Side Scroller Game - Post Mortem

So the last six weeks of the course have been taken up by one year wide group project. As a year we were to create a fantasy side scrolling game in Unreal Engine 4.
We were tasked to create four levels with the themes hot, cold, scary and happy, four NPC's and two main playable characters (male and female.)
The year was divided up into different teams based on their chosen skill. I worked on the character team and was given the task of creating the two main playable characters.
As the idea developed the main chracters eveolved in

I feel one of the things that went well for me this time round was my time management. I completed the two characters well within the time frame and keep to the deadlines we were set along the way.
I am happy with my designs and felt that this was a good learning experience for me to work on my anatomy, proportions and cloth sculpting skills.

My main disappointment with my own work is that I feel my material definitions weren't up to scratch. I feel that they need to read better as what they are. I also feel the colours are a bit blocky and need more variation and wear and tear. I will be redoing/improving the textures before putting them up on my portfolio.

The main problems I encountered through out this project were adapting my work pipeline to be suitable for the group project. Working as part of a group requires one to be flexible in your job role and be able to adapt to situations.
The main way I overcame this issue was that I talked to the other teams and worked out what other departments needed first and prioritized certain parts of my pipeline. For example, the engine team needed the rigged character to test in game, so I rigged the character first and textured later.
Another problem I encountered was in deciding the colour palette of my two characters. It was particularly challenging as the character must fit into all the levels, which all have different colour palettes.

To work out what would work best, I placed all the screenshots of the levels together and did paint overs of my characters in each scene, to see what would be consistent across the levels.
If we were given a similar project again I would have done all of my detailing in zbrush first. I ended up hand painting all the albeido and height maps for the belts, shoes and boots. At the time I thought I would save time but it actually took me longer than sculpting and baking.

I was relatively happy with the outcome of the project, it is certainly a nice feeling seeing your characters running around game levels.  It was a great experience to work as part of a larger team and work towards the same goal. I would like to redo some elements of my character for my own sake as I would probably give the characters a different colour palette to suit them better and improve my materials.

Kat

Visual Composition

Visual composition was never really something I properly thought about in my past work. My uninformed approach is normally to just go with what looks right by instinct and just settle with that.

Yet after being introduced to composition techniques in my visual design classes, my mind has well and truly been blown. I have had a glimpse into the importance of design, to think smart when creating an image, and to look further than simply the rule of thirds.  To be honest overall this year has been a mind changing roller coaster so far.

So, what did I discover? Well, there is a reason that masters work is so timeless, they were using incredibly clever and structured techniques to create an image that does exactly what the artist wants it to do. They understand what draws a person to an image, where do they look first and why? Once they understood this they started using set formula that means they can make the viewer see what they want them to. This is only in regard to visual composition, not even touching the other areas they had outstanding understanding of. 

I have also been reading a blog (http://www.ipoxstudios.com/canon-of-design/) in which these techniques are much better explained. I have only just started to get my head around it and I still have a lot to learn, I’ve had a glimpse but the stuff these guys were doing was so vast.  The author has been doing daily posts regarding different areas and explaining a lot of it so that I may start to understand what they were doing. I am hoping just having a basic understanding and trying to incorporate it in my own work will help me improve. 

It is odd to think, but what exactly have I been doing in my art education up to this point? It continues to baffle me how after 7 years of art education they failed to even properly mention basic drawing techniques. No wonder society thinks we just sit around drawing pretty pictures all day.

http://www.ipoxstudios.com/the-rule-of-thirds-killed-design-and-left-it-for-dead-65-of-365/

I really enjoy the blog posts where the author take the time to sit and break down some masters paintings; showing some of the thing they were doing. The link above is an analysed painting by William Adolphe Bouguereau and it is nicely broken down into the different elements used. 

Study and composition analysis by Miles Johnstone

My own analysis and study of 'Miss Elsie Palmer by John Singer Sergeant'

Planning and Concepting

Planning and concepting are two extremely vital parts of any project. A very misconceived opinion I seem to have noticed floating around is; 'I know how to do 3D, so I don't need 2D.' Obviously this is a load of rubbish. Your 3D work is going to benefit and improve tenfold if it has started with decent planning and decent concepts. One of the main focus'/realizations I have had this year is that having a good foundation in your 2D skills is more helpful that just being a wiz at 3D modelling. Developing an understanding of form, composition, and other basic drawing skills takes a long time. The more confident you are with it the better as it is easily transferred to your 3D work. Where as learning the 3D sides is often simply a case of looking it up on the internet.

In regards to concept art, there seems to be a massive misconception as to what it is. If you look up concept art you will usually find, beautifully polished and rendered pieces of work with a strong, well established visual style. So there is a general census that this is what concept art is right?
Well, another of my realizations this year is that actually no, what we are fed by the media as 'concept art' is not that at all. The stuff we are fed would be better named as 'promo art.'

Wikipedia says: 

'Concept art is a form of illustration where the main goal is to convey a visual representation of a design, idea and/or mood for use in films, video games, animation, or comic books before it is put into the final product.'

This gives a better explanation of what it is; while this is the general description of what it is, concepting is a lot longer and more thoughtful process than that. There is a tonne of work that goes through a process of developing thumbnails, variations or iterations of ideas before getting close to the final designs; most of it is scrapped or vastly changed. 

But this is vital to the process, it is extremely important to be critical and to be clever throughout the design process. It is not just simply drawing pretty pictures all day; it is an intelligent process where the concept artist is creating these images with a very specific purpose and idea in mind.

The fact that the public idea of concept art is warped is mainly becuase of the stuff that is relaeased as concept art. While this has a negative impact on students and amateurs who want to pursue a career in concept art; creating unrealistically high standards for them and restricting them from the real techniques that concept artists use, it is understandable why this has happened.

A company is not going to want to release concept art throughout the design process;

'Companies only release concept art when it is polished and final enough to represent the actual product. Nobody wants a design go viral, which is possibly later rejected and have customers imprint a wrong visual key.' - How not to suck at game design (explains topic very nciely.)

Planning and concepting needs to be treated as a vital part of the design process. It should be done in an intelligent and reflective fashion; seeking as much feedback and criticism as you go. This will push oneself further and nail the key visuals before processing to a more finalized product. It also should not end at the beginning, being prepared to go back and develop more is also important. For example, doing paint overs of an existing level or character is going to help move the idea further. Planning and concepting ensures that the project will run smoother but also is a constant through the whole design process.

I found a thing.