Sleeping At The Lab

So this is the weekend before we have to turn in our project to IGF. There is still a lot of work to be done in the art side of things, and there is not enough hours in the day to get everything done. This is mainly due to the trouble that our project has been in over the last few months, and why the other two teams are in much better shape than us. So I have brought one of my sleeping bags with me and a pillow to get at least some sleep at night.

At the end of last semester, we had to go back and think about what we could do about our game since the feedback we had from many people was that our game wasn't entertaining or appealing the way we wanted it to be. So over the summer, the producers of the team got together and came up with Dead Drop and we thought we had nailed  it. We worked really hard to get a playable demo during the summer even if some people had traveled out of the state/country and we couldn't count on everyone to work on the project. We presented our ideas, but then a few weeks into the semester we were told by a guest professor from another school that our project would get disqualified at IGF.

This really brought our morale down, and we struggled for a few weeks on what we could do to salvage the game so we wouldn't have to start from scratch. But this was probably not the best idea, since I was able to witness our team slowing deteriorate from internal fights due to stress and anxiety. This eventually lead the professors to make us vote on a new project, which because Drop Drop. From then on, we had to go back to pre-production stage and try to plan everything so it wouldn't happen again. The only thing is that we didn't have much of a level designer and it wasn't until recently that we got told what type of models the artist need to build for the game to make interesting ways that the player could fall through the city.

I had a list of assets to work on, but all the stuff on the list was mainly as props for the level once it was built which is what I belief our first mistake. We should have focused first on level design and once we had all the shapes of the buildings that we wanted, that's when we could start working on props and everything else to make the city look the way we wanted it to look. This has led to a huge crunch to the art team and I don't think that we are going to be able to finish all the 16 building models that they wanted us to do.

So for now, I will continue to work throughout the night (it is currently 1 AM as I'm writing this blog post) and try to get as much stuff done for the game. That is all for now, thanks for reading.

Utah State Capitol Building - Model Done

So I finally manged to get the model done, and I managed to get it just under 3K triangles. It was harder than I thought it would be to try and add some of the detail without going over the limit, but the texture will be the hardest part for me. I will have to find a way to tile my textures to make the most out of my 1024 x 1024 texture limit.

I will hopefully be able to finish the texture before the next weekend. Thanks for reading. 

Utah State Capitol Building

So this next week is going to be Fall break and it will give me time to catch up on a lot of work that I've been trying to do all semester. For example, on Monday nights there is an art class for the new cohort that started this semester, and I'm sitting in on that class to try and have more experience with Art. Unfortunately  I haven't been able to finish many of the assignments from that class because there is always something that I need to do for my other classes where I am going to be getting a grade.

One of the last assignments that was due this last Tuesday was to work on a replica model of a building in Salt Lake City. I decided to work on the Utah State Capitol building and I managed to get most of the model done, but not enough to move on to doing the textures for it. Here is a quick render of where the model is at:

The rules for this project are the following: 3000 triangle limit and a 1024 x 1024 texture limit. So far my model is standing at 2034 triangles, so I still have a lot of tri-count to add detail and I still have to do some face reduction where it needs it. Hopefully I will be able to finish this since I think it has the potential to be a really nice portfolio piece. That's all for now, thanks for reading.

Game Arts Final Project Idea

So we are suppose to start thinking about what our final project will consist of since basically we will have to create a micro environmental. I didn't really know what I was going to do until a week ago I was talking to another artist from the cohort and she said that since I love Japanese culture so much, why didn't I create a Japanese garden for my scene. I really liked that idea, so now I'm rolling with it. I "m not very good at sketching, but I've been working on some ideas of how it could be laid out and a simple model for a bridge that will be in the scene. Below is some of the work that I've done on my final project idea.

I've also worked on a few sketches of how I could layout the level. I've talked to someone else in the cohort and he told me that i need to make everything more curvy so it flows better the way a real zen garden does. I've also tried to sketch some of the props that would make fill the environment.

I'm going to start working on making the environment soon, as soon as I make enough progress in the thesis that is. That's all for now, thanks for reading.

Back to Pre-production

So art team has been spending some time in pre-production again, since we need to get a clear focus on how the art has to look. As you know, we have abandoned the idea of dropping zombies from buildings, so we are now going with a more abstract look for the game and following in the direction that Flower by Jenova Chen. Some of the game play mechanics are still a little fuzzy, but that will hopefully be cleared up in the next few days.

So my task for this weekend was to write up a 1 page document on how the level could look like, along with some possible color pallets. Here is what I came up with:

Overview:

• At this point, we have talked about making the environment look run-down and abandoned.
• We still want to make it look like a city, but at first it will look dry and lifeless. 
• Once the player has reached the bottom, the parts that have been hydrated will look new again.

Look of level before player starts:

• Dilapidated/Run-down
• Abandoned/Desolation
• Dry/Parched
• Cold

Look of level after player splashes down:

• Revitalized
• Energized
• Warm
• Back from the dead
• “Phoenix rising”

Reference:

• Hong Kong slums
• Darksiders level “the cross roads”
• 9 movie: house or factory
• Total Recall

Possible Color Pallets:

Dry/Dead

Hydrated/Alive

Here is the link to the PDF I created since I like how it looks there better, but I didn't want to just provide a link to the PDF in the blog post.

I emailed the document to my team, and now I'm just waiting back on some feedback from them to see if they like what I came up with. That's all for now, thanks for reading.

Redesigning Our Thesis Project... Again

So the thesis project that I'm a part of has been through a lot of changes over the last few months. If you remember my last post, we had presented Drop Dead to the professors but they still weren't happy with what we had. We spend a week trying to work on a different character, each of the artist had to come up with something else that the player could control with the Kinect. I created a simple teddy bear  model that one of the other artist would be able to do a quick simple rig so we could start experimenting with the new characters each of us we had created.

Screenshot of the low poly teddy bear I made, tri-count is at the top left corner.

But then we had a problem where a guest professor said that due to the nature of our game, we may be disqualified from IGF since it can look like people are committing suicide by jumping of buildings. We immediately started to think of another way to keep our game mechanics but that it wouldn't be like Drop Dead. To top it off, because of the situation some people in the group were getting frustrated and there were some arguments. All of this resulted in having to redesign our game to something a little simpler but that still kept the Kinect.

So what we have so far is that the player will control a water drop in a light rainstorm. The player will have to collect other water drops on the way down to get bigger. The player will also have to dodge obstacles and you have to reach the bottom to get a bigger score. There have been some talk about trying to hit specific targets on the ground or making the water affect the environment kind of like in the game Flower.

With the new game, we are going to try and make an interesting city environment where the player will be able to have a fun experience. So far, I've taught about using stylized cartoon like environment that is abstract. I worked on a quick simple model of a house, but I've been talking to a few of the other students in the cohort and one of them said that I should look at reference images from Hong Kong and the apartment buildings there since they are tightly packed and have a lot of different obstacles that would be cool to dodge if you were falling. I think that the next time I'm in class, I will work on a city environment that resembles Hong Kong and see how it looks.

That is all for now, thanks for reading. 

Sketching a Weapon

So last week Nathan (our game arts teacher) talked about how drawing don't have to start complicated, we can draw almost anything using simple shapes and then add detail in layers until it looks like what we want. This is probably really basic, but I don't have much experience in 2D art.

For this week, we were suppose to create five things all bases around a common theme which are: a hero, an animal sidekick, a villain, a weapon, and a vehicle. I've been having a lot of issues with most of them, but here is my best sketches from the group.

The sketch is suppose to be a small hatchet and I've actually realized that I really enjoy working on weapon art. When I had to design a weapon last semester, it was probably one of my favorite assignments the whole semester.

I may try to do a model of this hatchet later in the year, for now that is all. Thanks for reading!

New Semester

So this post is a little late seeing as how the semester started 2 weeks ago, but late is better than never (or so I hear).

So at the end of last semester, we were told that our game needed a lot of work because the player couldn't really tell what was happening most of the time. (Refer back to this post to know what the game is.) So over the summer, a couple of the producers worked really hard to come up with a new game idea that still involved falling as a game mechanic, but that was far more appealing that Graviators. The product of their work was: "Drop Dead: Zombie Divers".

There really isn't a narrative at the moment, but the premise of the game is that the player chooses a zombie from a group of other zombies and then drop it off a skyscraper. The player will then use the Kinect to control the falling zombie to dodge obstacles in the environment and make it all the way to the bottom and... splat! Along the way, the player would be able to find power ups and multipliers to get a higher score which is also affect on wether you reach the bottom or not.

We worked really hard to have a playable demo by the first day of class, since we wanted to make sure that the professors could see that we had taken the feedback we received seriously and had done something about it. The professors loved the new idea, but there was still one problem... zombies.

The professors think that zombies are over used in todays game market, and if we want our game to stand out at the IGF we should do something a little more original. So they told us to stop development of other assets (for us the artist) and work on developing other ideas and test them out in the game to see how it feels. So far we have been working on things like: scarecrows, clowns, teddy bears, and other crazy stuff.

Our next meeting as a group will be this next Wednesday, so thats when I will give an update on what I've been working on (I've been doing the scarecrow and teddy bear btw) and see if its still something that we want to do. In my opinion, I don't think that zombies are a bad idea. If the game is good, who cares if its zombies or mummies or bears falling.

What I think we should be focusing (and this is a little more for the producers) is on making a cohesive narrative for the game that makes sense and that it isn't too complicated. It could be something as simple as the narrative in Angry Birds, but they get really complicated really quickly and then it doesn't make sense.

Hopefully they will have something nailed down by next time, because this whole thing is actually making me kind of nervous since we don't have time to be experimenting this late in the year when IGF submissions are due at the end of October. Anyways, thanks for reading.

Influence Map Revisited

So I finished my influence map completely after class on Tuesday night, and I had a chance to label everything which seams to be the norm. I don't think I have to do this on my blog, but we had to explain our influence map to the whole class as to what each item is and how they relate to us and how they influence us.

1. Disturbed was one of the first rock bands that I listened to, and up until today they are still one of my favorite bands. I was really sad once I found out they had disbanded after releasing The Lost Children album. But I have to say that my favorite song is still Down With the Sickness since it was the first song I listed to from them.
2. Assassin's Creed is one of my favorite game series, the story line is really good and they have kept me coming back for more since the first game. I have to admit that the first game wasn't that good, but there was something about it that made me want to buy the next. After that, I was completely hooked and I can't wait for the third one to come out this year. The one thing that I hate is that I don't own a PS Vita so I won't be able to play Liberation.
3. Eragon (Inheritance cycle) is my favorite book series, which was written by Christopher Paolini. I've always been a huge fan of dragons and elves, and I really liked his style of writing and how it made the world come to life. I haven't been able to get around to read the last book, but I will get to it before the end of the year. I hated the movie that they did, I hope that they do a remake and do a proper job on the series this time since it has so much potential.
4. The Dark Knight series is amazing, there is just no other way to describe it in my opinion. I absolutely love what Christopher Nolan did with the series and how me managed to make the notion of Batman seem realistic, but still close enough to the series that we could all be happy. I've watch the Dark Knight Rises twice on IMAX since its come out and I can't wait for it to come out on Blue-ray.
5. Rise Against is another band that I really love, while I believe that it should be a bigger square than just the one, I didn't have the room to put everything that I wanted (and there was a bunch of stuff that  I didn't include).
6. This is a screenshot from the game Darksiders, and I put on here not only because I really like that game. I've passed the game a couple of times by now, and I also bought the collectors edition of Darksiders 2 (I got it mainly because it came with a life size copy of Death's mask). But the reason why it takes the biggest part of my map is because I want to be an environmental artist and I really like all the art in Darksiders with the post-apolitical look they gave the game while still maintaining everything fairly realistic.
7. League of Legends is a really fun game, and I've been playing it for about a year now. I'm still not as good as my friend that introduced me to the game. That picture is from my current favorite champion, her name is Diana and I really like the concept of her art and how her kit works in the game. My main champion is Shyvana, and the only reason why I started to play her is because she can turn into a dragon. :) I have to admit that I play this game more than I should, but it would be really cool if I could work for Riot Games one day. Maybe I'll talk to them next year when I go to GDC once more.
8. Eight and twelve are related, I don't know why I arranged it the way I did but they should be right next to each other. The reason why Mario and an SNES are in my map is because when I was a little kid, they were the first game and console that I owned. I remember playing Mario for at least a year before I beat the whole thing. I remember that after I played Mario the first day, I thought to myself: "one day, I'm going to make games."
9. This picture is from a manga/anime series called Death Note. The reason why its the only piece that hold three squares is because I love manga and anime, and I didn't want to have it represented by only two squares. I picked Death Note to represent my love anime and manga because its a series that I really like and that I find really fascinating. There is probably a better picture I could have picked, but Death Note was the first thing that came to mind so I figured it should be up there. I actually have a small collection of manga in my room that I've spend about $600-$700, there was a time when I would buy a new manga book from Barnes & Nobles almost every week since I just couldn't get enough. Eventually I realized that I couldn't keep buying every series I liked, so I had to resort to reading manga on the internet. :(
10. In case you are wondering, square ten says "Japanese Language" in kanji. I actually was in Japan for a month in the summer of 2009. I went to Japan as a part of a month long intensive Japanese language course through the University of Utah. I can't possibly explain how valuable this trip was for me, not only because I had always dreamed of visiting Japan, but because it was a life changing experience and I wish I could go back again. I took Japanese classes for 5 semesters, and I was never really good but it was enough to at least get around in Japan. But I haven't been able to practice for a while so I have now forgotten most of it, but I can still read hiragana, katakana, and some basic kanji even if it takes a moment to do so.
11. This studio everyone should know, or at least I hope that everyone does. They have made some of my favorite anime movies, and I love the message that they have on each of the ones that I've watched. Hayao Miyazaki is a genius in the way that he can critique anything and still make an animated film that everyone can love. I haven't seen his most recent work, but from the ones that I have seen, Spirited Away is by far my favorite.
12. Refer back to 8.

I hope it all makes sense and that it give a glimpse into who I am and why I picked the stuff that I did. I don't know if I've said this already, but this assignment was harder than I thought it would be. I've never really thought about what has influenced me, there were a few obvious ones, but I really had to sit down and think about what inspired me for about two hours. Thanks for reading.

Game Arts 3

So for this next semester, we are required to have a blog where we will be posting our work throughout the semester. I know that I've done a horrible job over the summer with my blog, and I will try to keep it up to date this semester.

For our first homework assignment, we are required to make an influence map and 2 drawings. I may come back and explain my influence map at a later date, but for now here it is:

I didn't have time to erase the stuff at the bottom and label everything.

These next drawing are my stab at doing some art related to the Darksiders game series. I've been slowly playing through the second part these last few weeks, and I really like the art style in that game. Plus, I bought the collectors edition do I felt like drawing the mask of Death. The second one is the weapon of War from the first game. I tried to do all the detail in the middle of the sword, but its really hard.

I love to get critique when ever I can, so please leave a comment if you can. Thanks for reading.