#gamedevelopment2

Game Development 2 - Part Three

This post was originally published on February 12th, 2020

I don’t think character design is a particular strong point of mine, so I really wanted to take the time to assemble something I would be really proud to sculpt. When we initially began, most of the focus was on anatomy of the character - so we began looking up research and references of faces that we would want to reference.

I began looking at references of girls that were a bit younger. With the thematic of my project, I think this is an important aspect that needs to be communicated to the player - both through anatomy and through style. I collected some imagery of woman that had very “young” features like large eyes - such as Mars Argo and Frances Bean Cobain - as I thought they communicated this idea really well in their anatomy. Despite being 32, you would probably guess from her facial proportions that she’s in her early twenties.

I think that she has a really interesting face that would be nice to play around with - but at the same time, I wouldn’t want my model to fall intro the trap of feeling too animated against realism - so I’m really going to have to play to find a nice medium.

Another thing that is notable about her face is the way she sometimes applies her makeup - sometimes applying things like white to her waterlines to make her eyes appear larger. This got me thinking about the way that I will need to apply makeup to the model. While sculpting will be really important, makeup can really offset facial features, so I’m going to need to really pre-plan the way I do this long with the rest of the characters outfit.

So because of this, I began looking at different makeup looks and styles to try and compliment the themes I want to show in my game.

When I began thinking about the way I wanted to show the makeup and the outfit of the character, I knew I wanted to do something stylized and dated. The idea with the game will more be a retrospective on idolization of the past and times shifting, so I wanted the way the character looks to represent this. I began looking at makeup that felt very graphic and fun, but dated. Things that are very iconic and recognizable - I began looking at face makeup from the 60′s and 70′s.

In terms of the design of the makeup, I wanted it to feel like a nice medium between the past and the present. As someone who does their own makeup daily, I designed a few looks I wanted to try and then tested them out on myself. I thought that it would probably translate better onto a 3D model to practice the designs in 3D rather than in 2D so I had a better understanding of shape and what the makeup was doing to my features.

I think I liked the first look the most as it was really graphic and fun. Interestingly, the way that the eye-shadow is blocked in and the eyeliner is shaped basically creates a new lid, which creates a very large and unnatural looking eye. I thought that this would be really fun to play with. I like the softer looks as well, but I felt the more graphic look was more impactful - but most importantly, it feel the most obvious. In the other makeup looks, I was changing my anatomy with more subtly - redrawing my crease, blending and giving the look an overall more natural feel. With the graphic look it becomes heavy and unnatural, which makes the makeup easier to read in terms of knowing that is real and what isn’t when you come closer to it. Ultimately, I’ll just have to see how this translates when it comes to the final model.

At the same time, I also began looking at some of the fashion styles I wanted to replicate. I think with the ideas I had in the basis of my story - being set in California and kind of having a surf vibe to it - I thought it would be most appropriate look at a time period when this kind of culture was iconic - so I began looking for inspiration from specifically the 70′s and the 90′s - which are both iconic and unique in two separate ways.

I began looking at all kinds of things - t-shirts, bombers, shorts, skirts, patterns, rollerblades - everything I could to bring together the kind of style I wanted so that I could reference these for a board of sketches. Once I collected a good level of inspiration I really wanted to just begin sketches.

I often find when I’m doing these initial sketches I get really frustrated at the way I draw versus what I would like to accomplish. When I first began work trying to create a template for the fashion I found I was getting really frustrated, so I looked into some of the concept work in some of the video game art books I already have for inspiration.

A lot of them began with using silhouettes and colourless sketches to create a baseline aura for the character. Using these as a reference helped me create ideas on paper that were similar to what I wanted to accomplish from a character sheet and helped me feel more confident. It was really good to see how these ideas were started in industry and helps me get to a point where I wasn’t frustrated with every detail.

As I kept practicing, I finally got to a place where I created a template that I was happy to work from that didn’t feel too stiff or rigidly referenced while maintaining the seven-and-a-half-head anatomy that I needed. It helped me feel a lot more confident in the work and allowed me to create a wider range of designs and really experiment with different looks. 

I wanted to work with a range of different styles and fits to the clothing, including in some ways that I wouldn’t consider wearing clothing. I think one thing that’s really important when considering clothing female characters is the fit of the clothes, and how you want clothes to wear and rest to meet an aesthetic. Luckily, as a woman (and an avid fan of RuPaul’s Drag Race!), I’ve had more than enough experience in this. When I did my character sketches, I really wanted to break down the look and feeling - so I went into annotation of what I was trying to accomplish with each look; why are some aspects oversized, why I specifically specify a men’s fit, why I used certain fabrics and what cultural aspects they come back to.

I felt very inspired by some of the reference imagery of the cultures of California, so I didn’t limit it to cute-skirt-and-a-totally-rad-top-I-found-on-depop. I also began looking at things like Chicana culture and other forms of fashion and expression used by minorities in California (as at this point, my character didn’t particularly have a set ethnicity or style). 

Because a lot of the fashion was very graphic back then as well, I also coincided some of my designs with some graphic designs as well that I would hopefully be able to use. I referenced a lot of graphic designs, fonts, quotes and lyrics that I felt appropriate for the designs I wanted to produce:

These decals were intended to be able to be used in a few different areas if I wanted to - on shirts, as patches for jackets or for jeans and skirts too.

Some of these designs were intended to be for either a front patch or a shirt design, other were things like back patches for jackets and other. I also created some designs and quotes that ran off of the backs of each other, so that I could use multiple patches with the same theme in one outfit (”some things just change in a day” / “or even in an hour”).

I referenced a lot of Californian and surf culture inspired typography. I used typefaces from different cultures as a means of getting in that “melting pot” Americana aspect that I discussed in one of my previous posts - if I don’t end up using it, I’ll definitely use it somewhere - like on environmental signage. I do really like the way it looks up against things like the surfboard so it’s definitely something to keep in mind.

In the end, I created a big large board of designs that I was considering - each with annotation and explanations to the style, fit and design choices.

I then took some of my favourites and went into more detail - did a back and a front and really tried to develop my idea and sow what I was really trying to do with the fabrics and break everything down. I was inspired by some of the concepting done in the second Alice game, where they did very specific breakdowns of everything that was relevant to the design process and referenced everything. I also think by having boards in this style, I’ll be able to communicate my design work a lot more clearly and effectively and hopefully it will look a lot cleaner in a portfolio.

I then made a final render of the front and back of my design just for the clarity of having a definitive design.

To help me get the project on it’s feet, Danny scanned my face so that I can work from it as a base in ZBrush. I’m really excited to be able to work with the data and manipulate it. I’m not sure how it’s going to go, but I’m just going to fire through it and hopefully it’ll be an easy process.

Game Development 2 - Part Two

This post was originally published on January 29th, 2020

In my last entry I discussed the general thematic of what I wanted to accomplish, but I was thinking that I would need to go a little more in depth with the means of execution. I’ve been looking at a lost of sort of point and click style recent adventure games. I didn’t want the gameplay to feel too heavy over the narrative as well as really focusing on homing in on the things that I’ve learned over the first semester into the second.

I really wanted to focus on games that were particularly known for the execution of their narrative with gameplay elements of less strength - such as games like Life is Strange or some of the Telltale style games (The Wolf Among Us, The Walking Dead, etc.) These games were very popular when they were released among all genres of gaming fans - although more mature in narrative, the gameplay elements weren’t hardcore and didn’t have elements that would feature a learning curve. The most that would happen in terms of quick-paced thinking and reaction times would be things like quick time events. These games were really enjoyable and because of their narrative elements also found popularity on platforms such as Youtube - because they were extremely easy to play and watch.

I’d sort of like to replicate the elements where the played is instructed to interact with certain elements of the environment, but rather than triggering interaction, perhaps trigger an element relating back to the environmental storytelling. By allowing the player to interact with the environmental aspects at their own pace, they can chose what’s important to them. I think I would like to do this with as little vocal commentary as possible so to fit the idea that the environmental storytelling is an important aspect of the project - but I definitely think I would like to utilise subtitles to some extent for quotations and references that I feel are important to the narrative - as a lot of the narrative derives from lyrical influences.

I’ve begun creating a visual script that’ll hopefully allow me to visualise everything before creating a small storyboard and animatic for some of the non-gameplay scenes I would like to create. I’m not actually fantastic at writing stories, so it’s coming along quite slowly - especially considering I want the narrative to feel quite floaty and not particularly direct to an outcome. I have a rough idea of where I want the story to go, but I’m struggling of finding an enthralling way of getting there.

Game Development 2 - Part One

This post was originally published on January 23rd, 2020.

“...I miss long beach, and I miss you babe, I miss dancing with you the most of all. I miss the bars where the Beach Boys would go - Dennis’ last stop before Kokomo.”

At the beginning of the year, I had an idea of a project that I potentially wanted to accomplish but didn’t really know when I would want to go about creating the vision I had in mind. I think when it comes to the way I envision video games, I don’t really think of a clear final execution - I just create concepts and scenes in my head from influential imagery, sound and writing. Sometimes this works it’s way into a bigger concept, sometimes its just the basis for things to come.

One of my favourite artists released an album last year and a music video for one of my favourite songs on the record. Although she’s a really big part of my life and has been for almost ten years now, I don’t really create art directly inspired by her. I think my work is always influenced by hers in some capacity, but I never sit down and create things with the basis of “this work is directly based on this song, or this artistic output of hers”.

“The Greatest” is the eleventh song from Norman Fucking Rockwell! and is arguably one of the best songs Lana Del Rey has ever written. The song’s lyrics focus on nostalgia for a range of things - people, places and music - and how she misses how things used to be.

When I first listened to the song, I think what I enjoyed about it the most was the contrast between the song’s title and the contents of the lyrics. In the first few lines, she talks about all the beautiful things she misses - how “on fire” everything felt and how alive her world was. The title of the song makes you believe it’s a reference to these things - how all these things were “the greatest”.

In reality, the title isn’t a reference to how these things were the greatest to her - but how losing these things and the loss of culture is her facing “the greatest” loss of them all. How her nostalgia of her past, her relationships and her culture are present in her character. I loved the contrast between the positivity of the times she remembers and the negativity of the loss. Everything felts grand and beautiful until it wasn’t.

I wanted to create a concept that aesthetically replicates the style of the music video that she created for it. I love the use of colour palettes, neon and mute tones that she uses here - as well as bending the styles and the eras that she reminiscences about to create a vision that seamlessly incorporates these contrasting periods.

When I started doing research, I looked at a range of things environmentally. I want to go for a very California surf vibe, as I feel like these kinds of aesthetics are very relaxed and fun and make for a good retrospective. Sun, beaches and warm radiate happiness and calmness so I think this would make a great aesthetical thematic. With my moodboard, I mostly wanted to capture a few things - things like architecture, fashion and photo image quality were at the forefront. In these images I selected, I wasn’t really choosing a connected palette between the elements of the images - just an overall “mood”.

In my research folder, I’ve also got a lot more sections than I think I’ve had before because I feel like I would like to replicate aspects of the culture well and really break down the elements that I want to reproduce. I also looked at specific elements of architecture, graphic design and contextualised some of the cultural influences that create the “melting-pot” of not only skate and surf cultures, but considerations of immigration to the Americana aesthetic (Hawaiian, Chinese, etc.) I think when using these elements, I’ll have to be quite sparing as to not overbleed too much or oversaturate one thing over the other. It’s definitely going to be a balance - and I can actually potentially see some of these outside cultural influences being axed later on for that reason.

I also took screenshots from the music video and used the mosaic effect in photoshop to create some small “palettes” and colour scripts. I screenshotted about 12 scenes where I really enjoyed the use of colour so that I could analyse them - and from there decide on what kind of effects I could replicate for the scenes I plan on creating. One thing I really enjoyed looking at these screens was how the colour reflects back onto her and changes her appearance. I think this will be a really interesting thing I could use to project moods onto the character I have to create - to consider this, I’ll probably have to create a character design with a lot of muted colours so the lighting projections work better.

I think when I envision what I want to create, the project is really going to rely on a lot of post-processing, colour grading and unity as a finished piece.

I’m going to start throwing together more character sketches considering what I want the protagonist of the game to look and feel like - as obviously this is what is the most important. I have also begun looking at Californian fashion trends and makeup trends, but I’d like to save this for a future entry so that I can have everything in one cohesive piece.