For our first class of the semester, we met with the games design students and were separated into our respective groups. My group consists of;
- The Animation Students
Myself, Manny Maguire, Jack Williamson, Daniel McLaughlin, Harry Gregg
- The Games Design Students
William Dodds, Owen Thompson, Dylan Brown, Ronan Wilkinson, Jude Kerr, Conor Currie
Before our first class, I did some research into my assigned role, which was art direction and prop modelling, meaning that as well as modelling assets for our game, my job, and the jobs of the other art directors in the animation side of our team, was to ensure the creative process ran smoothly throughout its 12 week duration and to maintain consistency in the overall aesthetics of the game. To begin with, I researched the art direction teams behind some of the games that I’m already familiar with, such as Super Mario Galaxy, The Last of Us and Animal Crossing as examples. I loved the concept art for Super Mario Galaxy created by Kenta Motokura; the depiction of mechanics such as Mario’s spin-attacks, jumps, throws and weightlessness were very interesting to see, I really admired Motokura’s ability to bring the impression of physical and dynamic movement to a static image. This lead me to concept art from other Nintendo games, where I came across the work of Koji Takahashi, who most recently worked as the lead art director for Animal Crossing: New Horizons. His ability to combine realism with a shape language that connotes a safe and friendly environment (primarily through the rounded edges of assets in ACNH) and his combination of colour palettes for the game and its characters is something I have a great admiration for.
When given our theme of ‘Isolated-Connected’, I realised from our group brainstorming session that I may not be as familiar with gaming culture as I thought. Nonetheless, we listed our strongest ideas and found that a recurring premise throughout them was of someone journeying to re-unite with a lost loved one, whether that was a significant other, parent or guardian. Running along that vein, we developed our core premise; two teenagers are abducted by aliens, and the player must guide one of these characters through the alien ship in order to re-unite with their girlfriend. At some stage in the development, it was discussed that the protagonist should be in a same-sex relationship to re-enforce the idea that they are already facing society’s attempts to separate them, and so this game would serve as a manifestation of the challenges faced in relationships, particularly one between two female characters. Based on feedback from our first presentation to our class, we also decided to set the game in the 1980s, when sexuality was considered to be more of a taboo subject, which would again help re-enforce the narrative subtext. As well as this, the 1980s timeline allowed us to maintain more consistency in the style of our assets, such as the 80s clutter that the aliens would have also gathered to study and research.
Before modelling any props, I created a moodboard to consult as a style reference and to give me ideas for 80s memorabilia that a hypothetical alien might seek to collect. I considered what details an alien may want to establish about another civilisation it comes across; How are extraterrestrials perceived by humans? What technology do they currently avail of? How do humans behave- what provides them with stimulation and entertainment? The 1980s was of course a huge era for extra-terrestrial and sci-fi films, such as Star Wars, Close Encounters of the Third Kind and E.T. among others. I felt that it could be a good idea to model some VHS copies of such films to include in the game, to indicate how the aliens are trying to establish if humanity may pose a threat to them, given their fear of the extra-terrestrial as depicted in these films. Speaking of establishing humanity’s capabilities, I wanted to include some iconic 80s memorabilia amongst the clutter gathered in the alien’s research, particularly things such as cell phones, Rubik’s cubes and video game cartridges, as these are objects which can generate a response from a human’s brain with visual and/or audible stimuli.
Because we have three prop modellers on our team, I was initially worried that I wouldn’t be able to be as involved with character design, which was one of my additional roles for this assignment. Upon discussing this with Manny and Jack, we established that one section of the ship could be a menagerie, where the aliens would keep other unusual creatures for study- this would provide me with creatures to design and animate.
As our aliens would be depicted as ominous and threatening, I leaned on my inspiration from Koji Takahashi, and decided to make some creature concept art which would utilise soft, rounded shapes, to contrast with the harsh, rigid figure of the aliens. Although I intended for the creatures I designed to be from other planets, I did want to convey a familiar design in terms of the appearance of creatures on Earth, which would signify to the player that they are not harmful, but may even be used to act as moving platforms to help progress through the level. I also decided to use a vibrant colour palette in order to reflect the chromatology of pride flags. The creatures would then serve as reminders of the beauty in all relationships, with the bright colours contrasting with the harsh industrial setting of the ship. In terms of the subtext, I also designed some creatures to be conjoined hybrids- a concept which was explored with Jack’s main alien model- to indicate society’s focus on the tradition in the union of men and women. As well as this, the hybrid creatures would not use their mutation to any visible advantage, which I wanted to illustrate the unhealthy co-dependency that is sometimes seen in relationships. From my concept designs, I picked three creatures to model and implement into the game; the snool (snail-like creature), the snurt (turtle-like) and the murps (hybrid pig-like).
Originally, I made models that looked a little too similar to earth-dwelling creatures, and based on feedback from my lecturers, I decided to push the designs of my models a little further, adding more eyes, antennae, and fins. A good book to reference which we were recommended by our lecturer was ‘Codex Seraphinianus’, which explored a similar concept of drawing or designing creatures that are fictional and other-worldly but still have some similarities to familiar animals. The purpose of this manuscript was to create surreal and parodied images of things from the ‘real world’ such as fauna, flora and animals.
After Dan set up the rig for my three creatures (many thanks to him, he helped me work through some small troubleshooting issues with the meshes), I began to make some test animations for how the creatures would move within the game environment. My animation test for the snool showed it moving forwards and then craning its neck to look at its surroundings before slinking back to its starting position, however, the game design students then asked me to keep the snool stationary to the animation, only adding keyframes to the head.
My snurt animation test was the one that I was most proud of. I hadn’t experimented with creating hovering or floating animations before, so that was fun to play around with. I also found that because the model wasn’t just confined to the ‘floor’ of the terrain surface, this allowed for more freedom in how I could move the fins individually, to show how each one would be affected by water or a lack of gravity in a different way. Unfortunately, upon importing the finished animation into our Unreal game file, I realised that I had added keyframes to the bones of the rig as opposed to just the NURBS controllers, which would not actually allow the model to move or be textured within the game, so once I rectified this, the import went much smoother, but I do feel the animation lost something by deleting those keyframes- I think the movement felt a little more constricted.
The animation for the murps was much simpler; it was a simple loop of the model walking back and forth, however, the game design students again told me that they wanted this model to remain stationary with keyframes added to show the feet moving.
Going back to my moodboards and our group asset list, I also designed some concepts for other props that could be seen around the spaceship. My main focus started off with 1980s memorabilia, which then progressed to experimental equipment, such as containment tubes or jars with suspended organs for study. I enjoyed this part of the pre-production as this was where I felt most creative, especially since I’d love to go on to be a concept or character designer later in life. I think the prop models I enjoyed making the most were for things like the game cartridges and VHS tapes. Although they were fairly simple, the default models allowed for some personalisation in displaying the covers of different retro games and films, which I thought would showcase the time period well. As well as the cartridges and VHS tapes, I also started to model other 80s assets, such as the brick-like cell phone and a Nintendo Game Boy, but due to troubleshooting and final polishing for the game, they weren’t able to be imported on time, so one thing I learned here was to anticipate for troubleshooting earlier on in the design process so that I leave myself enough time to finish my assets. I was also able to build receiver and teleportation pads for the game along with a broken vent for the player to climb through, but if I were to do this project again, I think I would try to balance the amount of time I spent working on characters and animations with the time I spent on props, because I think there was more potential to create assets that made the time period of the game more obvious, but I became more focused on my creature models.
For some plant models I made, I also added some keyframes to show the caps of the mushroom-adjacent blooms spinning on their stems, while the stem itself wriggled slightly in the soil. I would have liked for these animations to finish off as looking a little more polished, but as I said, I was more concerned about my creatures.
When it came to viewing the gameplay video at the end of our project, I noticed that none of my updated creature models or animations had been added to the finished game. I’m still trying to contact the game designers to find out why this is, but I haven’t gotten a reply yet. I’m quite upset by this because the creatures look completely lifeless and their colour palettes aren’t what I decided as my final outcomes, and to have spent most of my time focusing on getting the animations for them ready for export, as well as being compatible within the file, only for them not to be used, felt like such a waste. I think there was really poor team communication on this front, because whatever happened with this segment of the game, it wasn’t discussed beforehand. I couldn’t see any of my game cartridges, VHS tapes or the Rubik’s cube either, but it’s possible I just didn’t catch them watching the play through video. I would say as well that this was quite unfair to Dan, as he did a great job creating a functioning rig for all three of my models, using both weight-painting as well as IK and FK rigging, and for none of the animations based on his rig to be used feels like a missed opportunity to showcase his work. Oftentimes during the production, myself and some of the other animation students noticed that there was a lack of communication throughout the design process, particularly in terms of level design. One week we would have established that the game was going to be one long level played through until the end, only to find that the following week, there would be three levels including a menagerie, avoiding detection by the alien and ‘puzzle-based’ objectives, which weren’t ever really clarified to us. It was also difficult to communicate our issues to the games design theme because we haven’t known each other for very long, and we don’t want tempers to run high during a 12 week production, but every time a new aspect is added to the game (such as balancing along a wire for example), we then have to reconsider our existing animations and rigs, and whether or not they will be compatible with the mechanics that will be required for each task.
Here is a link to the finished gameplay on YouTube;
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AUx7yDyVGSQ
Overall, I feel that I really thrived in the design process, but I need to work on my time management and prioritising my tasks, because although I created the characters needed for the game with the designs and colours I wanted to convey, the creation of more inanimate assets could have helped the game look a little more built-out in the end. I also think we as a group need to work on being more assertive in terms of discussing our issues with the production process, as this will help to maintain clarity and prevent confusion in the integral stages of development.