Damian Street: Games Art 2024 - 25

Date: 29/11/24 In Attendance: Me, Sam, Faye Meeting Agenda & My Role: To discuss contracts and create a sound brief Decisions and/or Actions & Deadlines: We made a start on the sound brief and agreed to use Beepbox to create our own music for the game. We discussed each of us creating simple tunes for each patient. We don't plan to make a lot of our assets until after Christmas so we'll update the sound brief over the course of this project with the assets we make. Katie and Jake weren't present for this meeting so we left notes on the sound brief and linked it into the discord. We didn't want to make too many decisions when two members of our team were absent. We decided that we'd consider making a commission contract to help us grasp the basics but we doubt we'll need to use it so it isn't a priority. I said I'd see if I could draft up an NDA. Reflections: Overall, this meeting went quite well despite missing two members. We made a good dent...

Basics Moving around unreal is quite similar to Maya. You can hold down left or right click and use WASD keys to navigate the scene. The green play button allows you to go into your scene and interact with it like a player. To exit this press ESC. Placing Objects To place objects do Window > Place Actors > Geometry > Click and drag the box Adding the box to the scene is once again, similar to maya. On the right hand side are the transform options. You don't scale the object using the scale in geometry, instead use the scale in brush settings. I added a box in unreal and scaled it using the brush settings Here are some shortcuts Shift 7 = editor Shift 1 = selection Textures To add textures it's Geometry > Select all adjacent (this makes sure the entire object is selected) Surface Materials > Select a material from the drop down menu Using what I've learnt about placing objects and textures, I modelled a simple gazebo and added various wood textures. Lighting T...

During this meeting, I asked for feedback on the spider mini boss as I was struggling with the design. My team told me that they thought I was overcomplicating it too much and to try and not worry about adding too many details.  We had a brief discussion on what we wanted to include on our character sheets. We settled for a front view, back view, colour palette and a few extras (this includes zoom ins, patterns, facial expressions, etc). Sasha and Evie also provided some examples in the discord to help explain what we were aiming for. We discussed doing some research into how to set up shaders that mimic cell shading in unreal so we can showcase our models. Holly said she'd look into this as she's the 3D lead. On the topic of our 3D assets, we had a discussion about the scale we'd be using for our models to make sure they're scaled correctly. We changed the grid size in Maya to the scale we were using but weren't sure how to do this for those using ZBrush. To combat...

Curve Brushes This uses Stroke > Curves combined with a standard sculpting brush to make a precise curve. Creating a Curve IMM Got Brush > Create > InsertMesh Whilst you have the InsertMesh button selected, you can do the following: Stroke > Curve Modifiers - Selects the Size and adjust Curve Falloff (changes the start and end of the geometry, this is useful for hair). Stroke > Curve > Turns off snap Brush > Modifiers - Turns on weld points Picker > Depth > Once Z - Changes starting angle I then tried to create a Curve Brush I created the strap in Maya and made sure it had a start, end and middle. I'm not very proficient in Maya so I only created a simple strap. My skill in Maya is something I strive to improve over the course of this year. Here I imported the 3 parts into ZBrush and assigned PolyGroups. I then merged the subtools and created an InsertMesh Brush. I struggled to find the properties I wanted so I took some screenshots of the menu's I us...

Date: 22/11/24 In Attendance: Me, Sam, Faye, Katie Meeting Agenda & My Role: The purpose of this meeting was to check up on everyone, discuss the script and create a list of assets we'll need for the game. Decisions and/or Actions & Deadlines: We discussed the creation of the script and decided to leave it intentionally vague so there's a bigger chance the players can relate to the patients. We discussed the character changing expressions depending on which route the player is currently going down (more stressed expressions = bad ending). Reflections: I think the assets we have planned are achievable as it's mostly character expressions with 1 background each + the therapists office. The style we are working in is quite simple and utilises cell shading which hopefully should help us complete these assets fairly quickly.

Gesture Drawings To warm up, Sam started us off by drawing some gestures with a time limit that I've noted down next to each sketch. He gave us some advice to stop caring about how good our sketches look or we'll be too scared to finish them which is something I am guilty of.  Clothing Folds  Then we moved on to studying the different types of clothing folds with some discussion on how the textiles of the clothes affect this. Leather is a tight fabric whilst wool is thick. Common types of clothing/ textiles: Cotton Linen Wool Leather Synthetics - various Diaper Fold Drop Fold Pipe Fold Half Lock Spiral Zig Zag Stretching and action poses After we drew all types of clothing folds, we were task with applying our knowledge to the action poses Sam gave us. We were given a time limit to draw the figure focussing on the clothing folds. We continued to draw the clothing folds in references but this time we were task to draw some without lifting the pencil. We were also tasked on some...

In this lesson, we chose from a list to design and sculpt a character from. Originally, I managed to narrow down my options to two prompts which was the steampunk explorer and celestial mage. Steampunk Explorer Celestial Mage I decided to go with the celestial mage prompt. I had more varied designs for this prompt and knew what shapes I wanted to use. I also had a rough idea of a personality in mind which helped me come up with a few pose ideas.

The main style focus for our game comes from the Monster Prom (Beautiful Glitch, 2018) franchise. Since I have played all the games, I was tasked by my team to find characters that best suit the aesthetics and appearance of the characters we are making. This will help me and my team mates replicate the style when it comes to designed our final character sprites. I have also included a lot of early character concepts that I got from the games galleries. Faye Zoe Zoe (Monster Camp, 2020 ) Lots of eyes Her main eyes and the eyes on her body can show different emotions/ look different. This could be a concept you can explore? Zoe's Deity/ True Form Zoe's Deity Form (Monster Prom, 2018) Zoe has a 'deity' form that's more monstrous/ beast like? Visible vein looking things could be good to show stress Glitch Glitch (Monster Roadtrip, 2022) Lots of eyes Eyes have accessories, could explore concepts similar to this? Maybe some eyes could be partially covered by notes etc Not...