I like how this piece is composed in a way of a classic movie trailer and comic book all in one. It has humour and graphic novel style art work that help it stand out against the other pieces that were displayed around it. It tells the audience a story enough to pull you in however not enough to tell you everything that happens, leaving you in suspense.
The fact this artist designed his own polygonal display stands out against the rest in the room. His display is unique and is composed in a satisfying way. I’m not sure if it was a design choice or a layout flaw however, the way the layout sheets are portrait and not landscape as the should be, actually add to the feel of the overall vibe of the presentation.
I like the simplicity of the artists work and how they’ve captured people’s lives in a fleeting moment. I also like the composition of the pieces and how they show the subject in an interesting light, angle or area. Each of these components represent the persons life and what they do in it, such as what they work as or how their past has been. Each picture is personal and holds something dear to the person in the image itself. This can be a lasting memory for the family and friends of this person which makes the pieces unique and special.
For my final game map, I designed a small world consisting of snow topped mountains, grass lands with a small lake in the centre which is surrounded by shrubs and rocks on the banks. Even though the world is small, it does not feel claustrophobic at all and actually gives the player a sense of safety and it has a calming atmosphere that can make the players feel right at home. By using the unclimbable mountains as a border, it also acts as the world boundaries. This is good because the character can not fall endlessly off the edge which can ruin a players experience of the entire game, if it was ever to become one. I had a theme hat I set myself of “Peace and Tranquility” and I experimented with a few ideas before settling on this one.
When I first started learning about using the unreal Engine, I had no previous experiences with it at all. Throughout the time I have been experimenting with the lighting, the sizes and the depths of content I can drag and drop into the world, I have gained knowledge on how to make a First Person Shooter game (FPS) which is one of the worlds most popular and violent game genre out currently, closely followed by RPGs ( Role Playing Game). Learning how to make the most popular genre gives you a head start into game design, games concept or even environment concept artist job opportunities in the near future. It also allows me to think about different career paths I could take when going into University.
Unfortunately, I had missed a lot of lessons which put me quite behind my classmates which gave me little time to complete my game world. This meant I had to consider what I can do that would look clean and complete yet fit into the deadline. This is where I considered making a small game world that I could make flourish with animated content. I then had think about what I could have in to make my world fit in with the theme of “Peace and Tranquility”. I decided to combine a few aspects of what people find peaceful to create something that is full of calming atmosphere and has a safe vibe. By putting animated content in, it makes the world feel alive and busy instead of still , boring and dead. It also adds a slight weather effect with how the trees and plants sway. I also tried to make it interesting for the player by making the water area swimmable and if I could, I would have added fish or seaweed to make the underneath interesting to explore.
Overall, I am happy with the way my game world turned out, however now that I know what I am doing and having all the skills I have gained, I would create a similar concept on a larger scale, adding in robust villages with full furnished buildings and pathways. Inspired by Skyrims environments however more safe and friendly.
Idea and concept for a game world
Before I even start creating the game, I have had to consider what genre I want the world to represent and the target audience and even how someone would play the game itself. Devloping a game is a huge project which usually tends to require multiple people working on it at once, however I can only rely on my own skills to create this. I am planning to include objects such as lights, houses with animated doors, forests, flowing waters and of course, a landscape.
My inital idea before doing into creating a game world on my own is to keep it relatively simple and clean yet intersting to look at and walk around in. Where there will be no enemies howeer, I will use animations such as smoke and activated lighting to make the world feel alive along with other animated objects, such as animated doors on houses. By having animated doors, I can cerate an interior for houses and make each house slightly differnt. I will be using starter textures provided to me to create the unique looking interiors and i am planning for these houses to be two floors high. Between the rows of houses with flow a large and deep river which the player will have access to swim in. The houses will be surronded by a dense forest which will be surronded by snowy hills and mountins which will act as the border for the map.
Genre/type of game play
My game will be have first person view with a first person shooter type game play, even though there will be no enemies the environment is still interactable. I do not have a particular genre to label my game which such as ‘horror’ however I plan on it being a calm and peaceful walking simulator type of expierence.
Target audience
The target audience I will try and reach my game out to will br the general public. It is suitable for all ages however, the player might have to be slightly more mature than a child or teenager to enjoy just walking around and enjoying the environment as they are no particular game play options.
Level design maps
This is my really simplistic map of what I want my actual game map to look like. A small map which consists of snowy mountains, a small lake area with rocky banks with flower bushes circling it. I want to make the environment feel alive even in a small space and feel like a safe space and have a calming atmosphere.
Final Map Design
This is my final map design, I am happy with the way it turned out as I did not think I would pick up all the intricate details and skills that are required to create a game world. Even though it is only a small world, I have managed to make it a flowing environment and make it look as if it was just selected from a larger world. I have changed from what I wanted to do in the synopsis however, I am happier with this design than the other one I could have created.
Throughout my time creating this wire model I had quite a few struggles. In the beginning I ha a lot of issues with how to put together the wire figure and creating the pose that I needed to reflect the character I had created. Once I had that part done, each week something would snap and would then have to tape steps back. This held me behind from the class, and as such I knew I would have to put more time into it. We used thin wire to create the wire sculptures that we would later wrap with tinfoil to shape the figures body, giving it more life. After packing on the tin foil, I then had to wrap my wire figure in polymer clay to give my character curves and features she otherwise would not have had. I found it rather easy using the polymer clay however, I did notice it became harder to use the longer I spent on it. It became sticky and would refuse to go on and actually stay. Once I managed to wrap the polymer clay, I used specialised tools to help me create definition and make small details such as her nose and the way her dress has a floating effect. I spent a lot of time smoothing out the clay around my characters body making sure she was in proportion and she would not crack while being fired in the furnace. we fire the models so they become solid and are able to handle them without ruining little details, this way we would be able to paint them whilst keeping all the definition we worked hard on creating. As I created my character small, I knew I would struggle with her face. I did not want to ruin my character with small details and as such I decided to change her character slightly and I do believe this actually improved my character making her more unique. to give it more of a textured look, I used real white feathers on her wings which contrasted against her painted body, this gave her the angelic feel I was going for. For her hair, I used hair cut from dolls I bought cheap to give her actual texture as I did not think she would have suited polymer clay as hair. As I have created her hair using actual hair, it gives her a sense of life and flow. Even though I could not get the exact colour I would have liked for her hair, I am still pleased with how the overall model looks. As this is my first time created a scaled model I knew I would not have made it perfectly. If I was able to do it again I knew that I did not need to rush certain areas and I would also have out more time into the wire model itself. I could have looked at how over sculptures start theres to see how I could have made it easier for myself.
I used a series of photos taken in my room of my hand and a plush I used to represent mu bunny plush character. By taking a series of images, I then had the frames for my animation and could begin drawing it out digitally. By using layers on photoshop, I was able to create a sketch effect on top of the original image, giving it an illustrated and sketch book like effect.
As you can see, these frames are exactly alike, apart from one is done in a sketchy style digitally, this reminds me of manga or the raw sketches of an anime before being put into production. I did this with nearly 100 frames, creating the intro and the outro last minute.
As I didn’t get the opportunity to add colour into my animation, I am experimenting with different types or styles of colouring and seeing which one would work best with the animation. I will be using the frames I already used into my animation to experiment. Each frame will be a different colouring style, this is to show how different colouring techniques can create different emotions.
This is my final animation. Over 100 frames put into a 5 second GIF. I used Photoshop with a 12 pixel wide stroke with a 10% smoothness, this helped to create the sketchy inked style of the whole animation. The way it moves almost radically helps with the uneasy feeling and motion of the concept of abandonment, how the journey is full of bumps and turns and never feels right or stable. The writing was supposed to represent a childs handwriting, soft, curved and slanted. This animation took me nearly three weeks, without all the research and planning. I felt the Macs held me back as it was very hard and rare to find one that works with the tablet and the programmes work without crashing every second. As you can tell. I have had to cut my animation short, this is because realised I would not have enough time to do the complex ending if I wanted to get the deadline.As such I left it as a “To be continued” which also fits in with the theme of Abandonment, as the viewers were abandoned of an ending.
Unfortunately, during my model making process, my model continually broke and snapped in awkward places and as such I was held back a few weeks and had to end up rushing my final outcome. By adding real textures such as feathers and hair the model becomes more interesting and distracts from the other areas that are not as good quality. I used long craft feathers to create the wings and tried to get a one wing out and one wing folds effect. I believe I achieved this effect even though it does look a little out of place and even wrong to some. I used real human hair that was given to me by a classmate, this gives the model a more unique and obscure look and helps it stand out. I was also able to style the hair slightly, however I quickly found that the hair style my original character would be impossible to achieve. The glue I had to use had harden most of the hair and left sharp edges, this stopped me from doing any styling and as such I decided to use her hair to hide some unpainted areas and areas that had cracked in the kiln.
If I was to do this model again I would know how to heavily improve it. By changing the original wire material I would be able to make the bass stronger and even change the base wire model to help fit my character better. Giving better propositions and an easier way of wrapping the tin foil and clay around. I would also take more time on the hair and find other ways of creating a style with it and how to avoid the hardened glue issue.
Kimmy haseneder 