Reflecting on my first year...

End of Year Review

Before I started on this course, I didn’t really know what to expect. I’d heard great things about the course, being Skillset accredited, having students blasting off to places like India and America, I couldn’t wait to get started! I had an idea of what a game artist did from images and watching loads of videos on the internet, but I thought it was mostly doing concept art, digitally and traditionally, which is why I wanted to come to DMU and study Game Art. However the first couple of weeks into the course we were getting to grips with a 3D modelling package called “3D Max”, I won’t lie it was very daunting! I couldn’t seem to get anything done without spending days on end at particular aspects of the program; I was becoming paranoid of how good other people’s work was, compared to mine, which dented my confidence levels and even went so far that I was ready to quit by Christmas. This was made worse by getting stuck on a technical issue when doing the house project, that couldn’t be solved by other students and communication with the lecturer broke down, meaning this project was marked inadequate and I was not able to include it in an end of year game engine project.

After having a heart to heart with my family over Christmas, I decided to get on with it! So I made as many friends on the course as possible, which turned out to be a great move, because not only were they easy to get on with, they didn’t mind helping me at the things I struggled most with…….3D Max. By the time February came, I was gradually working more independently and finding out solutions to problems on my own, which helped me to produce a Ford Transit Van. It’s amazing to be talking about how much I struggled with the 3D side of the course when, at this moment in time, I have just handed in a fully textured post-apocalyptic weapon as my final project for the year. Oh not to mention putting all of my created assets into UDK, one of the best industry used game engines! I think the thing that stops me from working sometimes is self-belief; however I have had so much feedback from my friends in the group and one of the tutors about how I’ve progressed, it’s definitely increased my self-confidence, which has ultimately made me enjoy 3D work just that little bit extra.

On the other hand, the traditional side of the course has been incredible, instead of having lows and highs, such as 3D, I’ve spent the first year really getting into every project I get set! I’ve always been confident in scribbling down ideas, about anything, because I can get things across to people with ease, rather than struggling to say or write my thoughts. Coming into this first year of visual design with a foundation diploma in Art and Design, I thought this side of the course would be easy? How wrong could I be, firstly getting a brief every week for a whole year is ridiculous; sometimes I do rush or go brain-dead every so often, but because I know I got accepted on this course for my drawings, that burden never stopped me. However something I have noticed is that I’m starting to use colour, especially on the most recent projects, such as; 1970’s character and the Masters Copy project. I think is because some people in the room are better than me at what I do, which really does push me forward to experimenting and doing things differently to what I would. Another element to the traditional part of the course has been life drawing. Like others, I have done life drawing before on my foundation course so I wasn’t scared by the sight of naked men or women in the room. Somehow this degree level life drawing is completely different than what I learnt in the foundation course. This year I’ve learnt that if you draw with a relaxed hand and get the contour of the body stance as quickly as possible, it makes your work more fluid and believable, rather than using measurements to accurately draw a model, which is what I was originally taught in Foundation.

The only thing that I think needs to happen in the second year is for lecturer’s/students to start putting on classes for digital art, because for someone like me, who has never done anything decent on a tablet, doing tasks traditionally sometimes puts me at a disadvantage compared to others in the class. An example would be the last task of the year, the Masters copy. Everybody, I mean literally everybody was using digital painting to enhance their re-creations, because it only takes them a couple of seconds to use the colour sample tool, it takes me hours sometimes to mix the correct colour.

Anyway onto the last section, because I’ll end up moaning about being crap at digital art forever. We have a third part to the course, named critical studies. Critical study has been surprisingly enjoyable, because at the introduction to it, when the word “blog writing” was said, I and everybody else yawned! But without it we would have no knowledge about anything apart from ourselves and our own work. It really does teach you a lot of very interesting stuff, such as; learning about Game history (Pac-man through to next-gen games), and how to write blogs in a new games journalism way, which is hopefully the direction in which this blog is going. It’s a very lesson to have once a week, because I bet if Monet got asked about his water lilies painting, he wouldn’t respond with “I dunno?” That’s the point critical studies is getting across, that we need to have knowledge about every possible aspect of the game industry as well as being able to evaluate your own work and other peoples.

Again there has been only one point of concern, and that is there weren’t any lessons at all a month prior to the deadline, I don’t know why this was, but I would have liked to have had those lessons, because like I mentioned they are extremely helpful with my development over the course.

Overall, this year has flown by. I’m ready to start again next year and push myself even more to try and get the most out of this course, because “the more effort you put in, the more you’ll get out of it” quote from the seminar at the beginning of the year. I’ve learnt so much useful information and techniques from all three parts to the course; I just hope I don’t forget it all before I start back.

 

Environmental Issues

 

How do level designers construct and decorate the environment to assist navigation through the level?
 
The environment of a game is the base of the pyramid, which the assets and characters sit on top of. It’s the most important thing when it comes to producing a decent game, because the environment of the game has to make you believe you ARE that character and that you ARE in space (or anything other world/environment).

 

To an environment designer in the games industry, it is vital that you treat your level/world the same as if you were designing a maze, because you need to know where to go, how to escape and even find, shortcuts to get there or get out of there! The designer also needs to think about of the game and what the player sees through the eyes of the character. So depending on what kind of genre of game you were designing, you would look into setting, date and time of the event or fictional world, lighting and most importantly atmosphere. Games of this time and age have a story to tell through their environment, some even mix the reality of past or future events with fictional complications. Another element to consider is making levels that gradually get more difficult and testing, so you won’t find the player getting bored or completing the game in a day! That creates a bad game and bad reputation *cough cough* Fable 3.
 
How does the environment influence the atmosphere of the game?

The environment must be extremely relevant to the plot of the game or character (if the game is about one person or event). You need, as a level designer, to create a good atmosphere within the game, because you want the player to go through all emotions and facial expressions when they play. For example, I’m playing “Dead Space 3” I wouldn’t want the sun to be out and a slight wind blowing flower petals across my face! I want a distressing experience, with little natural light, caverns and tunnels with no exit, and messages written in blood across the walls of the level, doesn’t that sound better than the first option!? As a player you want to be in a new world where nothing is impossible, making the environment as realistic as possible, but keeping some stylisation throughout, this will create steadily flowing levels, with a huge amounts of interest, that’s if the player actually stops and takes a break from fighting “necromorphs” for example.

Is there a balance to be struck between realism and stylisation that supports or hinders the player’s belief in the game world?

I think there is a very slim line between realism and stylisation in the environments of games. Stylisation is a key factor in a game, because you need parts of the level to be an assist to the character such as having messages/symbols on the walls. If you apply those types of assets to the majority of the levels, players will start to use their surrounding world more often, there for bringing the environment into play, making them notice the place they are walking though. On the other hand a good level designer needs to know where to put the realistic factors into the game and how realistic do they want to make it! I have played a wide selection of games in my time, and as the years have gone by they have got more and more realistic, which is great, but sometimes you want the weird and wacky to still exist. For example “Modern Warfare 2” is based on real world events, WAR. And most of the environments are real, a level on the game is called “Afghan”, where do you think they got that from, Afghan……..istan. There was a lot of talk when Modern Warfare was released that it was a mockery of real soldiers and how they perform on the battle field. So I think when you have stylisation and realism to pick from, have half and half, because otherwise the game will be too truthful and real or so un-realistic it’s given a “U Certificate”.

 

Illustrate an example of an Environment you particularly like – who designed it, what real life equivalents does it pay homage to, does it reference existing film or literature genres?

 

If I had to verbally illustrate a particular environment, it’d have to talk about the underwater horror-show, which is Rapture from Bioshock and Bioshock 2. Steve Gaynor was the level designer for Bioshock 2 (which is my favourite out of the bioshock trilogy), he worked closely with a level artist who comes up with the sketches of the stylisation of the levels. In terms of real life equivalents, there are lots of people dedicated enough to make props and even short films from “Rapture”, but there are no real environments like it! However there is a blog online, which mentions that, the PayPal billionaire Peter Thiel, wants to build an underwater or floating city. So Bioshock is not really based on existing places but it might inspire something REAL to be made from it.