During this semester, we are to team up with the Game Design students and work to create a game prototype – more specifically the ‘Vertical Slice’ stage. During this assignment I will be tasked to create a story driven vertical slice, that focuses on developing artistic elements of a game. The project should demonstrate the use of art and animation assets informed by a pre-production plan. The development should be undertaken within a games engine. As animation students, we should focus on the art direction, art assets and animation of the project. The games design students will focus on the narrative design, game mechanics and level design. Within this project I will achieve to work together with my chosen group of animation students and games design students, fit into and experiment with my chosen role – hard surface modelling / texturing, and collaborate ideas to eventually produce a game prototype.
On the first week I met up with my new team members. They consist of Daniel, John, James, Katie, Matthew, Patrick, Turlough, Filip and Adam. Once we got to know each other and showcase our work – we started to brainstorm ideas for creating a game prototype. we first of all thought about the perspective within a game etc. first person, third person, side scroller, 2.5D and more. We were all fond of creating a first person game so we focused on this as we made more ideas. We all preferred to create this game in 3D. We speculated different game types/genres and we really liked the idea of combining horror and puzzle. We thought about a setting that this horror/puzzle game would work in, like a hotel, or a morgue. We listed our favourite, and similar looking existing games for inspiration. These included Outlast, Little nightmares, and Cry of Fear.
Our first initial concept was about waking up on a train, and trying to escape – each carriage was a different style in a different era, and you would complete puzzles to escape each one. Though there would be an evil conductor trying to keep you inside – the further you get through the carriages, the more disheveled and zombie-like he becomes.
We all were interested in the idea, and decided to continue our brainstorming within Miro Board.
We brought in most of the ideas made on the whiteboard during class, but added a few more points to develop our concepts.
We started up a server, and communicated within Discord to think of some solid ideas to choose from, and how they may look. To capture a solid vision of our ideas, we wrote them down on sticky notes what theme, game mechanics and style they would be in, and gathered images and art to convey a starting visual.
Our train horror puzzle idea consisted of the same description as above but we tried to focus on what kind of mechanics would work well with the theme. We also thought about the challenges of the game eg. the evil conductor, and becoming frozen in the wintery conditions. We later developed this idea to start inside the train station, and navigating around the area to use the train to escape, by finding supplies and fuel.
Our mood board included images of different eras of carriage designs, inside a train station, vintage art style, and character designs.
Another idea came about with a similar first person horror/puzzle genre. It was set in a Belfast hotel, where you are a detective investigating a case, taking a night stay at a hotel secretly run by a cult. Investigating further into the hotel and how it could be related to her cases, she would solve puzzles within the area, and protecting herself from the cult. To win you have to escape the hotel. We thought this was a good solid idea, and we could have conceptualised an interesting narrative connecting missing person cases, to a cult that took over a hotel.
Our mood board included images of dark, spooky hotel rooms/halls, and a collection of existing Belfast hotels.
One more idea we developed on was quite different from the others, but had the same first person horror/puzzle genre. This time it is about a boy with a phobia of dolls/toys, he runs from his mother, runs into a toy store, but gets locked inside. There are toys inside that look friendly, but the further he goes into the store, the more scary and horrifying they look. We developed many mechanics for this idea such as using a torch to navigate around, movable objects to complete puzzles, having limited stamina, and hiding from moving dolls.
Our mood board included images of toy stores, illustrated and real, dolls and creepy designs, and structures of toy stores/storage rooms.
We made a vote within discord of these couple of ideas to move forward with and develop, and the toy store idea won! We continued with its development and broadened the narrative.
( Four people voted for idea 4 – train station, and 5 voted for idea 7 – toy store)
Before I start my role as texturing / hard-surface modeller, I wanted to research each part of the role and how they take on the job in an industry video game project.
Typically a texture artist’s job is to produce surfaces for settings, environments, objects and characters with the use of artistic elements. They may require knowledge in particular textures of real life such as organic features / skin, textiles, geographical features and building features. For a video game, a texture artist would work with modellers and technical directors to provide and effective way to showcase textured elements into a game. Texture artists start by finding reference of materials from existing media, or from life sources. Texture artists use software such as 3D Substance, and painting software to enhance and bring assets to life, and stick to consistent look/visual for each project.
Source: https://polycount.com/discussion/218529/2d-texture-artist
A hard-surface modeller’s job is to produce hard surface assets such as weapons, vehicles, machinery, hand-held objects and more, using 3D modelling tools. They may require knowledge of all sorts of hard surface assets and how they are constructed to accurately capture their shape and function. They would usually work with the art directors and technical directors to ensure the models are following the game’s visual style, and keeping at top quality. Hard-surface modellers use software such as Maya or Blender to produce effective props and objects for the environment or setting of a video game.
Source: https://www.skillshare.com/classes/Hard-Surface-Modelling-in-Maya-2022/554432905
Sources:
https://opmjobs.com/job/hard-surface-artist-console-games-derby/
https://www.cgspectrum.com/career-pathways/texture-artist
https://www.foundry.com/insights/film-tv/texturing-video-games
Now that I have knowledge of both roles, I can prepare myself for this project to take on the necessary tasks for these roles, starting with brainstorming.
During this week, we also set up our first update presentation about what our idea is, and what we are all doing to work on it. I started off with brainstorming ideas for how the floor and wall designs would look within this toy store we imagine.
With the reference images and game references we collected, I studied what kind of floors are included in them, and what kind of design resembles a toy store. I made four concepts, and illustrated two of them so we could add them into the sample game room for Monday to present.
I also took the role of designing the Logo for our group. Since we decided our group name would be ‘Shock Studios’, I took inspiration from the word shock and researched a few images to help me illustrate some logo designs. I made three concepts below.
My group liked the first design so I developed it more. As I was designing I made sure to ask my teammates for feedback which helped my design process. We discussed the colour scheme, and symmetry visuals. As a result, I designed our group logo of a shocked emotion, within a comic bubble style frame.
By the end of the week in preparation for Mondays (week 2) class, we produced our first update presentation. The group added in the details of the game idea, and their progress from this week. They worked on elements such as level blocking out, 3D modelling, art style, and narrative research. I added my work in the presentation as our texturing progress. Our teammate Patrick made a video of our game room/build in unreal engine so far.