Unit 04 Communication Through Art and Design

these are some illustrator tutorials we completed in class

the assignment was to make words expressive, showing what they mean through distorting and changing the word slightly, usually invoking ideas and meanings behind he word to help form a connection with the viewer.

in this task i had to explore typographic variations using a haiku poem, changing typeface, size, layout and style all to creating different effects and really show the meaning of the poem. for example, i used the word "void" in a separate area to show loneliness but also the typeface i chose is quite pretty to me, the fact of nothingness is a beautiful concept to me as we as humans cannot imagine nothingness.  

Recipe design 

in this task we had to create a recipe design that would show the properties of making a meal rather then the traditional text layout of a cookery book.

i first looked at the online medium of showing a though or feeling through an image, otherwise known as the "meme"

i wondered if i could create a recipe design that would be understandable to this generation and the meme was the perfect format, it showed humour but still made it possible to follow
this was the outcome.

                                                         Posters

for this task i have had to create 2 film, music or food festival posters for in or around bristol

first i had to research many different posters relating to the specific subject matter, adding annotations to help me and others understand the visual process leading up to the initial and final designs 

i then had to make a few mood boards to broaden my research findings to help come up with original design, one for the visual, one for the typography and one for inspiring design

for the inspiring design portion i chose to gather images from the area that i live in to get an idea of what is eye capturing to the local populous.

these are a few quick typeface designs i came up with, nowhere near finished but just to get an idea of what i want

finished designs of the posters

unit 70 game story development

How story is used to enhance gameplay in computer games.

Storytelling has been around since the dawn of human intelligence, it is one of the single most important tools we have at our disposal to understand other members of our species and one of the oldest forms of entertainment. We use it to create beautiful universes… or destroy them.

The art of story telling through a vast number of mediums has helped grow our socially reliant species for countless generations and this newest generation is about to take storytelling to the next level in human society.

But before we revolutionise storytelling beyond recognition we should take a look at the evolution of storytelling.

The first storytellers of our species were crude barbaric apelike humans, but despite the sense of any intelligence they actually paved the way for generations to build upon and refine the fundamental rules of story telling. The way these first humans would have communicated would have been through the use of heavy-handed body gestures and perhaps even some speech, although it would have been a very basic language if any.

Later this moved onto cave paintings, basic shapes representing great hunts and other topics of social importance to the tribes of old.

Once we had a grasp on verbal communication and artistic representation written text and an even greater ability to exaggerate and spin fantastic tales to one another, such as myth and legend, would follow.

As we advanced with our communities and technologies a deeper understanding of social complexity and interaction would be needed. Humans never lived in such prosperity, a sure dominance over nature and vast numbers of people living in confined cities and villages- a form of entertainment would be devised for the masses, a way to entertain hundreds of people though story based narrative, plays and theatre.

These stories would call upon the human quality to imagine, imagine and show the world what you were thinking or creating through speech and choreographed movement

Theatre is one of the first methods to truly encapsulate the finer points of story telling, it was refined, well written and prepared rather then blurted out of the mouth with no though for execution. It was digestible entertainment brought to the masses.

From this sprouted many forms of genre. Comedy, drama, action, horror and more but with all of this ability there would be one fatal flaw- interest. Humans cannot be interested for large amounts of time with out reason, a sense of personal gain in some form. Without being able to justify a reason to stay and watch these plays, people would loose interest and go back to their normal everyday lives so the way in which stories were written would have to evolve to match human need, they needed to be written to evoke more emotion then laughter or fear, they had to start writing with more complexity and the ability to connect with the audience.

So story telling made another grand leap by involving the listeners, writing it so that you your self would feel for these made up people, feel emotions deeper then anything you were expecting to feel, in fact more emotion than you would spend on a stranger, but it wasn’t just a connection you were being made to feel but instead a complex and deeper understanding of this created world and all of its inhabitants, characters became 3 dimensional, they became fiction and non-fiction, they became plausible, they became our friends and family.

For hundred of years this would be the accepted from of story telling, until the further advancement of technology in our culture. We became able to harness electricity and bend everything in nature to our will. Invention was on the rampage and with this came television. Television was a gateway for easy access entertainment. It brought theatre and a whole host of other informative programmes to the masses. it revolutionised our ability to send information, knowledge and entertainment to people but again story had to evolve. It became paramount to make story telling even more appealable to vast numbers of people. Everybody has different taste in comedy, horror and other themes so story telling had to become universally digestible to the masses. With books and art the story it would invoke would be based on the person and the message it would convey would be personal, based on personal preference, you would choose to see it or not but with television story writing and telling would have to be more general and this dulled some of the beautiful content entertainers would often be able to express in more independent settings. TV became a mainstream affair that could offer varied information and stories but it wasn’t being used to its full potential.

Next begins the era of computers, the Internet and video gaming.

With the invention of smaller home computers and the Internet came a revolution in information sharing, opening our minds to vast stores of culture, art and technology.

With the arrival of video games into this mix came a variety of developers trying to find their feet and understand what they could do this this new form of entertainment. At first it was crude 8 bit sprites moving up and down or shooting, albeit basic it gave the public its first look into what it would be like to control a character, make it do what you wanted and allow you to dive into a new world. Story telling has done this for centuries but the introduction of video games allowed for total immersion in these new settings.

It would be years before technology could compliment the story intertwined with gameplay. The arrival of cinematic cut scene would add more depth to character and story progression, giving you a view into the world of your protagonist, allowing you to take control of him or her and help them along the levels to open up more of the story line eventually culminating in a grand battle with a final boss, usually fought by you the player allowing for even more immersion and then ending in one more climactic cinematic cut scene. This made gaming truly story driven, giving you a reason to play these tales of otherworldly brilliance. It allowed for not only human interaction between you and the character you were controlling but it also allowed the imagination to truly shine, the visual creation of things that were not real or bound to our physical reality. We became gods in a world created for our pleasure.

But we were still limited to the technology of the time, so the next logical step would be to upgrade out arsenal in home entertainment. Newer generations of video consoles gave birth to more dynamic systems of gameplay, further allowing for game titles to advance and incorporate new storytelling techniques such as dramatic set pieces like the call of duty franchise would use.

One of the newest modes of immersive storytelling would be the ability to create your own story in these games, everything you killed or saved would effect the outcome of the ending truly giving you a physical and emotional tie to the world your given run of, for example, the world of mass effect would put you at the hands of commander Sheppard, a man trying to save the universe from destruction but it’s the way you were given free roam to explore, the ability to recruit people to your cause to make the final battle easier as an optional thing, being able to speak to almost anyone with an almost endless tree line of different speech prompts with a ever changing response to your character and his intentions. All of this made story telling through gaming finally truly interactive story telling with multiple stories waiting to be played and replayed.

With the newest generation of consoles released we have yet to see the full potential of what they can do but one things certain, the evolution and maintenance of a well written story will be paramount in the production of visually and playable games of the future.

                                                                    narrative practice

in this unit i had to first create a short story to help me form an understanding of how to correctly write narrative, this would form a basis for future story development. the short story was comprised of 5 different images and with those images i had to write sentences filled with adverbs, adjectives,nouns and verbs. once the task was completed we had to evaluate our outcomes

is your story believable? well yes because the story was based on the OJ Simpson trial

is your story rhythmic? it has a beginning, middle and end the only part that is not rhythmic is the very last picture that shows ron burgundy with the quote " well that escalated quickly  "

do your sentences sound meaningful of emotional? well to the feed back from my work partner, it created emotion with the "family man" and the basis of the story was meaningful because it related to a real world event

is your story enjoyable? my work partner laughed quite hard when he saw it

do you want to find out more? i have read more on the subject of oj simpson

                                                        part 2

for this task we had to write for a solid 15 minutes, describing a meaningful event or dream in my life using large amounts of verbs, nouns, adverbs and adjectives.

ill let you decide if its a dream or and actual event.....

i was running so fast, so intensely, trying to escape the burning hatred and humiliation of what they had done, what they had done so carelessly, knowing how much i had felt for that poisonous bitch. somehow i knew the secret they tried to keep hidden even before i had found out the truth. i could see it etched on their faces, screaming to be told but still they insisted on binding them selves to the lie they constantly reassured me to. were they repeatedly reassuring me or them selves?

                                               notes on a headline

In this task we have to make notes about potential story development based on the news headline I found.

News headline “ human remains fall from the sky in Saudi Arabia; incident could be related to emergency landing of flight with landing gear malfunction”

Notes on the headline…

Human remains fall from sky, could be a premise for an end of days type story sort of like the knowing

The story is narrated, as the game progresses?  Read like the entries of a diary as you advance so it seems like this story has already played out but is being retold.

The playable character is the person narrating so it’s a recount of your life

Human remains fall from the skies; rivers turn red like blood, plague and droughts.

This all relates to a prophecy that had been uncovered from the ancient times e.g. a cave painting by stone age man or from a lost time of a great civilisation?  This causes wide panic as the events seemingly coincide as the “prophecy “plays out, this sets in a chain of events that breaks down all civilised life, killing, rape and cannibalism set in as the world becomes shadowed in darkness, they wait years for the final cataclysmic prediction to come to fruition as anarchy still reigns,

He learns that all of these events were natural phenomenon and not of religious telling’s.

Humanity just took it to far and believed too much into the prophecy, actively finding out natural disaster and assuming they were apart of the prophecy.  Unfortunately the world turned into a state of decay and all of its resources had been plundered or fell into disrepair and forgotten

He learns that there is real chances of the world ending as the fail safes preventing nukes to be launched have all been by passed by the main villain who believes that he is a messenger from god and he has been sent to wipe clean the earth of human existence.

Your objective is to stop the nukes from being launched worldwide and destroying life, hoping to one day re-establish humanity as they once were

Story could end 2 ways

1.     You don’t stop him, life is destroyed- narrative from the player explains that your efforts weren’t enough to stop him, and reflects stating”the prophecy was true and it was all in gods plan, he tested you and as he expected humanity’s will to survive simply wasn’t strong enough

2.     You do stop him, narrative and cut scene shows you stopping him and years later the beginning of rebuilding humanity, narrative explains that you were right, they were all natural phenomenon and we just put to much faith into prophecy’s and god, and we must strive to unite as a race focusing on higher goals of a sustainable future but does mention that maybe there was a god and maybe all of the explainable coincidence were interpreted those thousands of years ago as horrific things but they didn’t have the scientific knowledge to understand it and if it was a test of humanity’s will to survive, we passed it but will never know if god exists truly

This is a lucid chart showing how some of the dialogue could be generated, using the format from games like Fallout or Skyrim. you enter into a conversation with an NPC and you are give two or three different responses which will change how the NPC will react to you, for example in my dialogue the choices you can make are based on charisma or aggression, depending on the stats you have in the game relating to those attributes the NPC will react in different ways, its your choice and ability to read the situation that will determine weather you will be successful in your endeavour or not. 

this is a CSI type mind map detailing some information about the story development and character backgrounds. the images shown are of the antagonist (right) and the protagonist (left), they were created using a program that allows you to use hundreds of different facial features to create a unique face, a little like the police use to get a picture of who has committed the crime.

this i a character profile template for the main character 

this is a link to two of my games in text adventure

http://make.textadventures.co.uk/Play/Play.aspx?id=33025

http://make.textadventures.co.uk/Play/Play.aspx?id=28538

copy and paste the links(above) into the search bar 

Unit 01 Visual Recording

 in this exercise we had to re-imagine a "nice" game character in a more horror type setting, i decided to add the element of horror by making the image more dark and gloomy, making it more deep and adding to the horror theme. i also decided to have princess peach hanging by her arms from the front of bowsers ship to allow for a more tortured look. if you study Mario, you can see he is holding a bloody wrench- the wrench being the tool of Mario's trade but the blood signifies that he has killed to get to where he is and with the intensity of his run showing he is ready for another bloody battle to the death with his arch enemy.

to create the full image i decided to draw each part separately and then piece them together by using layers and slight blending to make the image seem more natural.

original sketches

these were the original sketches pre-photoshop, in order to create the final poster i scanned them into photoshop and traced the lines then to adding colour.

task 2- redesign a popular game character as a popular art work

to begin with i looked at art styles and had really good idea of what i wanted to do with the character i had chosen- sonic the hedgehog.

ive always wanted to try my hand a pointillism but was always decided against it because i knew how large the task was.

i looked at Seurat the famous pointillist who created the famous "an afternoon at la grande jatte"

i realised the depth and attention to detail  that was needed to create a brilliant piece of pointillist art 

this is the final design without any black outline which is true to many pointillist art works- instead of painting the image with an outline you allow the image to form free of lines.

this piece took me around 13-14 hours to complete which is why ive never attempted this type of artwork before but i am very happy with the outcome.

task 3 - develop an original character

i first began with basic thumbnail images to show body types, stance and heights.

then i went on to doing a character mind map, jotting down ideas on what kind of attributes i would want my character to have. looks, backstory, good or evil and possibly why he is the protagonist.

i decided upon the idea of a Neanderthal, battling the elements of ice age Britain to save his family from a fate worse then death.  

we later began a few drawing exercises based on making inanimate things human

this was a fun idea so i began making wacky designs like a fork and a knife fighting

this drawing here shows a progression from bottle with arms to o giraffe lamp post. this got my creative juices going so i began to further this design- so i asked myself a simple question "what is associated with street lights?" my answer, cctv cameras. so i doodled a humanoid cctv camera which i liked the look of so began to expand on it.

i came up with this image, inspired by popular game characters such as the "geth" from popular game franchise "mass effect

and after studying the images of the geth i began to understand how to get the stance and form to look mechanical whilst still keeping to a bi-pedal human look.

i scanned my concept drawing into photoshop and began to trace the image whilst making little tweaks to my design to update and incorporate the designs from the mass effect universe, smoothing out the torso and removing the large talon like blades from his arms and replacing them with a mechanical looking exoskeleton 

i then prcede to add a background to give  it more life

 

in order to make it seem like a robot, i gave it metal cabling for its muscle fibres by simply finding a picture of industrial cable and warping it to fit- 

i then cropped an image of a camera lens for the "face" and added a screen captured image from an alien from the movie aliens to create the ribcage filled with wires and cables

DEVELOP AND ORIGINAL GAME LEVEL INSPIRED BY

 ARTWORKS AND ARTISTS

so first of all for this project i started off by thinking of games that really made an impact on me and instantly i thought of the reboot for devil may cry called imaginatively DMC. i may joke about this but even if the name was nothing "out of the box", the level design was certainly inspiring.

 i had loved playing the original devil may cry games as a kid but i didn't play it for the scenery, in fact i thought it was quite lacking and some levels were deigned poorly (devil may cry 2) but in this reboot they had made the environment beautiful and almost alive when you entered the world of "limbo" and i wanted to recreate this in my game because it captured my imagination, the world being torn apart, walls collapsing on you and hallways becoming longer and longer, it was like the environment was alive, and the grungy/ punky art style made it even better, it was something out of a psychotic circus!

so i started to look at references from the real world for this concept, and i remember from a few years back i saw these street artists in paris that were literally drawing on the pavement to create 3D looking objects on the flat surface of the street.

i searched this on in google images and came back with these two images because they captured what i wanted most, a hellish landscape falling into the earth and the bottom one depicting tormented human forms climbing up from the floor. this is what i wanted, the balance or even change from the normal world we look at to an almost parallel universe that exists with ours but unseen, showing a deformed hellish version of the world we live in.

and then i looked at building design and i thought skyrims medieval towns would be the best as i was thinking that this in-game idea of revealing a hidden dark work could actually be a "rip in space time" revealing the modern world in place of the old medieval world you inhabit. the idea of this being the future of our world would look to be a demonic frightening place to the people of the past. i could use the ghostly effect that DMC used to show humans in the world of limbo

here are a few nordic concept designs by the man who visually created fallout 3 and the nordic game skyrim.

this is a 900 year old nordic building just for a visual aid of the real thing

 the man who created and helped create this stunning concept artwork was called adam adamowicz, he sadly died after a battle with cancer but the visual legacy of these vibrant and jaw dropping landscapes will inspire and live on.

 these are two street view concepts from DMC and skyrim, in creating my level i have to take elements from both and meld them together, or i can use the "street art/ ground illusion art" to create the idea of moving from one plane of time to the other

this is an initial design in photoshop

coloured 

after adding colour i decided to give it a little more life by giving it a sense of depth using the cave like entrance as a foreground and the sky as a background.