Composition and making things look pretty

As the task tells us composition is "The arrangement of elements within an image according to established art principles". So to have a good understanding of composition it's also important that we have a good understanding of the "established art principles" right? right. Well there are 6 main art principles; colour, line, shape, value, texture and volume. Each with hundreds of sub genres of principle and hundred of years worth of experience behind all of them, so I'm only going to talk about a couple.

Value 


In my mind this is the most important of all art principles. Value could probably cover volume too but they're slightly different. Value is often described visually by a scale with varying shades of gray arranged between black and white, but in reality its the way in which the artist can make a 2D image look as if it is three-dimensional. Whenever you seen an artist rendering a ball or box in just black and white they're usually practising their value skills



A rather crude rendering of a ball and a value scale to show the point.

Colour

Colour is a very important matter as i feel thats where a painting gets its emotional value. Artists like Rothko have explored how colour can change someones mood by painting massive canvas's with a few colours on, many people when confronting one of rothkos work are overcome with a sombre feeling. Personally, when i stood in front of a Rothko piece i didnt really feel all that much although i could see why people felt the way they did. I feel colour can really change a piece and it is important to understand why.


 The Rothko piece i was lucky enough to see.

Two of the main art principles that have so much depth to them that i barely even scratched the surface of what they intale, so go read about them yourself! Ultimately though, composition is the placement of these art principles in the scene. Its often used to devistating effect by digital artists that are seemingly able to control your eyes. Composition is also important as you can tell the reader scale through placement of the "camera" or viewers eye.

 

This piece by kekai kotaki for example. The camera is relatively low looking up at the characters and it really pushes the drama of the picture and also the scale of the giant worm monster chasing the cowboys.

I only know of a few rules of composition but i am sure there are many more. The few i know are;

Rule of thirds - making sure there is a point of interest in each third of the frame
Differential focus - Blurring parts of an image to force focus, much like the eyes do naturally
Rule of odds - Using an odd number of subjects to a scene to make it more visually interesting.

Planning and concepting

"All projects should show a progression from initial ideas to final outcomes." The dependence on good planning is essential if a good game is to be made in my opinion. Planning requires forward thinking and good organisational skills. Concepting is a tool used during the planning stage to help people visualise the idea you are wanting to work towards. it is an extremely useful tool that helps a teams' mind work in sync, and is also a useful tool to use when working on personal projects, helping you to finalise ideas that you might have had, giving you a platform to go on and create further more interesting ideas.

Planning comes in many different ways for different ideas or parts of a game. Planning a cutscene for example could be done through the use of storyboards, rough sketches that outline how the scene will plan out, a very cheap and time effiecient way of planning a cutscene through.


A storyboard by Cecil Kim for the God of War series

Another very helpful way of planning for idea generation amungst other things is using moodboards. Moodboards or "brain farts" as i like to call them are basically where you collect a bunch of pictures/bits of writing/colours or pretty much anything and bring them together. Its useful for when you need to help concrete an idea or even serves pretty well as a rudimentary piece of research.
 
This type of planning is often used by fashion students and profesisonals.

Personally, i find that i'm pretty bad at planning ahead and it's quite obvious from my work. I've found that alot of times i make concept art for the purpose of looking pretty rather than for helping me persue the idea into a more detailed and well thought through final outcome. However unlike me games companies would simply fail without great planning and concepting teams, one example of great concepting within games would be Guild Wars 2 by ArenaNet.

ArenaNet used the concept art made by their amazing team of artists to help promote the game and ultimately helping the game Guild Wars 2 become a major success. They blast open the doors of the MMO scene and took the world by storm during release. The art style of Kekai Ketaki really pushing the game forward.

The concept work is not just used for the planning stage of the game but was also used to help tell stories within the game through animated versions of the concept art.


some of the works used to help promote the game, they were even used in the game for loading screens.

reflection on year 1, looking onward to year 2

Summer is over and its back to work. Weirdly enough i'm actually pretty pleased to be back in leicester and in my new house. My summer was pretty boring as everyone is growing old and unwilling to do anything fun or creative, so i spent most of my summer watching videos about digi painting or playing games. I'm pretty disappointed with the amount of work i did during the summer, although i feel that the amount of information i collected regarding digi painting and character art was good.

I think first year, generally, was a success. I was able to hit most of the VD work just fine, struggling at the start with perspective but finally getting a grip of it toward the end. 3D I feel went "ok" but i never gave myself the full time to do the project so the end product was always under par. Critical studies i think i did really badly with. Im not the best writer in the world and always find it difficult to make blogs so i did just the very least. I plan to make more of an effort to do more personal blogs as well as the mandatory ones.

some first year work.

In terms of this year i'm pretty sure where i want to be by the end of it. I hope to specilise in character art and to have built a foundational portfolio that i can build upon in the 3rd year. I'm going to have to work hard this year and ask some in-industry professionals for help and advice. I know a few things i need to improve upon but i would be nice to have some professional insight. To get there i need to learn to master a few elements.

             These elements are-

• Need to greatly improve on my 3D work, both texturing and modeling.
• Learn to make highpoly assets and to bake them to lowpoly assets to assist in making really detailed normal maps.
• Vastly improve on my digi painting and learn more about lighting and colour theory.
• Increase my "visual library" by watching more movies, books, photography and researching more artists.

 I'm writing this a couple weeks late, because i'm a useless waste of space, but i wrote it from how i felt at the start of the year. The good thing about this though is that i can show you some work i've done in the first couple of weeks.

A few pictures of the first week projects. (sorry for the picture layout. can't seem to get it to change)

Character design.

Character design is a very complicated subject and recently some companies have been reluctant to make solid characters that are believable. For a time games companies just seemed to want to push the level of graphics in games, meaning many games were more like engine showcases than experiences. I hope that someday i would become a character artist for a big company like Valve. Their characters are always brilliant. They eek with personality, have flaws and show emotion, all these traits make them more believable in their worlds. Something that a company like Epic games have seem to forgotten, with their endless list of testosterone filled meat bags of death.

A good piece of character design would have to be someone like mario. Instantly recognisable, if you ask anyone today to name the most famous character they know, mario will most likely be their answer. But what makes his design so great? To start with, both the old and new version of mario have very strong silhouettes. It is easy to tell mario from another character from the quickest of glances. A premise that valve has taken to make sure that their characters stand out from the rest. A strong silhouette = good character, or at least most of the time. Another good piece of character design would be the use of a strong palette. What i mean by “strong” palette is not like really bright colours, but rather colours that work well together and within the environment the character will be in. So for mario bright red and blue makes him stand out from the background whilst also making him similarly bright to the rest of the environment. A piece of character design that i think is hardly used nowadays would be functionality. Many games these days choose to leave behind all functionality of a character’s costume in favour of an aesthetically pleasing one. Take Ivy from Soul Calibur 4 for instance, she is fighting against opponents that wield swords, hammers, scythes etc and what else could be more protective than a small purple bikini? well apparently not much as she never seems to get cut in the whole game, which is just ridiculous. Obviously all these points are not stuck in stone, but keeping them in mind whilst creating a character will always give them more depth. 

Valve doing what they do best. BEING AWESOME

Of course once a character’s design is finished it is then the job of the voice actor/actress and a good script  to really give them an engaging character. One of the games with the best script of all time would have to be Portal 2. Truly witty and at times actually made me laugh out loud, one of the few games to do so, i enjoyed every minute of that game. There are games though that try to be funny with their script and it can make a game fall on its face. My example being Duke Nukem Forever, Although as a whole this game is pretty much a flop, the thing i’ve always enjoyed about past Duke Nukems is the script and how it was almost purposely corny. This last installment however they crossed a line into the realm of neither corny or funny, you could feel how forced the script was and it really made me feel uncomfortable.

To conclude, character design is a very tricky subject. There are so many different attributes that constitute a good character that it takes a lot of experience and knowledge to be a good character artist. I personally believe that through good character design you are able to add another level of emotion and believability that some games miss out on.

Art direction in games

One of the most sought after jobs in the gaming industry is to be an Art Director. Huge responsibilities are rested on their shoulders to make sure that the game has consistent artistic design throughout. They would have to check each and every asset to make sure it fits the feel and artistic style of the game. Slip ups or bad decision making in the industry are tremendously costly and so art directors are often excellent artists with good communication skills. This allows them the ability to communicate their thoughts and ideas to their peers, meaning the game’s art style will be more consistent.

An art director is a very creative role. In fact the art direction sets the pace for the whole game. Usually working closely with concept artists, art directors are the key to the whole creative side of a game. On smaller development teams, often the art directors role is combined with that of the concept artist meaning his ideas and creativity and put straight into the mix.  As well as making sure that the game has a consistent overarching feel, art directors need to give criticism and advice to make sure all assets being made are up to the standard of the rest of the game. If this isn’t done right it will make the world less believable, making the player feel less involved.

Deux ex went all out in terms of art direction

Art direction in films can be a much different ball game. I think it is much easier to have and keep the same style all the way through. On a film like Sherlock holmes, keeping that same victorian style can be tricky, in the way that you need all costumes to be similar. In films however you only see what has been filmed and therefore only a small amount of characters and sets need to be kept in the same art style. comparatively, in games the player has the ability to roam around a scene, looking at characters and objects in the scene from different angles. Another point where film might have it “easier” than games is that all special effects are pre-rendered in films, so models and textures can be the very best looking. however in games, textures and models are limited in size quite majorly.

To conclude, art directors for games need to have a few things. An understanding of art, this allows them the ability to work really closely with concept artists to illustrate their ideas and to make sure that everyone on the team understands the art style for the game. Communication skills, this allows them the ability to further communicate ideas but also gives them the ability to give constructive criticism and advice so assets are made up the right standard. Knowledge, in my opinion a art director needs good knowledge in his field. with a good knowledge of past games a art director can borrow similar styles that have worked well for past games and integrate it into their own. It can also show them failed art styles to make sure they themselves don’t make the same mistake.

Game design.

To develop a good knowledge of game design you must first have an understanding of the major disciplines in games . In my opinion there are a few “disciplines” that attribute to a good game. They would be - Characters, story, gameplay mechanics, objective and artistic direction. These attributes i’ve chosen based off my own experiences with games.

The reason games, in my opinion, are better than movies is because you get to participate within the story. An epic story can make broken or boring gameplay an afterthought, as it did for me in Assassins Creed 1. I played through the repetitive and at times boring gameplay to learn more about the animus and what the assassination targets had to say, all of the information coming together to bring a cool although slightly weird ending. Another example would be Deux Ex: Human Revolution, although the gameplay wasn’t “bad”, in my opinion it was only slightly over average at best and often broken. However the twists and turns of the story kept me stuck to the screen until i had finished the game. Some games prefer to get an amazing story told than adding new or innovative gameplay elements, Hell, Metal Gear Solid 4 was practically a playable movie!

Old games such as Pacman or Digdug didn’t have the means to show off a big elaborate story, but through fun and, at the time, new gameplay elements. I feel that over time gameplay has been pushed down the list of priorities for game devs, which gave light to the ever creative minds of indy developers eager to create fun and new gameplay. Games such as Sequence on the Pc merged gameplay elements of guitar hero and pokemon to make a truly fun and interesting little game. Look at Borderlands for example. A game with a simple story. You’re on a planet hunting for a big treasure. The rest is fun, addicting gameplay. Also games like Super Mario and Legend of Zelda. They pretty much copy and paste the story, but its the gameplay we come back to.

Character and overall art direction are pretty similar within games. Characters are important in games as they pull us into the game and provide us with emotional context. Once these characters have pulled us in it is then the work of the art direction to keep us within the game. A strong art direction can make for some powerful atmosphere whilst playing games. One recent game with amazing art direction would be Deus Ex: Human Revolution. The heavily used black and gold palette really sets the mood for the game and makes it stand out from other games.

Ultimately the thing i look for in a game is fun. If i don’t find a game fun i won’t play it. Please mind that fun is a pretty broad word in this case as even though i find it fun to play skyrim cutting people’s heads off is not what i’d call a fun evening in real life, it is more the experience that i find to be fun. Dear esther is a game i played a couple of weeks ago. It is short and the only gameplay elements you have at your disposal is basic movement, however the combination of a nice story narration and amazingly nice environment modelling made it a great experience for me.

Team Fortress 2 Review

Every so often in the FPS genre there is a diamond in the rough. With every FPS trying to be the next big thing, rarely there is a game that follows it’s own path quite like Team Fortress 2. Made by Valve, Team Fortress 2 is a class based multiplayer shooter and sequel to the highly successful Team Fortress Quake mod. Like its predecessors, Team Fortress 2 is centered around two opposing teams competing for an objective. These two teams are meant to represent a demolition and a construction company as a part of the back story: Reliable Excavation Demolition (RED) and Builders League United (BLU). Players can choose to play as one of nine classes in these teams, each with their own unique strengths, weaknesses, abilities, and roles. Although the abilities of a number of classes have changed from earlier Team Fortress incarnations, the basic elements of each class have remained.

My main love of Team Fortress is the art style. Initially in early development of the game, seen through leaked concepts, the game appeared to be deviating from its predecessors by pursuing a more realistic and militaristic style, but the design changed over its nine year development period. The final rendition is a cartoon style that i love. As well as the art style, the animation of Team Fortress 2 is amazing. Having a small history of doing animation and a massive history of watching it, i appreciate how every action taken by each individual character is spot on with the personality of each one, such details are missed by most games developers these days.

Each of the nine playable classes eeks with personality, each with small histories shown on their “meet the” series used by valve as advertising. My personal favourite in terms of personality would be the sniper, a rugged and ready crack shot from the Australian outback . “No, not a crazed gunman Dad, I'm an assassin......Well the difference being that one is a job and the other is mental sickness.” a quote from “meet the sniper” that had me in fits when i first watched it. Even game characters have family problems!

All of the levels are full of the same fantastic art style and humorous character. The most well known of which would be “ctf_2fort”. It is one of my favourite maps of all time. perfectly balanced and amazingly well textured, it pretty much encapsulates the feeling of playing Team Fortress 2. Each map has a game mode tied to it, and for 2fort it is capture the flag (intelligence briefcase) . I think it would be nice if the mode of the map could change, to team deathmatch or something, however i can see why they would want to keep it the same, as they specifically designed the maps for each of their game modes. Which might be the reason why the level designs are so great.

The best thing about Team Fortress 2 would have to be the modding community. Through them we have had more incredibly fun maps and more recently Valve has been making mod creators money by putting their weapons and hats into the game for players to buy. An article i read on Pcgamer some time ago said that more money was being made through microtransactions than through the selling of the game . As well as being a major earner for Valve, the sales of hats have been used for charity. After the tsunami in japan, a set of hats were made for which all the proceeds went to a charity to help the people affected by the tsunami. I think it was an awesome move by Valve because through making only a little effort they managed to make $430,543.65.

I have much love for Valve and especially Team Fortress 2. I’m not a very good writer and haven’t given it justice but i think everyone should play it and see for themselves. It is free after all!