Edward Dudeney: Game Art 2024-25

Week 6 This week I have been working on different level designs for the game, for this I was focusing on different parts of the body the that the game will be taking place in. I came up with 5 main level designs this week.   The 5 parts of the body that I looked at this week included the throat, lungs, stomach, intestines and the skin. Each one I took inspiration from the style of level that we were going with for the level layouts, and the different features that would be found in these areas of the body. Out of these 5 level designs, the one I'm happies with is the design I came up with for the lungs level design as I took inspiration from the inside of the lungs and how the alveoli and the branches connecting them look like trees.  After speaking to the rest of my team about the level designs that I came up with for the game, they all agreed that they like the lungs level concept and how I designed trees to look like the structure of the inside of the lungs. Using this...

 Presentation evaluation and feedback This week, we pitched our visual novel idea to the class. For the presentation, my section was talking about the legal and ethical considerations for the game. In order to achieve this properly, I had to do research into the different areas we'd need to be considering for the creation of our visual novel. The first two areas I looked at was the use of different fonts and sound. The main consideration when looking into fonts is some companies have trade marked their fonts, so using the font without permission could land you in legal trouble with the company that owns the rights to that font, it is a similar case for music and sound effects. In the presentation, I talked about this and how using fair use fonts and royalty free music is a good way to avoid getting into legal trouble with companies that own different fonts and sounds. Another point I talked about was the use of references and how they can be used properly, I included talking about ...

  Musculature This session we started off with drawing a simple wire frame with accurate anatomy, in order to do this I measured out the full height of the wire frame using the length of the head as reference, the full height being 8 heads tall. Once the wireframe was finished we were asked to map out the muscles on the wire frame from memory, placing each of the different muscles where they should go for accurate anatomy. To differentiate the muscles from the wire frame, I drew the intial muscles using a red pen, I later used a blue pen on top to add in corrections where my anatomy was slightly off. Mistakes that I identified from my sketch from memory was the arrangement of the muscles on the upper back, the length of the deltoids and the arrangement of the muscles going into the Achilles tendon. In order to improve on my mistakes, I will pay more attention to learning the arrangement of the muscles on the back as this is the area where I fell short on my knowledge of anatomy. To...

 Presentation setup This week we will be presenting the ideas for our visual novel explaining the general idea of the game and what areas we will be exploring in regard to the breif. For my section of the powerpoint presentation, I will be looking into the legal and ethical considerations for the project and how this will effect the way we do different things. Fonts: As visual novels are very text based, we will want to be using a font that works with the general theme of the game rather than using a default font, this comes with its own legal considerations however, as companies are able to copyright fonts that they have made. This is something we will have to consider when looking for fonts to use in our game as we don't want to end up using a font that someone else owns and has copyrighted. In order to avoid this, we can look for fair use fonts on different websites such as DaFont.  Sound effects/ Music: When looking into sound and music for our visual novel, we will most l...

 Game jam session Storyline- Friendship sim showing different mental illnesses The MC sees these different illnesses as regular people that they're friends with Bad endings occur when you get too attached to the different characters and you see them for what they actually are, by which point it's too late Art style darkens and deteriorates as you get more attached to the different characters Environments- Bedroom Park Therapist room Lecture hall Dance studio Bus Library Characters- Best Friend PTSD Anxiety Depression Plot refinement- Story progresses over 5 days, the options you make either progressively make the mental health of the main character better or worse. Skipping days is possible, but makes the main character's meantal health increasingly worse due to a lack of interaction with other people Meeting and planning-

 

 Moodboards and style research This week we are looking into different art styles and inspiration for the colour schemes that we will be using in the art for our game. This will require looking at existing games and seeing how they managed to create an atmosphere for their game using different colour schemes, shapes and art styles. To start off my moodboards, I have decided to do some primary research into Stray (BlueTwelve studio, 2022) .The main reason I wanted to look at this game was for the main danger in the game called zurks, as the areas that they inhabit are covered in flesh like structures, which could help with inspiration for the environments that we need to design for our game.  The flesh structures found within Stray are very unsettling, which might not work for some of the early on levels in the game, but as the microplastics and fungi progress in the body, the art style could change depending on how bad the situation is. We have already as a group discussed tha...

 Perspective This week we went back over perspective and how to create perspective grids. The first perspective grid we looked at was the 2 point perspective grid. In order to construct a 2 point perspective grid, the first thing to do is mark out the area you're going to be working in, and then drawing points all around the edges of the area at regular intervals. Once the points are in place, you draw a horizon line somewhere on the canvas, the ends of the horizon line can be used as the areas to mark out the vanishing points. Once these vanishing points are in place, they are connected to each of the points around the edges of the work space in order to make the grid. The vanishing points can be moved further away or closer to the centre of the work space depending on the extreme you want for your perspective.  After recaping how to make a two point perspective grid, we were then asked to make a three point perspective grid. Adding a third vanishing point to a perspective gr...

 Initial sketches This week, we are starting to properly sketching designs for our game. The areas I will be doing thumbnails for include level designs and Key art. To start off, I wanted to look at some level designs.  To start off, I came up with three different level designs exploring how the levels could be constructed and what sorts of different layouts we could have in our game. With the level structure, I wasn't focusing too hard on being true to the anatomy of the human body as the levels are microscopic cutouts of different organs rather than a full organ. I did however try to get in the idea of different detials such as bones, pores and different pockets of fluids.  I also explored the idea of what the areas where towers are placed would look like with a tower in them, as fungi are the towers that we will be using to combat the microplastic enemies, but at the same time fungi are still dangerous for humans. I will now share my ideas with the rest of my group to ...

 Deformers This week, we are looking at the deformation tools in zbrush, these can be used to change your sculpt in a variety of different ways. There is a long list of different deformation types allowing a huge variety of different ways that you can change your model. Some of the tools work on multiple at once, where as some only work on one at a time. The deformation tools also take into account masks you might have applied to your model.  The tools available in the deformation tab are; - Offset - This moved the unmasked sections of the sculpt along one of the three axes - Rotate - Allows you to rotate the unmasked areas along one of the three axes - Size - This can be used in order to scale the section of the model that you are editing in three directions, or just one if you want to make the model longer, wider or taller - Bend - The bend tool is used to curve a sculpt along one axis - SBend - The S bend tool is similar to the bend tool, the only difference being that it c...

Week 3 This week we were looking at how to make a perspective grid in photoshop using the polygon tool. To start off the process, we expanded the canvas size to 2x the base size, and setting the colour of the expansion to a different colour from the main canvas. Once this was done, using the ruler tool which can be accessed with ctrl r, we inserted a horizon line to the canvas. Using this horizon line, I was then able to create two vanishing points on either side of the canvas using two horizontal rulers. Using my two vanishing points, I used the polygon tool in order to make my grid. To make the grid lines, I set the polygon tool to expand from the centre and set the star ratio to 1%, this made the lines expand outwards from a single point, rather than making a full shape. Using another ruler, I was able to make a third vanishing point in order to turn my grid into a three point perspective grid. This point can be moved up and down along its axis in order to heighten or lower the angl...

 Week 1 Our first session of 2D toolkit this week was covering character design fundamentals and annotation of character designs. The first thing we looked at was how to make an effective character design.  What makes an effective character design? - A good understanding of the setting the character will be placed in: This includes considering what sorts of tasks they'll have to be taking on, what sorts of materials will be available, how strong the charcater will have to look for it to make sense, their expressions will also probably be effected by the area they're in -An interesting costume: The clothes they wear will be effected by their role and the timeframe they live in -Use of shape and colour theory: Shape and colour theory can be used to portray ideas of strength, reliability, morality, role etc. Making it very important to consider when designing a character.  -Heierachy/ Composition/ Balance: These areas consider how each part of the charcter design is done, fo...

 Week 2 This week we are looking at more tools in Zbrush, the first one we were shown was the transpose tool, this can be used to move your sculpt in multiple different ways. There are three different arrows on the tool that allows you to move your model along the x,y and z axes.  The cubes behind each of the arrows are able to scale the model along their respective axis as well. The yellow square in the centre scales the model along all three of the axes. Around the transpose tool, there are also three circles. These are used to rotate the shape along the three axes while the grey one around all of them rotates the shape in the direction of the screen. We also looked at the mask tool in this session, this can be used in order to protect different sections of a sculpt while you're working on a part that you don't want to effect other areas, For example If I wanted to model the upper section of a neck, but I'm happy with the state of the lower neck and shoulders, I would be ...

 Week 1 This week we were introduced to Z brush, which is the leading 3d sculpting software which can be used to more easily achieve natural 3d models such as animals and environment assets. During this week's session, we were introduced to the different functions available in Zbrush. Some of the main tools being the move tool, clay tools, how to insert more primitives to add to an asset and how they can all be used together to create a detailed sculpt.  Using the tools that we were introduced to this week, we have been tasked to model a human skull between sessions using the tools that we have been introduced to.  Starting with a sphere, I used the move tool in order to get the general shape of the main part of the skull. I scaled the size of the tool depending on which sections of the skull I was forming, using a large one in order to get the general shape, before scaling it down in order to get in the finer details such as the eye sockets, more defined cheek bones and ...

Industry practice Visual Novels For this module, we are looking at the making of a visual novel. We have been given a brief from a client who has asked for a visual novel that runs for at least 5 minutes. In order to achieve this goal, we have been split into different groups, this means we will have to be able to demonstrate good team work, allocating tasks to one another so everyone has something to do.  To start off this project, I will be doing research into visual novels in order to see how they're made, what makes a good visual novel and different ways that they can be constructed depending on the theme of the game. I also want to discuss what a visual novel actually is, what their strengths and weaknesses are in comparison to other games and also how they differ to a traditional book aswell. What is interactive fiction Interactive fiction, or visual novels are a digital way of experiencing a story, a lot of them these days include a lot of different methods of deepening the ...

Scheduling For the progression of my project, I have come up with a rough schedule of what I want to be doing and when, in order to keep up to date with my work without risk of falling behind. In order to do this, I have made a weekly breakdown of what I will be doing for each day. With the first 7 weeks of the project schduled, I will start to work through everything as I have it layout on here. At the end of week 7, I will make another schedule based on how well I kept to this timetable, this will allow me to more accurately gague how much work I can get done per week for the second timetable, as I don't want to end up setting myself unrealistic targets, or not setting myself enough work to do, as this will either make me stressed, or I will fall behind due to a lack of completed work. Research part 1 For the majority of the next few weeks, as a group we will be researching different areas in order to inform all of the choices for the later stages of development for our game. As ...

 Building Alliances For this module, we were given a set of three briefs to choose from -The impact of global warming on future Nottingham: This includes thinking about the effect global warming would have on Nottingham anywhere from 10 to 500 years in the future. In this brief we'd be required to look into ideas such as the effect of global warming on humans, the animals, water levels and human architecture.  This brief gives a lot of scope for what kind of game we could make out of it, it could end up being anything from a survival sandbox to a story driven RPG. Taking on this brief would include thinking about the different direction the world could go in depending on human decisions, for example, Nottingham could still be standing and global warming could be an issue of the past, or, Nottingham could have been abandoned and left to ecological succession, which is the idea of an ecosystem reclaiming man made structures.  -The impact of microplastics on the human foodch...