out the back legs making them curved at the bottom as well as the top to give it more of a classical arched back look.
One I was happy with the other all shape of the parts of the rocking chair I decided to add different smoothing groups to make it seem more like wood and have less jagged areas around the chair. Also, it was to help with the wooden texture that I was going to be adding after this.
So I looked through the different textures on Textures.com to find one that I thought would be the best looking wood for the rocking chairs design that I wanted to create. I ended up finding a rather good looking texture that I thought could work well the my over all design (Above – the lighter one). However, this texture was far too light so I added a light modifier over the top of the textures layer that made it darker and to the colour that I wanted it to be.
Applying the textures was a pretty simple task, so there wasn’t much of an issue when overlaying these maps to the object. I didn’t change the texture over the whole chair because at first I thought that I would leave it plane at first so I could have a brief look at the whole chair fully textured and I will edit it later.
After all the texturing, I noticed that the head board at the back of the rocking chair didn’t suit the main of the rocking chair as I wanted it to. So I decided to shape it to look like an 1900’s style chairs head rest.
To give ff the sense of fear I looked a different textures that I cold use for both the back cushion and the seat cushion. I wanted to find something that looked really creep and scary. Finding the right texture was a bit of a challenge, this is because I wanted to find a texture that fits a certain story rather then some random blood splatter, also making sure it isn’t random but has meaning.
The two textures that I got, I think suit the same purpose that I originally wanted them to and they both seem to go with the same sort of story -making sure that they didn’t look as if they came from two different murders – having them have the same kind of consistency and similarities.
There was a little issue when adding the texture to the model because I created the unwrap backwards it made it difficult to line up with the model because of this reason, to make the texture go the way that I wanted them to I had to flip the image in Photoshop to align it properly.
This is what the finished textures look like when I applied them to the 3D model this made the image come to life within a sense, giving the chair a story and meaning to what the theme was as well as what I was planing on doing with the model.
To finish the whole scene off I created a hallway with a room at the end of it that was going to house the rocking chair within it. The overall idea of this was to have the chair in the room and the player was at the other end of the hallway and as the player progresses towards the door the rocking chair rocks and gets faster and louder the closer you get.
Evaluation
Throughout this task I have discovered more about creating fear within game and on how much details have to go in within creating a good environment as well as creating a good mood and textured environment. Applying all of the information that I found out about the feeling fear I was able to make, texture and create a horror environment to a good standard. Many of the skills that I used while doing this task have improved by the end product, especially the unwrapping and texturing. The skills that I demonstrated within this task are going to help me out in the future with other projects that I wish to do.
My unwrapping skills have improved significantly and I have more of an understanding on how to unwrap as well as texturing the models that I create which is going to help me when unwrapping other models for my FMP.
Going through these processes to gather the information about a certain subject and develop and create something form that has helped me a lot in understanding how I can use this kind of method within my own projects . As well as Helping me develop my skills within 3D more and within texturing to a certain type of genera.
Unfortunately the whole task wasn’t able to be completed to what I wanted it to be due to technical problems that didn’t allow us to add the animations that we needed. For next time we are planning on speeding up to modeling process to make enough time to create the animations.
Rocking chair
http://i-restorestuff.com/an-old-rocking-chair-renewed-hemp-oil-burlap/Page Break
Dead space concept art
https://www.pinterest.com/pin/418271884115603379/
Resident evil 7 midnight
http://www.theverge.com/2016/6/14/11930748/resident-evil-7-e3-hands-on-demo
Human emotions ‘Memories’ (week 4)
Introduction
Within this session I am going to be looking at how to portray Sadness/ family and memory within video games and how they give the sense of feeling of sadness and give the player a sense that a certain item has more meaning to it then the eye sees of the players. I am going to be researching games that use a similar method of making game objects give off a memory of sadness or happiness through these objects.
Later on I’m going to create a 3D model that shows off the research that I have done giving of a sense of memory that comes from the object I am going to choose to create.
Research
I am going to be looking at the different types of ways that games give items a sense of great meaning to the main character by either giving them a sense of happiness or sadness or making them have a vision/ flashback to the memory or to think of the thing that relates to that object.
I looked at the game Unravel, the reason why I looked at this game is because throughout the game you are following a sentient being of yarn what goes through the old ladies house, going to each picture that initiates a memory that is related to the old ladies life when she was growing up until this point.
All of the pictures start a memory that you have to play through and throughout the image/memory it shows you a part of the story and the life of both the old lady when she was younger and about the place that she grew up, it shows you what happened to her and why it is such a memorable point in her life. As you progress throughout the story you gather pins that – with everyone you find – adds more photos to the old ladies photo album showing you the happy memories that each of the pictures/levels are based around.
This concept and idea I though was a very good implementation to the game making the player understand and see the journey that the old lady and the ones who are dear to her went through within each of the memories.
Psychological science
I looked into the Psychology behind memories and how a memory is created and on what terms that they are created. If something the happens to you is traumatic it generally become fixed within your head, which as time goes by this memory will play on the mind of whom ever experienced this moment and it will continue to play repeatedly in the ‘mind’s eye’ which will cause the occupant distress.
Within the game Fallout 4 you play as either “Nate” or “Nora” and they are subjected to such an experience when they see their wife/husband be killed by a mysterious assailant who then proceeds to steal their child (Sean) from their partners’ lifeless arms. This plays a huge part in the characters mid set when he/she is suddenly woke for his ‘cryogenic sleep’ and through the story he/she is focused on one thing that is to find the man the killed their husband/wife and to find their missing son.
It goes on to explain that everyone undergoes some form of traumatic experience within their life and it will affect them in a different way to one another due to the level of the traumatic experience and on the person it is done to. For most war veterans they might suffer from PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) where as others might suffer from an emotional disorder ACE (adverse childhood experiences) or depression that is caused from their experiences.
As well as this I was thinking of having something that is more of a fear that gets brought up by looking at the object. Something that is known as Uncanny valley where the mind is subjected to having a fear and unsettling feel of emotions when they’re involved with something like this and an example of something like this is AOT (Attack on titan). This game has enemies that have proportions that are rather disproportionate to the rest of the body giving some players a sense on un easiness. Another game that does this is Alien Isolation and the AI that are within this game.
Creation
I am thinking about creating an object that will make a character remember a certain thing – in this case it’s the characters son/daughter – that relates to the object that they either look at or hold. This is going to take some time to think about what I would like the object would be and how I can relate it to a memory that is about someone, something or somewhere that is important to the character.
The idea that I had was to create something that is related to my FMP because it is based after the Second World War and I was thinking of making it something that one of the main characters hold dear to them. In the case of my FMP idea I was thinking of making a toy that was one of the main characters son/daughters favourite toy and this could like within to the memory being activated because she/he is taken away from him by his crazy brother who has gone insane due to the experiences that he endured within the war.
I’ve looked at many different toys and dolls that they had in the 1940s to give myself a better understanding on their shapes as well as how they are made and textured, this is going to help me out a lot when making this object. The first toy that caught my eye and made me think about having the child as a boy was to make a wooden plane that was the child’s favourite toy to have that reminded him of his father.
I found many planes that were made around the 1940s which is where my FMP is based around each of which have a different aspects to each of them making them unique in the way that they are shaped and the way that they are designed overall.
The wooden one looks rather basic and plain to the look yet it looked home made and very early design on the other planes that I found. The metal plane has a rather sharp look to it as well this one looked as If it was made within a factory. I looked at may other planes that were made around the same time as these and I looked at the similarities, differences and what makes them stand out from one another and the reason why I was looking at things like this is because I wanted an object the could really convey the sense of memories.
I have decided to go for the wooden plane and the reason why I have chosen this over all of the other planes is because I think that it can give off a better meaning of a memory as well as love. It looks like it has been made by someone which gave me the Idea to have it made by the main characters children for their father as a gift which is why it means so much to the main character and why it has so much sentimental value.
Creation process
Base shapes
For the start of my creation of the plane I decided to start off with the overall shape of the plane by mapping out the lengths of the wings, the middle of the plane and the back rudders of the plane. I did this so I could roughly calculate the over all shape of the toy plane without messing it up. I used the simple design of making only just rectangles to make up all of the plane, I did this because it was going to be easier to shape most of the plane as I go through rather then trying to make the shapes straight away.
Shaving off edges
I worked on making the wings of the plane more rounded by first champfering the edge closest to the front of the plane because that part isn’t as curved as the back half of the propellers. After I sorted out the angle that I wanted the planes win to be I curved the back edge to make the lines join up and create an arch to complete the shape of the wings.
Refining shapes
After the wings were the desired shape that I wanted to make them I started to shape the main body of the plane I made the front pointed so it resembles that of the other plane and I made the end thinner to make it more aerodynamic like the one in the picture i was using as reference.
Adding textures
After this I was working on shaping the back ends of the plane just like I didn’t for the front of the planes wings I did the same shaping formation with the last three parts of the plane.
When I completed making the shapes of the plane to what I wanted them to look like I decided to UVW map them and add textures and decals to the planes wings any its body to give it a wood feeling to it just like the original images shows.I have decided to gather different textures one of which is a burnt wood another that is off of a normal plank of wood and the other that is a piece that has pealed a little, I’ve overlaid these three to give the effect that it has been burnt in a certain place of the plane.
This is the maximum amount that I managed to produce within the time that I had to create it.
Make the connections between the practitioners and also the work you have made and try to analyse the themes and why you think they were a success, what went well? What didn’t? Show more examples of other industry professionals who have used this.
The processes and experiments you have shown are lovely, you have explored and broken these down thoroughly. Be more reflective though. On your doll task, I feel you have made more progress on the task in class, this should also be written up. What do the shapes mean on the doll? They are rounded? Continue to analyse the themes and the progress of your work and how you have adapted your own skills in conjunction to other developers.
Second experimentation
My second Its that I thought could be a trigger to a memory of some sort that is similar to the first item that I created which is this paratrooper doll that the main character gave to his daughter because he is a paratrooper in the war she hold it dear to her because of this reason.
Shaping the model
I started by making most of his body out of cylinders because I thought it would making it easier for me to give the stitched and stuffed look of the fabric that is within the other picture at the original picture. I created the arms, kegs and the head to be separate assets to the body so it could be easier for me to texture as well as create the model.
Shaping stitches
After the shape was made I decided to inset one end as well as adding a champfer to it so it looks as if it was bundled together at the seames. I did also ad an extrude to make it seem as there was a bit that hanged over as an overlay of the fabrics
Smoothing and refining the edges
Once this was complete with both of the arms I did the same for the legs, by using the same method as I did with his arms. This gave the exact same effect that I had with his arms.
Adding tiny details
After making the arms ad the legs to the correct sizes as well as the correct overall shape that I wanted them to be I decided to add the hands and feet to complete the overall aesthetics of the dolls body. I created these with thinner cylinders that I simple added more faces to add a curve and an extrusion on the hands to add a little thumb.
Adding a hood
The final part for me to move on to was the head and I knew jest how to make this to the correct size without making another circle from scratch. I copied the original circle and made it bigger so it was a snug fitting around the dolls head and after the fitting was right I added a shell to make the plane thicker.
Straps
I added little straps that are under the head because the original image had these at more of an angle so I was thinking of having them placed to get instead of making them flap away freely.
Adding textures
Adding the textured details I chose a fabric that was similar to what was in the original image, however I chose a burlap type fabric that gave it kind of a hard look to it unlike the original soft looking fabric. To add later FX to the fabric later like decals, grooves or even differences in tone I unwrapped each individual piece of the model to make sure I could do this in the future.
Evaluation
I am rather happy with what I produced both in how it look and the textures that accompany the work produced. The overall shape of the plane I think is rather good compared to the original, however I do think that there could be some improvements to help solidify the fact that it is made of wood rather then plastic or another material.
The burnt texture I think went rather well and I think it could use a little more work on it to make it look as if the surrounding area around the burn is peeling away as well as having singe marks across other parts of the wood to make it more authentic to look at. As well as this the addition or worn arks across the joints of the plane and around the propeller could add a lot more meaning to the plane because it would show more of an understanding of the work that his child put into making this plane as well as how much they play with the propellers.
For the paratrooper I think that he/she turned out rather well considering the difficulties with the unwrapping and texturing of the model because of the design and shape of most of its body. However, this is going to help me when creating future models that involve a lot of work and creativity to with the intricate curves and difficult texture unwraps.
Unravel memory
Psychology behind memories
http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0956797615583071
Uncanny valley
http://www.strangerdimensions.com/2013/11/25/10-creepy-examples-uncanny-valley/
Alien isolation
http://g33kingout.com/alien-isolation-review/
AOT
Burnt plane
https://www.etsy.com/listing/87706932/vintage-toy-airplane-1940s-wyandotte
Wooden plane
http://www.bbc.co.uk/ahistoryoftheworld/objects/4fnZWmsWQduACszg2fh8YQ
Metal plane
Experimentation (Week 5)
Introduction
Within this sessions I am going to be using different techniques and processes to create different types of work all for the same purpose and the reason why I am doing this is to expand my knowledge on the other types of medium and techniques on my chosen specialty. I am going to be demonstrating and looking at different techniques that are going to help me with my FMP. The reason for us to do these type of experiments is so that we can discover new ways to create pieces of work of our own chose specialist study expanding on what we already know and taking that to the next level of production.
All of this is going to help me with my FMP because it is going to help me improve on my skills that I am going to be using for my FMP as well as my experimentation with other types of mediums are going to help me with creating some of my work within.
Experiment #1
The first experiment that I undertook wasn’t anything to do with 3D modeling in the sense of creating the models, because I decided to create a drawing of an environment of which I wanted to be within my FMP. The reason why I did this is because I wanted to try mapping out a level on paper and use different ways in doing so I will make it easier when creating my FMP level and layout.
As you can see from this image above I have mapped out a very basic layout of one of the environments that I am thinking about creating for my FMP. I have mapped out where I would like the objects to be placed (after I create them) and what I want the objects to be.
Making this top down image of what I would like the room to look like after I finish creating it its going to help me when creating the dimensions of the room as well as the exact spacing of the assets within it.
Experiment #2
The second experiment that I was like the first experiment where it isn’t related to 3D modeling per-say because this time I decided to create different strokes with a pen to create different strokes to create different types of effects.
The reason why I experimented like this – using different strokes and different styles in making these strokes – is because I was looking at the different ways that I could use the same colour and the many ways that I can create different shades and colours with it.
This is going to help me when creating and editing textures that I am going to use for my models that I create. By testing out the different techniques and styles of creating patterns I an use these as both reference and as textures (mainly decals) if I need/want to.
Experiment #3
For my third experiment I decided to get a little more hands on with my approach and go a little further with my /first experiment where I created a top down design of a room that I was going to be creating for my FMP. In this case I decided to create an environment that was different from the one that I chose before, but this time I was going to create the environment with cardboard creating the models that I would end up creating in 3DS max.
The environment that I was going to be creating was the
I started to create the main structure of building using a cardboard box that was roughly the shape and dimensions that I wanted them to be so that it can have the right portions as the building would have. I then used a pair of scissors to cut away the first layer of the cardboard to make it seem like the indents on the actually building to make the model more aesthetic rather then drawing a design on the cardboard.
Doing this as well as cutting the wholes within the cardboard was a little time consuming and difficult especially when it came to making the window hole that is above the door because this was already weak, taking off the layer of cardboard covering made it significantly weaker. This did however split the box breaking it which is why I had to tape it together to make sure that it lined up correctly.
After I had cut all of the holes and engravings that were needed – as shown within the original image- I decided to add a cardboard flap as well, for the balcony. Making this was unsupported because of the size of the balcony so I added supports that were under the balcony in order to support the weight of it and the railing.
A member of my FMP design team helped by creating a little British flag that took us a little time to think of how to create it because our first idea of having multiple coloured paper and sticking them together didn’t work too well. Because our initial idea of creating the flag didn’t work we though about having one singular white piece of paper and just colour over it with red and blue pens to complete the design.
After making and completing the overall design to add aesthetics I decided to make a little cut out of Winston Churchill himself to make the whole set complete, as well as making it seem more relevant to the image as well as scale.
After it was complete I did notice a little issues to do with scale because of the little figure that I created was too big as well as the railing which could mess up with the building process within 3DS MAX.
Experiment 4#
For my fourth experiment I am going to be looking at the different ways to create and use textures within Photoshop and using them on my 3D models. I am going to be using my model from the previous task so that I can adapt and modify the doll to have different markings on it.
Practitioners report (Week 6)
Introduction
For this task I am doing to be looking at practitioners that relate to my specialist stud, which in my case it is environment design of games. I am going to be looking at the formal elements that make these games and how these have evolved throughout the years, as well as this I am going to be looking at how they are designed and what the ae designed from.
I’m going to base my research around the 1970-80 where the first development of games really started to become more enhanced and developed than the early design of games. Making sure that my work stays up to date as well I am going to look at work that’s from the present day to see how this has changed.
ID software
I am going to be looking first at games that are made around the early age of games to get an understanding on how they were created, what their inspirations were, the processes that were taken to make these games as well as looking at the history of their work that either lead to this point that the game was created or has lead them further to create other games closer to the present day.
The games that I have chosen to look at is Doom and Wolfenstein 3D, these games are rather similar in design and the way that they are make because they were both created by id Software. Wolfenstein 3D was created in 1992 and it became the first, first person shooter and it changed the way the environments of games were looked and create.
The industry was founded on February 1st, 1991 (Texas) by programmers John Carmack and John Romero, game designer Tom Hall, and artist Adrian Carmack. This group of people were members of the company “Softdisk” who gathered together to create games such as Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, Quake and Commander Keen.
Formal Elements
For the game Doom the colours that were used were rather dark and basic because of the time that the game was created there wasn’t a very big pallet that could have been used within games due to the time that this game was created. The overall reason why they only used these colours is because it set the mood of fear, the colour red normally signifies danger or something that isn’t good and greys/blacks are more of dull.
The greys also add an industrial feel to the surroundings making the areas seem more cold then lively and warm. I looked into the colours and found out more about their meaning to help further both my research as well as my understanding on the colours that they used. The colour red symbolizes energy, war, danger, strength, power and blood, all of which are related to something bad in one way or another.
Another mod the colour red can be associated with is that it excites emotions that make us take action in certain situations that aren’t going for the better. This does, however make sense within the Doom game because as the player takes damage the screen becomes redder as you take more damage, which makes the player become hasty to get out of the situation.
The colour grey isn’t one of those colours that show much of an exciting it is rather plain and dull compared to the other colours that it has to “compete” with. However it is more focused towards the darker shade of grey which brings in more of a mysterious look as well as making the colours closer within the light spectrum. The website says that the colour grey is subdued, quiet and reserved. It does not stimulate, energize, and rejuvenate.
These colours were a common trend for the future Doom game that was released in 2016 sing mostly dark colours and keeping with the over use of having deep dark reds within every nook and cranny of the game. This kind of trend has been kept throughout all of the games by having a similar type of colour scheme and textual design.
Lighting was another big prat within this game that added to the overall feel of horror and intensity that Doom gave off as you played it. This kind of trend has kept throughout both of the Doom games, both the old and the new one, where there isn’t much lighting in both hell and on Mars and the only lighting that there is either fire or light reflection.
Narrative
The overall pace of the Doom games have been similar by putting the character within a very immediate situation where they have to fight for their lives or an onslaught of enemies that attempt to kill you. The overall pace of the games are really quick, fast paced that don’t really have a moment of rest within the game, giving the players very little time to collect themselves before that have to fight another huge wave of enemies.
They have also designed the “Glory kills” of the enemies to be rather fast too
The characters movement speed is at a quick pace to hat is accompanied with the guns that he uses to keep up with the fast action that both the character undergoes as well as the guns speed (rate) of fire. There are so many different combinations of player b using the weapons that are provided that it will “Tailor your experience to your certain playstyle” – Hugo Martin.
Within the game they also have items that give off semiology to the players. This is shown through the colours that the objects are given, for example: the shields within the game are a strong green colour which indicates that it is good because of its purpose and what it does. Another example of this is through the power ups that you can obtain within certain areas, they are all given a different colour and the all have a different meaning to them.
These orbs al have the colours that best suit their ability that it gives you, the red orb gives you berserk which gives you the ability to kill all the enemies instantly without getting damaged from them, The Purple Gives you a lot of power – which is one of the meanings of its colour- as well as glom because of its dark shades.
Inspiration
After John Romero and is team created Wolfenstein in 1991 they then moved on to create a game called Doom in 1993. Their inspiration for such a world famous game was the board game “Dungeons and dragons” and this made them have an idea of the Doom universe John Romero says: – “John Carmack, lead programmer, was Dungeon Master as usual. I got greedy trying to procure a magic sword and caused the entire world to be overrun by demons”. This initiated the idea for the game we know as Doom, as well as Dungeons and dragons, the film Aliens 2 was a huge inspiration for the development for Doom.
They changed the theme about aliens and finding them, just like in the move, but they were in hell which correlates with the demons that came out of hell within Dungeons and dragons.
Materials
To create Doom they had a few materials that they used in order to create it one of which was modeling clay that helped them model the characters and what they was going to look and possibly move/animate like. As well as clay they used a toy dinosaur for one of their characters ‘Pinky’ to model his overall shape and movements.
They had to create a whole new engine just for the new Doom game. To do this their programmer Carmack had to spend hours on just making the engine, in return it made the game run smoother, faster and easier with more assets within the game than any other game that they had created before.
Scanning in the characters and creating them wasn’t too difficult to do because of the similarities in Doom and its predecessor Wolfenstein 3D.
Hidetaka Miyazaki
Hidetaka miyazaki is the creator of the games blood born as well as darkeners both of which involve a lot of gore and torment with every step of the way. He first was the director of the game called Armored core it in 2000. In 2010 he started the Dark siders series and in 2015 he created Blood born within all of these games they have all of a similar trend of how dark and sinister that they all look.
Formal elements – Within Hidetaka miyazakis games there is a repetition of having lots of gore and decay that is on every possible surface within the games that he has created and it is a trend that he keeps. The elements of using mainly blacks and dark colours (grays and browns), which shows much relevance to the old game ‘DOOM’ by having very strong colours that are within the same colour spectrum and then having colours (mostly browns) the define the different areas.
Both of these games show a trend with having a viskis mass spewed across most of the games levels indicating something is bad. Within DOOM it shows the gore, blood and suffering of the hellish nature and within Blood born it has black mass that is a sign of evil.
The lighting is of the game is rather dark and dusty which adds to the scary backstory as well as the tones and textures of the surrounding architecture of the levels and characters. all of these elements adds to the gruel and unwelcoming feel of the games.
This style of lighting and colouration has been a trend within Hidetaka miyazakis work.
Narrative – Throughout the levels there tends to be indications that there is something about to happen which is a sign of semiology and it does this by giving the character an introduction (Within blood born) where the surrounding area begins to change and wither, filling with the black mass more and more as you get closer to the main point of danger. As well as this it presents that player with a huge opening that gets you ready that there is going to be a Boss battle ahead.
Bibliography
Doom image – N/A. (1999-2017) MobyGames. Available at: http://www.mobygames.com/game/doom (Accessed: 20/02/2017).
Doom wiki – Surname, Initial. (10 February 2016/29 October 2016) id Software
. Available at: https://doomwiki.org/wiki/Id_Software (Accessed: date).
Inspiration of Doom – Hoad, P. (Monday 27 January 2014/ N/A) How we made the Doom game. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2014/jan/27/how-we-made-video-game-doom (Accessed: 21/02/2017).
Wolfenstein 3D –
Colous – Parker, R. (N/A) The meaning of Colors. Available at: https://resources.oncourse.iu.edu/access/content/user/rreagan/Filemanager_Public_Files/meaningofcolors.htm (Accessed: 20/02/2017).
Colour wheel – http://www.color-wheel-pro.com/color-meaning.html
http://uk.ign.com/companies/id-software
Hidetaka miyazakis story –
Dylan, I am concerned as I see none of your work from weeks 1-3. i am hoping it is in word. Please ensure it is all complete (use checklists on VLE) for me to mark.
Unit 9: Research and analysis of characters (week 2)
Introduction
Within this lesson we looked at the different types of features that are within characters and what they can show about the character’s personality. The things that we looked at were the characters’ appearance, personality, movement, voice and Audience for that specific characters, we looked at this because we are trying to expand our view upon what makes a character through its features and what we can tell about their personalities just by these things. We were given the task to think of two different characters that contrasted one another in either their personalities or appearance.
The two characters that I thought of were Lobo from Marvel and XJ-0461 (Clank) from ‘Ratchet and Clank’. I gathered the Information for each of the characters and I compared them to see how and what they both had either in common or their differences.
- Appearance:
Their appearances of both of the characters are extremely different form one another in more ways than one. I’m going to be looking at how they look what makes their characters be seem as who they are to the eye without knowing much if anything about the characters background.
Lobo – Lobo is dressed in all black tethered and torn leather, with huge hiking/biking boots that are covered in spikes and looking rather raged and worn. His hair is thick, black and rough and tuft not really having a look of being clean, pure red eyes that show off that he isn’t a friendly character and scars covering some of his visible skin. His skin is grey toned that shows a sign that he’s not living and that his body is life less or the he isn’t quite from this world. His full physical appearance is menacing and horrifying to the eye which gives the impression that he is evil and means bad intentions.
Lobo carries around a sharp hook on a chain a shot gun and a blow torch all of these items give you the impression that he is a hunter of some sort, a killer or someone who has bad intentions.
Clank – Clank is shown to look rather smooth and fine edged. He’s appearance is that of a humanoid child with feet fingers and the proportion of that of a human. He has green eyes that give the sense that he isn’t a bad character as well as his colours and shape being rather dull and blunt without a lot if any sharp/harmful edges on his being which gives him an approachable appearance.
Differences and similarities
They have a few similarities and differences that divide these characters from one another. One of the main difference that is noticeable is their eyes, Clank has green eyes where Lobo has red eyes which helps the player know whether they’re a good or bad character. Another difference is that the way that they’re both build (Although Clank is a robot) they do have a huge difference in the size and build of their bodies.
Clank has a rather thin, skinny and somewhat fragile to his appearance by having huge hands and feet yet little and thin legs and arms (Which helps him in the games with his abilities). He is also rather smooth looking and well rounded.
Lobo is quite built and stocky to his whole body structure is build off of circle on top of circles which could mean that he isn’t as bad as it seems. However, His body is covered in scars and dark black veins than entail another view on his appearance, as well as having sharp an pointy hair and accessories.
- Personality
Both of their personalities are different too in both the way they sound to the way that they act and speak.
Lobo – Lobos’ personality is ruthless he never gives up on anything that he peruses weather it is hunting or trying to take down his target he never gives up. Reckless (He will destroy anything to complete his goals), Intelligent, egotistical (stating that he’s above all), caring, and helpful (when he looks after Ms tribes).
Clank – Clanks personality doesn’t match all of the other robots that are similar to him. He has a rather humanoid characteristic to him that is both expressed through this motions, emotions that he expresses to others (ratchet, etc.) as well as his actions “he chooses to be a vegetarian”.
- Movement
Lobo – Lobos’ movements are very robotic because of his build; he shifts is body as one turning left to right as he walks barely moving, seemingly waddles because of his build and of his personality plays a part on that too by being egotistical and feeling as he’s the top dog.
Clank – Clanks movement is humanoid which is exactly the same as his appearance and personality, he sways his body from left to right as a normal human would if they were either running or walking as well as the arms moving as he walks which is really similar to a human’s action.
- Voice
Lobo – Lobo has a rather deep and dark voice with a menacing tone that sends shivers through the spine, it shows the musky and damage that his body has been put through. Lobo has a very burly biker voice that can intimidate smaller people, as well as being rather loud obnoxious sounding rather egotistic and sarcastic.
Clank – Clanks voice is proper and sophisticated in the fact that he is really well spoken and easy to understand. This also helps strengthen his personality of being kind, understanding and intelligent. He isn’t sporadic in what he says, he is very straight forward with what he’s saying at any given point.
Differences and similarities
Another difference is the way that they speak Clank has a rather tidy and gentlemanly toned voice that help people associate him with being a good guy and Lobo has a rather groggy and fowl mannered voice which gives off the impression that he isn’t quite the nice guy
- Audience for that specific character
Lobo – Lobo has a rather fierce appearance and an unruly attitude towards everyone and everything. As well as catch phrases that aren’t for the young aged audience , they’re rude and barbaric with a few parts of profanity and not for the young ear. His audience is for young adult and adults.
Clank – Clanks is aimed at more of a kids and teenagers audience possibly borderline middle aged adults also. This is because of the design of clank is very smooth and welcoming looking rather than having sharp and dangerous edges he is well rounded and smooth, as well as his colours being really simplistic and calming rather than harsh colours.
Evaluation:
Researching these two contrasting characters was very interesting to do because I found out what made both of these characters who they are by their appearance, their voice, the personality and their audience that they are meant for. This is going to help me out when thinking about what character I would like to create because finding out what makes a character suitable for a certain audience is really helpful to know when developing my own ideas and developments of my characters designs.
Bibliography:
How lobo acts:
WatchMojo.com (Oct 3, 2013) Supervillain Origins: Lobo. Available at:
Clanks movement: Time 1:43:10
RabidRetrospectGames (Apr 12, 2016) Ratchet and Clank PS4 Gameplay Walkthrough Part 1 FULL GAME – No Commentary Ratchet and Clank 2016. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bso_HL0lhqQ (20/09/2016).
Clank biography:
‘Clank0′ (2006) The Ratchet and Clank Wiki. Available at: http://ratchet.wikia.com/wiki/Clank (Accessed: 21/09/2016).
Lego franchise report (week 2)
Introduction
Within this session I am looking upon the Lego franchise and how they accustom to every possible audience through what they do (Games, Movies, toys, TV series) and through their designs of both characters and story/game play. I will be discussing the differences and similarities to do throughout all of the Lego games.
I will also be looking at a character that they have used within one of their games (preferably a Villon because they are usually more intimidating) and identify the key features that Lego has changed about the character to make him/her suitable for the younger audience as well as the older audience.
Lego Batman 3: beyond Gotham
The 3rd Lego Batman game is based for the age group of 7+ because of the art style and the comedic references that are throughout the game play as well as the overall softness of all of the characters and the overall feel of their appearance. The age range has kept the same throughout the whole franchise 7+ this is because the contents has all stayed relevant to that of the movies that it is based around ‘Batman’. Batman is naturally scary and is in nothing but action movies that have a lot of violence within them and the Lego games have changed the horror within the movies into something of somewhat comedy for both for younger audience as well as the older audience as well.
The reason why it is kept at 7+ is because the game does have mild/high violence and sadistic actions within it and it tries to soften horrific events that are within the films for the younger audience as well as appeasing to the older audience as a wacky addition to the games. For example: when the characters die instead of blood they simply fall to peaces and when there is a scary character or enemy they tend to have funny interactions that add to the whole comedic side of things.
As well as this they have slapstick comedy within most parts of their games by making the younger and older audience laugh to violence within the game because it have been censored and adapted for more comedic reasons, as well as being aimed at a younger audience.
Within Lego Batman 3: Beyond Gotham throughout the whole franchise of the Batman series the overall look of the characters hasn’t changes an awful lot because they are the same characters so a lot of the props and the textures of the characters are going to be the exact same as the first Lego Batman as it is within the third game. As well as having the exact same props as the original games there are lots of differences to do with the characters, this being their colours have changed to become darker or lighter depending on who they are (for example: Batman has become darker and man-bat has now got white hair on his chest and ears) as well as small features within the characters.
They have kept all of the bright colours that they have had since their first game ‘Lego Island’ and they have kept this all the way to their newest game ‘Batman: beyond Gotham’. This has kept in rather simplistic for the younger audience that it is originally aimed for with still a hint of being for adults as well, especially within the newer games where they have added more puzzle type scenarios that sometime test your memory and coordination. As well as this (mentioned earlier) they has still kept the violence within the game just transferred this to a timid and less gory transaction when the character gets killed.
They have also changed the way that everything looks (i.e. the bricks and some of the characters appearance) to a smoother yet sharper to the eye and just generally more symmetrical and naturalistic. For the characters they have done the same over all changes as well as changing what they look like within the slightest (As mentioned earlier)
Character analysis
The character that I have chosen from the Lego games is Doomsday and the reason why I have chosen Doomsday is because of his overall appearance within the movies and animated series is rather menacing and scary and not very suitable for younger audiences. So in order to make his appeasing for both older and younger audiences Lego have changed him and an awful lot so he can appeal to the younger audience as well as the older audience.
Here I have gathered the different appearances of doomsday form different types of media the bottom one is from the new movie ‘Batman vs Superman’ just after Doomsday has broken free form his chrysalis and causing havoc on the city of Gotham. As you can see he is covered with bumps and sharp edges, the sheer size of dooms day within this movie as well is monstrous as he towers well over 15ft. This makes him really menacing and scary to a younger audience.
In this image it shows a 3D model of Doomsday and as you can see it is far scarier than the one from the movie mainly because of the sheer size of his physique as well as the size of his spikes gives him a more dangerous look and that he’s more suitable for the older audience because of his overall look.
The third image is off of Doomsday within the game Batman 3: Beyond Gotham. As you can see there are rather drastic changes with the character for this game and this is because of the appearance of Doomsday to begin with, before he was a character within the Lego universe he has very sharp edges dark menacing colours and all round he looks scary. For the Lego game they have changed practically everything to do with him; firstly they have changed his colours to a cool and calming blue instead of having a gritty and bleak brown.
Another thing that they have done is they have had sure that the over all look of his spikes and shape by changing them from being rather ridged and sharp and they have changed then to a smoother and blunt edges that look less intimidating and well as making then less ridged and harsh which makes him not as intimidating and menacing as he does within the movie and within the other game.
Evaluation:
Throughout this task I have found out that there is a lot of difference between a characters design through different types of media, whether it be a Lego character, an animated character for a fighting game or within a movie. I found it rather interesting to see the development of the characters and what has changed throughout the different types of media.
This is going to help me with my own characters design in the future by helping me understand the key differences between a fighting game (street fighter~) and a Lego game (Batman: Beyond Gotham) as see what will change my character from looking really realistic to looking plastic and like a Lego character.
Raul, O. (2016) 11:14 PM – 30 Jun 2016. Available at: https://twitter.com/vics95836264/status/748761720592539648 (Accessed: 27/09/2016).
Lego Doomsday: http://lego.wikia.com/wiki/Doomsday
Batman vs Superman Doomsday: http://www.techinsider.io/batman-v-superman-who-is-doomsday-2015-12
Re-creation of a character to suit another audience (week 2)
Introduction
Within this Session I am going to be discussing a character that I have chosen for the two I had last week that contrasted from one another and what they as a character show towards their audience this being their age range, what gender they are specified for, their background and how this shows the audience they are meant for. The two character that I am going to be choosing from are Clank from ‘Ratchet and Clank’ and Lobo from ‘injustice’.
Also I am going to be re-designing the character to fit a different audience all together and change these specifications to the new design and to the new audience that I have chosen.
Chosen character: Clank (Ratchet and Clank series) 7+
Audience:
Age range – Clanks age range looks around the age of teenagers to young adults (7-15) this is because the overall look of clank is very approachable towards the audience, he doesn’t have any sharp edges so he isn’t perceived as a dangerous or menacing character because of the way that his body is shaped and the colours that are used for Clank. His voice and attitude is also very calming and sophisticated in the choice of words and attitude.
I am looking at trying to make him suitable for an older audience more of a 15-18 years of age possibly older audience as well.
Gender – The gender that I think clank is for is both genders because of the overall look and attitude of clank it isn’t aimed towards a specific gender (colours are neutral meaning there are no blues or pinks that would make him more in favour of one specific gender.)
I am thinking of changing this by making him more appealing to the male eye by being harsh and sharp edged and dark colours. However, either keeping his personality as it is or making him more heart felt and caring than the original clank.
Background – Clanks background is rather simple, he was a robot that was designed to be a super destructive killing machine but he went rouge because of this ancient soul was put inside of him which makes him rebel against his higher authority. This could be related to the younger teenagers because they are a little rebellious to their higher authorities as well which could entail with this. As well as this he is a secret agent within an action movie which could interest the more of the younger aged audience because most children at a young age think about being a detective of some sort as well as a trending feature in some older audience members.
Re-designing:
To re-design Clank for a different audience I wold start by changing his overall colours to a more darker tone to give him a scarier look because of the darker colours and making sure that some of his coloured features are more menacing then they were before I.e. his eyes from green to a possible red or orange. Another thing that would help change Clank for the older audience is to change his appearance to a great extent by making his edges sharper and harsher so that it fits to a more spookier manner and helping the fact that he is based for the older audiences.
(add drawn sketches of new design ideas and talk about re-design)
Making him all hard and sharp edges will give Clank a rather sinister look to him as well as the accompanying colours that I wish to add to him.
Age range – The new age range that Clank is going to be is 15 because of his destructive nature and evil and dangerous appearance that I have given him. I don’t think that he is going to be suitable for the younger audience because of this reason, making most of his features more sharp/pointed and ridged rather than having them smooth and basic in colour and design.
Gender – The gender that the new design of clank is going to be mainly aimed at boys because of his sharpened edges and darker toned look where as his personality if going to be possibly aimed more at girls because of his loving and caring approach to scenarios and people.
Background – his background is going to be different as well, instead of Clank escaping the enemy he’s going to be supposingly decommissioned and undetected as he lives a secret life as a bounty hunter who’s sent out to hunt ratchet when he ends up liking Ratchet when he finds out they’re working for the same cause.
How I would use key features to make my character suitable for my new audience?
I would make his edges less smooth and shiny by giving him a sharp and rustic look to his entire body this is going to make him look more intimidating to the audience because of his colours and over all feel and shape of his entire being. I am thinking of making his voice more deeper and slightly posher this will make his sound more sophisticated and darker when he speaks.
As well as all of this I am thinking of making him look makeshift by making him look as if he was build be a few robots rather then being a complete robot as he is within the original game.
These robots form destiny are the references that I’m going off of as you can see they are rather sharp and pointed edges which gives that a dangerous look, this is what I have integrated into the new design of Clank. I am going to do a few sketches of the new design of Clank and intemperate this kind of colour pallet within his design by giving him a glowing area (possibly his eyes and antenna) and have most of his body a darker grey and/or black in colour.
Biography – Clank was created in the Robotics factory and was commissioned for Decommissioning due to a technical fault. Clack manages to escape the facility with only a missing arm and a few parts of his metallic shell missing. He escapes to the planet (Ratches planet) where he lives in secret as a bounty hunter, slowly reconstructing his body back to its former glory with his victims parts.
Evaluation:
Recreating a character for a completely different audience was an interesting task to do and this is because it is going to help me with the development of my own characters. Seeing how I can change one character that was meant for a specific audience to another audience is going to help me when creating my own character, being able to change my character to appease to my own audience is going to help me if there is any issue with the design that I all ready have.
Other robots- http://destiny.wikia.com/wiki/Vex
Ryu’s rigged animation
Introduction:
Within this session I am going to be creating a 3D animation of two different actions performed by the Street fighter character Ryu. The first animation is of his idle and the second is going to be off of his famous Hadoken move, both of which are going the be difficult to do because they have to be done with a CAT rigged character as well as the fact that I have only done a slight amount of animation with fire and the movement of non-rigged objects.
Ryus rig – starting off with his animation was the difficult part to do and the reason for this is because I had to align all of the rigged characters limbs and his body with the original video image in order to start the over all animation.
After getting the rigged character to be the exact stance as the first frame of the video I had to adjust piece by piece of his body to match the corresponding part that was moving within the video itself. I started with moving his pelvis because this is where all of the movement is going to initially going to come from, so making sure that the pelvis bone of he rig was a accurate to the video as it possibly could so the rest was going to be an easy task to do. If I moved any other part of the body before I moved the head it would have distorted them when I decided to move the pelvis so moving the pelvis first was a good idea to do.
This is the animation that is side by side the original video so you can see the similarities and differences between the two. As you can see there is a few things that went wrong, for example my rigged characters left arm jolt up and then back into the original position. I tried to solve the issue within editing, however this didn’t work as I couldn’t find where the key frames were that caused this issue. Although there was some issues with the animation, this was understandable because this is my first time animating a rigged character.
Hadoken
For the second animation of Ryus was to do his Hadoken. this was a little easier to do because his idle stance was already done all I needed to do was to align his body to the video for the rigged character to do the Hadoken. Unfortunately the rendering of the Hadoken that I did wasn’t complete and the part that I did complete the rendering failed.
This is what I was going to be animation my rigged character to.
Evaluation: Throughout this task I learnt a lot about the creation of making an animation and how difficult that I can really be. I have vastly improved on my animation skills because of these tasks that I have done and the skills that I have learnt through this experience are going to help me in the long front of creating the animations for my very own character as well as with other animations of other Street fighter characters.
Ryu’s audio (week 3)
Unit 9 1.1
Introduction
Within this session I am going to be looking at audio of the Street Fighter character ‘Ryu’ form both Street fight II and Street fighter V and I am going to be critically comparing them to one another and analysing them off of how many there are and the quality of the audio that is recorded.
Street fighter 2: Throughout the video clip that I watched where Ryu was fighting against Ken I noticed that they had the exact same audio for both of them and this is because Ken is practically a re textured Ryu until the later games where he starts to adapt a bit of characteristics for himself. The audio that Ryu emitted was rather robotic in the way that it sounded, as well as this there was only three different pieces of audio the I could define against the Hadoken and the Shoryuken and Shinku Hadoken these were the only pieces of audio the character Ryu said within his fight.
Street fighter 5: Within street fighter 5 Ryus’ voice is far more auditable, smooth and realistic to that of Street fighter 2 and the main reason for this is because the technology change has made it possible so they can sound much clearer that they did within the younger versions of the game. Also within the newest Street fighter (V) Ryu has more audio than he didn’t within the earlier games, he has about 10 different auditable phrases/sounds throughout his fights.
Comparison
In street fighter V there are sounds that are used for different actions the Ryu does , For example: there is a sound when ryu jumps back or throws a player over him where as within the Street fighter 2 he didn’t make any noise when he pouched or kicked this is because of the amount of storage that they would have had when Street Fighter 2 was developed. He only made a sound when he did his power moves as well as having sound effects for being damaged when in Street fighter 2 they didn’t make any sounds when they were damaged which emphasizes the impact sound making the player know that it was a powerful attack.
Storage was a really big thing in the early day because there wasn’t a lot of storage availability which meant that it was really difficult to have so many different sounds within one game at the same time. However, as time has progressed this has became less of a problem allowing developers to create and add more sounds to their games.
The Purpose of adding more audio to Ryu is to make him more of a character and an individual, this is because within Street fighter 2 Ken is exactly like Ryu and throughout the games they have added these different sounds that both of the characters will give off with different moves which brings them apart and different from each other and making them more of an individual character.
They are rather suitable for Ryu because his character is filled with a lot of power and he’s martial arts for his background which is shown through his clothes and the shouting that his gives off when he does his moves which is a really good addition to both what he wares and his character as a whole.
Ryu pixel art (week 3)
Introduction
Within this session I am going to be creating pixel art for Ryu for the series Street Fighter series. The stance that I am going to be creating the idle stance. To create the pixel art I am going to be using the program Photoshop to make a 2D Pixelated version of his idle stance making it look as identical to the original image.
At first I decided to create the silhouette of Ryu before I decided to add the colours to the 2D pixel art. The reason why I did this first is so that I can get the rough outline of his idle stance before adding colour so I can figure out the proportions of his body and where I am going to be adding the colours.
When I added the colours I only added the base colours without adding and definition to the model as well as proportions to the colours that I have given to him life and make him start to have a shape of his limbs and JI.
After I put in the base colours I decided to edit the colours around the model to give the pixel are more depth and make more of the character stand out, by adding shading and different colour textures.
This is the final design that I have created for my Ryu pixel art, I think that it turned out pretty well for my first ever pixel art especially when I was trying to create Ryu to only basic shapes and colours which was rather difficult to execute because of the small scale that it had to be done within. Next time I could work on making sure that his bodies silhouette.
Evaluation:
Making pixel art for the idol Ryu from the Street Fighter franchise has helped me understand how fundamental a characters colour scheme is to them and the audience that plays them. I have also found out that the colours of a character symbolizes who the characters are, their story and their meaning, this is going to be very helpful when thinking of the colour scheme for my very own character and how I can make his colour pallet Idolize him/her.
Next time I could spend a little more time in getting the over all shape of Ryu as well as putting more indentation within his clothes and skin so it doesn’t look like one solid object.
Speed drawings (week 3)
Introduction
For this session I have been given the tasks to do three to four different drawings that each have different set times in which they have to be completed by. The first one has to be done within 30 seconds, the next one has to be done within 1 minute, the third one has to be done within 2 minutes and the final one has to be completed within 3 minutes with as much details as we possible can do within the time given.
Ryus idle
The three images are of Ryu in his idle stance I was given different times to do each of the drawings ranging from 30 second to three minutes to see whether I will improve with what I do under a time of stress and time.The first image (Top left) I drew was the 30 second drawing, as you can see I have only been able to draw the skeleton and a little of his outline. This is because I was working out the portions of Ryu and how his body is going to be positioned and how his body is going to be twisted.
For the second image (right) I had 1 minute to complete the drawing of Ryu idle, within this drawing you can see that I have added more of a outline of the stance mapping out all of his body parts and shapes of his body. At first it was hard to map out all of the limbs and how they would be positioned.
For the third image (Bottom Left) I had 2 minutes to complete this image and as you can see I have added much more detail to the shape of the character as well as having the over all outline of Ryus idle.
Ryus Hadoken
Within these images I am speed drawing the hadoken stance at the end of Ryus move and his CA when the ball of Ki releasing from his hands. In the first image is my test drawing that I drew the bones of Ryu working out how his body is twisted and how it is positioned at the end of the move.
In my second image (right side) I had 30 seconds to draw as much or Ryu as I possibly could, It was difficult to so within 30 seconds because of how his body was twisted and how his arms overlay one another as well as how his body is now completely side on. I had two different attempts at completing his stance within 30 seconds and the second time that I did this drawing (bottom right) I got more of a human body build and the final shape of the body was finally coming.
In the third image (top left) I had 1 minute to finish this drawing which was a little easier to start adding some details to the arms and legs giving them more of a realist look for the muscles and positioning of the body itself. However I didn’t get as much of the body done as I did in the previous 30 second drawing.
In the fourth image (bottom left) I had 2 minutes to draw this drawing. As you can see I have changed the way that I was drawing and this is because it was an easier way that I found for drawing it. Instead of trying to draw it to the exact style of the game I decided to draw it in my own style and this made it easier for me to map out and draw all of his features and body positioning.
For the final image (below to the right) I have drawn a final image the we was given three minutes to complete. This time I decided to get all of the shapes of his body (muscles and positioning) and then I worked on getting all of his aesthetics by drawing his head band and his clothes as well as his hair. To finish it off I added the energy field around his arms and behind his feet to show his movement.
Birdie
My first drawing (above top left) of birdies idle was a little easier to do because of the help the I had for drawing Ryus idle before I did this task. I have only drawn the skeleton of Birdie because I was getting the over all idea of how his physique was going to be like when I drew him in more detail. The second drawing was exactly like the first drawing, I decided to experiment with the angling of his body parts mainly how his body was arched, how his arms were positioned and how his head tilted to make it look as close as possible.
My third drawing (below top right) I was given a minute to complete this drawing of Birdie in his idle stance, as you can see I have added some over all shapes of his body mapping out where his body is going to be formed and how his body is going to be positioned. I have only game him a few defining circles to show off his body structure and how it is going to form throughout the other drawings.
My fourth drawing (below bottom right) I had 2 minutes to complete this drawing instead of having 1 minute as I did have for the last attempt at doing this drawing. As you can see I have greatly improved on the over all shape and design of his body making his body more rounded and adding features such as his muscles as well as more of his bodies over all outline.
My fifth drawing (below left) For my fifth attempt at drawing Birdie in his idle stance I had 2 minutes again to complete this task. However, there was a twist with the task where I couldn’t make the pencil move away from the paper until the two minutes of drawing was up and/or the drawing was complete. As you can see from this drawing I had been able to complete his entire body structure as well as rounding off all of his body parts defining them and making them accurate to the games design.
These final two drawing are of that of Birdies bullhead attack. I have found two key frames of this attack one at the beginning of the attack and one at the execution of the attack. The task for these drawings was to do them within three minutes without moving the pencil off of the page which was hard enough to do.
Evaluation
Overall I am happy with the outcome of my work, at first it was a little untidy and unprofessional but as I did more of the drawings and progressed through the tasks and the various drawing stances I could see that I improved vastly making minor tweaks with each and every drawing that I did. To further improve my skills speed drawing I will work further into doing other time trialed drawing where I set myself a specific time to draw a certain image to the best of my ability to improve this skill of the next time I do this.
Ryus idle – I though that the development throughout the whole process of drawing Ryu in his idle stance was really sudden from changing from trying to make him look like the exact image to interpenetrating my own style within the drawing. To help myself keep at this level in speed drawing I am looking at practicing doing these types of drawings with not just characters from Street Fighter or any other game but looking at every day objects and try this technique on them as well.
Ryus Hadoken -I though that the way that I was drawing was very sudden in the fact that I changed it from trying to draw it exactly to my own style which made it turn out much better then trying to make it as accurate as I possibly could.
Birdies idle – I though that doing Ryus idle and his Hadoken helped me in making Birdies idle stance because I already had a little practice in drawing outlines and body structures. It was a little difficult at the beginning because of the overall shape of Birdie is far different from how Ryus body is structured and positioned.
Unit 9: Street fighter as a Lego franchise (week 2)
Introduction
Within this session I am going to discuss the audience for both the street fighter game and Mortal Kombat game and checking out their differences between their game play, what characters that they have within and how both genders are represented within them and how this works with their audience that they are aimed at. I will also be discussing how they would be suitable for the Lego franchise as well as why they wouldn’t be suitable for the Lego franchise.
Comparison between audiences
The audience for Lego is general based for the younger ages this is because of the colours that are used as well as the characters’ overall design it isn’t too flashy and there really isn’t much details within the anatomy of the body build (i.e. they all share the exact same body structure as one another unless it was for bigger characters but overall they are still rather plane). Lego is mostly based at the younger ages but because of its diversity between characters and for its nature, it hasn’t really go a specific age group because of this reason.
The audience for Street Fighter is for more of the older age range because of the main reason being the over sexualisation of the female characters throughout the games series they show more skin then there are clothes on the women which doesn’t make it suitable for the younger audience (for example: R. Mika is a very sexualised character because of her whole attire as well as Laura).
There are some similarities with the games and some differences too; the main similarity that stands out to me is the bright colours that are used within bother of the games, within the Lego games it is used for most of the props and building and in Street Fighter it is mostly for the bright clothes that the characters are waring. Diversity is another similarity between these games, they both have a range of characters that you can choose from. Although, Street fighter doesn’t have as many characters as the Lego universe has, however they do allow the players to customise their desired character that they want to play as (normally up to 4 different attires) which brings self-customisation the Street Fighter).
They also have a lot of differences the main one being how they represent both genders, within the Lego games they are generally exactly the same body built except for the bigger, bulkier characters (for example: The Hulk, Dooms day, Man hunter, etc.). Whereas within the Street fighter series all of the characters have out lining features mainly the women because of their oversized features and their little clothing that they have which makes the character (especially female) over sexualised. Another difference between both of these games is the violence within them.
In Lego the most violent thing that you are going to see throughout the game is simply Lego characters falling apart, whereas within the Street Fighter series they have rather brutal and crude finished (depending weather they are male of female characters) and they are generally far more violence within the Street Fighter games.
What would be more appropriate for a Lego franchise, Street fighter or Mortal Kombat X? Why?
It is a difficult decision to make to choose whether it is better to have a Lego franchise about Mortal Kombat X or Street Fighter V, this is because they can be both equally be developed into a game of Lego because some games that the Lego company have made are already changed from being games that are for 15 years olds to what they are within the Lego universe.
Both of the games would be labelled to the same type of audience even if they were over sexualised within the original games because of the female characters are within both Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter are, but they can be changed to look as normal as the other character do within the other Lego games.
For example: within the Lego Star Wars games princess lea has become less sexualised from the scene on Mos Eisley when she has been captured by Jabba the Hutt and this is the same way that all of the characters within Mortal Kombat or Street Fighter could be changed for the purpose making one of these games a series for the Lego franchise.
So I personally think that the best game that would be more appropriate for a Lego franchise is Street fighter and the reason for this is because of the characters that are within the game, they all symbolise a different culture background and they are all different because of this reason and It would also be good because of the comedic element that it entails within the game it isn’t all super serious as Mortal Kombat is. A good example for this is when the character Birdie eats a banana and throws the peel onto the floor which causes the other player to slip on the peel and making it easier for Birdie to attack.
Comparing the audience between MKX and SFV
There are a few differences with the audiences within both Mortal Kombat and street fighter the main thing is that Mortal Kombat is definetly aimed more around the older and more mature age range rather than being around the ages of 7-12 this is mainly down to the amount of gore and violence within Mortal Kombat and it is extremely gory and graphical with most if not all of the Fatalities (
This is differnet for the audience for Street fighter because when they have a finisher it isn’t filled within gore and the amount of realism and graphical content as Mortal Kombat has. So this is going to be suitable for a younger audience because of this reason as well as having a more of a cartoon approach to the characters design and personality.
What are the problems with street fighter for a Lego franchise?
There are a few problems for the street fighter franchise, one of the main reasons of why I think this is because of the movement that the Street fighter characters do within the move set and their final critical arts that a Lego character cannot preform because of the limitations with the limbs and joints of the Lego design so many of the moves that are within the original Street fighter wouldn’t be able to work.
Another aspect that I see as a problem with Street fighter being a Lego franchise is because of the different builds of the characters are really different from one another and each of these come as an advantage to perform the moves that the character is designed to do. Lego characters however are only two different sizes; one being really big and bulky and the others being the ordinary Lego build which in turn takes a way some meaning of the characters (in the game the way that a character looks tells you a little about their move set, how they are going to move and who they are as a character).
Bibliography http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=1208858&page=1 idle poses
Venn diagram (week 4)
Introduction:
Within this session I have created a Venn diagram that shows the differences and the similarities of both the Lego and the Street fighter games finding out what they both have in common and what they have that is different.
Evaluation:
I have found out as much information that I could about both of these games by researching using the internet and by playing these two games, Understanding what these games have that are in common and what is different is so that when I create a character I can make sure that it is suitable for both of the game rather then just making them for one game.
Birdies Audio (week 5)
Introduction
Within this session I will be talking about Street fighters V character Birdie. I am going to be looking at his audio that he has had through the street fighter franchise both in Street fighter Alpha and Street fighter V and discussing weather I think that they are appropriate to his character and how he looks and acts.
Within SF alpha 2 when the round starts and you play as Birdie he lets of this grown as if he was woke up from his slumber where as within SFV the beginning sound that Birde makes is of him saying “Hey!, it’s not too late to run away” while he spins around his chain and licks it which personally I think that it is far more intimidating then just letting out a grunt.
Throughout his fights he does let off some audio as he plays out his moves, he does however old produce three different types of audio as he is fighting and these being when he jumps to do a belly flop, when he is damaged by the opponent or when he uses his move ‘Bull head’ these are the only three sounds that he creates. His voice within SF alpha is rather groggy, burly and deep like a biker is normally addressed to have.
Within street fighter V he has way more audio that he says throughout his fighter compared to SF Alpha, he has up to 13 different sounds that he makes without all of his moves and damaged moves. Within SFV he has kept the same type of voice, very low and groggy biker voice.
The reason why they have given him this type of voice and sounds when he is fighting within SF Alpha and SFV is because in street fighter Alpha they haven’t given him an awful lot of audio mainly because of the recourses back then they didn’t have enough room for more than a few sounds per character. As well as this is that most of his sound effects are when he uses powerful moves, so the sound that is given off give a sense of power or high damages as he does these move or they took a lot of energy to perform.
The performance of the voice isn’t very realistic, as I discussed with Ryus’ voice also it is rather robotic but this is because of the era that these games were created there wasn’t a lot of high quality auditable sounds that they could have.
Within SFV there are definitely an increase of the amount of audio tracks that are used for Birdy and this is because of the technology that Is available is far greater than is was when the SF Alpha was made. Also he makes more sound affects when he is performing moves and I personally think that this is because of him being over weight which is why even when he did lighter moves (for example: kicks) he lets out grunts whenever he moves his overweight body.
The performance of Birdies voice is also better sounding less robotic and more organic which help his character (Birdie) portray meaning where in this case it shows that he is un fit by making these grunts as well as his attitude and voice gives then impression that he’s a biker too.
Birdie rigged animation
Introduction
For this session I am going to be creating an animation using ‘3Ds MAX 2017’ by using a rigged character I am going to create the idle motion of the Street Fighter character Birdie to the best of my ability trying to make it as accurate as I possibly could. Hopefully the skills that I have taken on board for the last animation that I did of Ryus idle and Hadoken move.
As you can see there is once again issues with this animation even through it is my second attempt at creating an animation for a Street Fighter character. The visible issue that has occurred is the texturing has made the rigged character become shadowed and rather hard to see and this has caused an issue when I was trying to check the character for any movement glitches or deformities of their body while I was animating them.
Another issue I noticed was he starts to lean back throughout the whole animation and this is because of key frame that starts the next part of the animation. I did however try to resolve this matter by inserting another key frame before the next animation starts and I reset the movement so he was at the correct position throughout the animation. However this did not resolve the issue that was at hand and he still arches back throughout the while animation.
Evaluation:
Throughout this experience of making another animation for a different character within the street fighter games was quiet enjoyable to do because of the difference between both of the characters movement and their stances made the whole takes a little challenging to manage. The reasons for this is because of the over all movement of Birdie is a whole lot different to a fighters stance and its more sloppy then any other characters like Ken, Ryu and even Chun Li.
My over all progress and completion of the task I was rather happy with even with the few issues that did occurred. The whole of the animation I was pleased about getting the timing correct and the movements.
Birdies pixel art (week 4)
Introduction
For this task I am going to be creating birdies bull head attack within Photoshop animation tab by using pixel art to create a similar design as that of the pixel art that I did for Ryu but adding animation which is going to involve various amount of frames instead of just the one frame.
For the first image I have found out what birdies idle stance was and created to the best of my ability to to make it look as close to the original as I possible could to make it. I started by making sure that all of his features were as perfect to the original as I could. After I added the details to give it a 3D affect to his belly, chin and other parts of his body.
After I finished doing the First image I decided to find the next key frame that is within birdies bullhead animation which was the point where he lifts up his head and leans up backwards to ready his strike to the opponent. The reason why I didn’t start with the next frame is because this would have been too fiddly of a task to undertake for the time that I had to do this within, so sticking with the key frames is a really good start to the animation.
For the last frame I looked at the point of impact where birdie finally hit the opponent at the end of his bullhead attack. This is the final key frame because it is the last point of action that he makes within this cycle so it is a good one to pick out of all of the frames.
Evaluation:
Creating another set of pixel art for the character (Birdie) I am finding out more about the importance of a characters colour pallet and how recognisable these colours make them, although it is only 16 by 16 pixels it is quite easy to see what Street Fighter character this pixel art is off of. For next time I am going to work on the colouration of Birdies body trying to make his skin tone to the exact same colour as it is in the game as well as adding different tone effects to his body giving him more definition.
As well as making his skin and clothes look more realistic I will create more then just the key frames for the animation, I will work on creating some of the other frames that are in the middle of the key frames to make it looks smother and making it look professional with colour change to when he charges the attack.
Unit 9-10 Black street fighter characters (week 5)
Introduction
Within this session I am going to be discussing the different Black make characters that Capcom have used within their street fighter games and talk about why Capcom has made these characters look the way they look, who I think that the intended audience is and weather they represent cultural diversity in either positive or negatively as well as if they put forward any stereotypes. I am going to be using two characters for the street fighter games those being Birdie and Dudley.
What are the problems for these characters?
All of these characters have some pros and cons with them, but it all depends on the character, for example: Balrog has a negative stereotype by the way that he acts and for what the character does within the camping within the street fighter franchise. Balrog is a ruthless and un caring character that is rather psychotic and in the way that he acts as well as him joining a local gang to cause pain and havoc for everyone.
Another character that is a bad example is Birdie especially the new design, he slumps around and he is rather unhygienic and putrid in both his appearance and the way that he acts.
Birdie and Dudley
Why did Copcom choose to design/redesign these characters in this way?
Capcom have redesigned Birdie the way that they have because he has supposing been on retirement for a short while where he put on weight yet still kept some muscle. Although some of his features have stayed the same as it was within SF alpha to the newest game SFV and these features being the attire that he wears and his Mohawk as his facial features. However, the cartoon stylized style that they are using has made him look as if he is sad rather than the pervious anime in the SF Alpha.
http://capcom.wikia.com/wiki/Birdie
Capcom has designed Dudley the way that they have because of the person who he is based off of and this person is Chris Eubanks who was a British boxer who wore both a monocle and a top hat where ever he went as well as carrying a Cane to complete his attire. Which is by Capcom has made Dudley look the way that he looks and why he always keeps on his boxing gloves because Chris Eubanks didn’t take off his monocle or top hat.
Who do you think the intended audience is?
I think that the intended audience for Birdie is both for the younger age as well as the older generation, the reason why think this is because of the over all way that he looks and acts it is very comedic and childish and it portrays monkey-ish characterists which is better for the younger generation and for the older generation. As well as this is his attire, it isn’t too menacing to the eye by extruding and harmful additions upon it and it is very simple in colours and not too complicated.
For Dudley I think that the intended audience for him is the older audience because of they was that he acts is rather civilized and formal as well as the way that he dresses it is very high class. However, it could also have a comedic note to it as well because of the wat that he is dressed it is rather formal and particular cloths, seeming smart, wealthy and somewhat funny.
Do they represent cultural diversity?
For Birdie I think that he doesn’t show cultural diversity simply by the appearance of him, the way that he acts and the things that he does within his fights by making himself be presented as a slob and un-ruly on what he does about his look.
For Dudley he does show culture diversity by adding a rather true British character who is rather eccentric in both his mannerism and appearance shows that he is indeed British and that shows that the game has a lot of cultural diversity. Another character is Chun Le who’s from China and by the way that she dresses and acts really evokes where she’s from.
Does they use stereotypes? If so, what issues does this raise?
Birdie brings up some stereotypes but in the case of a negative sense and the reason why I think this is because of the way that he acts sounds and his over all look as well. The issues that this raises are very bad towards a younger audience by potentially making them think that this is what and how black people act, all slobby, weird and very un-hygenic.
Dudley Shows a very strong stereotype for the British by showing that they are all well spoken an snobby in the way that we act and speak as well as how British people dress and act, by making Dudley drink tea and ware the smart clothing that he does. This does raise a bit of an issues making the British seem snobby in the way that they speak and dress in a odd and peculiar fashion.
Are there any examples that offer alternatives?
For Birdie they could have made a few alternatives to what he looks like which could make him look less of a bad and slobby character. For starters they could have left his physique as it was within the SF Alpha game instead of giving him a bear belly and making him slouch. As well as this they could have made his clothing more punk rocker by adding a t-shirt and spike on his shoes.
For Dudley they could change things to do with his character design to make him less of a stereotype by changing his attire and making it les flashy to the eye making it seem more simple and stylistic to a type of martial arts rather then having some overalls combed hair the way that it is as well as the mistouch that he has.
By making him sound British and possible having wrist bands or a hair band that shows the Union Jack symbolizing that he is from a British background.
Chris Eubanks picture: Chttp://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/boxing/article-2836941/CHRIS-EUBANK-not-doting-father-way-build-fighter-like-son-throw-wolves.html (accessed- 15/10/2016)
Pitch for characters (week 6)
Introduction
For this session I created a powerpoint for my pitch describing the two characters that I had in mind to create for my final character animation. I explain what type of fighting style they have, what they’re going to wear, their back story, etc.
My first character is called Maximus Prisca meaning “Greatest ancient” in Latin, the reason why I have called him this is because he was born in the Roman times meaning he is thousands of years old much older than any of the other characters within Street fighter other than Necalli. The reason why he is alive and so old is because he was born a half god (demi-god) and his father is Mars or ares in Greek “the God of war”. His being the son of the god of war has given me the idea to add flames to some of his attack and moves, for example: when he preforms his heavy attack his hand catches a light and hits the enemy with great force setting them a blaze for a short amount of time (Like F.A.N.G.S poison attack) only lasting a few milliseconds.
Another time that this effect is going to happen is him Critical Art when he initiates the move as well as his V trigger where he gains double his strength and twice the resistance his body is going to be covered with flames which is where his power will come from.
Clothes
For his clothes I did a little research on what Roman gladiators would have worn when they were going out to fight for their lives. So I looked at various different attires that the gladiators wore ranging from the golden armor all the way to the leather Armor to see what they have in similar and what I would like my character to be based around.
This Armour I though was pretty fitting to the idea that I was originally thinking for making my character look like for his final design. making him very robust and Armored was the initial kind of attire that I wanted him to have. I decided to get some variations of the attire by looking at the different types of armor sets I got some of images of armor that was worn by the guards or chariot riders. This I though was too much for me to be able to complete and design in the time frame that I had to create the textures and the animations for my character. As well as this it would be a pain to design all of the arm by having the amount of scales that is has as well as having most of the face and body covered would make it hard to see my texturing work.
The bottom image is off of another type of gladiator, one who rides on the chariots or uses a spear as his weapon. Like the first image it is going to be difficult to pull through with this type of armor because of its shoulder plates bulging out to the sides of his body. Most of his body has been covered also so I would have to create a model that went all around his body so it is going to take a rather long time in order to create his outfit.
The third type of armor that I looked at was a gladiator brute who has got more skin showing more than the other two that I looked at which was a good thing because I could actually make this as a design for my characters attire because I could add most of his attire onto his texture that goes along with him body except from his head.
Peer feed back:
When I did my pitch I got some peer feed back from my class mates and they gave me the ideas of implementing fire to Maximus’ attacks through either his V trigger or through his attacks when he goes for a heavy attack or within his CA.
Another thing that they suggested was to do with what he is wearing. Luke gave me an idea to give him a helmet that has a Mohawk which is going to be the item that sets on fire while using the V trigger and/or his critical art.
Secondary character
For my second character I created a character called AI meaning “love” in Japanese the initial frame work of AI was based around a female Samurai. This made it rather interesting to both research and work out how I would design he character and her story behind her. I decided to look at the history of the Samurai and take a look at what they looked like, for example: attire, colour scheme, body posture and stances of attacks, how they would move, etc.
I did all of this so I could get the best Idea in how my own character was going to act, dress, move and generally what type of things that my character is going to be doing over all within their animations. These are two of some of the images that I got a Samurais armor is very big, heavy and intracute looking to the eye and this is because most of their armor was made up of tiny pieces of folded paper overlapping one another making their armor in its time and still today a rather good piece of armor against swords.
Trying to make something like this for my character is going to be a task in itself if I wanted to make it to the exact specifications that the armor has as well as the textures and the details that go with it in order to make it look as ashtetic to the original image.
I found out that it was going to take more time then I had to create this outfit so I looked into for of the female attire rather than the overall general Samurai look.
The female Samurai had a very different look to their attire that the males had although they could also wear what the males ware too it wasn’t very often. They tended to ware a Gi that looks like the one I have in the power point. However their Gis have a rather colourful look to them with sharp colours and very detailed drawings of dragons and symbols.
Peer feed back:
There was a little feed back that I got for my secondary character. Jay asked how one of her main attacks was going to work as it was similar to that of Ryu, However she emits sword/s in a flow of energy that attacks the opponent with a hardy blow which he then agreed with the overall idea and suggested that she’d point her fingers and a channel to focus the energy.
Evaluation:
Throughout the research I found out more about how to make characters of my very own and what is needed in order to make them to a specific audience and a specific background. I discovered how to write a professional back story for my characters, how to make up attires, move set and their voices to a professional standard.
Bibliography:
Golden Armour: http://www.globaleffects.com/C_b20_frameset.html
Guard Armour: http://www.globaleffects.com/C_pages/Rental/Wardrobe/Armor/Period/CompleteSuit/European/romansoldier972_hi.jpg
Fighter Armour: http://www.globaleffects.com/C_pages/Rental/Wardrobe/Armor/Period/CompleteSuit/European/bank1_2_06_hi.jpg
Titan Armour: https://www.pinterest.com/explore/gladiator-armor/
Samurai 1: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/418834834072408850/
Samurai 2: http://jameelcentre.ashmolean.org/collection/4/1238/1241/all/per_page/25/offset/50/sort_by/date/object/12472
Female Samurai: http://allthatasia.com/pictures-capture-the-female-warriors-of-samurai-era-japan/
Street Fighter Movie Comparison
Introduction:
I was given the task to look at three different movies that are about the Street Fighter franchise and they all show off a different style from both visual and in terms of what they are about. The three movies that I am going to be watching then comparing are Street Fighter: Assassins fist, Street fighter 1994 and Street Fighter 2: The animated movie.
How did the creators of street fighter movies and games adapt the franchise of varying audiences?
For all of the movies they all show variety within their audiences through their adaptation of some aspects that are within them, for example:
The Street Fighter franchise is a universal and a world-wide brand that is known in many different cultures and types of media such as games, Tv/ comics and films that all show different sides and adaptions of the original Street Fighter series.
The Street Fighter games have adapted the was that you play the game by making all of the characters cartoon to the appearance and has covered any form of violence to something that is of slap stick comedy, by making all of the violent acts that are done within the game seem visually un-damaging to the opponent or the player and only giving off light flashes and movement as a sign of damage. This appeases to both the younger audience because of the use of comedy and non-bodily damaging moves (unlike Mortal Kombat) and to the older audience too within the visuals as well of the artistic design as well.
Street fighter assassins fist has been adapted so that it isn’t too violent and too graphic to the audience. Within the movie there is a level of violence but there isn’t anything that is perceived to be too graphical and violent within this movie even with the spiritual powers that are given through the “Hado”
For the anime based off of the overall look and almost comedic tone to it makes it suitable for the younger audience especially with some of the characters that are within the movies, however there is some nudity as well as scenes of torment that is for the more mature audience such as older teens and adults.
How did street fighter assassins fist compare to the previous movies, both Hollywood and anime?
(Street Fighter Hollywood movie 1994)
The film Street Fighter: Assassins fist took a new, fresh take on the Street Fighter franchise by giving the viewers an in site on something that hasn’t been looked upon within the other movies and this is the origin story of the two main characters that are within the SF series (Ryu and Ken). Within the other movies (Street Fighter 2: The animated movie and Street Fighter 1994) they are both well into the future of the two main characters so you don’t know how their powers were able to become right from the beginning and Assassins fist tells you how they came to terms and learnt these powers that they posses. Within Assassins fist they have made sure to keep to the characters overall backstory and traits as well as looks within the movie unlike the other adaptions of Street fighter. Assassins fist was initially created for a project that soon transformed into a full fledged TV series that was funded by the fans and they showed a lot of devotion to their fans because they looked into all of the details that their fans wanted.
The 1994 Street Fighter movie wasn’t that focused on doing it for the fans as well as much into the role of their acting unlike how they were in the Assassins fist movie because of their cause was different for both of the movies. As well as this the 1994 Street Fighter movie was mainly for the money because of the big celebratory of the time Jean-Claude Van Damme who played one of the main characters ‘Gyle’.
Street Fighter: The animated movie had very similar character interpenetration of that of the Street Fighter: Assassins fist movie had. Both of the two main characters in both of them are exactly identical by both being Ryu and Ken in both of the movies. Within these two movies their characters are almost identical through both of these movies by having Ryu as the serious and devoted character and Ken being the more ruthless and somewhat careless character out of the two. Other character were explored within the animated movie characters such as Chun Li, Cammy, Vega, M.bison, Barlog, etc and they went into a little detail in who they are and what their stories were where as in the Assassins Fist movie they only focus mainly on Ryu and Ken.
How did street fighter movie game compare to street fighter 2 game?
Street Fighter: The Movie Game wasn’t of the best overall quality even for the time that it was released in 1995 mainly because of they didn’t use the typical sprites that any other Street Fighter game has and as well as this it was doing the exact same thing as their rivals Mortal Kombat in their 1992 game where they would use realistic sprites that are from their previous movies. I personally think that this made the game rather terrible because of this use on sprites and that it would have been better if they used actual sprites rather than using the ones that they did within the game.
Street fighter 2 had far better sprites for the characters and its use of colours were also sharp and well presented unlike Street fighter: The Movie Game because the colours within that game were rather dull and dark toned which made it difficult to focus on most of the characters moves as well as the background because it was so distracting of the sprites that were used.
Furthermore, within Street fighter 2 all of the colours are all set around the same level and they all blend within one another making it a rather pretty game to play and enjoy.
Which character in street fighter assassins fist appealed to you most? Explain why?
Within the movie Street Fighter: Assassins fist the character that best appealed to me was Ken the reason why I think this is because of the characters development throughout the whole movie. At the start of the film Ken is rude, uncaring about what Goken told him, questioning his master occasionally and the most being impatient and unruly of his masters ways. Throughout the first half of the movie the actions and attitude of Ken was leading me to thinking that he was going to be the one that turns his back against his master and goes the way of ‘satsui no hado’ and join Akuma. Thinking that both Ken and Ryu both polar oposites to one another so I thought that Ryu was going be in control of the Hado from the beginning.
However, this was not the case for Kens character he in-fact changed his way and realised the true importance of his masters training and how important waiting for his training to be complete really is. He became enlightened and caring towards the end of movie, caring for his friend/bother (Ryu) when he was being taken over by the Hado and taking him on the right path to prevent anything bad form happening to him.
Which character in street fighter 2: the animated movie appeal to you most? Explain why?
Within the movie Street Fighter 2: animated move the character who for me appealed to me more that anyone within the movie was E.Honda and the reason for my choice is because of his over all kindness and personality of his character. He is jolly and a fun loving guy who takes it out of his way to give Ryu some money for helping him win the fight that he was in, even though Ryu didn’t do anything to help him. This shows that he is selfless and willing to help out others even if the y have tried to kill him (in the end scene after M.bison was defeated).
Evaluation:
Throughout these movies learnt a lot the characters backstories and about their origins about their characters especially within Street fighter: Assassins fist, I learnt about the characters Ryu and Ken and their backstories and how their got their powers that they have within the Street fighter games. Doing this research and watching these movies is going to help me when designing my own characters backstory.
Bibliography
Assassins fist – http://www.blu-ray.com/movies/Street-Fighter-Assassins-Fist-Blu-ray/109044/
street fighter 1994 – http://www.avclub.com/article/read-theres-reason-street-fighter-movie-was-so-awf-202068
Street fighter 2 – https://spencerberry.com/2014/12/28/childhood-obsession-street-fighter-ii/
Street fighter: the movie game – http://www.technologytell.com/gaming/124386/5-best-worst-movie-games/
Audience analysis
Introduction:
Within this post I am going to be looking at five different blog articles that are done by different people that all look at Street fighter V game and they all give their own impressions of the game. I am going to be looking through these articles and talk about what they say about their traditional audiences, etc and how I can use this information for my own use when creating my own characters.
Part: 1 Audience Analysis
Unit 10 1.1, 1.2
Part: 1 Audience Analysis- Links
http://www.mcvuk.com/news/read/capcom-targets-newer-younger-esports-audience-with-street-fighter-v/0158783
Part: 1 Audience Analysis- Task
What do the articles tell you about:
1. The traditional audiences for fighting games?
These articles say this about the traditional audiences for fighting games are the casual and the competitive gamers that it caters for. The talk about what they have done for the casual players by giving them a single player champagne that they can play on the difficulty that they want to play it on. The competitive side of everything they’re really hyped to get into tournaments and play multiplayer with players around the world.
Also they discus that they’re having to slow some of the moves down for the characters within the game because of the faster reactions of the newer aged audience so they’re making it slower so there is a gap so the older as well as some not so experienced players can counter the attacks of the other players without being completely annihilated by them.
“There is more opportunity now for competitive players than we’ve ever had in the history of the genre, and we are constantly sharing the excitement of fighting games with the Capcom Pro Tour to new audiences. With Street Fighter V, the game is more accessible and more intuitive than ever before in the series, so this is the perfect time for anyone to jump in and have fun,” Dahlgren said – Why Street Fighter V Is More Than Just a Game
- The problems in broadening that appeal to new audience demographics?
A lack of single player content is a majoy down set some of the new casual audience
How have the developers tried to overcome these problems?How could you apply this new knowledge to your ideas for your characters?
1. Consider: age, gender, education, income, interests, etc.
Developers of the Street fighter (Capcom) have tried to add additional content to the game so that more casual gamers can also enjoy the game to the full experience that they want to play the game at. The way that they have done this is by implementing a single player mode as well as a single player champagne for the casual players so that they don’t have to play online against other player around the world they can play on their own at their own level and not worrying about other players constantly winning the matches that they are in.
For my own ideas and characters I could consider what level of playability of my characters are going to be, by making them either easily controllable or giving the player a slightly more complex way to control my characters. As well as this I could make is so they can make a good match with other opponents around the world by making them easily to control and learn their fighting styles.
I could add a little history within his end quote after they have a victory as well as having it in their native language to serve somewhat of an educational purpose to the characters as well. For age I will make sure that it is going to be suitable for the age and not over by making sure that my designs keep to the original Street Fighter characters looks and style.
For interest of the audience I will try my best to adapt and create my characters around the styles that they already have within the Street Fighter franchise already. Trying to make the moves of my characters interesting and fast paced keeping the attention of the players rather than boring them with slow and basic movements.
Part: 2 Characteristics of the beat ’em-up genre
Unit 9 1.1, 1.2
Part: 2 Characteristics of the beat ’em-up- Link
http://www.racketboy.com/retro/fighting/fighting-games-101-all-you-need-to-know-to-battle
(Fighting game 101)
Part: 2 Characteristics of the beat ’em-up- Task
What are the typical themes of the fighting game genre of video games?
The typical themes of the fighting game genre in video games are that there is a lot of action within them and it is rather fast paced because of the over all style of the games because some matches can be over within a matter of seconds depending of the skills of the other player and timing. As well as this they have a wide variety of different cultured characters that all have different fighting styles and moves to suit and given player.
Combos – Combos is yet another typical theme that is within all fighting type games, this is when a player can hit a chain of moves to create a substantial amount of damage to the opponent and this have been a rather occurring theme through games such as Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat.
Super attacks – Special attack are something that is used within all fighting games such as SF and they are used when a bar is maximised and released to do a substantial amount of damage to the other player.
Mano-a-Mano – The game generally puts the player with opponents that are of the same fighting capabilities so thee is a nice fair game and no advantage for the opponents on the player.
Equality – Though tier systems for the quality of fighters develop in the highly competitive tournament scene, fighting fans expect a certain amount of equality between standard characters. Strategies and tactics will vary, but every character is supposed to be on equal terms with every other character for the sake of balance. If characters are unbalanced, the game is generally met with harsh criticism, though it’s considered acceptable for boss characters to be overpowered, and players will usually forgive an exceedingly weak character as a “joke character.”
Winning Is All – Throughout all fighting games beating the other player until they are KO is the only way to win and progress to the other stages, match or rank. There are many different ways that this could be accomplished and it is very different for each individual game weather it being KO for Street Fighter, Kill for Mortal Kombat, etc. They all lead to being victorious over the other opponent to win the game.
Quarter Circle Punch – Within some fighting games there is a feature where you have to use the joystick or Dpad to use some of the attacks that some of the characters have when executing these certain moves. Like the article said “The most famous is Ryu’s Hadouken from Street Fighter, which involves a roll of the bottom quarter of the directional control towards the opponent, followed by a punch.”
Rounds, Bar, Time, Punch/Kick/Block/Throw, Rounds are other themes and features that are within the fighting game genera.
- How does your character fit, adapt or subvert these themes? Why is
this relevant?
I think that my character fits to these themes because it add yet another type of character within the fighting games because he can relate to quite a lot of these already and I can adapt him to fit them more as further development comes into play. For example; The Punch/Kick/Block/Throw mechanic fits my characters because he is going to have all of the capabilities as all of the other characters that are within the street fighter universe.
What is the appeal of these games? Why do you think people play them?
The appeal of these type of games is the fast pace challenging aspect of them by having such a diverse and multy cultural or variation of characters that are within these games give the players the ability to test out and choose the character that they think best suits their style of playing. As well as this its the over all players experience of the games draws in players because it was a never seen before type of game and it was very divers and interesting to play either with yourself or with a friend.
What are the key conventions/characteristics of the genre?
The key conventions of the fighting type games are;
- Mano-a-Mano
- Competitive Multiplayer
- More Meat for the Slaughter
- Equality –
- All’s Fair in Love and War
- Winning Is All
- Quarter Circle Punch
- How could you use these to develop your character/concept?
I could use these for my own character By not making him overly powered and un able to be defeated, Because him being a demi-god normally refers to him being literally invincible but only having a slight change of him being defeated. However, to go with the other fighting games I could create a way that my character could be defeated. Quarter circle punch is another thing that I could use within my characters development by enabling my character to have a move that requires it to do such a movement with the joy stick or the Dpad to execute either a powerfully uppercut or jab.
How have other developers followed or adapted these characteristics for new interpretations of the genre? What can you learn from this?
There are many game franchise had to adapt something about their games to make them stand out within the crowd and get noticed by the wider audience. Fatal Fury implemented a lane system where it game the players the ability to jump for the foreground to the background in a moments notice. Mortal Kombat implemented digitalised human actors and gory fatalities that range from 1-10 on the most gory moments when violence started becoming a major selling point. Samuria Showdown mainly focused on weapons within their games. Killer Instinct took the best for bother SF and MK by taking the controls of Street fighter and the gory fatalities of Mortal Kombat.
What are the key game-play elements?
There are a few key game elements within the street fighter games one of these is the each character always has six different types of moves one being light, one medium and one that is heavy. Another game play element is fast paced action. Now throughout the Street Fighter franchise it has always been a rather fast paced game and it has only become fast and faster throughout the development of the game itself.
- How does your character fit, adapt, or subvert these elements?
My character fits to this because he is going to have multiple move sets also by having light, medium and hard attacks as the original Street Fighter characters have.His over all movement is going to be slow yet his attacks are going to be fast to keep with the over all speed of the games theme, an example of a character that does this is Zangif.
Evaluation:
Throughout this task I looked at all these different articles and I found out a lot of information that is going to help me out in the long front by allowing me to look back on these articles and this post to see what Capcom has done to Street fighter in order to make it ore suitable for more casual players as well as adapting it to the newer audience. After looking into all of these articles and knowing the knowledge that I do now is definitely going to come in handy when creating my own character because I can adapt them around what I have discovered throughout these articles.
Character Story boards (week 7)
Light punch – I have designed the first punch that is much like all of the other characters that are within Street Fighter V, most of the characters if not all of them have their first attack as a very like jab or slight kick without moving a lot which is why I have made my character do a light punch without moving much of his body.
Heavy punch – For my heavy punch I have made sure that more of his body is involved and I have done this by making the attack come from the rear arm (Right) and his stronger arm. He uses is mass as an advantage to maximize the amount of damage he can inflict. This move will also take some time in the game because of his build and power within the attack.
Light damage – For his light damage there isn’t much of a difference with his idle stance, the only thing that changes between his idle stance is the movement of is left arm by only a few inches and this is due to his size.
Heavy damage – The heavy damage animation is going to be more immediate and involve more movement he is going to be hit down to the point where he is nearly kneeling and then he’ll get back up and carry on with his fight.
Critical art – For the Critical art it involves a lot of infliction of damage. He starts it by opening his arms as if he was going to clap or is in need of a hug, he then slams his fists together which is going to have the energy surging through his body. The camera angle changes to behind him where he then does a right punch then a left punch, which then goes into a right uppercut as well as the angle is changing to a long view. For the final part he grabs the other players legs and slams them to the ground and finishes them off by throwing them behind him and the camera goes back to normal.
Evaluation:
The story boards that I have done are really going to help me out with the recording that I am going to be doing in the future weeks. It is going to help me in executing the moves that I want my character to do within his animations by creating these I have given myself key frames in which I can look at and follow within the recordings to get the precise movements that I want to get for my Lego character.
Next time I can probable add a little more description of what the moves involve so it is a little easier to understand for both me and everyone else (Just in case I got one of me peers to act out for me because of their build, etc).
Character design
Introduction
Within this session I have been given three templates for my Lego character that I am going to be designing, One of the templates were off of three small Lego images that all have to have a different appearance to the other, The second template is off of Lego heads which is where I am going to be creating different facial expressions in detail and the third template is off of two images of the Lego character of the front and the back of the character in which I have to make it in depth and fine lined.
In this first image I have designed two different attires and looks for my character. The first image he is dressed within gold plated leggings with a leather tethered skirt that covers his bottom half of his body, his head wear is based around a spartan helmet that was also used with the chariot rider gladiators and guards of Rome.
The whole idea of this came from having my characters initial backstory of him being one of the kings best fighters in the Colosseum who has been with him for years, fighting and defeating all of his opponents. He was also in the early stages of being a gladiator which is why he looks so clean and tidy.
Within the second drawing I have given him a more ragged look to both his attire and his overall look of his body structure and look. I have taken away his footwear and his skirt and just replaced it with the shorts as throughout his fights he lost a part of this. I have given his shin pads that compensate for the missing leather and I have given him shoulder pads that also help with this. I have removed his helmet and given him long, dark, think and rugged hair that is a mess and untamed. the reason why I have given his this look is because I was trying to make him look old and worn because the look that I was going for is when he has lived through the ages (from Roman times until this present day).
Face images
For these facial images I worked on getting the over all look on what I wanted the face to look like in its final design. I started with the basic and decided to draw a simple helmet that only shows the front and lower part of the face. I made it somewhat symmetrical on both of the sides to make it seem new and unworn, this is because it was to show the birth of his fighting career as a gladiator.
The second image was based off of the same idea as the first image that I drew. However, I added a dark cloak over his face to mask his appearance and giving him red eyes which give off the sudden feeling that he is a bad character. The reason why I did this is because I wanted to add a dark/evil version of my character. The reason for this is because within the Street fighter games character such as Ryu and Necalli have a dark/er version of themselves that is not completely different to the original design but it is different in some ways.
Final character design
For the final product of my characters design is the one below. I have looked throughout all of my previous designs and looked at what ones looked the beast and what I and others liked about them as a whole. I kept his long ragged hair but I made a slight modification to it that make it less messy and ragged to the eye which I think is going to hep me throughout the Photoshop process as well as the texturing and the creation of the character itself.
I have made sure that I made all of his muscles seem unreal and unnatural to his stature (mainly due to the design and structure of a Lego figure and the Lego template that we was given), giving him all of the curves and markings that signified this will help me give off the impression that he is bigger than the other character within the game i.e. Zangeif.
For his attire I decided to take out the overall idea of giving his shoulder plates as well as knee and shin pads because I was thinking about the time that I had to create my character within 3DS MAX was going to take long enough without adding any of these features. As well as the fact that adding them to the bode structures was going to make it harder to animated in fear of them clipping through the image and making it disport and seem off.
I kept the design of giving him both the leather skirt and golden shoes which looks pretty well when they’re put together which my peers and I both agree that it looks well together and suits the whole design of my character.
Peer feed back:
Luke liked the use of hair that I gave my character and suggested that I keep it to give off the impression that he’s really old.
Darren liked the over all look and shape of the characters muscles and attire and he though that they both suited the story and the design of the character.
Evaluation:
Throughout this task I was looking at the fundamentals of making multiple designs for my character whether it being just his face or a full design of his body. Creating multiple designs of the character really helped me to figure out what works well and what doesn’t so I could make the design that both suits what I like and what me peers would like my character to look like.
This is going to help me with the layout of my character and what I want the characters to look like when I am editing the final texture on Photoshop.
Refine characters
Introduction:
For this session I will adapted the drawings of my Lego characters within Photoshop making sure that all of their features look to the best that I would like them to be as well as making sure that they look as presentable as possible so that they can be easily used and applied onto my character for the animations.
We was given some Lego templates like was was given before where we had to add start our designs on paper. At first I was trying to figure out what template of my designs that I was going to be using in order to start with the creation of my in depth and professional final design. I have decided to look at the rugged look my third design of my character and the reason why I chose this one is because I liked the way that I drew his facial hair and the way that I drew his hair, clothes and the way that I designed his features to his body.
The first thing that I decided to draw was the facial features, by doing this it gave me an indication where his hair was going to form and how the rest of the putter half was going to form and take place (muscle lines on his neck). I gave him a ragged look as if he doesn’t look after himself too well and the reason for this is because of his back story, he is supposed to be thousands of years old and been through tones of fights which have each left there print on his body. The tough beard shows the rough time that hes gone through as well as his snarling mouth showing aggression towards the other player.
I have also designed his hair with the same intention with it being rather long as messy shows his untamed nature and struggle that he has been through the thousands of years he has been fighting on this earth.
For his stomach I had to do a little research into what Athletic Lego characters physiques looked like as well as human body builders bodies so I could find the one that best suited the character design that I wanted to do for my characters final texture. I Looked at the body builder Arnold Schwarzenegger in the film Conan (Below) and the reason why I did this is because I wanted to see how the human body would look with this much muscle and well as his type of clothing are somewhat similar to the design of my characters.
As well as looking at realism to try and work out the dynamics and shape of all of the muscles that I would need to involve for my own character I had to also look at Lego characters that also have a lot of muscles so that I can see what it is going to look like when it is applied to a Lego character rather then just having human examples as well.
I looked at characters like bane and the hulk because of their body build and their body structure. Bane has a similar body structure of that of my characters and this is good in the sense that I could get an over all look on what my characters body is going to look like and how it is going to make throughout his animation (how the muscles are going to move around as he moves). I did more research on this by looking at how these characters moved within the game ‘Batman: Beyond Gotham’ in order to get the general idea on what he was going to look like when his body moves around.
Clothes and colouring
For his bottom half I have added the skirt and the golden shoes that I had within the drawn design and I decided to keep this because I though that it suited my characters because of the over all design of him and that it would be easy enough to texture over him instead of having all of the bumps and ridges of his knee and shin pads because it would have been a pain to draw the fine details to especially doing it on Photoshop.
For the addition of colour I decided to use a different type of equipment just to give myself more skills within creating textures the professional way and possibly in an easier way then it would have been with doing it with just a mouse. I used a graphics tablet to help me with making all of those defined details that I have on both the leather pants and oh his body too. using the graphics tablet to add my colours and add the details to my character helped me out a lot in the sense that it gave me the free flowing movements of a pen/pencil so I could make the perfect lines and make sure they were precise.
Adding body colours
For the body colour added a whole new layer that I put over the top of the object which made it easier for me to colour the template as well as it gave me the opportunity to draw over any of the other pieces of the texture that is going to be going on his main body. This also helped me make the fine details on is hair look more defined then they did before.
Final products
For the final design of this character I have made sure that I have done two different variations of this so that I can have an idea on what it is going to look like with and without different assets to see what best suits him. As you can see I have done one of the designs with the character with his hair and the other one he is completely balled, the reason for me doing this is so that I could see what it would look like if I decide to take away the hair if any problems occur with the creation of the hair.
Evaluation:
Throughout this task I have learnt how to use a graphics tablet to help me in adding colours and drawing with and it is harder than I initially thought it would be and the reason for this is because it picks up the pen as if the whole pad was the same as the screen, which made it rather difficult for me to do this and create my texture.
Giving two different examples is going to help me show others what its going to look like with different features one his body as well as giving them more of an option to choose whether he has hair or whether he doesn’t.
Bibliography
Conan the barbarian: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-3096721/Conan-Barbarian-sequel-writer-says-Arnold-Schwarzenegger-stars-back.html
Lego Bane: http://lego-dimensions.wikia.com/wiki/Bane
Sound and Scripting
Introduction
For this session I took a look in the sounds that are made within the Street Fighter games especially Street Fighter 5 and the reason for this is so that I can gather the knowledge of what sounds are important to have within a characters moves and within their critical arts as well. After I have found out what sounds are key I am going to create a asset list of a ll the sounds that I require and how I am going to make them.
Within the Street Fighting game there and on hundreds of sounds that are used within the movements and attacks of each and every character within in the game. The video above shows you all of the sounds that are within all of the characters critical arts.
In Rashids Critical art there are a lot of sounds that aren’t made by him physically. I mean by this is that when he initiates his CA you can hear him clearly grunt then say “rawing thunder” as he says this you hear a high pitch ‘sharpening’ noise that signifies that the move hasn’t been blocked in time and that it is going to hit. After this there is a revurburation of a wind noise that comes along as the blue water like energy balls wiz past Rashid before the move then initiates where it is followed by more wind noise as whistling to make it seem more like wind rather than just a hum.
“ITS SHOW TIME!” he shouts which is a use of script and vocals. This is followed by inhuman kicks that are accompanied by thunderous thuds that almost sound like a machine gun because of its pace. The is so the player knows that it is a rapid and powerful attack that isn’t humanly possible.
Asset Type of sound Source of sound Sound location
Character Clap of hand, movement of body Hands, leather gloves N/A
Fire Fizzing a crackling Paper, card N/A
Fire 2 Revering hums Rubbing foam N/A
Ground Crack or smash on impact Broken glass, plastic N/A
Voice Grunts, moans and groans Voice actor N/A
This is my asset list that I am going to be referring to when trying to create the sounds that I want for my characters CA.
Sounds added to animation
The sound from my asset list I have recorded all of the sounds that I needed and I have edited them through the program Audacity to make the sounds sound less like the items that were use to record them and more like what I intend them to sound like (punches, fire, Breaking ice, etc). After I made them all sound to the exact specifications that I wanted them to I imported them all to the program Abode Premiere as well as the video file of the CA animation so I could splice the two of them together to get the Critical art with sound to it hopefully giving it more meaning both visually and audibly.
Evaluation:
Throughout this task I found out a lot about the importance of sounds within some moves that the characters do as well as within their Critical arts. Looking at a ll of the different sound sand what makes the sounds within their Critical arts helped me in planing my own sound board and helped me look within my own animation to see what sounds I could create, what I’d be creating them with and how to redefine them to sound like I would like them to sound like as an end product.
Next time I could spend a little more time in creating more variations of the sounds that I would like to create and as well as spending a little more time within editing trying to make the sounds as accurate as I possibly could make them to the original sound in trying to make or to the sound that I would like to make.
Filming character animations
Introduction
Within this session I am going be be recording my animations for my characters that I have designed and already textured. The recording is going to have to be done so that I can get an accurate movement of what it is going to look like as If my character was a real fighter performing my moves or if he was a player within the Street Fighter games.
The first thing that we did was align the two cameras that we had to record our animations and the reason why we had two cameras is because of the two different angels that we was going to have for our animations so that we could make the animations the the best quality and accuracy as we possibly could.
To make sure that they recorded our whole body at all times we made sure that we found a space that was big enough for all the moves that we wanted to perform for our characters animations so that we wouldn’t cause any damage to ourselves anyone around us or our surroundings. The cameras were equally spaced out from a center point that was marked out by a piece of paper and both cameras were spaced the exact distance from the piece of paper as the other so the size of us was the exact same.
Idle
My idle motion isn’t too much and it is too in-depth so that it is going to be a pain to animate in the future when I start to animate my own Lego character. I didn’t given my character much of a defense or much of a proper fighting stance and the reason for this is because of the time era that he comes from and the amount of martial arts or wrestling that he has been imprinted with are close to nothing.
I have shared this page with you to show you the different stances that gladiators had and what similarities that my stance has with them.
Damage
For my damages animation I didn’t really know what to do with my characters damage and this reason being because he is a Demi-god means that he shouldn’t be prone to that much of a deal of damage but because of the game type I had to think of something and this is what I though of making my character do when he is hit with a heavy attack.
As you can see from the video I have made sure that little damage looks like it is done to him because of his background but I have made it look like he has been attacked and his body has moves as a result to the energy that is given from his opponent.
Critical art
The critical art was a little difficult to do because my characters movement were very hefty and heavy using all of his bodies momentum within most of his attacks and his CA was no different because it consisted of four different stages of it one of which I forgot while we was recording so it isn’t within the video. The one that I forgot was the initiation of the CA where he charges his hands and “claps” his fists together, then he dose a series of pinches before picking up then slamming the opponent to the ground before eventually throwing them away behind him.
Evaluation
This recording session for my characters animation was really helpful to see how much work that goes into creating realistic animations for characters within games and how important timing is going to be when I start to create my own animations with my Lego character.
Before doing this again for either another Street Fighter character design or just another animation that involves humanoid movements I will make sure that there is more rehearsal before hand so I can get into character and make the moves more acurate and precise as I possibly could.
Character texturing
Introduction:
After the initial creation of my refined textures within Photoshop I was given a Lego model that was within 3DS MAX without any textures applied to the model this is so that I could edit his textures to suit what my character looks like within Photoshop using UVW map to get all of the faces of the model to the correct positions and shape of the body assets.
I started with doing the texture for his head because I wanted to get this over and done with so I can add the helmet to the model as soon as I could so I can start to mold the facial features to the helmet as well as the positioning of his eyes and mouth.
At first when I applies the texture to his head the eyes were too close to one another and made the model look odd and it didn’t look like a normal Lego character looks like so I had to make minor adjustments to the model in order to make his face match that of a Lego character.
After making the face work to the corrects specifications of an actual Lego character I then worked on texturing the more detailed part of the body and this was the torso. ~The torso was a little harder to do because of the placements of the muscles that I created were at first off center due to the fact that I drew the intercostals on his left side too big which made the abs a stray the the left hand side of his body segment making it look off and distorted.
After a few minor tweaks with this texture I finally managed to complete the texture for his body.
Completing the body was a little time consuming because of how perfect I wanted all of his body to be aligned with the other parts of his body making him completely identical either side of his body or as close as I possibly get it to be.
After this was all done it was time to work on making the textures for the legs making the textures work for the legs were a little harder then I initially thought they would take and the reason why I thought this is because of the unwrap of the legs make it hard for me to add the textures that I planed on having on the top half of his legs.
I resorted in making the whole leg to become the golden colour I only wanted for the bottom half, however I did leave the knee whole as I have in the original designs.
As you can see there isn’t many differences in the final texture product and I an rather happy with how the legs turned out because of the one solid colour as well as the whole for the knees mobility is a good addition for the final design.
The last part of the model that I had left to texture was the arms and this was simple enough to be completed because there was no UVW mapping needed in order for me to add the texture to the arms, being a solid colour meant I didn’t need to have an unwrap for this segment of his body.
This is what my final development and design of my character looks like
Evaluation
My overall texture for my character I think went rather well although there were a few issues that occurred throughout the development and the creation of these textures for my model but in the end I managed to finally managed to overcome these issues and prevail until it was to the specifications that I wanted them to be.
Next time I could possibly spend a little more time in creating the leg textures a little more then just having a solid colour. Although there are slits for where the knees are, I still would like for next time to be able to next time add the leather skirt that was within my previous designs.
Animating characters
Introduction
Within these sessions I am going to be creating the animations for my own character and the animations that I am going to be doing are the idle stance, Heavy damage, Heavy attack and his critical art are the animations that I am going to be doing. As well as this I am hoping to demonstrate my skills within 3DS MAX using both the animations skills that I have been working on and the particle systems that I’ve been working on.
The First animation that I worked on was the idle animation and the reason why I have chosen this as m first animation is because it is the most important out of all of the animations that I could do because all of the other animations are going to be leading off of the idle stance/animation.
It was relatively easy for me to do this animation after I got the initial stance done the rest of the animation was pretty easy to complete. to make is seem as if my character was actually big and hefty I gave an additional animation tweak that makes the upper part of his body go back and forward as if he is breathing heavily and aggressively.
Idle
Idle side view
Damage
Heavy damage front
For heavy damage at first I didn’t know what to do for the animation as well as when I was recording the animation as well I had a little trouble of thinking of how I could make my character seem as if he was being hurt and damaged by the other player. The reason being why I didn’t know what to do for this animation is because of my characters back story about being a Demi-god means that he possibly don’t get damage inflicted on him with ease.
I think that the animation went rather well and it is pretty accurate to the original video that I performed. For the animation I have given my character little tweaks that have made it more realistic to the heavy attack that has hit him rather then him just moving backwards or simply turning slightly to one or the other sides I have given him minor details that make is seem as if he is really being hit.
One of the details that I have added was the movement of his arms and hands making them move as he is hit and turning slightly as the momentum of the attack makes him move along with it as if he is going to fully. Another this that I did was making his head move as jerk to the side as his body leads and his head follows the momentum as is goes through his body making it seem more realistic.
Heavy damage side
Attack
Heavy attack Front
The heavy damage was a little different mainly because of the reason that the arm was going back a little further than it normally would which means there is potential for the Lego model to deform and become oddly animated as well as (a discovered issue) the limb or body part will rotate a whole 360 degrees to get to the correct orientation.
As you can see by moving his arm as far back as I did when I was preforming this animation, the model has become deformed a little and oddly positioned with its body. This is understandable because of the restrictions that my class mates and I have because of the Lego characters physiques are making some of the moves that we initially though could be performed seem impossible to display through these animations.
To demonstrate that it is in fact a heavy attack I have decided to add a particle affect to his hand as he swings his punch across his body and down to the floor it gradually dissipates as he returns to his idle stance.
Heavy attack side
Critical Art
For the Critical art it was a little harder to do within 3DS MAX and the main reason why it was difficult to do because the Lego figure doesn’t have as much mobility as humans have which made the turns that my character does seem off and slightly disfiguring my character because of the rotation of his body.
CA
Evaluation
Doing this task was rather enjoyable and tedious at times. There was a lot of fun experiments that I had while working with the particle systems as well as timing of my characters moves because sometimes I found that it was either too fast or most of the time it was too slow for my character so tweaking was advised to make the animations seem better.
There were a few issues that occurred when making theses animations and that was of the characters limb moving in weird positions and sometimes causing the character to snap or rotate a full circle to the correct way that the body part is supposed to be. This occurred within one of my animations and this was the heavy attack after it is done his arm rotated all around until it was back into the correct position at the start of the animation.
I did however use this to my advantage by moving all of the other keys a little bit on a delay so it looks like he is stretching or shrugging off his punch after because of its power.
But over all I am happy with how all of these animations turned out and how close I managed to get them to the original video which was a challenge at times.
Evaluation
Introduction:
This term I was given the over all task to design a character for the Street Fighter franchise and then re-design them so that they can fit the criteria of the Lego franchise which is what our end goal was to do, to create a Lego street Fighter character that followed the overall design of Street Fighter but had to be changed into a Lego styled fighter. As well as this a bunch of research that had to be done to help the development of our characters (their backstory, what they look like, their fighting style, etc).
For the past three months I have been working on the creation of a character for the Lego franchise first staring the term looking into the initial character design of characters that are within various games and that who contrast on another. After this was had to re-create one of these characters to identify the key features of the characters for their specific audience and how I could change them to suit them for another audience which was rather useful in the long front because being able to identify what makes a character and how to change that to suit another audience will help me with the development of my own character.
extensive research into the street fighter games, looking at how the characters move
As a result at the end of the entire project I should have developed to corresponding animations for two different SF characters identifying how to properly execute an animation to the original characters animation through its movements and behavior.
Two different pieces of pixel art for both Ryu and Birdie from the SF franchise both of which are using only the most apparent colours that are used for the characters within the game. Identifying what these key colours was useful when trying to make colours for my own character and making sure that he is easily recognized through these colours, like the Street Fighter characters are.
Three CAT rigged animations of Ryus and Birdies idle and Hadoken showing the skills that we are learning throughout the animation making them as accurate to the original animation of the characters.
Conceptual drawings of characters from the SF franchise as well as a few of our own characters. As well as four different storyboards (heavy attack, heavy damage, Idle and their Critical art) that show what movements our characters are going to be doing for their final animations as if they was going to be put within a Street Fighter game.
An asset list for my characters Critical art explaining the sounds that I am going to need and what is going to help me create the sounds that I am going to be using.
Recorded human reference animations that were used to help align and execute the animations to a humanoid standard because of both the Street Fighter and Lego movement capabilities of their characters. Followed up by making computerised animations based off of the recordings that we did previously and these animations had to be off of the idle, heavy damage, heavy attack and the Critical art all to be created as an animation.
This is the final design of my character
Throughout the term with some of my tasks that I undertook I personally thought that the work that I did was fairly well done. However, with some of the good parts there were some strengths and weaknesses that occurred throughout these tasks some that were worse than others and these were:
Strengths:
- 1 – Texturing – Although there was some issues with the texturing (unnecessary black outlines and off centered texturing of both the face and abdomen) I eventually solved the issues that were at hand and make sure that the textures that I used were properly presented to the best of my ability. I was rather happy with how I textured my character because I put a lot of work into making sure that it looked as if it was plastic and that it was at a personal standard, making sure that it looked as if it was made of plastic.
- 2 – Animation – The animations that I managed to produce I think turned out pretty well and they went rather smooth throughout the production of them. I think the the way that his body moves is much like that of a human by the way I’ve made it look like he’s got motion after every punch and when he gets damaged from the other opponent. Making the movements of his head jerk or snap suddenly as he is hit after his body goes back. The addition of making the floor have an imprint of another Lego character turned out pretty well in the end because of the timing and the effect that I ended up giving it.
- 3 – Cameras – The addition of cameras for the Critical art I was rather happy with because for some of the animation I made it seem as if the moves that my character was doing as well as the shock-waves produced by him affected the camera making it move in certain directions and placements. I also followed the “other” character as he is thrown away past my character which then helped me resort the camera back to its side on idle position.
- 4 – Particles – The particle systems that I added went exceptionally well and better then I initially thought that they would turn out mainly because of the particle aging that I added to the arm particles to stimulate fire spewing out of his arms and hands. Initially I though that it was too many particles and when I turned them down I thought that it wasn’t going to look as good, however it made it look better and more realistic with the gaps that it had between the particles of ‘Fire’.
- 5 – Assets – My assets that I added I though looked pretty good even if there was only two assets that were within the whole animation they still took some time to completely finish their designs as well as their animations. The first asset that I created was his helmet and the reason why I created this helmet is because I personally though because I couldn’t create his hair the way I wanted to because of time and complexity, I decided to make him a helmet to cover the part that was initially going to have something on.
The second asset is the flooring and I am rather happy with the outcome that has come because it adds aesthetic to the environment and the way that I made it do this is by leaving a rectangle in-front of my character so I could add two more rectangles that are going to fit within the space. The first was of a simple rectangle that I cut several times on the top side and then I extruded it to give it a broken look and the other layer was another rectangle but this one had an imprint of the Lego character but at a smaller scale giving the impression that my character throws the opponent to the ground and he is bigger than him.
Helmet design
Weaknesses:
- 1 – Distortion – Throughout the animation there was some distortion that I did see happening to my character and I couldn’t figure out what was causing this issue and how I could possibly resole it and take the distortion away. This did cause a little problem when moving my character around because the distortion was situated mainly around his feet (when he moved beyond a point his front of his foot would stretch and bend).
- 2 – Not what I aimed for – At the beginning of the task where we discussed the ideas of our characters (the pitch) and following onto when we was preparing our story boards for our animations. While doing all of this I envisioned making a more smoother and accurate animation to match what I saw in my head but there was a few issues with some of the movements that I did with my character, i.e. with his arms and legs. Anther thing that wasn’t to what I originally thought of was the particle system that I created. To me it didn’t look like fire normally would look like, although I did get the overall colours of fire the look to it wasn’t quite as “realistic” that I wanted it to be.
- 3 – Movement – The movement within some if not all of my animations had problems with them, they was either too slow, too fast or simply made the character move in odd ways (rotation in a full circle to starting point or jolting limbs).
- 4 – Texturing – Within my final product there was a slight issue to do with the textures that I added and these are along the lines of not having the leather skirt on the upper part of the legs of my Lego character which is what the original design has. another thing that made my texturing a trouble was the positioning of some of the textures were off centered and not as define as they was supposed to be.
- 5 – More research – For the future tasks that I am going to be doing research is something that I am going to crack down one more that I already do because gathering as much information that I could for any task is going to help me with creating and developing any project that I set myself. For this project I didn’t do as much research as I possibly needed/wanted to do and I know I could have done much more research if I wanted to and it could have helped me out a lot in the long front.
My creation for a Roman demi-god was seemingly out of the blue although Street fighter already has someone who is practically a god within the Street fighter universe but I thought that I’d make a different character that isn’t a complete god but a half god so he can at least be defeated. The over all creation of my character was inspired by old Roman gladiators and their uses of armor within their combat as well as their overall style of fighting I though was a rather interesting thing to look into because their wasn’t any characters that are within the Street fighter series and I thought that it would have been a good player to add to the Street fighter family.
I overall liked the way that the Roman gladiators would be dressed within the arena both because of their attire that they are wearing and their over all colours I thought that they were a pretty good combination to go for because this type of character hasn’t been created before.
The over all build and bulk of a gladiator gave me a good indication of how I wanted my character to look and act as he is played mainly because of how brutal and aggressive that the gladiators form of fighting was. This was a pretty good big inspiration for the way that my character was going to move as well as fight within battle.
Another thing that I inspired me about the Roman gladiators is their colour scheme and not because it is bland and mostly mono tone in its colour scheme but because these colours worked well with one another and it is a little change from that of the other street fighter characters colour schemes.
Another inspiration that I had for the over all design and creation was two characters that are from two different background and are from two completely different backgrounds and these characters and Torr from Mortal Kombat and The Hulk from the Marvel Universe. Both of these characters played a part within the development of my own character in more reasons than one.
Torr – Torr was a big inspiration for my character because of his over all size on his build of his body is what helped me in creating the over all body mass that my character has because at first I had some ideas to possibly make my character either a larger character like Birdie or someone who isn’t as big as a bulk as Zangif. However Looking further into research of game characters that are a little more aggressive I looked at Torr and the way that he was built and the colours and clothing that was used for his character and it gave me the inspiration to design my character more bulkier and scary looking.
The Hulk – The hulk had a very similar take within my inspiration by the over all size of his body. However, I looked at how the Hulk moves in order to make my character move as he did because I wanted a character that was ruthless and unyielded in his over all attacks and strength.
I decided to make this as a part of my character and I edited my own character to suit this build because within Street Fighter there isn’t many characters who are unruly and ruthless while they fight, they’re normally controlled and focused to a certain type of martial arts.
Roman god: Mars – Mars is the Roman god of war who’s main theme is fire and this gave me the inspiration for my own character to have a half god being rather than being mortal like other characters within the Street fighter universe. I wanted to give my character a little more than just being a brute that is reckless and powerful within the battlefield so I decided to look into some of the Roman gods and looked at what elements they control and what they did as gods.
I chose Mars over all of the other gods and goddesses because his element was fire and I though that it would best suit my characters ruthlessness and destructive behavior.
The over all design of my whole character was based off of a Roman gladiator who is born both from human and God origins (Roman god of war Mars) and throughout his whole production of his design and his final creation there were a lot of things that I decided that wasn’t quite what I wanted so I decided to change them to something that I though would either work better of would make the overall product a better success then I originally wanted it to be. Throughout my trails of creating a suitable look for my character there were a few designs that I decided not to go for and these were the clothes that my character was going to be wearing as a final attire within the Street fighter game, there was many other ideas that I had before I got to what I wanted in the end.
Some of these designs involved a full bodied armored gladiator who is plated with relatively full body armor. However I though that this might have been too much of a project for me to implement within my own Lego design because I would have to create the whole assets for each of his limbs in order to make them bulk out properly and as they would if it was within the Street fighter game.
My creation of helmets for my character I had a few variations of what I wanted it to look like whether I wanted it to be gold, silver, iron in texture and whether I wanted to make it a full face mask, a pointed and sharp mask or a realistic Roman helmet as they had in the time of the Romans. The first helmet that I looked at creating was based off a spike charging helmet that I had an idea to make it one of his weapons and used of attack like Birdie does with his Bull head attack but I thought that this was going to be too much for a Lego game.
The second one that I looked into was one that was similar to a Spartan helmet where it is well rounded and pointed at the bottom of the cheek guards. This was a good Idea for a helmet that I initially wanted to be the final design of my character making a Mohawk to go on the top of the helmet to give it more of an effect of being a Spartan helmet. After developing this helmet to the stage where it only needed the remaining features I tested adding my texture and it turned out the eyes where way too which caused an issue because his eyes were hardly visible as well as it being too short around the edges.
To resolve this issue I did try to re-scale and move around some of the features, however this didn’t work and it just distorted the image so I decided to go for another design that I through was going to be an easier and better option which was the helmet that was actually used as a Roman gladiator helmet.This I thought was the better design and option in the end because of its simple design. I did experiment with the back part and the top of the helmet by making it smooth and then rigid and I thought that having the helmet look rigid at some point made it look more like a Lego helmet.
Making these different variations in helmet designs could appeal to a younger audience because of the variations of the helmets mean that they have some choices in what they want their characters to look like. As well as making it a little rigid more than smooth can relate back to the earlier development of the Lego product.
These designs that I can up with and also developed in my own way a little I generally think that all of the designs turned out pretty well in the way that they looked and as well as how they could be adapted with ease. However, if I ad to do this whole project there are a few if not a lot of things that I would change and adapt about what I produced for my final developed design. Starting off with the concept art and storyboards if I could revisit these I would change quite a few things with what I produced and this is along the lines of adding more of a variation with what I produced because I noticed throughout my sketches of my characters textures that they all looked too similar and only a few things changed. Next time I wold definitely add a little more variation between all of my sketches by changing most if not all of his clothes as well as changing his facial expression, colour and possibly even build. Instead of going for the same kind of build I would possible try to make major changes in colour, clothes and his overall body type.
For my story boards I could add a little more detail to do with what my character is going to be doing. I did add description to what he was going to be doing however if I added more key frames to show the process of what the moves are going to involve will help me when acting out the moves set.
The assets that I created I think could also be improved especially the shattering floor that I made. I could further develop this by creating a singular object and just use the connect tool and create a plane that has the indent of the other player and just simply animate it in the shape of a Lego character. This way the textures of all of the other objects would overlap and distort he rest of the objects making it obvious that there is something going to happen to that part of the object.
Appropriateness
Lego – I think that my character is appropriate to the needs of Lego because of his over a all design is similar to that of the Hulks there is only a few things that are different and the main thing is the colours and the choices of the clothes that I have chosen for my character. The over all looks and characteristics of my character are also similar to that of some of the backstories of some Lego characters and it isn’t too graphical or serious to deter the younger audience that Lego is mainly based around these days.
Also the overall actions and facial expressions are somewhat comical to some people because of the ‘over the top’ movements for my character as well as his constant snarling attitude will perceive him as a bad guy and something that is also a laugh to act out and play as. Further more his vocabulary is limited so he cannot use many if any words within his sentences which makes it relate to the older Lego games where the only form of communication that Lego characters had between each other was grunts, mumbles and groans.
Street Fighter – My character is quite appropriate for Street fighter as well and the reason why I think this is because again his backstory it is something that seems like it should be within the Street Fighter universe because my characters backstory is based around him loosing his family at a rather young age and then hunting the would looking of the strongest and the most powerful beings on earth and he is relentless to find this all powerful being. This relates to M. Bison because in the Animated movie he is searching for an all mighty power so he can create a brain washed ‘Zombie’ and take over the world using their power.
My characters build and appearance is another things that I think is appropriate for Street fighter as well by having his body much like Zangiefs’ only having more of a hunch than an upright stance that Zangief has. The over all clothes to skin ration is another thing that is shown within some of the characters as well mainly those who are wrestlers and hands on which my character is, which leads to his fighting style and ethnicity. Street likes to have characters that are from all sorts of different cultures and fight styles and my character could be another addition to that ‘Family’ by giving a new ethnic and culture group and possibly fighting style.
Final outcome of project
Throughout the whole entirety of the task there was a few ups and a few minor setbacks that happened within my tasks and processes with completing my character and his animations. But I think that overall the project went better then I thought that it would go with some of the tasks at least for others I wold liked them to have been better.
Some of the tasks that I though went rather well were the animation tasks at the end, I thought that the animations went rather well considering it was my first time at creating an animation of a character that doesn’t have an in game reference to go off of, only the one that we made of ourselves. Another thing that I went rather well was he exaction of the animations and my first addition of moving cameras other than a movement that is just panning down. the smoothness and the over all motion of the cameras went better than I could have ever imagined it to go.
Something that didn’t go how I wanted it to go was the textures on my characters body, mainly on his legs because that’s where I had the biggest trouble with making it looking like he had his leather skirt on instead of just having a full gold legged character. Possibly a little more work could have been done within Photoshop in order for me to get the texturing to the perfect level that I wanted to have at the end of the task.
Peer feedback
Through my tasks I was asking my fellow class members about my work and what they either thought if my work or what they think that I should improve with my work for the future of my designs for my character and for future projects as well.
Luke suggested a few things to do with different parts of my project, the first thing that he said was about my conceptual drawings of my character. He said the reason why he chose Maximus (my first character ‘Gladiator’) over AI (my second character ‘Samurai’) was because of the use of fire and power that accompanied his power and the fact that it related to Mars (his father). He mentioned about his colours that there should be more brightly toned colours to both his helmet as well as his other arts of his clothes to make him represent his element more.
He also said something to do with the models of my characters helmet that there could be fire on the helmet that harnesses his power.
Darren said “There should be fire as the Mohawk of his helmet rather then just having a red hair Mohawk so it will bring the aesthetics of my characters father into play”. and he also said ” Maybe add a little more of aggression with his attacks to make it seem like hes more of a strong characters rather then like the others”.
Loric said “Maybe add more defining lines along the edges of his clothes, especially his lower half and possibly his muscles” – this was for my conceptual art on Photoshop when I was making the refined textures for my character. I worked on this after he said it trying to make sure that the lines didn’t look distorted in any way and that it was nice, sharp and even.
Bibliography:
Torr concept art – http://conceptartlibrary.tumblr.com/post/119277118630/mortal-kombat-x-ferra-and-torr-mortal-kombat-is-a
Hulk – http://steeven7620.deviantart.com/art/AoU-Hulk-607556740
Mars: god of war – http://www.greek-mythology-pantheon.com/wp-content/uploads/Greek_Gods_and_Goddesses/Ares_Mars_Greek_God/Ares_Mars_Greek_God_Art_06_by_SteveArgyle.jpg
DylanprestongamedevelopmenT 
Recent Comments