jameswilsongamesartanddesign

[jameswilsongamesartanddesign]

Week 30 - 30.04.18

This week was again relaxed, the game is nearly complete. Play testers have revealed some flaws, including the ability to hockey puck puzzle pieces around the level with the sword. Something we may leave in. Other than that, response to the game has been good. Whilst observing players, I learnt what was needed to tweak the movement to a good point. I also felt good about what we had so far, as a lot of the game was self explanatory and the players never needed to be given hints on what to do.

I finally fixed the projectiles spawners also, I had originally thought it to be an issue with the system I added to make them track the player. Which I found out after a long while of thinking and testing, was not the case. Instead it was much simpler. One obsolete boolean locking off an entire area of code.

Some time ago, I mentioned a Gamasutra article which I wanted to implement as I realised it could directly affect the start of our game. The article spoke about how the best part of puzzles is the eureka moment, when the player realises what they need to do to solve the puzzle. This was true no matter how complicated the task was meant to be. And so, when a lot games have their first level be just a button and a box that can be moved, it has an opportunity to cheat the player out of that eureka moment. Because there’s a high chance that the player will move the button onto the box without thinking about it.

I realised that this is exactly what I had done for our first level, I placed a puzzle piece right in front of the platform with the intent to show the player that they have to complete the puzzle to open the door. I have now changed it so that there is more time for the player to think about what they’re doing. By reworking this first part of the level, I have also taken the opportunity to teach the player about the camera movement mechanic.

Images below,

[jameswilsongamesartanddesign]

Week 29 - 23.04.18

This week was relatively relaxed, most of the game is now in. We’re just polishing, adding assets and playtesting what we have.

One focus of this week has been lighting and fog effects. One of our 3D guys added in some simple lighting which looked really good, this served as a starting point for how we wanted the lighting to look. I myself am struggling with working with lightning, none of the settings seem to change anything for me. This has been rather frustrating and so I began to watch some tutorials on lighting, to no avail. After some time, I took a break and made a simple dust particle effect, which hopefully we can add some ‘god rays’ to catch. Adding to the eerie feel of our world.

One of the things we wanted to add to the game was more challenge. Falling down meant there was no consequence for the player. I fixed this by adding an area which would send you back to the start of the room if you fell into it, we decided to not add a health system because it would not fit the game we set out to make and also because of time restraints. The danger zone was made using a version of the checkpoint system from the example game for the first project of this year. I did have to make some tweaks so that the level would reset and the pieces would go back to where they started from. In the process I broke the projectile spawners, but that can be fixed later.

The signifier for the danger zone was meant to be a toppled over barrel that was leaking something dangerous looking. I even had the 3D guys whip up a custom barrel just for it and had a 2D artist start working a fog texture. Unfortunately, it turns out adding the type of fog affect we needed is way harder than what I expected it to be. Many tutorials and forum pages revealed nothing of use and what could be found was way more computer intensive than our little game needed. As a quick fix, I tried to repurpose the snow particle effect I made for a previous project. With the intentions of essentially flipping the effect and have the particles being flung upward in a smaller area. This showed that I don’t quite understand particle systems yet as I did not know what to tweak to make that work, I shall revisit it next week. I also learnt on that day that I should do my research and make sure I can do something before ordering in assets and wasting other people's time. I may repurpose the assets made into something later on, so that this was not all a waste. I believe I could use the barrel to add more personality to the level and the fog textures as some kind of barrier.

One thing I did get to work was the addition of some 2D assets. Firstly, I discovered that 2D sprites can be tweaked once they’ve been exported from the main sheet. This meant that I could quickly and easily get some tester animations in without having to go back and forth with the 2D people and having them line up the sprite sheets to a T. I also communicated with 2D to get some real assets in for a particle effect I made a while back.

One of the jobs that needed completing was the way in which the player moves between levels. I initially struggled with this, but found a working solution after some experimentation. At the moment, invisible blocks stand in the way of the doors, preventing the player from moving onwards. Once the puzzle is completed, the piece becomes intangible and a glyph appears, signifying the door is open.

I am still struggling to come up with an essay question still, at current I am thinking of pursuing the question ‘Why is Overwatch still popular after 3 years?’ and highlighting how the game is still relevant, despite many games like it, such as Call of Duty, fade out after a year.

[jameswilsongamesartanddesign]

Week 28 - 16.04.18

This week began with the group coming together to assess where we are at with our game and our plans moving forward. At this stage, most of the assets have been completed, and now we were on to finally getting the level together and squashing bugs. This summed up our presentation given in our first production meeting, which was somewhat nerve racking.

Over the course of the week, I worked with 3D to get all of the assets onto the drive and into the game, which needed some back and forth. Some of the assets needed to be recentered as the pivots were way off. After several attempts at communicating what I needed, I gave up and personally spent the time centering everything in Maya and exporting it into the game. I then worked with our blueprinter to ensure we had a definitive version of the game and file system to move forward with. Game Version 1.0.0 was live before the week was out.

I also made some headway with the camera rotating system, I tweaked some of the script created by our other blueprinter and got the cameras to work a bit more how we wanted them to.

I also implemented our system for picking up puzzle pieces, which I learnt from a tutorial online. I am especially proud of this because I had to change a few things for it to work in our game. The tutorial required the game to be first person, but by understanding the code I changed it to work in our game. It’s still somewhat clunky, but I can tweak that later on.

This week I also applied for our game to be showcased at Norwich Games Festival. I however had to contact the organiser a short while after, as our application may have seemed lackluster due to a lack of content. A few days later we had a small collection of assets which I collated into a drive folder.  

I also spent more time researching puzzle and level design, I spent a lot of time on Gamasutra.com, reading articles on the ways of good level design. One particular article stuck out to me, and I hope to implement what I learnt later on in the game.

I have also begun to think about my essay question, but have not made much progress yet. It’s raised some person questions for myself such as what I enjoy about games. Which made me realise I have been playing a lot of games just to relax, instead of to learn from. I hope I can find time in the near future to play more thought provoking experiences.

[jameswilsongamesartanddesign]

Weeks 25, 26, 27 - Easter Break Commencing on 26.03.18

These three weeks covered my Easter break, a rest I really needed. Unfortunately, due to personal and family issues I haven’t come back feeling refreshed.

I hope to get things back in order asap. I will begin by asking my team for help with the direction of the game and what needs doing and when. I hope we have a playable prototype by the end of the week.

This week I also hope to gain some traction with my essay, I want to really nail down what it is I’ll be writing about.

[jameswilsongamesartanddesign]

Week 24 - 19.03.18

This week began with our second crit which went really well. It was commented on how confident our group behaved and how well our project is coming along, we have yet to begin pulling our hair out.

On Tuesday, I attended my animation class which was refreshing to return to. I still need to find time to revise what I learn, but websites such as rigging101.com should help to speed that up.

At the start of the week, I suggested we make a tweak to our game and implement a more unique mechanic, as right now our game may end up feeling like Valves Portal without the portals. I believe some kind of unique skill could freshen up our game and give it more of an identity (as well as something for me to build levels around). Whilst discussing this with the group, I also suggested that the lock which the player has to unlock to escape to the next room be broken. Split into pieces around the map, it gives the player something to do and gives more purpose to traversing the level. Right now, we’re considering whether or not the player should have to carry the lock pieces like the sword (one or the other) or have some kind of simple inventory system. Where if you collect all of the pieces, they appear in the necessary place.

The rest of the week I found to be particularly rough, I spent most of the week not really feeling part of the group, I’m really struggling to design puzzles and block out the level. For my own sake, I have decided to let it slide for now and wait for more assets to be completed. Hopefully by that time, I can also get more help from people and not feel alone with this. I’m finding this project to be on the complete opposite to all the group projects I have done so far, instead of being busy and working all the time. I’m finding myself lost without a focus.

I did make some particle effects, which with some tweaking, I hope to utilise all around the level.

The rest of my time was spent putting our group name into action, I worked as a rubber duck for everyone in the group, listening and talking to different people. I helped organize the 3D modellers so that they could get all of their assets into one place and be the right scale. We had previous issues where I was being given assets that were tiny and did not have their axis centered. I also helped to delegate work, one of the 3D modellers is an environment artist by trade, and so I set him the task of creating windows with which he could put some imagery behind. One of my main focuses as ‘leader’ is to make sure everyone is happy and gets to do the work they want to do. I pushed myself to work on this after observing one group leader getting his concept artists to design doors and windows and then proceed to not use any of it. In most cases, busy work can be rather insulting and is something I hope to avoid.

I have also begun spending more time under the wing of our blueprinter, observing him so that I may learn as well as to be his rubber duck. This has proven to be useful so far, as I helped to fix a peculiar bug the current version of the game had where if the character jumped, they would become locked in a state of walking/ falling and not be able to fall to the ground again. This time spent watching how the game worked and what it would become has also helped me improve my own image of the game and how I may better it. Before we finished for the day, we worked on making the cameras mobile, as I realised that puzzles revolved around movement, such as platform hopping, would prove rather difficult for the player with the camera angles we have given them. Unfortunately, we have yet to address the billboarding issue from last week.

I also took the time to try and break what had already been made for the purposes of finding bugs, it was on this Friday that I discovered that our character could effectively fly, given the right input of mashing the jump and shield placement buttons.

We also had the guest lecturers from Ubisoft Reflections, surprisingly I did not find their presentation as haunting as I thought it would be and only felt the pit in my stomach to be half as big as usual when thinking about my future and talking about the big scary industry that is games. One thing has become clear though, I need to speed up my process so much more. Right now UE4 feels like a niche hobby instead of the tool I’m going to use to get myself a career. I hope to start practicing UE4 over easter and to begin making some games, whether that's of my own design or following along on a stream.

I also REALLY need to get my twitter running again so I can follow developers and make a social media presence. I half heartedly started a while ago but never really finished or worked it all into my routine.

This easter, I hope that I can find my place within the unit and create something that I can properly say “Yeah, that’s mine. I made that!” and not feel like I’m leeching off the rest of the amazing group I have.

I suppose now I’m realising the plight of the designer, our placement within the team comes later and the fruits of what we create might never be as flashy as what an artist paints.

Carpe diem.

[jameswilsongamesartanddesign]

Week 23 - 12.03.18

This week we had our first crit which went really well, we didn’t receive much, if any criticism at all. It was really good to see other groups and how they were getting on, this helped catch what we missed and put ourselves into perspective. Afterwards, we felt confident with our project plan, as the other groups had some clear communication and scope issues that where commented on and needed working out.

Tuesday and Wednesday, I took part in the Interchange event. I attended the board game and writing classes. I found both to be interesting and have asked the lecturers for their slides, so that I may revise upon what I learnt.

With our group work, I helped one member of the party test their animations in game. We tried to add a billboarding effect which is important to the visual style of our game and it did not work. After playing around with some more, we decided to inform a member of the group who also works with blueprinting. We hope to have the effect working by next week.

I also helped to mediate a dispute between some of our artists, unfortunately there had been some miscommunication on jobs roles and so I helped to calm people down and get everyone back on track with jobs they felt happy with.

By the end of this week, I had most of the admin stuff down. I created presentations for the crit this week and next. I organised the Trello into a smoother system, I also created a timeline, to further solidify the scope of our game and keep everyone up to date. I worked with everyone to make sure they agreed with the deadlines I set them. We hope to have a finished prototype by the end of easter. I did also make what was essentially a change list type document, where each person got a document with their name on it. Then they would fill it out at the end of each day, bullet point what they had done, in the end I decided to not get the group to do this as communication has been very good so far and no one needs more chores right now.

After all this, I felt my place within the group start to slip. The concept artists where busy drawing, the 3D modellers making assets and our other blue printer was working on the core mechanics of the game. Which unfortunately, because of the type of mechanics we have chosen to create, they need to all be in one working system and so that has not left me with a whole lot to be doing. I have tried working on puzzles and level design to not much success, I think a lot of next week will be experimentation.

[jameswilsongamesartanddesign]

Week 22 - 05.03.18

This week we got our briefing for the 8 week project and I’ve decided to go full throttle this time round. Last week, we had a talk on the Norwich Games Festival and I have made it my mission to get a game up there and have something to show as well as be proud of. Before I was even out of the room, I began working on pulling together a team and before the day was out I had a group I was sure I could work with.

On Monday, we all met in the new building™ and spoke. The purpose of the meeting was not to discuss the brief, but rather get to know each other and find out everyone's skills and goals. I have made clear my intentions for NGF and the group agreed we would aim for that.   

On Tuesday, we received the briefing and immediately went to discuss ideas. We agreed to not settle on anything until Wednesday morning, just to allow time for new ideas to arise. With the theme ‘Illusions’ we all had to force ourselves to stray away from anything stealth based, as it seemed to be everyone's first idea. Also, the way I handled my personal project last week seemed to have proved to some members of the team that I was worthy of handling the role of team leader which is nice.

On Wednesday, we settled on putting a twist on a classic Wizard’s tower and filling it with illusions and puzzles. The core reason we went with this is because of it’s modular design. All we have to do is design one really great puzzle room as a proof of concept, if we have more time we can add more rooms as we go. We went through a lot of iterations with what the tower could be and contain. A personal favorite is a twist ending where the player takes the role of the defeated villains daughter at the end of the game and they do all the puzzles in reverse/ upside down.

Over the course of Wednesday and Thursday, I worked on setting up a group chat, Trello and Google Drive file system, as well as formalising the role each member of the group has taken and how to use each system. So far, I have found being group leader a relievelaty easy experience, most members of the group understand the vision of the game and their role within it and so I’m not having to nag people to do work.

I am currently in the process of formalising the games concept through a game design document. I believe once this is finished, we can use it as a guide to creating the game. This will also ensure everyone will be on the same page with what we are making.

On Friday, I attended the guest lecture by Chris Filip. I found the presentation to be really interesting and felt like I understood his message. The words “Design. Decisions. Matter” and how it’s my responsibility as a designer to be careful with what I put into AND don’t put into my games has really stuck with me since. Unfortunately, I could not attend his Q&A and so I am currently uniformed about Chris’ project, Game Anglia. But I have expressed interest to tutors about it, and will follow up any subsequent emails as I wish to be involved with the project. I think it is paramount to my success as a Designer that I get involved and being networking as soon as possible.

Overall, this has been a pretty good week. I feel confident about the game project, which is further bolstered by the grade I received on Friday which I am very pleased with.

As a side note, to whoever marked my work - Look into the trope ‘Dogs Love Fire Hydrants’, these where the main reason I selected these to be the enemies in game! Thank you for the great feedback! :)  

[jameswilsongamesartanddesign]

Week 21 - 26.02.18

This week I took some time to myself and relaxed for the first time in a while. Of course this meant I just had to immediately fall ill and miss all of the snow…

During the week I began work on a new personal project. One of my favourite hobbies is playing Dungeons & Dragons, it’s been a goal of mine to make some homebrew content for a while and now I have the chance.

I began by considering what I wanted to do and what was achievable. I quickly settled on making a single archetype instead of a whole new class as one is far simpler than the other and I have plenty of other archetypes to learn from (thanks reddit). If University has taught me one thing, scope is everything when beginning a new project.

I next contacted a few friends and got their input, together over the course of a few days we settled on the rough idea and I spent the week refining it into something nearly playable. One of the biggest issues I encountered was how my vision for the archetype translated into the game. In its current state, I believe what I made is too similar to a current archetype. And so I will be adding and making changes in the future to further enhance the flavour and vision of the archetype in the hopes of making something more original.

I hope that sometime soon I can finish what I made and post it online to get feedback, I may also look into if there is anyone on the University staff who knows D&D 5e and get their input.

All in all, I have really enjoyed working on this and hope I can continue this in the future to help myself become a better designer.

[jameswilsongamesartanddesign]

Week 20 - 19.02.18

This week, we began working on the cross course collaboration project. Initially, I was concerned with how and why we would be taking part in this, as well as the fact that it takes place right after a huge hand in with no chance for rest.

However, I still pushed myself to make an effort and work with my group. By the end of the first day, we had several ideas down. One of my favourites being an infomercial warning the women of WW2 the dangers of using gravy to paint false stockings onto their legs. The punchline being that the model in the demonstration was clearly a male with very hairy legs. As opposed to a traditional attractive female model.

The idea we went with was warning people about the dangers of rats in the home and some comedic ways to stop them, including hand to hand combat and smoke signals. This idea was the culmination of several peoples ideas within the group, including myself. Reflecting upon the experience, I see now that I did not communicate the idea properly as it seems no one in the group has understood what was funny about the concept whilst it was in it’s infant form. The product the script has created has taken a different route, but may still work on the screen. I am curious to see how well it is received.

When it came to production two days later, I took the role as ‘the talent’. Pulling together some resources to make an old man costume. Other members of the group collected the necessary equipment and made some props. We then spent the day filming all of the scenes we thought the script required and a few extras. Because the script rhymed we expected it to take time to read out, and so extra scenes to drop in seemed like a good idea.

By the end of the day we had everything filmed, all the footage has been passed along to the rest of the team to do editing and voice acting. I think in the end, I enjoyed this experience. Mostly because it was over so quickly and in comparison to everyone else's groups, who at the time of writing this (over a week later), still don’t have a solid idea. I got off pretty well.

With regards to my skills, it’s shown some weakness’ in my communication skills and revealed that I need to learn to push more when people don’t understand what I’m saying and take the time to reiterate so everyone is on the same page. I will put this newfound knowledge to good use on the next group project.

[jameswilsongamesartanddesign]

Week 19 - 12.02.18

These past few months have really opened my eyes to what I really don’t know and what I need to learn in order to become a successful game designer. I have struggled with pretty much everything I have been asked to and my lack of time management has not helped. I wish I had started the essay sooner so I didn’t burn out so quickly and could have actually learnt something. I must learn from these mistakes and focus on getting things done on time.

I have enjoyed my time working with UE4 and welcome the relaxed work load in the coming months, I hope to take advantage of it and work on a new personal project. One I hope I can be proud enough of to upload to Art Station and perhaps be a proper portfolio piece.

I have also found animation interesting, it’s always something that has caught my eye. Admittedly I struggled with learning the later half, as I had no time to practice what I learnt in class. So I struggled to understand and remember what I learnt each week. This is something I want to go over again in the near future to expand my basic knowledge of 3D animation.

I look forward to the coming months so that I may embrace the challenges that come with it.

[jameswilsongamesartanddesign]

Week 18 - 05.02.18

I finished the boss battle this week. I faced a pile of challenges I didn’t think I would even see. Blueprinting AI turned out to be a lot harder than I thought it would be and so I had to leave that in it’s simple stage whilst polishing up the rest of the fight. AI trees are something entirely new me and a week was not enough time to gather the resources to learn and make something efficient.

I had hoped to make the boss have more of a cyber theme to it, which included shooting lasers, swooping attacks and cloning herself but time did not allow for me to even start those things. I did however make jump pads to launch the player, but did not include them in my final level as the level space and the way the boss moved made it feel awkward for the player to get around. I also made a custom beehive texture to use, however I did not have a copy of Photoshop to hand and so I could not use the offsetting technique to make it tileable. Had I done, I would have predominantly built the level up out of those.  

From this small test I have reinforced my previous goals concerning projects, in the future I want to focus on getting a fleshed out design with a plan on how to make it on paper before I touch UE4.

[jameswilsongamesartanddesign]

Week 17 - 29.01.18

A lot of this week was spent playing catch up. As well as trying to come up with the design for a boss for a game I have never played. As usual, I struggled with coming up with the initial concept and so I started to fall behind even further. In the meantime, I began to set up the UE4 Project with a movable character and an enemy which could move around. Or so I tried. Turns out I can’t figure out how to make a 2D character with a controller on it, so I ended up using the 2D example template, marking this failure down as something review later. I really want to understand how character controllers work within UE4, it’s something I have struggled with a lot in every project I have worked on so far. I always feel like I have done a half job when I get something to work.

Eventually, I settled on a Queen Bee appropriately named her Hive Queen. She can fly around the stage, shoot projectiles as a single shot, multi shot and a spray. Each one with it’s own rarity so there’s a nice random element to it. Once she was finished, I set about creating AI, which I have nearly finished. Larger worker bees drop down using the same scripts as the Queen Bee and drop smaller bees. I had originally planned to have these bee honey pots which land on the stage and stay there, but unfortunately I couldn’t fix until I was typing this and realised what I did wrong. I now believe that a previous issue I fixed made me over complicate this one. I had originally set the value on the movement timeline to 5, causing the honey pot to overshoot and not stop where i wanted it to. I later changed this value to 1, meaning the honey pot stopped where I wanted it to. However, by that point I had already decided to change it to a worker bee and so I left the timeline node with “Start from End” instead of “Stop”.

[jameswilsongamesartanddesign]

Week 16 - 26/28.01.18 - Global Game Jam

On this weekend, I took part in the Global Game Jam. The theme of which this year was ‘Transmission’.

I began somewhat nervous, as I didn’t really know anyone there and so I was apprehensive about sharing and pushing ideas with the group I joined.

Our concept was a game about two germs which grew to the size of house cats confined inside a laboratory. The aim of the game was to spread your infection by sliding over the tiles which made up the map. The winner was the one with the most area covered at the end.

I feel like I learned a lot from this experience, it was a pleasure to further my knowledge on multiplayer controllers, furthering my goal on mastering them. In the future I will try and play a more active part in group projects instead of being the UE4 whipping boy. I felt out of my depth, which can be a good thing, and longed for someone more experienced in UE4 than me on the team. Looking back, I wish I had said more when it came to the design of the game as I feel like the team of artists were more focused on making the game look good rather than fleshing out the gameplay.

In the end, the project went fairly well and we did finish with a playable project, I’m glad to have had the experience and hope to take part in the next big jam.

[jameswilsongamesartanddesign]

Week 16 - 22.01.18

This next part of the art test I struggled with initially, but I found that once I knew my inspiration I had a lot more clarity with the project. I started off making a few simple challenges like platforms to jump between and swinging pillars to avoid. I then began to research other game levels and realised that TV shows such Ninja Warrior and Total Wipeout are very similar to what I had already made. And with a few tweaks and touches, I had an assault course for a level design.

Some of the design decisions I consciously made included adding a long tube for the player to slide down at the start of the level. As I realised this made a much more dynamic entry and gave the effect of throwing the player into the level. I also worked on making sure that my obstacles taught the player different things about the game. For example, not all challenges can be completed by jumping or running. Some need a more patient approach or have height restrictions. I am most proud of the obstacles which combine the two, which show the player they need to use the crouch button to give themselves more control over the character.

I also tried to stay aware of what the player was doing in the moment, I realised when watching other peoples games that they had used a lot of the boosts to carry the player around the level. This eliminated a lot of the challenge, leaving the player to just hold walk forward and enjoy the untextured scenery.

I had some people play test my level and used what I learnt watching them to further refine my design. This included telegraphing to the player what was a challenge and what wasn’t. I noticed that some things weren’t clear as to whether or not touching them would send you back to the start of the obstacle. And so I placed the teleport zone texture on them and raised the opacity so they didn’t blend into the sea of red below.

In the end, I think I felt a lot better about this part of the project than I did the last piece. My one regret is not being able to get the giant boulder that chases the player at the end of the level to work.

[jameswilsongamesartanddesign]

Week 15 - 15.01.18

This task felt like the first true piece of game design I have been given since coming to uni. The thing I have long awaited for and have wanted since arriving in Norwich. And it’s got be said, I have really struggled with the first design task and I have really had to push myself to get it done. It also made me realise that I have not been playing as many games as I should. As most of the games I listed in the first section where games I played over a year ago. I couldn’t really put down anything recent.

The first section I found to be an interesting challenge as it really made my think, what made these some of my favourite games? A lot of my default answers where simply ‘fun’ or ‘well written’. But of course, that’s not analytic at all or deep enough. I decided to figure out what that thing was that I enjoyed in the game and then hone in on that and describe in an academic way.

The questions in general I have struggled to finalise a lot of the ideas I had and to put them into words. However, I still found the whole experience to be useful. I feel grounded now and are aware of my own abilities. As well as what brain muscles I need to begin exercising and working on. I hope in the future I can push myself to play new games and to review and reflect upon my experience, so that I may become a better designer.  

[jameswilsongamesartanddesign]

Week 14 - Art Analysis

The following is what I wrote when asked to analyse two art pieces. 

By Theo Prinns

The first thing most people notice about this image is its use of such a bold red. It grasps the viewers eyes from the bottom left and then guides them into the middle of the image. The powerful red, contrasts with the calming blue to create a dynamic duo that really ties the image together. This is furthered by the use of such a saturated foreground on top of an unsaturated background, which adds a layer of mystery to the image and a varied sense of depth. Combine this with the sweeping entrance the eye makes to the scene and that sense of depth, really brings the canvas to life. The way the image is composed, which such incredible use of saturation and colour, helps make the character and the ship in the background stand out. Weaving an element of storytelling into the painting. Who is the character? Where is he going? Is he going to board that ship?

By Dorje Bellbrook

Contrasted with the first painting, this image has a much stronger calming effect. The limited colour palette and the widespread use of green and blue sets the viewer at ease, as the two colours weave together to unify the image as one. What's more, the angelic spotlight is further accentuated by the use of a vignette, which helps to frame the building. A warm sanctuary, encompassed by an unforgiving landscape. The low contrast colours across the canvas creates a sense of harmony and peacefulness, further contested by the ongoing war between nature and humanities will to survive.

[jameswilsongamesartanddesign]

Week 14 - 08.01.18

This week started off with a crit assessment of the work we did for the art test practice. I was told I made a good snow.

To further enhance the user experience, I began to work on an animated symbol, which could glow and create a smaller particle effect. I found this task quite fiddly diddly, and could not get the pulsating ring to do what I wanted. However, I found what I learnt about emissive effects to be useful and hope to implement them in the future.