Damian Street: Games Art 2024 - 25

We presented our presentation but unfortunately went over the time limit by a lot. I think we should've condensed our PowerPoint a bit more or maybe managed our time better by spending less time on the slides that aren't as important as the rest. After the presentation, we paused to allow questions and get some feedback on our presentation. Sam's Feedback Reflection We were told that we had an effective way to manage our files and assets. We hit the Scavengers Reign style very well and the inclusion of the main character having a missing limb is a great decision. We were told that it would've been nice to see more design work and explanation on why we made certain artistic decisions. A major point to focus on is what it would look like in game. During our presentation, we had included no concepts for UI nor any screenshots on what it would look like from the characters perspective. For the duration of this project, we will include more explanation on the design choices ...

In this meeting, we did one final check over the presentation and we started discussing the road map as well as more in depth plans for the 3D work. We made a rough list of final assets and what everyone was expected to have completed!

Building a Base Mesh Base Mesh The base mesh is the starting point of everything you develop in 3D. We should be trying to capture the silhouette of whatever it is you are creating. We want to make sure the base mesh has refined anatomy and proportions before moving on to the next stage. Concept For the purposes of this exercise, we will need the use of 2D concept artwork and the focus of today will be on anatomy and readability. Understanding design principles and fundamentals is valuable for this because it is ultimately your mindset that will allow you to create the characters. Face Structure Structure of a Human Face You can think of the human face as a set face and a front face. When you are sculpting out a face, you can define a plane. Planes are what we use in order to understand shape. We don't understand the shape with remembering the arcs but rather a bunch of different planes that wrap around geometry to understand a bigger picture of that geometry. Use the HPolish brush...

In this project, I was assigned the role of the Lead 2D artist focussing more on character design over environments (as that has been assigned to another team member). In this blog, I have researched the roles, responsibilities and the expectations needed to be a character designer to help me to fulfil this role in my team. What is the role of the lead 2D artist? The role of the 2D artist is to manage all 2D assets produces by the team ensuring each asset produced is consistent with the style of the project they're working on. It is they're job to provide feedback on the designs as well as ensure everyone is meeting the deadlines set. They work closely with all members of the project to achieve the overall vision of the project. What is the role of a Character Designer? A character designer is a type of concept artist who visualises and creates recognizable characters thought their anatomy, body language and facial expressions. As said by CGSpectrum, "They interpret a char...

In this lesson, we recapped on the anatomy and musculature of a human figure. We started off by drawing an anatomical diagram that's approximately 7/8 heads tall (average height). Afterwards, we were tasked to draw muscles from memory. This didn't go particularly well for me as I couldn't remember a lot about the muscles especially when it came to the legs. I annotated my attempt with what I did wrong and this helped to point out which areas are my weakest. I then looked up various diagrams of the human muscles to then go back to my anatomical diagram and correct my mistakes. Practice We were then tasked with applying our knowledge to real life references. In this task, we looked up athletes who had visible muscles and we then drew them. In some images, I grab some anatomical diagrams to guess where the muscles would be if they were hidden by an item of clothing. Usain Bolt Serena Williams Reflection Overall, I still think I need a lot more practice when it comes to drawing...

In this lesson, we presented our pitch presentation. During the presentation, we discovered that one of our slides had gone missing and we weren't sure why. We made sure to send Rachel a working link with the missing slide included. Here is a link to our pitch presentation  Mask_Studios.pdf Reflection on your role in the pitch presentation In our pitch presentation, I feel as me and my team successfully spread the work out so we all had a equal part in its creation. We each allocated one slide per person and did the rest all together during the meeting discussing this. I was put in charge of the legal considerations slide. Unfortunately, compared to my peers I felt like my slide was lacking. It didn't have as much information on it but this was mainly due to this area being the one we've talked about the least. As a result of this, I made a few assumptions and tried to keep it brief. I posted the slide in our group discord and got feedback from some of my teammates who seem...

Date: 25/10/24  In Attendance: Me, Jake, Sam, Faye, Katie Meeting Agenda & My Role: The purpose of this meeting was to have a final look over our presentation and ensure everything is ready to present later today. The role of each of us in this meeting is to make sure the PowerPoint is ready for later and help those who may be behind. I brought up that some PowerPoint referenced in text and discussed if we should remove this or add it to all the slides. Decisions and/or Actions & Deadlines: We made some final changes to the aesthetic of the PowerPoint so nothing looked out of place and it matched our game aesthetic. Not everything was referenced in the PowerPoint so we all went over and added in the missing references. We made the decision to reference in text for all slides so I went back and added in those references. Reflection: Overall, this meeting went very well. Aside from a few missing references, everyone had completed their slides on time and we were confiden...

Environmental statement   I went into our shared OneDrive to get the environmental statement my teammate (Evie) wrote. I changed some words to make the brief we have chosen clearer and made sure it was readable and it easily fit on the slide. I took some time to read through it so I could carry over some point made in here onto the environment milestones slide. How will we all meet environmental milestones Environmental milestones are events and actions that have shaped environmental awareness, protection and management. I did some research and it seems the main environmental issues faced by the gaming industry is due to energy consumption of gaming hardware and data centres. I made sure to research the steps that the gaming industry was taking to reduce the impact of these issues. Not all of the research I found was relevant to what we are working on as a studio so I picked out a few that were. Cloud gaming Turn off pcs when not in use reference our environmental statement I only ...

Here are some early iterations of the Doctor! Here is an early concept sketch of the Doctor.

This meeting we focussed on the formative presentation! We decided to split the work load and assign each slide to a team member so we all had an equal part on it. We did all the important slides that needed a lot of input together. Here's what was assigned: We discussed having the majority of the work done by Wednesday to allow Evie to do some final checks. Sasha suggested using Milanote to help us gather character inspiration.

Insert Brushes  There are a range of brushes that allow you to insert a new shape into an existing one and the weld them together with DynaMesh. Inserted Geometry will force every other object into a masked state to allow you to transform the newly insert object before you join them together. You can also use symmetry with Insert Brushes. Working with Inserted Brushes Inserted meshes can be welded together with existing meshes using Dynamesh. After melding, you can add detail using Smooth, Clay buildup and move brushes/ You can also use Insert Brush as a means to subtract geometry. To do this, hold Alt whilst using the Insert Brush and then Dynamesh (Subtract) by using Ctrl Alt and drag into an empty space. You can also create your own models as Inserted Mesh Brushes. To create an inserted mesh brush Go into the tool tray Click create InsertMesh Click New Here are some screenshots of me trying out the inserted brushes. Inserting geometry using the inserted brushes Using the transpo...

I really liked the spider thumbnails I did inspired by Evie's work. This prompted me into beginning some research into underwater spiders in hopes I can somehow combine this idea with the leachate found in landfill.  A spider that I found quite interesting for this, is the Diving Bell Spider (Wikipedia). I found out that they're mainly mid to dark brown in appearance but their hairs on the abdomen appear to give it a dark grey velvet appearance on it's bell. I plan to conduct more research into these spiders as well as do a small study on their anatomy to help me design the mini boss. I wanted to create a robot with a hard exterior due to the harsh environment and it will also help with level progression. We plan to have a storm full of plastic, microplastics and leachate behind the Junkyard that stops the player from progressing into the next area without the correct gear. We plan to have the player kill the robot spider mini boss in order to harvest it's parts to then...

As part of our presentation, I was put in charge of the legal considerations slide. I wasn't entirely sure what this entailed so I spoke to my lecturer, Rachel. She reminded me that the presentation doesn't have to be perfect nor does it need to include everything in the guidelines. We might not have thought about everything listed and it's ok to discuss what we plan to do especially when it comes to topics we haven't discussed much. So far, the legal considerations is one of the areas we've discussed the least. A lot of the guidelines for this are on topics we haven't made any concrete decisions but I have included some of our suggestions. Here are our suggestions: Font – We haven’t had too much discussion on the fonts we would like to use. We thought about doing some research into fonts commonly used in visual novels and making a list of ones that caught our eyes. Once we’ve made this list, we will investigate the copyright law s urrounding these fonts.    ...

We each decided we'd like to design a character for our visual novel. We liked the idea of creating monster like characters that wore these masks to hide their identity. I immediately decided I wanted to make a plague doctor character and I checked with my team to make they were ok with this. We then had some discussion on what mental struggle our characters are suffering from. We decided to each do different struggles so we'd have more representation in our game. Once we all decided on the struggle and mask, we started on the visual research stage and created some mind maps that we linked to our Miro board. Character Mood Board Since I'm creating a plague doctor character, one of the first mood boards I did focussed on various plague doctor designs especially when it came to the mask. I really liked the idea of adding details/ decorations to the mask to personalise the character I'm creating a little more. Monster Mood Board I thought I'd create a separate mood boa...

My team decided we wanted to contribute to each others designs by doing some thumbnails for each character. We then took these thumbnails and created more taking elements from each set of designs. Here are the annotated thumbnails I created using inspiration from my teammates. Junkyard Mini Boss My own Designs, some were partly inspired by Sasha (1 and 2) Inspired by Holly Inspired by Nathan Inspired by Evie I got some feedback on the spider thumbnails which can be found in this blog here .