Game Trailer - Mindmap

In this lesson we gathered in teams to plan and discuss the ideas for our project. We mades notes and ideas on a piece of A3 about what is possible for our project and how we plan to handle it. We covered a few concepts, such as font, graphics and things that we would include into the trailer, this as well as making sure we covered the idea we had.

We have selected to go for a past tense sort of scenario (think bioshock), we have taken aspects from many other games, such as the animus idea, going into the past when Salts Building was a school, and having the player do puzzles from room to room, and learning more about the history of saltaire, while trying to fight against the evil Titus Salt.

The idea is to provide a very popular puzzle based environment, take inspirtation from popular games like bejeweled, with this mind we have also worked with an adventure scene, with a bit of story to add some flare to the design of the game trailer.

The characters we have decided to use, is ourselves as well as some characters from the past. Our characters are avatars, guides that help the player along his path to finding a solution to destroying Titus Salt. And restoring freedom and peace to Saltaire, we have decided to give a unique elements and voice act our characters ourselves, such as ..

Rob the Wizard
Stuart the Goat
Curtis the Boss
Micheal the Goldfish

Overall the group particpated well, I believe we still need to discuss this more and work on the mindmap to get a foundation laid out, and the lack of one of our vital team members, set us back further than the other groups. We would like to continue this is time allows with the particpation of Joe Brown, next week.

Sound in Games

In todays lesson we discussed the elements of Sound in Computer Games. We covered how sound is used to create ambience and set the feel for the game, we also discussed elements of sounds and how they are created either sythetically or with the use of real life objects, such as the job of a foley artist.

Sound is recorded for many elements, and referred to as samples, these samples are mixed and modified in a computer program and used in different areas of environments, such as floorboards squeaking and doors opening, bullets firing.

It helps in environments as well, such as when you are playing through an FPS, the sound of shooting helps to define the location of the enemy, or if you are being fired upon, the element of hearing the sound after the flash, aids the user in ambience and elements.

Music Psychology

In todays session we was listening to music from different tracks and genres to help get a better understanding of how music helps us feel. There was mixed emotions that poured from each track, but each was defined by it's principle, the first song, "Killing in the name of..." was a rather upbeat, high tempo song, that used alot of heavy sounds and symbolises in my opinion with anger, frustration and taking this out on the world, rebelling against an authoritve figure and rules.

I'll relate to another song, that I like. I am an avid Fan of metal music, Disturned, Avenged Sevenfold, Sevendust, Devil Driver, the music I listen to, provides  a rather heavy and deep tone, but one song, i'll cover for this is Seize the Day by Avenged Sevenfold. This song is rather deep, and sad, like a repentful notion, like regret is felt throughout the entire song, the height of the pitch and tempo in parts of the song provide more timbre in the texture and ambience of the music, and creates a more felt sound giving of more emotion in the voice of the artist.

Unit 6 - 3D Environment - Audience Surveys

For our research into our 3D Environment, it was required that we do some audience research, using the technique's we learnt with Quantitative, Qualitative research, we was tasked with creating a questionnaire as a team. The questions I asked on my particular questionnaire were rather specific. Options that allowed me to drive the audience into creating the product that I wanted to do, this was a good way to gain postive feedback, and one that could be easily calculated and formatted into presentable data.

The team did well, and each of us came up with a different idea, however, I must say that due to Curtis's absence at the start his level of questionnaire work was short and not beneficial, he was asked to expand on it, and is something I as team leader will help him with in order to push him up and keep in with the rest of the team and not feel left behind. Joseph created a unique form and some aspects from his work where taken to add to mine, which was voted in the end by the team as the final form to use for the surveys.

After this was selected and the team was ready to begin surveys on our project, we printed off 30 copies, and set out. We hit a few problems, realising we had one hour to get the questinnaires completed, we decided that to cover more ground and save more time, we'd split up into two teams, I accompanied Micheal as we covered the library and surrounding areas we filled out our forms and got alot of good feedback from the student populance and tutor populance. In meeting Joseph and the team we were sad to realise some of the public where unsupportive, one even ripping up one of our questionnaires, which was a massive blow to our numbers, and some even ignored us completly, this was dissapointing as we would have assumed that most people in the local area would be up for helping out students with their projects, especially one that effects them and their surroundings profoundly.

However minus the hiccups, we managed to get a good 27 solid responses, and in returning the following week where able to tally up the results and present them in a format, that allows us to gain an insight into our results. Our first idea was to break all the questions down into columns and then input the responses for all 30 results, rather like a relational database. How ever we quickly realised how unefficient this method would have been, especially with the question size, and amount of input, it would have been a long and ugly process.

We later decided we would break it down, in a much more simplified way, using questions as headers and placing the results underneath, we also took onboard Stuart's idea, which was to seperate Male and Female, so we could get a much better understanding of our target audience and what the difference in detail between the two genders where, so we could later apply thus audience profiling to any future products.

The outcome was well, and we was able to see that the environment we are to make will be based on a futuristic environment, we would apply this in a 3D Walkthrough, rather like architectural building walkthroughs, which I think would be great, and a task worth particpating in with. We could also tell from our results that Classical Music was more favoured, I have to say we will likely mix music, which is posting over Modern Pop and Classical, to fit in with our more futuristic setting, but that is something to discuss with the team.

http://www.robinsondesigngroup.co.uk/
The business Robison Group, provides a great insight into the architect buildings, because we are building furturistic substainable buildings, we would like to look into the Hong-Kong arcitectural desings, and designs from Dubai which hold a great insight into the buildings and designs that are present. The Robison group provides a few design specifics that I would like to incorporate in the final design, which would benefit our final project, such as the Shanghai International Automobile City (http://www.robinsondesigngroup.co.uk/project_details.asp?ID=37) whioch can be related to Saltaire, as you can see this looks alot like a furutistic environment and I could imagine Saltaire representing something like this, especially with its history, maybe the river and canal could provide Saltaire of the future with a substainable environment.

It was also mentioned by Joe that we may want to look into Steam Punk, I agreed and so did the team, as well as a futuristic design, we looked into Steam Punk style games, such as BioShock, the style and design input here works perfectly, providing a furutistic environment, but set in the 1920s base, it provides a clear input and design interface into what we would like to aim for, taking the architectural designs from Robison and using the Steam Punk 1920s style of Bioshock we can meet in the middle and come to some unique, and powerful design.

(http://www.overclockersclub.com/reviews/intel_e8400/10.htm)

In the end I learnt alot about this process, not to mention how to deal with the public and how to set out a proper marketting survey, but to also build out and create a more detailed and worth while insight into the target audience, and the set backs with the uncooperative members of the community didn't set me back a bit, knowing that the majority of individuals where genuinely interested in our final design. This motivates me to continue.

Team Logo Design

So, this year has begun with being split into groups, for our final project. I was placed into group two, and given the role of team leader, my team consisted of,  Joey Brown, who was selected for his ideas and concept designs, as well as his 3D skills. Stuart Wade was chosen for his concept art, and to help promote his communication capabilities. Micheal Prior, who was added to the roster for his ability with 3D and idealisms, Curtis Stoyles for his ideas, and photoshop work, and finally myself, obviously for my ideas, concept art and to help promote and improve my communications skills in a leadership manner.

Our first task, consisted of select our team name. It is important that a name is concise, straight forward, I believe a little witty as well, easy to say, it was stated that a name should not be more than two syllabals this helps to make sure that the name is easy to pronouce, and understand when spoken. So in our teams we sat down with a sheet of A3 paper, and began the process of brainstorming our ideas. It was suggested that we add at least three names, of course most in my team came up with many more, which of course I was rather pleased with, as this showed enthusiasm towards the project undertaking.

I put forward more than the suggested three per member, and the one that recieved the most votes was Explosive Matrix. I had a feeling that this would be the one chosen, and one that appealed to me, so I was happy when this was the selected name. Although I will admit it was difficult logo concept, and didn't have many ideas brimming at the time, so I knew there was going to be challenge with the final conceptual idea's.

The other names that where selected by the group where as follows, Holy Turtle from Micheal, which I thought this particular name was intuitive, quite funky and I thought was rather unique. I knew Micheal had an idea of where to progress with this name, with his enthusiasm was well noted.

Chaotic Moose, from Joe Brown. This name again was unique, and his design ideals, reminded me a lot of Manard Moose, I think a lot of thought when into the design asthetics, but I have to say I was not a fan of the name itself, I didn't think it expressed much in the terms of game develop studio, which is why I voted against this particular name. A better alternative could have been Chaotic Pioneers, or Dev.Moose, something that related somewhat to development, which would have been more founded.

Stuart Wade's was Cybertronix. He had a little help from the team in developing this name, and we believe it represents more of a gaming environment, and a little bit of a tech software development environment. Still it was one of the more favoured names, and his design idealism, was brilliant, if not second to none. I have to say now, out of all the logos this was my favourite. 

Explosive Matrix came to me through my recent work with 3D Graphics Programming, working with Matrices and Vertices, gave me inspiration with the name, select matrix as a 3D term, one familar with the asepct of programming in a 3D Environment. Explosive, this word was to add a air of gaming to it, most by giving a general concept of gaming enthusiasm.

Below is the tally sheet of the name ideas and those in our group. Unfortunatly, Curtis Stoyles could not be present for the task, due to unforseen circumstance, so we had to leap on without him, and hope to catch him up and keep him informed, when he returns. This had provided us with a disadvantage towards the other groups, intially we had one less than the other two groups to begin with, and without Curtis, we are down to four members, meaning we have to put the extra effort in, and hope he makes hasty return.

As you can see many idea's where spread across, and we had more than a few names which we wanted to use. The selected favourites which we was tasked to develop into a logo where as follows.

- Myself: Explosive Matrix

- Micheal Prior: Holy Turtle

- Joey Brown: Chaotic Moose

- Stuart Wade: Cybertronics

So, it came down to design, with my brain lacking in any idea of how I was going to achieve an effective logo. I sat down and began to think about what made me come up with Explosive Matrix, as a programmer, I knew in 3D Graphics that a matrix was used, especially in OpenGL to help render 3D Vertices and Points. So, taking that into consideration, what is a "Matrix" usually inmagined as, minus a world created by machines where humans minds are linked too, so they can harvest humans as batteries, a Matrix is a 3D Cube, least, represented as one. I took this into context, so numerous thoughts now hit me. What was a cube? Rubix Cubes, Computer Towers, were somewhat cuboid. I even tried to influence the Mathematical Matrix Symbol to incorporate a more general approach to the matrix and make it more funky, and simplistic.

I tried to keep in mind Simplicity and memorisation. The memory had to be easily recognisable, digestable in one bite, and easy on the eyes. Not too detailed and taking in context those with difficulties in sight as well. For this reason I chose bright colours, to help make it stand out, and tried to avoid too many details. See the two concepts sheets below, with annotation to get a better idea on what ideas I came up with. The final concept was the logo I dubbed, "Literal Matrix" for it's literal matrix mathetical routes.

With these ideas, I expanded on them a little, taking into context certain aspects, I even had a practice
at creating one of the logo templates, coming up with this design attempt.

 

This design, was the breaking up logo, and was my first attempt at creating the logo itself, of course this is nothing like the chosen logo and was merely select as a method of attempting to incorporate a 3D logo. In the end this logo was not selected as the final product. What I like about this logo specifcally though, is the incorporation of physics and 3D. Gaming is particular is more renowned for the aspect of 3D Models and Physics and because of that is one of the reasons decided to see how this particular design would play out.

So with the final logo selected, and a new design being developed in photoshop I began to create what I invisioned on paper, I was generally happy to admit that the literal design that was selected, I was more than pleased about, it was a simple design, and one I thought would work both professionally and one I knew I had the skills to develop with little to no problems.

I set up photoshop, with the following setting.

- A6 Page Format Size (? cm and ? cm)
- DPI - 72 - This format allowed for a neutral depth in pixels, and when it came to printing, allows us to
                    print with a good crisp standard.
- The end file was saved as .png for good compression and tranferability, and so it reacts well if placed on
   a webpage or alternatively a video game case or tech product.

Below was the final product, I will talk through the development steps afterwards, and then dicuss a little bit on the designs and inspiration and move onto comparison with a professional example.

The final product, I have to admit now that I was rather very proud with this particular logo design, it to seems professional, simple and eye-catching. The feedback I recieved of the tutors as well confirmed my own thoughts, and I can quote. "That look very professional...", "Simple, Stylish, I like it" where amongst the words said about my design.

The inspiration for my design stremmed from two locations. One being the matrix used in maths. If I can direct your attention to the below image, so you can get a better ides of what I am trying to explain here.

(http://www.mathwarehouse.com/algebra/matrix/multiply-matrix.php)

As you can see from above, a matrix is a group of numbers, as large as 4x4. They are encapsulated within

a square brace [ ] and often represent a square, they are used in 3D mathematics to calculate vertices and quadrants, and a key asset to 3D Mathematical Development. 

This was the inspiration, I wanted with this design to stay true to the concept of a matrix but still make the logo funky, fun and eye - catching.

 Development design was generally quite easy, I took inspiration from the centerpiece of the logo from my Tutor Chris Dewey no less. He did a small lecture on logo design, accompanied by a story of how he developed the Play.com logo. I remember specifically he spoke of circles being a more femnine aspect, and representing unity. I wanted to incorporate this aspect, as well as the basis that I have realised circles are a common factor in most logos, and wanted to to use them in hopes that I would gain the same kind of concept, design.

I also decided that I need to create a more manly aspect to the logo centerpiece, after all, we are a games development team. Without sounding too sexist there. I decided to add some spikes to the logo to create a more male and gaming aspect about it and it made the end product stand out just alittle bit more, instead of looking like some sort of plain logo design.

Unit 69 - Influential Ideals and Concepts.

Through the course of the project I have developed Batman further and taken him into a context which was different from his usual heroic self. Batman has long been one of my more favoured heroes, simply because he doesn't rely on powers but on wit, strength and deception. But in a more conceptual focus, Batman provides a great essence to take pitch from, the character itself is beautifully designed, providing a great interface for any super hero to be based upon.

It is often I take inspiration from this character when developing my own, and I chose Batman as my character to develop simply, because he is so well designed, the idea, the concept and the understanding behind Batman, as well as the costume and way he is pressed across is a great backbone for any Anti-Hero character to follow.

Batman to begin with started off as a rather happy, cheerful and charismatic individual, which often could be seen in a rather comical sense and didn't show any essence of the darker side of today. He was rather scrawny and used a lot of gadgets and repellents to help him fight, oh.. and his boy wonder Robin. Of course, let us compare him to the Batman of today, you can see that he is a rather darker and more bulky in muscularity and demeanour. Nothing like the Batman from the early days, with this Batman is also a lot more like Marvel Hero Punisher, with a darker and leaner context within him.

Through this development I think that is the more interpretation of Batman that I influenced my character design and through the research of Batman I discovered the traits that signify the character depict a lot about him. Such as a passive attitude, a willingness to save other people, a dark persona and appearance, the ability to fight, seems to be rather intelligent individual, likes to use a range of gadgets in order to accomplish the task.

From this I have taken many aspects, such as his passive and rather dark attitude, and his ability to fight with my version of Batman. I have placed him in a large trench coat, which is something that is more common from the Hero Punisher, which is something I have taken many aspects from. I have also taken into account that I wanted my character to be in the World War 2 era as opposed to the normal fictional modern city of Gotham which is applied to the original Batman.

At first I was going to select a noir style, common in the Batman series "Gotham Noir" and which is more traditional in the old 30s type concepts. But seeing as mine was at the same time as old, it was rather conceptual on the basis that it was very action orientated, rather than detective and it seemed rather rustic and post apocolyptic as opposed to city based, Sherlock Holmes/Dick Tracey styled themes. With this in mind I decided to go with a more colourful, modern based theme and try to relate it to the common Batman comic styles.

The layout I chose was rather similar to a comic layout, I tried to keep the border lines relatively thin, and attempted to allow enough room for it to be overflowed to try to keep a molded concept, where it seems to interact between frames which is something that seems to be quite common in todays comic books, in trying to create not just frames of art, but a whole page of artistic concepts.

Target Audience is something I had to take into consideration, while I believe that the old Batman most likely attracted the younger generation at the time, the modern Batman of today seems to peak interest of people of all ages, I decided that I wanted to take Batman from this kind of area and place him in a more adult sector, which is familar with such concepts as die hard, punisher, kill bill even in some concepts of violence. As I made Batman more violent in this concept, I have to take into considerations age ranges, for this I reccomend 16+ at least, as I have taken quite a violent, war based concept with my new design.

Unit 13 - L05 - Digital Portfolio

Overview: For our Unit 13 - LO5 we was required to create a portfolio of our work and provide some details on our skills, attributes and interests, which would go towards creating our final CV. We had to also show awareness of different sectors within the industry for future reference.