Reef project... it's like it was made for me

So.. I like drawing fish people. It's a bad habit, I'm pretty sure it's why I'm so crap at drawing legs and getting proportions right on any drawing due to my love for unbelievably slim-build merfolk.
A project to essentially design a character based around reefs, coral reefs, whatever inhabits them?

Needless to say I did the predictable.

But that's what worried me, due to this stupid pass time of mine I was worried I'd underdevelop my character, and although I still feel I have and have time to further develop it, I fear having to relearn 7 years worth of Korean words and facts about my tae kwon do organisation is somewhat interfering with my ability to focus.
Thanks grading, you're the best and not stressful in the slightest, honest.

But I digress, I started with basics - moodboards looking at reefs, fish breed for tropical reefs, as well as female characters based around a more aquatic appearance, featuring Aeryn from Farscape for her Pilot DNA infused appearance.

 Initially I wanted to go away from the typical mercreature, I'm feel that I'm too comfortable with them and a set appearance I've given them, this being observed in the image to the right. Slim, flexible and bald with fins for ears and on the head. I wanted to focus on the coral reef itself, look into the textures and its ability to inhabit creatures - possibly develop some form of coral creature who hides within the reef, or focus on more forgotten creatures like sea anenomes.




That idea failed when I started adding tails and looking more at the creatures inhabiting coral reefs. They felt like the stronger silhouettes  with the more possibilities as I could take any fish, and aspect of any fish, any colour or pattern and apply it to this flexible form that I could apply to any situation with multiple possibilities as to its "purpose". In addition, it allowed me to consider the scale of the character, two of the silhouettes take items of rubbish that could be found in the sea - carrier bags, those plastic ties that hold cans together and tin cans - and add them to the creature, both featuring a different scale due to the way the props are applied.

Considering this "purpose" to the character, I probably should have looked more at the themes I looked into - warrior, gatherer/herbalist and seer/psychic - rather than focusing on some idea I had in my head. Warriors focused on having more predatory fish - Lionfish, Eels and Black tip sharks. Adding their skulls to the heads added to this feel, as well as allowed a setting on the scale of the character. The other designs for alternative themes weren't as strong in my opinion, taking any fish I thought looked pretty and adding bits of coral, or sea urchins to seem all mystical or collection-based didn't seem to work in the way that I did it. However, some of the aspects would work on a warrior type character.

Final design - no skull

The final design features a Lionfish tail, and fins, with coral and limpits from the seer/psychic theme. The head shape ended up being influenced by images on my moodboard, as well as myself accidentally applying my predetermined mermaid design to her. Oops. I decided against a patterned tail, due to the limpits - less is more on merfold in my opinion. 

The colours were all taken from fish. Exciting stuff. Gradient looked better, moving on.

Final design coloured with skull

For the in situ, I wanted to represent a proud, strong warrior, poised and ready for action. This would have been easier if I had researched, and had gathered references to refer to for correct stances and staff grip. The final, was a draw between two of my thumbnails - far right on the top, and middle on the bottom row. They showed two aspects of the warrior character, an aggressive and a calmer side towards sharks, however aggressive made more sense due to the skull headdress she is adorned with.

I'm still to model her, which will either be annoying or fun.. more likely the first one. But over all I'm happy with how the in situ turned out, so at least that's something.

Elements of game design: Part 4

Oh boy, last in the series so it’s the hardest to write… procrastination in the form of my sister showing me MS Paint drawings and coffee runs can only happen for so long so let’s to this…

Environment designs in games are hugely important, with so much going into it in order for it to create a realistic, lore-friendly, and immersive feeling for the player. The correct colours, theme application and referenced material in order to make a place seem realistic, and if not based on the real world, logical. Generally done by a team of designers, ideas are thought up by each individual, announced, and pros and cons are picked of the idea. This solves issues with ideas, and generates a team-fuelled single mega idea with aspects of all solutions. Team work is awesome.

From here, a flow diagram is depicted of a level plan, and then the juicy parts can begin. The narrative can be applied to a level, with the lore/backstory of a level being able to be told in multiple ways. That’s what makes a game level and environment a success really – the ability to merge and provide story and context-relevant gameplay.
Research is super important for environments, whether the game’s genre is realism focused, or whether an art style is stylised. If an environment is more believable and more logical, then a player is more likely to be immersed and connect with aspects surrounding the environment and the story. I can only imagine stylisation can make the production of such an environment that little bit more difficult, due to everyone’s individual construction on what the world is like – their schemata (thank you a-level psychology. You were good for something in the end). The immersion relies on the environment fitting multiple peoples’ schemata, which may vary dependant on what country someone is from – so huge amounts of research and judgement would generally have to be made in order to create an awesome environment design. No pressure, right?

An environment that I truly fell in love with is that of Fallout 3. The vast wasteland, desolate but full of hidden treasures with a minimalistic colour scheme but yet it works so well, and really sets the theme of a post-apocalyptic wasteland well. The destruction to the buildings from neglect and raiders, I feel so immersed in it it’s brilliant.
The designer for it, if I’m not mistaken is Rashad Redic – whose responsibilities focus around architecture, props and other various physical structures of the world alongside non-character animations, lighting, landscaping and where art is concerned the level layout. The research gone into the environments to represent a pretty convincing layout of a destroyed America where it counts is fantastic, with such a huge focus on the lighting and colour overlays to allow the environment to reflect the theme superbly.

“I love gathering reference, it's kind of like having a blank slate, and as you see all these cool and interesting things, a plan starts to come together. I don't think I have any one place I'd consider a favourite for references or texture sources, I've been building a database of refs, textures and inspirations going back to college, now numbering about 350,000 images.”

The main inspiration in his work are his co-workers, looking at the AAA titles from other publishers and picking apart how they do stuff and visiting the website CGSociety.org sites and ConceptArt.org and a handful of art blogs. The way I worded that, it’s like a dating ad..

(Information gathered from here)
But seriously.. just look at how beautiful the environments are.

Elements of game design: Part 3

"To create a truly immersive game experience with a compelling fantasy world, you have to populate that world with real characters. Not just characters that behave realistically on the screen, but characters that ARE real to you, the game’s creator. The more you know your own characters, the more real they will become, and the more they will help draw the player into your game’s imaginary word.
Tim Schafer"

One aspect of games and there designs I truly love is character design, and in regards to the above statement I agree whole heartedly. I personally find it easier to play a game where a character has been given such an immersive back-story  motives, dreams, on-going character development – whether it is an NPC or the PC. It encourages – for me – interaction with the environment, and a feeling of connection to the story, plot, and world itself.

Clementine - The Walking Dead

A way to express this point further would be to select a character from a game, so let’s go with a popular franchise in which the game produced many “feels” for those playing it. The Walking Dead. A game composed of 5 chapters revolving around Lee – the PC – and his survival in a zombie apocalypse. Within this game, there’s a female child character that features heavily throughout the story - Clementine. Personally, I struggle to connect with child characters in games, I dislike children in real life so why would I like one in a game where their scripted dialogue and actions revolve around an over emphasised childlike naivety and “innocence”? Clementine appears to compromise this view – she’s quietly composed, smart, driven to help the group whilst maintaining some aspects of nativity which add to her female person and humorous aspects of the game. As the game focuses on decision making through dialogue and point and click puzzle solving adventure game design, I found myself going out of my way to talk to Clementine before everyone else – making sure she was happy and changing decisions based on how it could affect her characters happiness or personality. Then, when a decision choice made me have no choice but to negatively affect her – causing her to either be grabbed by zombies, or for a text box saying her negative emotions in the top left corner of the screen – I found myself cursing at what the game was doing, wanting to go and restart and try again just to keep her happy. This aspect then compared with the moronic example of a kid in a zombie apocalypse – Duck – furthers her appeal and wish to complete the game in a way which would please a certain character.

Tiny Tina - Borderlands 2

Another example of a child character that’s just bad ass is Tiny Tina from Borderlands 2. Although not completing the game due to time management with work, her dialogue takes a good combination of adult-based humour and 13 year old girl-ness and creates an essentially awesome character who’s missions look entertaining to complete.


These aspects are mainly dependant on the script and voice acting quality applied to the character. Certain phrases – for example when you ask Clementine if she licked a salt lick, and she responds “I don’t know” – slowly introduce character traits, character development, scenery interaction and then later on when the same object is used to kill someone, makes you cringe when you think to the mix of emotions applied to a single object due to a child's curiosity. As both Clementine and Tiny Tina are female child characters – granted of varying ages – their appearances actually hold quite a few similarities which is interesting due to the completely different scenes. Both emphasise their femininity through clothing and not overly luscious eyelashes or any form of suggested makeup. Both have similar face shapes to emphasise their youth and their hair is both wild, linking with the environment, with the addition of ribbons or hair ties to keep in line with the fact they are female and that doesn't change due to the environment. Their personalities somewhat coincide in their aesthetic design which stimulates interaction with them more, both designs are pretty awesome if you ask me.

I personally find that stories are really influenced by the characters, I enjoy stories which involve and revolve around character interaction to further story and stimulate environment exploration. I enjoy the playable character either having a strong personality, which is developed on constantly dependant on the story and occurrences in a game, or essentially a blank slate of which I have complete control over. I enjoy decision making open world games which allow me to view every aspect of a games design, choose how I play and allow my short attention span to constantly be focused on the game. I like feeling the repercussions of my decisions in a story – like despite the fact I'm simply playing this pre-scripted design, it feels like I'm creating my own story and my own world and connecting with everything in game on a different level to say a game where everything is definite with the same outcome.
Even games with a definite outcome – for example Assassins creed is somewhat linear, more so than say a Bethesda game, it still has open world aspects to it with the decision to explore, collect and then the additional experiences of 100 percenting each memory segment. Then again this doesn't really rely on character design in a game… off topic a bit. Oops.

But all in all, character design is such a huge aspect of a game – in my opinion it motives a play through to be completed, and every other aspect in the game could simply be ruined by shoddy NPC’s or an incorrect PC for the environment. A lot of thought must go into the design of a character in order to make sure the production time of a game is correct, and it must coexist harmoniously with every small aspect of the game. Voice acting and dialogue must match so seamlessly with a character for it to fit so well, and it seems like it must be such a difficult task but it truly seems worth it in the end. Honestly, if I ever do get into an industry where I am influencing the design of a character I hope that I’d be able to produce the same or similar reaction in another that I have to character design.