BA3a:
The last year is upon me and so begins my plans for and creating my final project.
The Year is split into two sections:
BA3a: Research & Development
Ba3b: Resolution & Innovation
BA3a is split into 3 sections:
First is Tasks with different tasks (similar to the art tests I did last year) where I have a small project for a few weeks to complete. Next is Creative Practice where I focus on planning on what I want to create for my Final Major Project (FMP). Finally is Research Report which is researching, making notes, making a draft and completing my Contextual Studies Research Report/Extended Essay
BA3b is dedicated to creating my FMP and making it perfect for submission, and once submitted putting it up on display in the End of Year Exhibition.
Tasks:
Week One Summary:
By their very nature, hotels are designed to teem with life but when business dips and owners can no longer afford to keep the doors open, the building’s inviting atmosphere dissipates. Lobbies once choked with people become yawning and shadowy. Wandering down hallways with darkened rooms flanking either side becomes an exercise in courage. In these places, the mind plays tricks, inventing footfalls, laughter, and snippets of music from a bygone age—or perhaps some guests really do never leave.
My Task:
is to design an atmospheric environment which can be used to drive the first paranormal encounter in the game.
is to design an atmospheric environment which can be used to drive the first paranormal encounter in the game.
This Project is Due for Friday Next Week.
Thoughts:
After learning in a bit more about what I had to do with the project, I had to do a mood piece, and started to come up with ideas about a shadowy corridor with a light shining on something paranormal, I'll fiddle around with some ideas tonight and see what I come up with.
Creating the Hallway
I have two weeks to do this project, I decided to use the first week to do sketches and the second to do a finished piece, I started with a few thumbnail sketches and after a couple of ideas I decided to go with the theme of light beam focusing on an arrow with mythical properties. My Idea was that the arrow is a cursed object and the theme is to attempt to collect it without dying.
Week 2 Summary:
On the second page of thumbnails I started sketching a piece with straight lines creating the piece, which received praise from my tutor, as he said that 3D artists prefer to use this style of artwork for references with creating models of the 2D paintings. So I looked up some Feng Zhu artwork in that style and created the rest of my thumbnails in this art style.
For my final piece I will attempt to create the art style line art and use a small number of colours for my painting as I feel it will take to long to create a full environment concept piece, these pieces I feel have helped me with my perspective skills and as I prefer character design, have a good chance to hone my 2D skills in environments.
Once the layouts where done I practised with some of the lighting tools and focused on creating a god ray on my arrow which I wanted to be the main focus of my piece.
Once I was done with the thumbnails I moved on to the final piece, I realised that I wouldn't be able to create a new hallway from scratch so I decided to use a thumbnail and give it some colour.
For the final piece I decided it needed more to it, so I added a figure down the end and bolted up a few of the overhead windows as my tutor pointed out that there is too much light shining in on the hallway (later adding it to the thumbnail above). I then started collecting textures from textures.com and once I had all the textures I needed I focused on filtering and changing the lighting to create a dark and eerie mood setting. While the other thumbnails are eerie in a way, I felt as though this one was the eeriest with the figure looming at the end of the corridor, and the arrow glowing in its case giving the place a sense of mystery.
Week 3 Summary:
Task 2 Brief: Survival Weaponry
An epidemic has broken out in Chicago leaving a section of the city cordoned off, under quarantine, and those stuck on the inside fighting for their lives. With limited supplies and an increase in crime, you are left to forge your own weaponry from everyday items to protect yourself.is to design a weapon sheet that can be used as reference by 3D Artists.
This Project is due for three weeks from now.
Ideas: My first idea is a multi-purpose backpack attaching a car battery to the back, connecting wires to whichever weapons the character has giving them an electrical charge, also putting a water cooler inside the back to keep the battery cool. My second idea is a Pitch Fork with electrical charge running through it connected to a car battery with a leather strap for the character to wear over their shoulder. My third idea is a bat with a desk fan attached to the end, on the desk fan's there will be sharpened metal blades which rotate thanks to power being given to the desk fan so it can rotate, most possibly from a car battery. My last idea is a leaf blower that shoots jars filled with random items in each one, (metal shrapnel, petrol, acid, nails, e.t.c).
Items: Wires, Knifes, Glass Jars, Pitch fork, Rucksack, Car batteries, Garden Gloves, Boxing Gloves, Leaf Blower, Straps & Belts (Leather), Desk Fan, Blender Blades, Duct Tape, Pipes, Makeshift sword (metal), Jump Cables, Superglue, Lighters, Petrol, Rubber, Garden Tools, Rake, Scythe.
Week 4 Summary:
After collecting my image research and compiling ideas of weapons that would work, I began doing sketches for my weapon. I then moved onto creating the nunchuk made out of bike parts (or Bike-Chuk as I called it), I decided the handle is going to be made out of a bikes main body strip, with a stub that holds the chain (made out a bike chain) in place. On the other end of the chain contains a bike gear that has the chain wielded in the centre to stop it breaking off and the edges sharpened for damage.
Next up I did a Pitch Fork with an electrical charge running through it (Spark Stabber). I put a car battery on the end of a pitch fork, duct taped together so as not to fall off, with Kitchen knifes on the other end of the fork. I attached jumper cables to the metal part of the knifes to create the shock while getting stabbed, and the wires were duct taped to the pole to stop them from getting loose when attacking an opponent.
For my final design I decided to go with the 'Fan Bat' idea as that had been mine and a majority of other's favourite. After pointing out that if I used a plastic desk fan blade the plastic would break off easily, so I looked into metal fan blades, and went with a metal fan blade that had been sharpened at the end for a more effective attack weapon. Below is the line art base for the design sheet.
Week 5 Summary:
Continuing on from my line art sketch last week, I then added colour to the piece, I struggled with the duct tape when showing the crease effects, but after a number of repeat attempts I think I showed an idea that the tape holding the wires and blades together was duct tape. The hardest part of the piece was get a good colour scheme for the wood, after multiple attempts I wasn't happy with the design, in the end however I able to come to an effective colour for the wood.
I asked for feedback on my design and was told that I just need to add a bit more shadows to the darker areas of my design. While doing that I decided to add small blood splatters on the blades and head of the bat for effect.
Week 6 Summary:
Task 3 Brief: Loot Chest:
Loot chests are a common occurrence in video games, which are often spawned in various location or received upon defeating an enemy.
My Task:
Design three types of loot chests which can be easily interpreted into a 3D model. Design(s) must explore an alternate art style to that in which you normally work, i.e. realism > stylised, and vice-versa.
· Basic Chest.
· Rare Chest.
· Boss Chest.
This gives me a good chance to work in a style i'm not familiar in and see if I can use it to further my creative practice and maybe find a new art style to look into. My work mainly focuses on cartoonist realism style, so this time I'm going to try and aim for full realism style by looking into artists who use photo manipulation techniques for their artwork.
While gathering artwork I decided that I did not want to create a chest, so I branched out onto the idea of the chest being a vase or an urn with loot inside it, and the player has to smash the chest/vase to get the loot. After talking to the tutors about my idea, I was told to not focus on the idea of my chest being smashed but rather finding a way to open and close the chest.
For further research, I looked into the theme of the chests being Egyptian themed, I looked at artefacts and treasure chests from that area and came up with the following.
For my basic chest will be a small golden box with Anubis heads sticking out the top and the player has to turn them to open the chest.
The rare chest will be an unique shape vase in the style of a human torso, a hatch will be around the chest area that opens after a puzzle is figured out.
The Boss chest will be a sarcophagus that has handles that open out to let the lid be lifted up, by placing a key in the shape of a ball into the slot on the sarcophagus.
With the concept of using photo-manipulation to create my work in my mind, I set out to create my first loot chest, I was able to come up with the design a lot quicker than I thought it would take. By the time I’d finished I realised that the shape wasn’t right, so I decided to start from scratch, knowing that I’ve already done this once, it shouldn’t take too long to get the next one done.
After making a base model in maya I began to replicate the steps I used to get the end result. By the end of the week I had produced a much better looking piece that had a lot of positive feedback, with this encouragement I proceeded into the next chest design.
Week 7 Summary:
Moving onto the second loot chest I decided to make this design into a more humanoid vase shape, based on a doodle I liked. Once I had the model made in maya, I moved the design to Photoshop and began work, this design took the longest because I ended up getting too picky about its textures and stains, it took a lot longer to get the shape that I wanted.
Week 8 Summary:
Kekai Kotaki
TASK 4: Professional Online Presence
For this TASK, you will need to create a professionally-facing portfolio website and upload a selection of work to present to potential employers or clients. You can create a website from scratch but are be advised to consider using a pre-existing platform such as ArtStation, Wix or SquareSpace. DeviantArt is not recommended.
To accompany this you will also create a professional LinkedIn profile. It is also a good time to look back through previous blog and social media posts to remove anything you wouldn’t want a future employer to see!!! This TASK should not take more than two days.
For those of you with existing websites use the time to reflect, update and amend.
My Updated linkedin and artstation accounts.
I added some work I did over this term.
TASK 4: Professional Online Presence
For this TASK, you will need to create a professionally-facing portfolio website and upload a selection of work to present to potential employers or clients. You can create a website from scratch but are be advised to consider using a pre-existing platform such as ArtStation, Wix or SquareSpace. DeviantArt is not recommended.
To accompany this you will also create a professional LinkedIn profile. It is also a good time to look back through previous blog and social media posts to remove anything you wouldn’t want a future employer to see!!! This TASK should not take more than two days.
For those of you with existing websites use the time to reflect, update and amend.
My Updated linkedin and artstation accounts.
I added some work I did over this term.
Creative Practice:
For the same time as the hotel brief is due next week, I have to present my idea of what I want to do to my tutors, It has to be one slide long, containing:
Information about the project, images, and initial designs.
A schedule,
Plausibility,
Research & Development (R&D) Strategy
To be submitted as a PDF.
Information about the project, images, and initial designs.
A schedule,
Plausibility,
Research & Development (R&D) Strategy
To be submitted as a PDF.
I was fully on board with the concept of creating artwork for a game (I went to look at The Skillful Huntsman Book over the holidays, however I was told it is a bad idea to create an Art Book as it will take too long to create and will be too much stress on me, I am allowed to go with my idea of creating a presentation showing concept art telling a story/myth/fairy tale/legend, I plan to expand upon this over the week ready to have something to show for next week.
Weeks One & Two Summary:
My final year project will be a body of 2D concept artwork as if it was a real game based on the Czechoslovakian Folktale of 'The Flaming Horse'. I will be creating the main characters and a couple of environments showing the main location and battle of the story. I will be looking into creating more of a fantasy style game where I'll keep the clothing and characters more historical by looking at clothing style from the time period of this story and games which have similar clothing styles, (Witcher, Skyrim & Dragon Age). While for the environments looking into anachronism, more of a futuristic fusion of cities from different time periods for the environments (starting with Midgar from FF7, and Republic City from Avatar: The Legend of Korra). In this project I aim to evolve my drawing skills with research, and composition so I can create dynamic polished pieces. By the end of this project I will have fully finished character pieces and illustrations of my process, as well as environments and if I have more time, promotional art.
After Searching for fairy tales online, I came across a website called mainlesson.com which had a massive amount of fairy tales to choose from. It was tough to narrow down a choice as there where quite a few that I was considering, In the end I found the story I will be bsing my concept artwork off.
The Flaming Horse:
The story opens with a narrative of a land that's dreary and dark, because the sun never shone there, however the king owned a horse that had a flaming sun on its forehead, the king used this horse to bring light to the kingdom. One day the horse disappeared, and the land was cast into darkness and despair, with the kingdom in ruins without the horse's gift, the king, along with his army, decided to set out on a journey to reclaim the missing horse. Once reaching the outskirts of the kingdom where the sun began to shine again, the king and his men encountered a small cottage, the king decided to enter it to ask the owner for directions and clues as to find the horse. Inside sat a man, the king greeted this man and when the man greeted back, the king realised that this man was a seer. The seer told the king he knew that the king would come to his cottage looking for the horse, he also told the king that he'd never find the horse unless he let the seer find the horse instead of the king. The king offered the man a handsome reward and any tools for the journey, the seer replied saying he needed no reward and but one man to accompany him, with this the king returned home and the seer and servant set out to find the horse. After crossing six countries and arriving at the seventh, the seer told the servant that this country is ruled by three kings, who all have wives who are daughters of a witch, he then said that these kings stole the horse and the youngest king rides it. To learn the location of the king with the horse, the seer transformed himself into a green bird, then flew up to the first queens bedroom, tapped on the window until the queen let him in, while gazed at the birds beauty, the queen told the bird that her husband was visiting a third of the kingdom. Just then the witch came into the room and tried to kill the bird, knowing that the bird was really a seer, however the seer transformed back into a man and escaped, then went onto visit the second queen. He once again transformed into a bird and got the second queen to reveal that her husband was off visiting two-thirds of the kingdom, once again the witch entered and tried to kill the bird, with the seer escaping once again by transforming back into a man, then again into a bird. He then visiting the youngest queen who told the bird that her husband was visiting all three parts of the kingdom, and like the last two times the witch entered and tried to kill the seer, with the seer escaping once again. Now knowing the location of all three kings, he and the servant camped out under a bridge which led into the heart of the kingdom, which all three kings would have to cross in order to return home, waiting to ambush them. That evening when the first king arrived, the seer placed a log in front of the horse to spook it. The king cried out for the man responsible, calling him a scoundrel, the seer then pretending to be offended by these words attacked and swiftly killed the first king. He then attached the kings leg to the horse it was riding and sent it on its way home, but making sure there was a trail of blood to attract the other kings. The seer then hid and waited for the next king to arrive, the next evening the second king arrived and noticed the blood, assuming that murder had taken place, the king cried out for the victim. Once again pretending to be offended by those words, the seer attacked and killed the second king, and once again, the seer set the second kings horse home dragging the dead man behind it, leaving a trail of blood and hiding it wait for the last king. On the third evening the youngest king arrived riding the flaming horse, noticing the blood, he shouted out for the killer, the seer then leaped into action and attacked the king. This king unlike the others was much stronger and better at swordplay unlike his brothers, they fought until both swords where broken. The two men then agreed to transform into wheels and see which would break first when rolling down a hill, the seer transformed into a cartwheel, and the king a lighter wheel, they attacked each other with the cartwheel breaking the lighter wheel's spokes. The king, only having his finger broken, challenged the seer into a contest where they are both flames and whichever burns up first is the loser, the seer agreed and changed himself into a red flame, while the king into a white flame, the two flames then began burning each other mercilessly but neither could get the other to burn up. Then a beggar passed by, the white flame called out to the beggar offering him a penny if he will pour water over the red flame, however the red flame offered a shilling to the beggar if he would pour water over the whit flame. The beggar, who was interested in the shilling as it is a bigger currency than the penny, then poured water over the white flame and in doing so killing the youngest king. The red flame transformed back into the seer, gave the shilling to the beggar, retrieved the flaming horse, called his servant and rode off. Once the kings that had been killed where buried, the witch decided to enact her revenge for losing her son-in-laws, and took off with her daughters to kill the seer and the servant. On their way home, the seer and his servant where crossing the mountains when the servant became extremely hungry, they then encountered a tree full of apples, a spring, and a rosebush. These three stood out rather suspiciously, to the servant he did not notice, however the seer knew that these where the witch's daughters in disguise ready to kill the seer and servant when they became tempted by their disguises. Knowing who they really where the seer killed all three of the women before they could attack, afterwards the seer and servant continued on their journey. When they returned to the kingdom the horse's power brought life back to the land. The king offered the seer half his kingdom as a gift, but the seer just wanted to return to his cottage leaving the king behind and returning home. http://www.mainlesson.com/display.php?author=fillmore&book=czech&story=horse The Idea for the Game I think that this story would be a great basis for a game, the player would control the seer travelling the land in search of the enemy king and the horse, fighting enemies along the way to reach the final boss, including extra content at the end with the witch's daughters battles. I want the game to be similar to games I'm based off games like Dragon Age and Witcher. I won't think about the game side of this much as my project is creating concept art for an idea rather than creating that game itself. I envision the game play being an open world game where the player is free to explore through the use of agency. I want it to be a more JRPG style of game, like Final Fantasy games and Pokemon. The idea is that the player has the ability to see the future, at points throughout the game, the player is given future visions primarily of items and weapons, side quests will become available where the player can go searching for these weapons. The more the player collects, the more of the game world they can explore. If the player refuses to do the side quest, the game will later punish the user by making battles against the mini-bosses and some enemies difficult as they could be much easier defeated with the weapon the character was supposed to collect. Once the player has all the weapons and items needed the ending story arcs with the final bosses will be unlocked.  Who I am creating With a roster of characters to choose from, I narrowed down the four most important characters I want to create for my project. The first will be the Main protagonist and playable character, The Seer. The second will be the prize that the characters are fighting over which is The Flaming Horse. The third will be The Third and youngest brother King which is the main antagonist of this story in my opinion. The last will be The Witch, see was the one who set the story into motion by stealing the horse in the first place. Depending on the time frame and work flow will depend on whether any other characters will be created, the next two I have in mind are the seer's assistant and one of the witch's daughters (Probably the one who is married to the enemy king).  Week 3 Summary:
Czechoslovakian Culture:
My main culture reference will be the Czechoslovakia culture where the story originates from, since the story is set in the 9th century, I will start my research with looking into what clothing, weapons, props, architecture, e.t.c that are from these times. I will be aiming to get as much realism as possible in my designs through studying artists I have chosen that I think would benefit my work the best. When I pitched my idea, I was given the name Alfred Munnings to research, his depictions of horses are beautiful, bringing their powerful bodies to life.
 Source: http://www.mythencyclopedia.com/Sa-Sp/Seers.html 
The Seer is the protagonist, and the first character I will be creating, he will be who the player controls throughout the game. The seer will have a access to abilities such as future vision, shape shifting, and use of magic spells. Looking into character influences, I think that Dr Strange (Dr Strange), Merlin (Merlin) and Loki (Thor) would be good examples because I think the clothing style of Dr Strange and Merlin are what I think he would be wearing. With his powers to see into the future combined with his sorcery, he has the ability to acquire any necessary pieces of equipment for his journey, as he predicted the king would ask him to take on this journey. Less of a battle hardy character, more cocky nature knowing that he can win any battles because of his powers.
I spoke to one of the tutors the other day about my idea, and we both came to an idea of him only going on this journey for his own needs, fighting the enemy king just so he could meet the flaming horse himself similar to Loki in doing what he wants, the idea of he's not a hero, he's just the protagonist. I also had an idea from early on of his mood being shown through his eyes, and them changing to suit his emotions, e.g: red for anger, blue for calm.
For his design I imagine him to be in his late 20's early 30's age, however being the man he is, he could have any age but I'll stick to 20's-30's. I want him wearing travellers clothes, like robes and loose clothing, with a few layers for warmth, but not too many as to overheat.
I want him to be wearing a long robe or coat that covers his clothes to conceal weapons and other items like potions and treasures. I see his clothes being dirty as he prefers not to change his clothes so as to loose his possessions, His colour scheme should be darker colours like blue-black or mud brown, and have smaller brighter colours which stick out to direct the viewers eye, maybe a wrist band or a scarf. I'm considering doing two designs, one where he's wrapped up and hiding items, and then when he attacks or tricks people, he takes off a coat or robe and reveals what he's been hiding up his sleeve.
  
The unique abilities of the eye powers in Naruto, The Sharingan allows the user to copy their opponents attack and later use that technique in battle. The Sage Mode eyes allow the user to tap into the power of nature and store energy quicker, and the Byakugan allows the user to locate their opponents whereabouts when hiding and pinpoint all the pressure and weak points on a human body. The Rinnegan allows the user to use any of the abilities above, as well as absorb their opponents attacks and have complete mastery over any attacks and elements of nature. I very much like the idea of these concepts and hope to develop them into my designs.
Sketches I did during the week, the first one looked at the four dc heroes of Constantine, Arrow, The Flash & Legends of Tomorrow. The next one was sketches based on the idea of him wielding a staff in various poses, this image was based off a dark magician model I found online.
 
This last sketch is a hand study, because I'm not good at drawing hands, so I gathered a few images off google, and drew rough sketches in different positions.
Heading into week four I have a lot of ideas I want to try out and hopefully will be able to develop them to my full potential.
Week 4 Summary:
Week four I decided to look into researching artists and art styles for my character designs, and in the background I continued practising on facial designs for my character. This first image is a quick practice of male face references I found on google, I later attempted to do some shading for one, but abandoned it after the process of my task was taking up too much time.
Further development and hand practise into getting a more flowing and dynamic hand shot, I used images I found on google to create this evening sketch.
About halfway through the week I started my design process on creating horses. As I stated in my learning agreement that I struggle with animal anatomy, so I would use BA3a to practice drawing horses. The first shape anatomy is traced from a picture to get a feel for the shape, with the idea of how it should look, I tried it again by referencing the picture this time. I then spent the rest of the piece practising horse heads, the shaded piece is defiantly the best one in my opinion, because it looks more natural than the line art ones I created.
Matt Rhodes: Matt Rhodes is the lead concept artist in Dragon Age games and my current favourite artist in which to do my art style in, He is defiantly a good starting point for research into creating my character concepts. His artwork is best known for its style of blending a comic book characters with a semi-realistic environment.
After researching Matt Rhodes, I considering doing my artwork in this art style as I am basing my project off a story. I will look into other artists and continue to come up with ways in which I could implement their designs into my ideas.
Theo Prins: Theo Prins is a environment concept artist working at ArenaNet, USA, his best work is the concepts he's done for Guild Wars 2. His artwork style uses simple colours and shapes to confidently create a sense of space and dramatic effect, whereas most sci-fi environment artists tend to make hyper realistic and detailed drawings, Prins's impressionist art style aims to get viewers coming up with their own unique impression of whats happening in the paintings, rather than coming up with a logical understanding of what the painting is. I think that this art style would be great to create for my final project as it gives me the freedom to create an amazing landscape piece without becoming fixated or focused on one area and make the whole piece flow more efficiently.
Marc Brunet (Cubebrush): Marc Brunet is a concept artist who runs his own company, Cubebrush. Previously working at blizzard, Marc has developed an art style that leaves a big impact on his viewers. He uses his own made custom brushes to create this unique painterly style which combined with the colour schemes and process make incredibly beautiful artwork. This kind of fantasy artwork is something I hope to achieve when creating my project, I know it won't be as detailed but I hope that I'll be able to try and find a unique colour palette.
Mathias Zamecki: Mathias Zamecki is a freelance concept artist, who has worked for many studios such as MPC, CD Project Red, and One Pixel Brush. I prefer to focus on his environment work for this project. The brushes he uses give an idea of what kind of landscape it is, whether it's trees, rocks, or grass, it flows well and presents a design of a unique world. What I really like about his artwork is how like Prins its simple yet gives a clear message of whats going on in this world, I would defiantly like to have a go at working with this art style.
Feng Zhu: Feng Zhu is the leader of the Feng Zhu Design company which does concept art for lots of different companies such as, Epic Games, ILM, Sony, EA, Warner Brothers, and many more. Using nature & machinery as his inspiration he creates fantastic new and creative paintings which leave a great impression, through his tutorials on his YouTube channel gives me a chance to look into them in great detail. Having had years of industry practice behind him, I feel as though his tutorials on YouTube will help out massively, and it would be a waste not to attempt his line art style, I used that in the first task and it greatly improved my thumbnails and final design.
Alfred Munnings: Alfred Munnings is an artist who at the age of 14, attended NUA in 1892 for six years, he has become well known for his amazing skills at drawing horses and his house was turned into a museum a few years after his death in 1959. His ability to use the colour and lighting in a way to really bring out the shape and strength of a horse, leaves a fantastic impression on the patience and skill needed to create these paintings. His artwork will defiantly help when it comes to developing my horse character.
Elizabeth Thompson: Elizabeth Thompson (also known as Lady Butler) was a British painter, and one of the few female painters to receive fame for historical paintings. Most of her paintings are war themed, like with Munnings I think the designs and skill of the paintings are inspiring, however I've noticed in her paintings tend to focus more on the theme of war rather than the horses. So I chose to look at her for the way she draws the horses in battle, the movements and gestures the horse's make are what drew me to them. I will attempt to create these movement in BA3a
With a good selection of artists to look at and choose from, I felt a lot more confident finishing the week with the chance to practise these style guides this term.
Week 5 Summary:
Bohemian Culture:
When researching into Czechoslovakian culture, I found out about Bohemia, a region in the Czech Republic. Bohemianism is a term best used to describe them, the word emerged from France in the early 19th century, the culture usually consists of like-minded people involving musical, artist, or literacy pursuits. They refuse to stay in one location and will live anywhere that takes there fancy, and prefer to live the gypsy way of life.
Now I'm going to look at the main focus and character everyone's fighting over in this story, The Flaming Horse. In the story he is described as a horse with a sun on it's forehead, while this is an interesting idea, I wanted to take his design in a different direction. My main inspiration for this character will be the flaming horse of the apocalypse WAR, this character is meant to bring death and war everywhere it goes, so that got me thinking on its concept and came up with an idea. The horses power allows it to bring life to nature wherever it goes, what if it gains it's powers by taking the life energy from its rider, making it a cursed horse. Whomever rides this horse will receive a cruel and painful death, but with the seers powers he can negate this effect. Its powers I imagine it being similar to the horse with the same name in the Red Dead Redemption DLC Undead Nightmare, it helps the player cross the open world much faster, and it burns any enemies it touches.
For his design I looked into different horse types.
To help understand these a bit better, I will take about flat-racing and jump races in horse racing:
Flat-Racing: has the horses running 'on the level' in a test of speed, stamina and skill, where the knowledge of the jockey and power of the horse and pushed to the limit to win. Races vary from 5 feet to 2 miles long depending on the conditions, races mainly take place on grass, but can be held on specialised turf if the weather conditions prevent the use of normal grass.
Jump Races: these are races where horses have to jump obstacles like hurdles or fences. Jump races usually take place during Autumn, Winter & Spring, these races are a test of stamina and jump power, the horses used in these races are from a much older variety compared to the flat-racing horses. Some horses are bred just to compete in jump racing, races are held over a distance of 2 to 4 1/2 miles.
Arabian: Arabian horses are one of the oldest types of horses in the world, most horse types have originated from Arabian. It's most identifiable characteristic's is the finely chiselled head, dished face, long arching neck, and high tail carriage, It is said that it's appearance shows off energy, intelligence, courage and nobility. The Arabian's history goes back centuries, it's true origin date is unknown and has had a huge influence on history as being seen as the personal transport of many historical figures. Arabians start racing later than normal horses at the age of 3, and can race for up to 12 years after starting, this is the same for jumping as well. These types of horses are more known around the world, I may look into development on this horse, however I have set my mind on a thoroughbred.
Quarter: Quarter horses are the most popular type of horses in America, they can reach speeds of up to 55mph. It is mainly used a a farm or rodeo horse because of its number of equestrian disciplines, being able to work well with cattle, hunting, polo, or farm work, this horse has earned the title of 'America's Horse' and 'World's Fastest Athlete'. These horses usually start at around the age of 3, and can last up to 15 years in racing, be it flat or jump racing.
Thoroughbred: originally Arabian horses imported to England in late 17th, early 18th century, Thoroughbred's are the offspring's off these Arabian's breeding with Britain's native horse, these type of horses are better for sprinting and covering distance faster. They can start flat racing at the age of 2, but their peak physical age will be around 4 or 5, Jump racehorses tend to start at the age of 4, and can continue this career until they are about 12 or older. There are 7 colours for this type of horse, I think I will aim for a brown or chestnut colour scheme, this is also my favourite choice for design, mainly because I see these horse types a lot more than others.
With this in mind I continued my developmental process of drawing horse anatomy, these drawings a showing an improvement, but I feel like I made the sketches a little too skinny. I will look into the horses body a bit more next time.
With this last piece, while I did spend a bit longer creating the piece, I am ultimately happy with the results as the sketches start to look more realistic in terms of anatomy.
At the end of week 5 I felt as though my research process was coming along nicely and I'm starting to feel much better about producing enough content to work on over the term, however I'm still not ready to begin my character iterations as I want to do a bit more research and the task is also taking up more time than I thought it would.
Week 6 Summary:
While coming up with concept ideas for my main character, I decided on the idea of my seer character being a trickster, mainly because I believe that this is a more interesting character plot, and this links to my previous statement about the seer doing what he wants to, he's not a hero, he's just the main character. So I decided as inspiration to look at the best trickster I know Loki, the Norse God of Mischief: Loki is the son of two giants, Farbauti and Laufey, he is also the harbinger of Ragnarok and father to three children, Hel, Fenrir, and Jormungandr and a mother to Sleipnir, Odin's Shamanic horse. Loki is shown as a scheming coward who only cares for himself, he will offer help, but only if it suits his desires. He was killed during Ragnarok by Heimdall, the guardian of the rainbow bridge. http://norse-mythology.org/gods-and-creatures/the-aesir-gods-and-goddesses/loki/ http://www.ancient-origins.net/myths-legends-europe/enigmatic-loki-trickster-among-gods-norse-mythology-002484 http://mythology.wikia.com/wiki/Loki 
I then had a look at items or possessions I thought my seer might have on his person, I started looking at amulets that where related to Loki, and found a number of results. I'm considering using
Next I moved onto looking at rings, amulets, necklaces, and bracelets that related with the elements of nature, e.g. fire, water, earth, and air, I wanted my seer character to be able to channel the power of the elements through rings on his fingers, similar to the Mandarin's rings from the Iron Man comics.
Next was the use of potions and elixirs, most JRPG games use these as a way of healing the character, mine should be no different. I want to go for a simple design so players will be able to realise straight away what the effects of the bottle do and how best to use it.
  
Continuing on my sketches, I decided to settle on creating a face for my seer character, I had another attempt at drawing faces, and I think I'm ready to take on drawing my character, and I have an idea of who I want to base his face off.
Another sketch of horses, at this stage I felt a lot more confident with the anatomy of a horses body. I want to focus on a Thoroughbred being the horse species, hopefully when I start developing more colour and value practice this will give the horses more life, I believe that the horse from the story is older than it's prime age (around 7-10 yrs) but because of its unique ability, I see the horse being stronger than the average horse.
 The King is the primary antagonist is this story, as he was the one who stole the horse with the help of the witch. In the story he is the youngest and smartest out of all the kings, and the only one who counters the seer at every blow, until the seer outsmarts him resulting in the king’s death. I envision him as being a dictator king, believing himself to be a true 1% class, better than everyone else, as such he has to have rare one of a kind treasures, like the flaming horse. The king is also vastly better at everything he does compared to his brothers, and spends a lot of time practising and studying. It would be interesting to see how his armour turns out as I see him being protected by magical clothing thanks to the witch’s powers, his colour scheme should be more of a golden armour, or gleaming armour to show a sense of power, similar to Gilgamesh’s design from the Fate/Stay tv series.       
For his weapon I looked into the online series of Man of Arms, where they create popular weapons from games, tv series and anime, like Cloud’s Buster sword from FFVII or Genji’s katana from Overwatch. The King’s sword will be infused with magic, with help from the witch, and have the ability to shapeshift and take on any form the wielder requires.
Week 7 Summary:
Constantine (Matt Ryan): Ryan is best known for his role as Edward Kenway in Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag. Matt Ryan was also known for his portrayal of John Constantine, in the Constantine TV series, which was based off DC's Hellblazer comics. I really like this character as his cocky attitude mixed with his knowledge of the supernatural and occults make him a fun character to watch, his reasoning's behind his actions are mostly because he feels like it or because he was told to by a higher power. When I began working on this character I noticed that his appearance was a older than what I was aiming for, so I had to abandon this character development, however I still want to use some of the traits Ryan's character portrayed.
  Basing my design off the Dr Strange look, I noticed that this character would be better as the villain of the story, mainly due to the head shape and the goatee. So I decided to expand upon that with bigger beards and scars. While I like this concept I still want to see what I can create with Mikkelsen. 
At this point I took a step back and looked at the research that lead me to this character design, upon where I decided I looked into Tom Hiddleston and his portrayal of the Norse god Loki in the Marvel cinematic universe. This man was able to bring the trickster god to life and get a massive fan base out of it, he way he plays this man who goes to any and all lengths to make sure he is the ruler is inspiring. I was thinking of making use of his god complex, where my character see himself better and therefore cocky than others. Once I started working on his character, I felt as though his face and design were perfect for my own, so this is my chosen reference.
 
Week 8 Summary:
The Witch is the final character I am creating for my project, in the story she helps the enemy king steal the horse away from the other kingdom, but is later killed by the seer at the end. Her character is more of a normal witches attire, being a robe and loose clothing, however with her magic she has the ability to disguise herself and dress in more formal clothes when around the palace and the king. With her ability to disguise herself, she can also hide her true age, she and the seer used to have a relationship, but he left her. So she conspires with the king, knowing that the seer would be interested in a flaming horse and using the king to kill the seer. However this plan backfires and she has to confront him on her own, this ends up forcing her to return to her normal form and losing the fight to the seer. Her colour scheme will be dark blue green in her normal form, and in her disguise form more of a white, to lighter colours to hide her true nature.
 
Krysten Ritter, Best known in my mind as the actress who portrayed Marvel character Jessica Jones in the Netflix tv series based on the same name, and Jesse Pinkman’s girlfriend Jane Margolis. I really enjoyed her portrayal as Jessica Jones, but I won’t be using her in my development, as she is too young, I envision the witch a little older, I might implement her design into one of the daughters if I have time at the end of the project.
  
Colour Design
Analogous colours are next to each other and push at each other
 
Complementary colours are colours opposite each other.
Split complementary is where one colour splits off from the rest.
Triad hues are equidistant on the colour wheel.
The Seer’s
The Horse’s
The King’s
The Witch’s
The submission for research report draft
Week 9 Summary:
Week 9 is a reading week, It is also the perfect chance to catch up on some project work as up until now I've been focusing on the task's over the main project, the third task especially as I was practising photo manipulating. I began the week with using one the horses from my previous drawing and developing it by giving it colour and depth into highlights and shadow.
                  
Week 10 Summary:
Starting week 10 I want to do some iterations on the iris to demonstrate the seer's powers of eye transformation to match which power he's using.
The first one I looked at animal eyes, specifically reptile types such as snakes and lizards, who have a sharp iris shape to intimidate their opponents, I want his iris to take this shape when he is engaging his opponents.
The next design came from looking at the various eye powers from Naruto series, I modelled the design after the Byakugan technique, as it looks the most similar to his future vision powers.
  The last design I made is a clarity mode one, this eye form is obtained when the character is relaxing, I imagine he uses this form to heal from injury. Overall this was a fun experiment to test, and i’m really happy with the results I got when it came to the eyes. 
For my concept of the two environment pieces I want my first one to be a city landscape from the outskirts of the city, maybe one where the character looks down onto the city from the edge of the forest. The piece should follow the character towards the city from the edge of the piece heading to the city being in the middle-right area. While it is big and busy looking, like Mos Eisley spaceport (Star Wars A New Hope) and Republic City (Avatar: The Legend of Korra) is should have nature or a vast landscape surrounding it. (examples below)
Republic City from Avatar.
 
For the second piece, I envision the main battle between the protagonist and antagonist taking place on a bridge outside the city border, I want the bridge to be old and worn out to indicate that people avoid it meaning its quiet and abandoned location, however knowing this the king challenges the seer to do battle on the bridge despite its conditions. The main area of the bridge should be all broken and debris can be all over the place as a result of a heated battle between the two characters. I want the background to be more facing towards nature and forests, landscapes, however I would like to have hints showing that they are close to a city, like a abandoned checkpoint or old signpost with nature taking its toll on it.
When it comes to creating environments, like with character pieces, it's good for the eye to have a direction to follow, and allow it too lock onto a transition that's the main focus of the piece, so I need to find images I looked into castles, bridges and the Czechoslovakian landscape for references.
  
With these images and more I found off google, having researched watched Feng Zhu's videos on environment thumbnails, and after talking to a fellow student for advice and their thought process on creating environments, I set out to create thumbnail studies of fantasy landscapes. After seeing the time process it took for me to do one, I decided that nine would be a fair amount for a variety. The pieces all began by using one image, cropping it and duplicating parts of it to create a different outcome, then I would add a few more pieces in and adjust there colour settings to match the main picture. The majority of creating these pieces came from mixing the colour balance, changing the brightness, adjusting the levels, curves and hue & saturation format. While I had already tried photo-manipulation in the third task I still struggled with the concept as this form was completely new to me.
The end results, I tried to create designs that get the viewer to follow a path, number one was a test run, number two I like and got a lot of positive feedback, however I feel concerned for the direction the rocky slope gets the viewer to follow. Number three was created with an a concept of a final fantasy XIV scene I saw, the fourth one is trying to improve upon the third one making it more interesting, Number five was the one I spent the most time on and enjoyed the most, creating a scene from inside the city. Number six was an attempt of making something similar to number two, but changing the view port and adding a rock carving into the mountain, this one doesn't really work well for the idea of the second concept piece, number seven was a view of the city from a town on the outer limits, I envisioned it being a floating city in the clouds, similar to Bespin from Star Wars and Columbia from Bioshock infinite. Number eight was another attempt at number five from a different angle, different time period, and with flying pirate ships which where inspired to me from the movie Treasure Planet, and number nine was looking at an idea of what the city planet Coruscant from Star Wars would look like if it had some greenery in it. After asking for feedback and opinions of people's favourite, I learnt that I should've started a little smaller and edited one image by using paints a lot more. Moreover the designs received positive feedback and from favourites and my personal favourites, I have decided on number's 2, 5, 8 and 9 for further iteration.
Once I had my fun experimenting with photo-manipulating I moved onto the main focus part of the practice sessions, creating my seer characters body. While I had the face design done and the eye powers meanings explained, they needed a body to get a better understanding of how these powers work. So I started with some rough sketches coming up with ideas based off my research.
 
Reference pic I used for the design pose.
Once I had done a few rough sketches I started to go into a little detail, by choosing ten I really liked and developing them further, Taking inspiration from the Czechoslovakian clothes mood board, while I mainly stuck to this clothing range. I added a few items that I thought would match the scheme, such as the bandanna designs, torn clothes, and the cape.
With a better standing of creating environment and the design process for my seer character under way I feel confident in heading into the next week, for the rest of term I will focus solely on the character iterations and development.
Week 11 Summary:
Going into week 11, I need to look which of my designs from last week I like the most and which relates to my designs in terms of time period. For my style guide & research document I'm going to need to show character development iteration, so this week I'm focusing on moving my iterations for my seer along. At this point while I have looked at other artists and art styles, I'll be keeping my work simple to manage time. With these concepts in my head, I going to start developing my character design to a final state.
After asking around for advice, I got feedback from people saying they really liked the cape design, so I decided to follow up on that design for the next phase of the iteration
I liked how the scarf piece turned out, so I choose the third design from the last one and further iterated that design, editing various features on the underclothes, the sleeve and length of the coat, but removing the scarf flow and making it tucked into his hood.
I then decided to combine the last figure from the previous designs, taking the concepts I liked best from each one, I went for the thicker coat with the hood design because it looked a lot more like he had something to hide, and making the coat go down to his ankles instead of his knees. With this the concept for my character in his travelling form is done.
With his major travelling design done, I wanted to create an outfit he would wear when in the presence of others (talking, fighting, e.t.c.) and with that all the interesting items he would have on hand.
When drawing the character without a coat, I made him carry a massive rucksack which contained treasures from other countries, however after sharing this idea, I decided to re-visit this concept and turn the rucksack into a small knapsack that gets hung onto the belt and through the use of magic, it allows him to store weapons and objects much bigger. This idea came from the magic bags and tent design from the harry potter series where the inside is bigger than the outside.
I wanted to have him wear a bell that chimes whenever he wants to be noticed by someone, this refers back to my idea of becoming invisible by people unless he talks to someone, at which point the bell will ring when he walks and people suddenly become aware of his existence.
While coming up with ideas for a belt buckle, I noticed one of the design had holes all the way around the belt, upon further development I understood that these where buttons. I then had the idea of making it so his belt buttons would contain the souls of the victims he's defeated, this in turn fuels his life energy and makes him stronger in the process.
For the necklace placed around his neck, I wanted it to represent his countries symbol but be upside down, to show he doesn't follow their ideals, but will support his country when needed and only if it suits his needs. I looked into Czech flags and symbols and came across this design of a double cross on a hill, this is perfect as it has a unique meaning behind it and can easily be created. The maps included are from a website I found last year called Inkarnate which allows you to create your own map, I might have a go with this website during some free time, as its design concept is interesting to me.
With this I have finished my design for the seer character, I am now proceeding to introduce colour to my designs over the weekend as I want to save the last week for making a model sheet and start looking at creating my guides.
Week 12 Summary:
Heading into the last week before the Christmas holidays, I wanted to get a model sheet finished for my character. If I can get this done before the holidays, I'll be confident going into BA3b with my design ideas.
I finished creating my colour palette for the designs, most of the colours come from choosing a colour or two from the image research, and putting them into adobe colour wheel. Using the settings in there I was able to come up with 6 major colours for each set. I decided to keep the outer clothes and shoes in a darker colour from the clothes references, balancing out the tones by keeping the lower clothes in a more lighter colour. If the outer clothes where in the mid-tones I made them slightly lightly mid-tones.
     
Over the weekend I decided to buy Cubebrush's tutorial on Ambient Occlusion, using that tutorial to create a model sheet for my character, this is the first time I attempted to create an art piece in this tutorial, but I want to use this for my style, So I need to practice, and I figured that this would be a great first piece to try it on, also this can save me a lot of time in terms of shadow and lighting in the future.
Creating the base layer for my model sheet, after that was done I cleaned up the line art and made it smoother.
Reference Pose I used for my design.
 
Once that was done, I moved onto the base colours, I hadn't thought of what colour I wanted the coat to be, eventually I settled on the colour of light brown, however I had to make changes to his clothes underneath the coat. Aiming for a more lighter colour than the coat but keeping with the dark colour scheme, I decided to choose a mixture of blues, mud brown and dark green for the clothes, brown hair, and dip for a greyer skin tone, making it more lifelike with warmer skin tones in later editing, with this I had my colour palette.
  
Colour scheme with coat (Left) and without coat (Right).
Now that I had the lineart and colour done, I set out to attempt the ambient occlusion. Since I'd never tried using ambient occlusion in Photoshop before, I started with a first softer layer, then using a thicker brush for the edges where there's more shadow. It took a few tries to get a decent result.
 
I then made a couple of gradient map layers to bring out the skin colour and make the piece seem a little lighter. This effect does make the character's outfit look more weathered than the value study, which is making the shadows stand out a lot better.
 
Finally Overlaying the colours and making tweaks here and there on the skin as I didn't like the way it turned out the first time, after experimenting with colour balance & levels editor I found I colour set that I think suit it.
 
The end result of my model sheet for my seer character with his coat on and off, I feel as though the piece is a little dark, but I think this works out in making the design look aged and used. I will focus on adding a few dirt and stain patches around places like the feet, as well as scratches and tears in the clothing to show indication of him being a traveller. However I will attempt to make some of the colour to brighten it up a bit as some of the piece is a little difficult to make out. With this I'm ready to create a finalised piece for him, this I have set myself to complete over BA3b.
Week X1-X3 Summary:
I know I won't be able to get much done over the Christmas holidays as I have job work and I can't use any of my uni software to work at home. The holidays will primarily be research doc and style guide layouts, continuing research towards my characters and writing my Dissertation.
I began looking at google slides for design ideas as well as different template images that I thought where interesting. I very much liked the photography slide with the design style of a magazine, I thought that it would be good to write it in similar style to that of a newspaper.
  
Moving on I looked on the the internet for a while looking at websites like slides.com and shuttershock for layout ideas, upon which I discovered a website (link below) that makes beautiful template designs. The use of the design layouts I thought where amazing, the style and spacing for each column I thought where perfect for grabbing attention, especially the portfolio style templates. However once I saw the brushslide designs which make the photos look painted in, I was sold and wanted to use this design in my documents, I noticed that these websites charged for the templates, but with these design ideas I implemented them into my own style of design document templates.
         
Taking this ideas and inspirations to mind, I set out to create my own template slides, I really liked the brushslide effect, so I made my own style by using a texture brush and erasing the edges of the pictures, these are layouts of a title page and a text page.
 
I really liked how this design for the design documents turned out, however I felt that something was missing. After asking Kaliegh I changed the design, choosing the colour of one of the backgrounds and creating a box design that I like better than the last design. It also saves me from editing the pictures when putting them into my presentation, so I decided to use this design for all my documents.
 
Depending on the theme of the slide, I may have to change the box colour, but for the moment it works well enough.
|
Research Report:
On the same presentation as the Creative Practice one I have to create another slide showing what I wish to write about in my Research Report (RR). On the slide I should talk about the:
Subject, topic, area of interest,
The Initial Research I have already done and what research I plan to do,
The Style of the RR e.g: extended essay/reflective/industry.
This month I plan to make notes and write small paragraph drafts so by the beginning on November I'll have a first draft ready. I have a topic in mind but need to explore it further and be ready to be able to answer any questions.
This research report explores the idea of players attaching themselves to the protagonist of games using various understandings of what a protagonist is. I will look into different ways in which the player can emotionally connect and reach the understanding that the games designers set out to create. I also wish to consider if the player cannot empathise with the protagonist or if the designers choose not to make the protagonist relatable by focusing on the game itself while limiting the games potential for player attachment. I will consider the difference between how players engage with custom made avatars and choosing dialogue to suit the player’s wishes (Skyrim, Mass Effect) compared to predetermined experiences and how players respond emotionally to them. By using the different forms of empathy: emotional, cognitive and compassionate, and how it can help the player gain a true connection to the protagonist and enjoy the experience.
Subject, topic, area of interest,
The Initial Research I have already done and what research I plan to do,
The Style of the RR e.g: extended essay/reflective/industry.
This month I plan to make notes and write small paragraph drafts so by the beginning on November I'll have a first draft ready. I have a topic in mind but need to explore it further and be ready to be able to answer any questions.
This research report explores the idea of players attaching themselves to the protagonist of games using various understandings of what a protagonist is. I will look into different ways in which the player can emotionally connect and reach the understanding that the games designers set out to create. I also wish to consider if the player cannot empathise with the protagonist or if the designers choose not to make the protagonist relatable by focusing on the game itself while limiting the games potential for player attachment. I will consider the difference between how players engage with custom made avatars and choosing dialogue to suit the player’s wishes (Skyrim, Mass Effect) compared to predetermined experiences and how players respond emotionally to them. By using the different forms of empathy: emotional, cognitive and compassionate, and how it can help the player gain a true connection to the protagonist and enjoy the experience.
My 5 key words are
1. Protagonist
2. Empathy
3. Avatar/ Alter Ego
4. Design
5. Attachment
After visiting the UEA library I unfortunately only found a little of what I was researching, so I will attempt to return to the UEA library to continue researching and see if I can find out more about what I'm looking for. For the moment I have found some online articles that would be a good starting point to write up.
After receiving feedback about my 150 words, I focused on creating a research question for the title of the essay, I've narrowed it down to 'How can players relate to their video game Protagonists emotionally?' or 'How do Protagonists in video games engage players?'.
I'll looked into affordances, I started my research here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QCSXEKHL6fc
Affordances allow us as a player to understand what an object is and it's use by its environment or design of object (a space gun looks similar to a gun because of its shape) This can be used to talk about customisation's and how we as players understand that when creating our characters that this is a coat, or a pair of boots because of the shape and how it looks.
Looking into the aesthetics of games art
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/185676/the_aesthetics_of_game_art_and_.php
The differences between emotional & cognitive empathy
http://blog.teleosleaders.com/2013/07/19/emotional-empathy-and-cognitive-empathy/
Creating Empathy & Sympathy for my characters
https://gideonsway.wordpress.com/2013/05/12/creating-empathy-and-sympathy-for-your-characters/
"Caring doesn't always mean the audience wants the characters to achieve their goals, but rather the characters being interesting enough to engage with them."
While looking up protagonists and narrative devices I stumbled onto this essay which I think will help out a lot:
http://www.eludamos.org/index.php/eludamos/article/viewArticle/vol4no2-13/192
From that I also found this:
https://www.taik.fi/kirjakauppa/images/05b242aa4f26a8e03f8499599462f5f2.pdf
"Players can control their character regulates and facilitates the engagement with a game via a PC. I propose that the engagement with the player character can be goal-related or emphatic. Emphatic engagement and goal-related engagement are connected with the goals of a PC."
Books:
'The design of everyday things' by Donald Norman, this book looks into how affordance is applied in design, I hope to find this in the UEA library.
'Rules of Play: Games Design Fundamentals' by Katie Salen & Eric Zimmerman
'Homo Ludens' by John Huizinga I will look for these two in the NUA library as I think I can relate some of Huizinga's magic circle theory to this essay, about how the player is drawn into this game world through the protagonist.
'Creating Emotion in Games: The Craft and Art of Emotioneering' by David Freeman
"So although the primary reason for putting emotion in games might be to make money, it’s not what fuels my greatest passion, nor that of many other game designers I know. The fuel is the desire to create entertainment and art."
I started to plan out a structure for the essay:
'Does Empathic relations between the player and video game protagonists make for better gameplay?'
Introduction
250-500 words
Outlining area of the subject I will be discussing.
Chapter 1
1000-1500 words
The Various forms of empathy:
Cognitive empathy
Emotional empathy
Comparison
Games which don't have empathetic characters.
Why that may be a good thing
Chapter 2
1000-1500 words
Interface
Creating your own characters
Picking your personal outcome to a situation.
Chapter 3:
1000-1500 words
Conclusion:
500 words
After visiting the UEA library I unfortunately only found a little of what I was researching, so I will attempt to return to the UEA library to continue researching and see if I can find out more about what I'm looking for. For the moment I have found some online articles that would be a good starting point to write up.
After receiving feedback about my 150 words, I focused on creating a research question for the title of the essay, I've narrowed it down to 'How can players relate to their video game Protagonists emotionally?' or 'How do Protagonists in video games engage players?'.
I'll looked into affordances, I started my research here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QCSXEKHL6fc
Affordances allow us as a player to understand what an object is and it's use by its environment or design of object (a space gun looks similar to a gun because of its shape) This can be used to talk about customisation's and how we as players understand that when creating our characters that this is a coat, or a pair of boots because of the shape and how it looks.
Looking into the aesthetics of games art
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/185676/the_aesthetics_of_game_art_and_.php
The differences between emotional & cognitive empathy
http://blog.teleosleaders.com/2013/07/19/emotional-empathy-and-cognitive-empathy/
Creating Empathy & Sympathy for my characters
https://gideonsway.wordpress.com/2013/05/12/creating-empathy-and-sympathy-for-your-characters/
"Caring doesn't always mean the audience wants the characters to achieve their goals, but rather the characters being interesting enough to engage with them."
While looking up protagonists and narrative devices I stumbled onto this essay which I think will help out a lot:
http://www.eludamos.org/index.php/eludamos/article/viewArticle/vol4no2-13/192
From that I also found this:
https://www.taik.fi/kirjakauppa/images/05b242aa4f26a8e03f8499599462f5f2.pdf
"Players can control their character regulates and facilitates the engagement with a game via a PC. I propose that the engagement with the player character can be goal-related or emphatic. Emphatic engagement and goal-related engagement are connected with the goals of a PC."
Books:
'The design of everyday things' by Donald Norman, this book looks into how affordance is applied in design, I hope to find this in the UEA library.
'Rules of Play: Games Design Fundamentals' by Katie Salen & Eric Zimmerman
'Homo Ludens' by John Huizinga I will look for these two in the NUA library as I think I can relate some of Huizinga's magic circle theory to this essay, about how the player is drawn into this game world through the protagonist.
'Creating Emotion in Games: The Craft and Art of Emotioneering' by David Freeman
"So although the primary reason for putting emotion in games might be to make money, it’s not what fuels my greatest passion, nor that of many other game designers I know. The fuel is the desire to create entertainment and art."
I started to plan out a structure for the essay:
'Does Empathic relations between the player and video game protagonists make for better gameplay?'
Introduction
250-500 words
Outlining area of the subject I will be discussing.
Chapter 1
1000-1500 words
The Various forms of empathy:
Cognitive empathy
Emotional empathy
Comparison
Games which don't have empathetic characters.
Why that may be a good thing
Chapter 2
1000-1500 words
Interface
Creating your own characters
Picking your personal outcome to a situation.
Chapter 3:
1000-1500 words
Conclusion:
500 words
Revising what I have written and creating a personal outcome based on my opinion.
At the moment my research consists of notes and links to websites and articles to help me write my research report. In games people aren't aware of the massive connection there is between the player and the protagonist, the player is living the life of the protagonist and experiencing this game world through the chosen character which the game is based around. Bethesda Games like 'Fallout 4' and 'Skyrim' show this off well by allowing the player to customise their character to suit their vision of this person, from different clothes & hairstyles, to various and legendary weapons/ devices only obtainable through certain characteristics (Fallout 4's level perk system). Exploring the game world at their own pace through the eyes of the character they brought to life. One thing I like a lot about Bethesda games is it allows you to explore and select your own storyline depending on how you play the game, naturally some missions are harder than others, but the more the player practises with getting to understand the protagonists strengths & limits the more they can fully appreciate all the games have to offer.
At the end of the week, I decided to visit the UEA library again to see if I could find any more books and quotes to use in my Research report, because the topic I'm writing about wouldn't be found in that library, the quotes I'm using from the UEA will mainly be setting up my argument or explaining a certain aspect of information.
I looked into the illusion of choice and agency in games, and from the feedback I received on Friday's session, wrote the next 500 words of my draft.
https://forrestpreciado.wordpress.com/2015/05/17/the-stanley-parable-the-illusion-of-choice-in-video-games/
This article uses the Stanley Parable to look into the illusion of choice, it does also talk about its limited environments making effective gameplay, but I focused on the illusion section.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=45PdtGDGhac
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j0RFoGvkQfs
Extra Credits video's, The first one is on the illusion of choice, and the second is on agency in games
Bibliography:
Belman, J. and Flanagan, M. (2010) Designing Games to Foster empathy. Cognitive Technology: Volume 14, Issue 2.
Bogost, I. (2010) Persuasive Games: The Expressive Power of Videogames. Massachusetts: MIT Press
Bogost, I. (2015) Video Games are Better without Characters: The real legacy of SimCity is its attempt—and failure—to make complex systems the protagonists instead of people.
Available at:
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/03/video-games-are-better-without-characters/387556/
Bowman, S.L. (2010) The Functions of Role-Playing Games: How Participants Create Community, Solve Problems and Explore Identity. North Carolina.
Carleton, B. Lund, C. (2014) How do we make emotional connections with objects?
Available at:
https://www.quora.com/How-do-we-make-emotional-connections-with-objects
Chmierlarz, A. (2013) Empathy in Game Design, or Why Some People Like Beyond: Two Souls. Available at: http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/AdrianChmielarz/20131112/204587/Empathy_in_Game
Davis, M. (1994) Empathy, A Social Psychological Approach. Dubuque, LA: Brown and Benchmark Publishers.
Dautenhahn, K. (2005) Social Intelligence and Interaction
in Animals, Robots and Agents. Hertfordshire: AISB’05 Convention.
Freeman, D. (2004) Creating Emotion in Games: the Craft and Art of Emotioneering. Berkeley, CA: New Riders.
Huizinga, J. (1938) Homo Ludens: a study of the play element in culture. Boston: Beacon Press.
Jennett, C. (2008) Measuring and Defining the Experience of Immersion in Games. London: Journal.
Jørgensen, K. (2010) Game Characters as Narrative Devices. A comparative analysis of Dragon Age: Origins and Mass Effect. Eludamos. Journal for Computer Game Culture. 2010; 4 (2). Available at: http://www.eludamos.org/index.php/eludamos/article/view/vol4no2-13/192
Lankoski, P. (2011) Character-Driven Games Design: A Design Approach and Its Foundations in Character Engagement. Taik; 1st Edition
Newman, J. (2002) The Myth of the Ergodic Videogame. Game Studies.
Available at:
http://www.gamestudies.org/0102/newman/
Pearce, C. (2003) Game Noir - A Conversation with Tim Schafer. Game Studies.
Available at:
http://www.gamestudies.org/0301/pearce/
Preciado, F. (2015) The Stanley Parable: The Illusion of Choice in Video Games. Available at: https://forrestpreciado.wordpress.com/2015/05/17/the-stanley-parable-the-illusion-of-choice-in-video-games/
Salen, K. and Zimmerman, E. (2004) Rules of play: design fundamentals. Massachusetts: MIT Press
Sarantinos, J. (2013) Creating Empathy And Sympathy For Your Characters. Available at: https://gideonsway.wordpress.com/2013/05/12/creating-empathy-and-sympathy-for-your-characters/
Schandel, Iben. (2014) The Player-Character Position: Understanding how Computer.
Available at: http://projekter.aau.dk/projekter/files/198256663/Schandel_2014_The_Player_Character_Position.pdf
Game Players Relate to Predefined Characters
Sicart, M. (2008) Defining Game Mechanics. Game Studies.
Available at:
http://gamestudies.org/0802/articles/sicart
Simons, J. (2007) Narrative, Games & Theory. Game Studies.
Available at:
http://gamestudies.org/0701/articles/simons
Solarski, C. (2013) The Aesthetics of Game Art and Game Design. Available at: http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/185676/the_aesthetics_of_game_art_and_.php
Stuart, K. (2014) The identity paradox: why game characters are not us, but should be. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/apr/24/the-identity-paradox-why-game-characters-are-not-but-should-be
The Illusion of Choice - How Games Balance Freedom and Scope - Extra Credits (2013) Directed by James Portnow. YouTube (Video) Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=45PdtGDGhac
Affordances - How Design Teaches Us Without Words - Extra Credits (2014) Directed by James Portnow. YouTube (Video) Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QCSXEKHL6fc
Extra Credits: How Much Agency do Games Need? (2013) Directed by James Portnow. YouTube (Video) Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j0RFoGvkQfs
Self Evaluation:
Self Evaluation: With this year being my final year I was ready to go into BA3a with a strong foot forward, and I have defiantly been able to keep my balance and I walk this mountain path. One of the main points I will take away from today is that I can never have enough research. This part of the project allowed me to research and develop any and all necessary skills heading into BA3b, for the most part of this term I was kept busy by the tasks, one thing I can say about the tasks is that while challenging, It helped me improve in my visual skills, but I spent a long time on these tasks, and that cost me time I could have been doing researching for my creative project. Through these tasks I was able to learn new techniques and methods that can be taken into BA3b, and now looking back there where a couple of iterations I wish I could make as I did struggle a lot in the second task, the third was the hardest, but that had a good reason, I was trying to do art in a style I’d never used before. In the end I don’t think that I’ve lost out because I’m proud of the work I achieved through the tasks.
As stated in the previous paragraph, I spent longer hours on the tasks than the creative practice at the beginning of the project. Once the third task was over and the reading week rolled around, I was able to pull up my sleeves and get some practice work done, making a huge jump in my art skills towards the later half of the project. In terms of work flow, I believe that I’m on the right track to completing everything on a schedule I set myself, My only concerns where if I could’ve had a bit more time to try and practice more studies, and in particular environments. Environments where a challenge when I tried taking them on during the term, but after help from fellow students and online, I have a clear head of where I want to head with them.
I am surprisingly happy with the was my research report/dissertation turned out because I feel as though I was able to get my point across clearly and effectively. I believe that the main topics all got their fair share in the argument and was able to make the word count with no difficulty. There are a couple of sections I would’ve liked to retweet, but I’m not letting that hold me back and am walking forward with my head held high.
Overall while my time management improved in some areas, towards the end I slipped a little and ended up having to make up for lost time, but that has defiantly improved since the previous terms. I am happy with where I am with my work and hope to push forward into climbing the bigger cliff that is the last project of University.
