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Agile Scrum

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Unit 3 Evaluation

SinUnit 3 was a very enjoyable unit for me as it focused mainly on design and image, these are things that I am best at and really do well with. The art side is where I shine and I feel like because I was in a team, I could really come up with a good idea and show it with in a way that reflects my ideas well.

I and Harley planned everything out from the beginning and really scrutinised every aspect of the idea and because we did the unit separately but focused on the same story, I feel that there are a lot of ideas to continue with and expand on with the future units.

The environment was a major point that I enjoyed also, I never usually do environments and with the help of models from outside sources, I was able to focus on design, colour and just making an environment beautiful and really reflect what I want to accomplish with the final major project.

Looking back at the unit and comparing it to the required points, I really would not change anything, I think I divided my time properly and with the help of Harley, we were able to come up with a time plan which helped with getting the work done quickly and on time. This really helped because I had enough time to finish my artwork and level to a standard that I am proud of and I think I did really well with getting my ideas across and presenting them in a professional manner. Since this unit was about the design side, I really tried to create the best work I could and I feel like a did so, the only thing I would change would be to think more about compressing the size of my level files however that is unrelated to this unit and more of something that I would look into in future development.

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Extra Artwork

These are some extra artwork I developed for the presentation. The first and second pictures are a cover art photo or rather a splashscreen for the presentation that reflects our game and everything in it. This is also a nod to my storyboard as it holds the same colour values but with the exception of colour on the raincoat and the red behind her, the red symbolising the danger of the signs but also the roses to show life, while her coat is coloured in order to add a defining feature to her and make her stand out.

The third picture is the forest backdrop that will go behind the information on the slide in the presentation, in order to still capture our theme and reflect on the environment shown in my storyboard.

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Block Out

These are the screenshots from my own level blockout.

As you can seen the floorplan is the same as shown in the concept art section of the blog, as I wanted to keep it as close to the original artwork as possible.

The level creation part was a really quick process for me because I avoided making any assets myself and instead used royalty free assets either from the internet or Unreal Engine store, this made it so I could focus only on design and theme. 

I wanted my level to be swarmed with assets and foliage, I wanted the trees surrounded with flowers and rocks and water, and every part of it to feel full with no empty spaces. I feel like I achieved that with this level. I positioned most of the trees by hand to make sure they were in the correct locations and the rest were painted in using a terrain and foliage tool in the engine itself. I will avoid going into how I created my settings and just say that I created the terrain materials by using ones given from the Unreal store and with the terrain painter, I layered the textures over one another to create a flawfless path through my level and really focused on making it look unison.

The lake was created with a water texture and with the terrain editor and painted around later, I added each plan around this section individually in order to really get the feel I wanted. The same goes for the ruins, each piece was selected carefully and positioned in a way that made it look almost natural. The rocks are used to fill space and separate the landscape, so it does not become too repetitive, I even avoided using the same assets more than twice at most in order to create an unpredictable environment.

The colour scheme represents the earlier part of the story where the scene is set at almost dusk, making the greens stand out more which was accomplished with a post production volume.

I am very happy with the way the level turned out, I feel like it reflects my aims perfectly and it gave me a great base to move along with in the future development of this project.

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Colour Thoery

Colour theory is logical structure for visual artist when using colour combinations. There are three categories when it comes to use of colour based off the colour wheel: primary colour, secondary colour and tertiary colour.

Primary colours are a group of colours that mixing can result in all other colours. Secondary colours are the result of mixing two primary colours. Tertiary colours are obtained by mixing a primary colour with a secondary colour.  

Basic formulas of colour include analogous colours, this is a combination of any three colours side by side on a 12-part colour wheel. Another being complimentary colours, this is any two colours that are directly opposite from each other on the colour wheel. This creates maximum contrast within the picture.

Colour theory is important because creating a good colour palette is pleasing to the eye. It can engage the viewer and help with creating any feelings that your trying to convey. A saturated warm or bright colour palette is automatically going to give the viewer a happy impression whereas the opposite, a dark cold and desaturated colour palette will give the viewer a sad or scary impression.

In media this needs to be taken advantage of, having a way to evoke a feeling automatically from the viewer is convenient.

 I found examples of media that takes advantage of colour palettes I would be trying to convey in my game.

Starting off my game would be very bright, happy and peaceful. A great example of this would be from Zelda breath of the wild. The world is bright and saturated giving you a friendly, comfortable and happy vibe.

During the game events take place that will change the environment, making it dark and creepy.

A good example for this change is Little nightmares. This game is impactful, using high contrast and very desaturated colour palettes, you immediately get a creepy and uneasy feeling from the moment you look at it.

 Another great example is the movie Coraline. You get a dark almost twisted vibe from the movie. Once again being highly desaturated, other than one saturated colour where they use contrast to their advantage. The example being where Coraline is wearing her yellow coat, they draw your eye automatically to and keeps you focused on her, the important object of the scene.

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Storyboarding

This section is about my storyboard creation, the part of this process that I was most looking forward to.

I am more into the art side of game design so to bring the story that I and Harley came up with to life with visuals and colour was the part I enjoyed the most and really wanted to focus on as it is the foundation that my blockout and level design will reflect upon.

As you can see, with my colour choice, I wanted an almost greyscale them however I tend to avoid greys and blacks when I work as I feel like it can be draining and it really doesn’t allow for complimentary colours, so I used an almost brown type colour and just used different shades to represent foreground and background, keeping the background dark and the character bright.

The butterfly as seen in the 5th and 25th shot was an important part of the narrative to me as it was the beginning and the end of this particular adventure for the little girl. It is reflective of the state of her home and life as she knows it, with life in the early section and the death in the ending. 

The fog is also a major part in the storyboard as it is the only thing with colour, in games we tend to view brightly coloured liquids and gases as poison, I am not entirely sure why it is that way, whether to draw the players eye or whether the purple reflects an unnatural element or even provoking feeling. When coming up the the fog, the colour was always a major point of interest as it is supposed to reflect danger. We decided that purple would best suit this mist as it looks unnatural compared to the forest surrounding and that may lead the player to run away from the substance.

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Concept Art

Before getting to the storyboard of this unit, I wanted to flesh out the characters, my plans and get everything down in stone in order to make my job of turning the story into visuals a lot easier.

I started with the environment, since this is the world the character would live in. As I stated in  an earlier blog post about my plans, I and Harley want a forest theme to begin with and that is pretty self explanatory so I focused mainly on the character’s home and surroundings, the animals she would see and of course, herself.

This is the sketch I came up with for her home in the woods, as you can see its very innocent and normal looking. I wanted this to be the first thing the viewers see and that would immediately give them the wrong impression of the game, since we wanted to misdirect users into thinking this was a Legend of Zelda style game when the meat of the game is more leaning towards Little Nightmares or The Evil Within. 

The animals play a big part in the story as they are the driving force in order to get the character from a to be and also put herself into danger so the style was something I thought about for a while. 

The bunny was easy enough to create, I want an almost eery looking animal that clearly shows that all is not as it seems. The transformation however is just a concept we came up with, we wanted to make the fog dangerous but also wanted life within the level so the only way the fog could affect them would be something that faded, therefor we came up with the transformation idea, where animals will grow and change as soon as their bodies are exposed to the poison.

This piece is just a representation of some of the animals and what they may look like.

This is the final design I came up with for the main character. Me and Harley both did our concepts seperatatley but spoke about what we wanted. Originally Harley mentioned that we should stay away from the raincoat idea as it reflected too much on our main insperation, however I disagree and after a few designs, it was the only thing that made the little girl feel right. As you can also see, I wanted to make her appearence represent one of a little girl with the love of rabbits as they are what get her from a to b, this is reference with her ears, her bunny tail, her gasmask and the keychains on her backpack. The rest of her outfit like her shoes and long sleeves are also a reference to how small she might be and maybe that those clothes were not meant for her but aquired elsewhere.

This is the floorplan that myself and Harley came up with, as you can these the white line is for the main path of the level that the first half of the story takes place and the red path represents the path taken back to the house, the fork in the road  has been added for the function of the level and will appear later on in development.

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The Story

Continuing from the last post, I and Harley came up with a story for our short so with the inspiration from hearing Pete’s story in a session, we thought the only way for us to create different ideas for our storyboard was to write it out like a story in order to visualise the scene and from that create our own storyboards.

Project: Fog

The scene begins with a close worn old leather book upon an ink stained wooden desk surround by old papers and quills. The book opens slowly to two blank pages that slowly materialise into the story and a picture of a cottage, suddenly the pages are enveloped in black ink that engulfs the entire screen. 

As the screen slowly clears to a view of an orange sky with a sun that is just minutes from setting, a monarch butterfly swoops across the screen, the camera follows as it flies down to a little cottage surround entirely by trees and fences, clearly deep in a forest. 

A little girl emerges from the home, however her face is not shown, only the back of her head which is hooded with a raincoat. He hums as she skips down her pathway, towards the deep of the forest when something white and fluffy catches her eyes. As the bunny turns, it reveals that the rabbit is no ordinary rabbit, its eyes enlarged and frightening, the girl reveals her face to show a gas mask over it. She chases the bunny down the dirt pathway through the forest, the forest growing darker and darker as the sun goes down, she passed signs after signs of warnings, begging any traveller to keep away, alerting to danger ahead. Running after the animal, she reaches ruins where she corners the bunny.

CRACK!

A loud noise behind her causes her to suddenly look behind her. A powerful thick purple fog begins to spread through the trees towards her, with her eyes widened, the little girls starts running in the opposite direction of this fog, it tightly chasing behind her as she jumps over rocks and fallen tree branches. Behind her she hears loud growls and squeals as the woodland animals begin transforming into horrifying almost demon looking versions of themselves as the fog surrounds them. As she runs through the forest, she passes small areas of the forest where the trees have been chopped down and tents had been built, filled with gurneys and countless body bags wrapped with black tape. As she crosses a small lake, she stops running, seeming to think she is safe where she is, she bends and pants heavily through her mask, worn out from her chase. She slowly stands up and looks towards her home, only to find a pile of rubble where it once laid, as she stares at what once was her home, a twig snaps behind her, she looks back then slowly upwards as a large shadow crosses over her.

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Plans for Unit 3 and Research

In order to get a general idea of what we wanted, me and Harley sat down and talked about the kind of character we wanted to introduce, what their world would be like and what kind of genre we wanted to go for.

After a long discussion in class, we came up with the idea to make a horror game short, that left off at a cliffhanger. This idea came from watching shorts presented at E3 and also character introduction shorts from Overwatch. The idea is to create an incredibly detailed character and environment with realistic physics and weather effects, and high detail facial animation for the character.

The character we came up with is a little girl based on Coraline and Six from Little Nightmares. We like the idea of a little skinny girl in oversized clothes and wanted to create a world around her in which she seemed normal at first but as the cutscene progresses, there is an eery feel and it starts becoming darker and darker. Since we liked the idea of the mystery behind Six, the way her face is almost concealed and her name is vague, we wanted to replicate this mystery with our character so we came up with the idea of her wearing a gas mask which was inspired by young Psycho Mantis from Metal Gear Solid: The Phantom Pain. The gas mask idea lead into the main plot of the project, which is poison fog, this fog idea was inspired by The 100 where every night at a certain time this acid mist comes into the forest and starts dissolving organic things.

In order for the character to chase this fog, we first needed to come up with a way for her to come to it, so we came up with the idea of her chasing something into the deep of the forest where shes comes into contact with this fog and in turn runs back to her home where she finds her house crumbled to pieces and a dark shadow casts over here. This is where the short will end and leave a cliffhanger. 

Since we had a general idea, we looked at some chase scenes that we liked from movies and games and also looked at some environmental references.

This a moodboard of the general theme, colour palette and mood we want:

As you can see we added games like Limbo, Inside but also The Legend of Zelda and Overwatch. This is because we wanted to show what the project would look like at the beginning before it turns into a horror theme and then the games like Limbo and Little Nightmares show what the game will become once our character comes into contact with the fog.

Below are some of the videos that we enjoy that follow the same theme that we want, just click the link to open the video.

Little Nightmares Fatty Chase

Spirited Away 

Inside 

Bastion Short

Breath of The Wild 

The next step of the process will be writing the story and creating concept art from there.

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Introduction to Unit 3

Pete Gibson-Black Unit 3 Advanced Level Design.

This unit on advanced level design, I am to create an introduction to a character of my creation and in a professional way present storyboards, concept art and an environment that will lead into not only Chris Butler’s unit 2 and also the final major project of the year. This unit will be the whole planning part of the process, with concept art of the character, environment, storyboards, narrative, theme, goals and of course the blockout of the environment.

Th purpose of this unit is to set us up for the final major project that will be the full introduction to the character with animation, finished character, functionality and the finished environment. This unit is basically the planning and early development that will be continued in Chris Butler’s unit 2 and then continued further in unit 5; the final major project.

This unit is going to be a group effort with Harley Pendleton, however the storyboards, concept art and blockout will be finished individually in order to show a clear evidence of individual work. 

According to the unit brief, these are what are required for this unit:

Task 1: Preparatory work, planning and research for Advanced Level Design.

Task one is the pre-production process, planning, writing a story, concept art and the plans behind the camera angles, colour theory, theme and of course the involvement of references and genre.

Task 2: A professional standard Storyboard of your introduction to game.

Task two is the confirmation of designs, themes and the discussion of what is going to be included in the final work.

Task 3: Presentation to peers and feedback review.

Task three is the presentation of the work to peers in order to gather feedback.

Task 4: Development of final Advanced Level Design and evaluation of final outcome via Blog.

Task four is finally the presentation of the finished level and storyboards, presented in a profession manner, future development and also the evaluation.

This blog will be documenting the whole process start to finish. Since this blog is not a tutorial, I will be only documenting the process of why I did the things I did, the narrative and goal of the final product and the programs I used to do so.

For Harley Pendleton’s side of this unit, this is his blog link: -INSERT LINK-

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Welcome to Unit 3

This blog will document the process of development for unit 3.

During this unit, I will be documenting the process of creating an introduction for my original character using a cutscene from the art side.

During this unit, I will be storyboarding my ideas and creating a blockout of an original level, using paintovers to show how the level will look as well as using concepts to collect an idea of my theme and colour palette. After the block out is finished, it is about making it look game ready.

This unit will link into unit 2, where I will be creating the functionality of the cutscene, this unit will also be a part of the group work with Harley Pendleton, however for this unit, we will be creating separate projects with our own views and ideas but will be using the same story as we created it together.

This blog will be my take on the group project and will show mu vision of what it should look like.