Over the course of this project I've dealt with a lot of roadblocks, and different challenges. It's been interesting and fun, and I've loved doing it - even when it's caused me immense frustration. I learned a lot about working with others, and the realities of taking responsibilities for things that you'd have hoped other people might have done. On a technical side there was a lot of things I wish I had thought about, but at the time it was not something that occurred to me to do so. The clearest example of this was the modular building, it was something that I understood in principle and it made sense in my head, but in practice it was very different. Where I thought I could very simply make the assets and import them and align them, it turned out that it would have been easier to combine certain assets - or to have other assets have their manipulation points line up so it's easier to line up in the engine. The project, overall, took a slightly different turn than I imagined it would have, but I'm proud of the things I've achieved, and the things I've learned. I've learned that it's good to make plans based around what's realistic and what could go wrong, rather than shoot for the stars and fall far short. Taking an idea and boiling it down to creating something simple, yet effective, is better than trying to do everything you wanted to right off the bat without knowing whether what you've done can even be properly achieved.
Although I would have liked to do more animation, and implemented more characters, I was eventually tasked with doing more assets than I planned to - and although that gave me more practice at doing those, I think I would have preferred if things went according to plan. Overall, I'm proud of what I've achieved. The video has it's issues, but it highlights my achievements, and it's something I'm very happy about doing.
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Over the last few weeks I've been working on an animation for a streamer called Sean "Day[9]" Plott, a massive member of the video game creations, and esports community. A while ago one of his fans, and a friend of mine, MOARNial made a song based on something silly that another user put together from various clips of Day[9] singing about the game he was playing (Rocket League). I thought it would be great to do a little animation with a character meant to represent Day[9] and have been working on it for him. I'm hoping to get this animation shown on his Twitch stream on Monday the 15th (or Tuesday the 16th, at 2 AM) in front of his usual audience. I've put a link to the video below, and hope you enjoy. I was really really excited for this day, due to the first speakers being part of something that I was really interested in. There were some things I didn't expect, which turned out to be a huge bonus.
Talk 1 The three speakers; Thom Gulseven, Tom Jenkins, and Laura Rankin, were part of the creative time responsible for Mashed - a digital channel which broadcasts many different styles of animated content, generally based around video game culture. It's because of the rise in this culture, and the different way that media is generally being consumed, that Mashed was formed, something which can be applied to any creative: meet new demands and even rebrand if you need to, because the change may bring more success than sticking to what you know. Most importantly you need to know what what you're passionate about and turn your passion into your hobby, so that you're doing what you love as something for fun. With that comes accepting change, and learning to embrace innovation, because stagnating means you're never challenged and never growing and will end up doing the same thing consistently, which is bad - even if you are enjoying what you're doing. Your different work can lead to meeting new people, and you shouldn't wave these off but try and stay in contact with people, because you never know who's going to provide you with various opportunities that you may not have had before. With the state of media being that it's so saturated with both content and viewers, you can afford to take opportunities that stand our more and appeal to a niche market. Even if what you did didn't become as successful as you hoped, you often learn more from failure than success, because it's easier to analyse what went wrong than if you hit the correct formulate accidentally. This sort of failure can sometimes lead to stress, and negative emotions. You should accept that everyone has low times, and should do your best not to let that discourage you. Most importantly you need to keep working, and no matter you do just keep making stuff. Ultimately this will help you improve, since you need to learn and practice as much as you can, so that you never stagnate. If all else fails then make your own opportunities, by taking what you know and applying it to something and trying to see where that takes you, it could potentially break a bad streak. The important part of this is not to fear failure, but rather accept when it's happened and let go of bad projects. Most importantly, love what you do. Pitch Talk The pitch talk was something rather different to what we had done in the week up to that point. The team from Mashed were aiming to work with some students to create content for their channel. Although anyone could participate, it was primarily aimed at level 5 students, as they would be pitching the idea and then in their final year developing the idea. They wanted to create something unique, so advised that if we wanted to use established characters then we'd need to make something unique and different. We could see examples of their work on the Mashed channel, and were encouraged to visit The Connected Set website, to help with inspiration. Talk 3 Enda Carey seemed to have a great deal of passion for his field. He was exceptionally interested in how technology would progress, and what the future of video games looked like. Having worked in video games for many years he understood that it's important to know what makes people want to continue playing your game, and know who your target audience is. If you know those two things then, in theory, you should be able to make a successful game. Although knowing the key elements is important, you need to be able to keep going and persevere, even when things look grim. Know what you want, and how you want to achieve it and keep your passion alive. Don't lose sight of why you wanted to make games in the first place, and keep playing games - as they change, and evolve, so will your passion. Ultimately, you shouldn't be afraid to try new things. Experience will help you grow, so if you're not enjoying it, or learning something, then you should stop and start with something new and different (something which I tend to agree with). Know what your peers do, understand their roles, and you might even find an avenue to go down that you didn't see before. Wednesday held a great deal of information for me, in the talk that I went to. Sadly I couldn't attend for the entire day, but I greatly enjoyed what I did manage to experience.
Talk 1 Barry Purves, an industry veteran, offered a wide story of his own life and his own influences - in hopes of inspiring others to follow suite. He carried a presence that seemed to indicate that he had a great deal of comfort talking about what he was - but without pretence. First and foremost he seemed to be a storyteller, and in everything he did he wanted to tell a story, and relayed that realistically we all have stories to tell. This is due to our own experiences, and parts of our lives that we've picked up and stored away, and ultimately we all want to be noticed and storytelling is our way of doing so. Essentially what we're saying when we're telling our stories is "I matter", something which I think is important to everyone, a sense that they are not just temporary but they have purpose. Many stories have started with a family that needs healing, and this is because it's a compelling place to start. It can relate to people either literally or metaphorically, and everyone has felt like something needs to be fixed. It's a good way to get people interested, which can help you set up your world, while telling a story. More importantly is that you need to set the scene, before you to tell the story, so the audience has an understanding of what's going on. He stresses, also, that you don't always need to have your art be perfectly polished. Part of the beauty of art is seeing the technique, and showing off that technique can actually end up making the final product look even nicer - which is part of the reason he likes stop motion so much. Even something like cartoons are art, and specifically animation, at it's most raw - but it captures the essence. It shows what needs to be seen. Working on more of the complete feel of the level I started making assets to fill in areas, and make potential blockages, and making them feel more complete. A lot of the level needed work, and needed to be filled in a bit more, since it was very basic. To achieve my goal I worked on making some very basic boxes, one that would be something similar to a crate (with slightly altered corners). I wanted it all to look, as with everything else, very manufactured - but not boring, and I wanted to create at least one box that looked like it had taken a bit of damage so created an open box with a slight bend. Just to give the object a bit of history, and make everything look a little more human since nothing is perfect, especially not in the scenario where it's been left for an extremely long time and subdued to who knows how many different things. I really wanted to get the effect that there was a desolate city beyond the walls of this place, but without putting too much weight. I wanted the place to feel like it had substance, but not like the prison was crowded with buildings (in the same sense that the main city would be) - since the idea is still that it is a prison facility. To make the area look alien and horrible I changed the skybox, to have the colours not be denoted by the lighting, but to let me change the colours myself, and shifted them to look more yellow-brown, as if the area is heavily polluted. I also added a huge fence around the outside of the building so that it's an enclosed area. To create the glass domes I very simply made half-spheres in Maya, and cut off half of them, and imported that as a single asset. I used Unreal Engine 4's preset glass material, and decided it looks too nice, and too clean. I altered it slightly (later on) by using Substance Painter to generate some maps for glass, and then replaced the ones in UE4's glass material to make it look more dirty, and tweaked the transparency a bit to reflect this. I also added in my own base colours, to add some cracks and detail into the glass. I wanted to make sure that my chambers looked good under the lighting so I checked. I added these barriers to make sure that the player can't get down. Although they're very simple, I wanted to keep to the simplistic look that I'd stuck with, and if I could find time to add in the detail in texture as I had done with a lot of the rest of the environment. Overall I'm happy with the general aesthetic, and although it would need a bit of altering and work it would help the general look, I'm happy with what I've achieved with it. Once I implemented the boxed into the engine I started positioning them to block off parts. I also added textures to the edging in the doors, and corridors. Using the boxes as something that could be shoved into doorways wasn't quite my original idea, but I think it added a lot level design possibilities down the line, and hopefully I'll be able to use them if I continue to develop this project. To get an overall idea of what the level will look like on the outside I got a screenshot from the top, to see how bare or filled the area is and if there's any significant changes that need to be done. Although there's a lot of work to go before it's complete I completely love the fact that the top looks so simplistic, and barren - and just under the surface there are these stacked tunnels that you can just about glimpse down into. I think this will give the player a real sense of how far they've come with a direct look at what they've achieved. I also added some support structures for the domes, which will also hold the mechanical moving arms. Adding some simple concrete texture also helped a lot. One thing that I do also want to mention is the expansive dirt-like ground. By using UE4's built in ground generation tool I was able to quickly and easily putting in ground that I can sculpt and make look natural, so when I populate the area with clutter - it will seem more natural, through I did make some simple models for the centre of the area, like a large support slab of concrete. I also added the large building at the top, so that the player would have somewhere to come out of. I think it would do with having some more work put into it, as with a lot of things, but it's an additional thing that makes the area look more complete, and not a core piece of the aesthetic. When I had completed a satisfactory amount of the work I decided to do my run-through video with some music. I decided to keep it nice and slow-paced so you could see the assets shown off, but quick enough that you wouldn't be constantly looking at the same thing and getting bored. I changed some of the tones of the textures, and added greyscale textures to some of the lights to denote that they're off, as well as swapping out many of the lights to ones that are off (or broken). As well as that, I added texturing to the support beams above the domes to make them look old and rusted, as if they've been exposed for far too long.
Overall I'm pleased with the effect that I've managed to achieve with this project of creating assets for a small area in a game.
I wanted to focus on a few different aspects of creating this level, and deciding on focusin on some of the thoughts and technical processes that went into creating the levels.
So I wanted the overall feeling of the game to be very cramped, and so looking at the actual Cryogenic chambers I wanted to have it relay that feeling of claustraphobia. That you would not be able to move through the areas very easily, and that they were never really meant to be used as a common place movement area so I designed them to be very small on space, with little area for the character to move around in between the cryogenic pods and the railing. This is meant to give the feeling that there was always an intention for someone to be able to move around on them, but never for them to be used regularly - perhaps for someone like a technician to make sure the pods are still functioning.
It was also an important small detail to look over the different areas and think about how they would be lit. I wanted something different than the standard overhead lighting, and considering that the environment would typically be devoid of prisoners I dind't think it would be unreasonable that wall-mounted lighting would be used. They'd project enough light outwards, and a simple 3 cylinder light would cast a lot of lighting around. I was hoping that this could also help create some interesting shadows with the lights from rails casting across other parts (provided that they work as intended).
Working on the expansion of the level I had to start thinking about the spacing, and used the templated for the undergroun area that I had designed before. I started with the floors, since this would provide a good template to work off for the rest, I could easily match the walls and the ceiling to be the same length, which meant that I'd be able to make sure that all the pieces fit together. Each one lining up (in theory) perfectly with the other. This means I'd also be able to quickly prototype parts of it and build needed geometry, such as the stars seen on the right.
At this point I had combined the cryo chambers into one mesh, with the idea that it would make it less time consuming to build in the engine, since I could just import the individual meshes. I had attempted this in the engine later on and found that it made a lot of problems, particularly with collission mapping as the engine saw the geometry as something too complicated and would put broad collissions on everything. Because of this the cryo chambers had to be done separately, but there was some leeway in what I could do, specifically combining the walls and floor, since they're both relatively simple.
Eventually I started finding that keeping all the individual parts together (which was mainly to be able to use them as reference for each other) meant that I startd having my project folders become increasingly cluttered, so I started working on organising things. Putting different wall pieces together, along with the standard floor piece, and organising it into the seperate components as opposed to a mock up of what the level will look like. I also started adding in assets such as the walls with doors, and figuring out how they would work and had a piece that would line up well with the cryo chambers and the overall design for the level that I'd be working on.
Once laid out I wanted to think about how I could use these assetts, and what would help make the level interesting. Part of what I thought was that I'd start needing some more assetts to display and block off areas, and had to make the level feel overall more fleshed out. It would be very bare bones, and too perfect if everything was just functional and neat. The start of this venture was to start adding in some exposed metal beams that I modelled, with just three simple beams, that could be used in different way to show damage or decay. They wouln't neccesarily need to be something spectacular, or even something that was in the level as a static object, but could be placed anywhere to enhance the overall aesthetic.
It was important to me to test the level thoroughly and so throughout creation I was looking at the level in Unreal Engine 4 and lining up the assets, seeing how the all fit together. Initially I made everything unlit, and checked to see how they fit together, but slowly but surely I realised that part of what I would need to check would be how well they look when properly lit so I started working on getting lighting done.
Creating the light in unreal was pretty straight forward, all I had to do was create a new blueprint (which can be done by right clicking in the Content Browser) and add the components by clicking the small button in the top left. By simply adding a mesh and a point light I was able to create a believable light, and adding a simple texture on top afterwards helped sell the appearance even more since the light shining on the yellow made it look a lot more like it's glowing.
The main difference between the video and the picture is that in the video no textures are shown, and a simple texture is added to it. This, I think, emphasis the importance of the textures that are added to the assets, and how they can help sell the look of the entire environment. Where something is extremely plain, and dull in one view, can be altered to look a lot more believeable after the fact.
As I started developing the level further I started thinking about what sorts of things would be needed for the environment to make the feeling of the level more complete. So I started working on different aspects of the game, such as the elevators. One thing that I was consistently thinking about was the theme for the world, and the location. That this was a place where everything was extremely manufactured, and cold - not somewhere that you'd be visiting for fun, however the state of technology and also the mindset of the people inhabiting the world would be one where frivolous things would be commonplace.
With this in mind I made the elevator as simple as possible, something that would quickly and easily be able to be manufactured, and took the same sort of approach to the doors - in that all their components are made up of simple shapes that would be easily created in a factory type of environment. Despite the simplicity of the individual parts I wanted it to function in a way that was needlessly complex, and made that way simple because they could. An homage to a world once so bountiful and advanced that making things excessively over the top was not an extra effort, but simply an after thought.
I started playing with the animations on another one of the doors that I designed. Seeing how well I could make them work, and seeing two different styles. The first was designed to be purely functional and look very square and even, but the problem that I had with it was that it ended up looking too flat and plain. It wasn't something nice, it was just a doorway with a fancy opening and so I wanted to experiment with what I preferred.
I then went through and had the door open up into more of an archway, which I ended up liking far more, as it gives it a nice overall look. I ran the animations by some of my peers to see what they thought. I've had some problems importing the animations into the engine, but I'm hoping that a little bit of debugging will help solve that issue. Most likely baking the animations, and maybe redoing them slightly, will help resolve the issue.
After I got what assets I wanted done I started working on different textures. Using Substance Painter I generated some maps for the different wall panels. To make it easier and use less space I had the UVs for several different wall pieces on one map, and then I could create one texture to use for all of them. The main purpose for this was so I could get clean and crisp lines where I wanted them, and easily manipulated colours on different parts - while still saving on loading multiple texture sheets. It would be easier to match colours that way too, to make sure I can get consistency.
Tuesday turned out to be another fairly interesting day. We had some really useful talks that provided a lot of interesting information, and it was really great to hear from someone that actually works in the industry.
Talk 1 To start the day off the first talk featured an artist called Doug Fishbone that did a lot of varying art, through varying mediums. He had a lot of influence throughout the artist community and wanted to challenge a lot of what the world saw art as, by changing how he showed art and how people saw art. He focused mainly on being an independent artist, focusing largely on fine art and stated that focusing on what he does is financially tough and sometimes you need to think creatively to get funding, but in the end you work hard so that you can make the art. Sometimes to be able to get the chance to do your work you need to go out of your way to make things happen, but the more you work the more you start helping build the community - which can open opportunities for you. This community is a great way for you to begin collaborating, and often times this can lead towards you having valuable contacts in the industry. In addition it will give you valuable life skills, such as being proactive - because nobody can give you the path to success. You have to take what you learn and apply it, and think about what you want and how you want to do it and align that with a realistic view so that you can create your art and sustain yourself. Most of all, don't be discouraged by not reaching the top, or getting the perfect job, the most important thing is that you keep creating, and make what you want, and feel passionate about. Realistically, not everyone is going to like you and that's not something you should be constantly striving for. Just keep working, and make sure you get things done in good time, and try and get everyone to support you. Talk 2 Following that we had a talk by Alan Mealor, who is the Lead Artist at Lucid Games. He was very to the point, and gave a lot of insight into how the video game industry works and what sorts of things we should be focusing on - and realistically the whole talk was very sobering. First and foremost he highlighted how important it is that you have a good portfolio/showreel, since it will be the thing that's standing out to employers. Second to that is your CV, and it is a huge help towards getting you employed. You need to make sure it's well written, since it will leave a good impression on an employer. With all that in mind, you need to think about what you want to show off, if you have a hundred pieces of work then you're going to be struggling to find an employer that will be willing to look at all of them, you need to have a few highlighted pieces that are really good, 5 good, solid pieces of work on it's own is better than the same but surrounded by bad work. Sometimes, quite simply, less is more. With than in mind you have to think about what you want to show, renders of nice looking images are good but you shouldn't only show renders, show your lower poly work, and your process too - so that employers can see your knowledge base. Among your work you should also aim to show something believable and realistic, since stylistic things can look good but don't always show off your skill, whereas something that's meant to be realistic shows up flaws much clearer - if you can get something realistic to look perfect, then it will do better than something stylistic looking perfect. Make sure you work is well presented, and use the resources available to you like Artstation/CG Society/Polycount to show off your work, because ultimately those will just help you boost your appeal to employers. Look out for anything that's too similar to everything else, your content can be just as important as your technique so avoid cliches, and make something that stands out from the rest. Don't be afraid to learn things that aren't directly linked, but could be used. Learn a little scripting, it could end up being the difference between getting a job and losing out. Learn multiple skills, don't just focus on one, because sometimes you'll need to know the extra things to get by. Talk 3 The talk by Alex Jones and Pete Griffith seemed like an odd talk for us. It seemed to be selling it's internship scheme, more than giving advice for jobs in general. Although it offered some general advice, it was very heavy handed in trying to offer up their own jobs - which has a benefit of it's own (as you might end up getting somewhere to work). They did, however, mention that you should follow your passion - there is no right path to success, and sometimes you can end up in places that you didn't expect. It's often less about what you use to accomplish something, what matters is the skills you possess to achieve your goal. Even with that in mind you don't need to be able to do everything, you just need to be able to do your part - which helps form who you are, or in other words it gives you a unique selling point. A capability to provide a service that others may not be able to. Talk 4 The final talk provided an incredibly different viewpoint from Ted Brand and Ro Stein, two illustrators that work on comics for Marvel as well as some other independent comics. They had a wealth of experience, and had to learn very quickly what the right, and wrong, way to approach their work was. First and foremost they echoed something that you hear a lot from people in the industry, you need to network. Although they worked together and one of them networked more than the other, it helped them immensely because they could have a public rapport, and that would bring in business for both of them. It's important to keep in mind, though, that you need to be professional with what you do. The more you seem like someone that's capable of delivering work, while simultaneously being good at keeping contact, the more people are going to want to work with you, or contact you which helps build relationships with those people. Even so, you need to make sure that you read all your contracts very carefully and look out for any vague wording, since this could be used as a way to cheat you out of your hard work. It's not a bad thing to make sure that you both know exactly what you're getting out of the deal. Going hand in hand with that you need to make sure you get everything in writing, or else you've got no legal fall back - since they can just deny everything you're saying. While you're busy building yourself up,stick to small jobs, they're more likely to be manageable and less likely leaving you overworking yourself just to try and get it done. Lastly, pick jobs that highlight your strengths. This will bring out the best work you can possibly do, and will help strengthen your position and your portfolio. A client, someone I met through a community that I'm part of, asked me whether I'd be able to do some motion graphics work. Although It wasn't my exact field, I decided to see if I could help them out.
They gave me some specifications and I started working on something as an example - and offered it up, it wasn't what they were looking for so they asked me to change it. Over a few weeks I ended up building up a final image for them. I interviewed QRUXEL's owner, to ask about what he thought about my work: "Me: Hey, are you okay with me blogging about my work for you? Ludwig: Absolutely it would be my honor. Me: Out of curiousity, did you end up using of my stuff? ^^ Ludwig: Well, it saddens me to have to say no. And it had nothing to do with the assets because they were great - it was just so much to do during the broadcast that I never got around to make the final steps (usually I have time to do that even during the broadcast but since I had to control the cameras as well as take care of talents when they arrived - there simply was no way..) However, I will finish them and hopefully be able to use them soon for something else or the next time there is a horror-stream.. (but since you own the rights/royalties, I will of course check with you before) Me: That's fine. I just wanted to check for posterity and be able to blog about it and say what I learned, etcetera. Now for the big question, would you work with me again? Ludwig: Haha, of course as I said, I really found it to be a shame that I wasn't able to use the assets - becouse they were really good and I found you to be very professional and versatile to work with Me: Excellent! Ludwig: By the way, I was loading in the frames for the lowerthird now - and noticed two things I thought I'd mention - first off, since the animation had a in and out loop - it's good to be able to loop the video's middle part - e.g. that the first frame after the intro-animation looks the same as the last frame before the outro animation - otherwise there is a noticable jump in the video.. (it will always jump a little when you remove the lower-third since you jump to the outro-animation, but that is usually not as noticable.. secondly, there seams to be a grayish border at the bottom - was that a graphical glitch or as intended?" The overall experience was definitely new, and had a lot of learning involved but I enjoyed it. The first day of creative futures turned out to be a pretty positive day. Far better than I was anticipating, and I managed to get some useful tips from the different talks that I attended. I'll be going through some of the things the different speakers said, which will be useful.
Collaboration in the creative industries The talk featured 5 independent speakers of note, that had very different career paths and so offered a lot of varying perspectives but shared a lot of common advice. Gareth Jones suggested that we take opportunities, as they can provide themselves at any moment and passing them up could mean there's some time before the next opportunity. This will also help you connect with people. Tamara Harvey made the point that you should do anything you can, as it will tide you over until you get into the position that you want to be in. This ties in nicely with what Gareth said, too. Innovating in a bad situation can mean you make the best of a bad situation, and although that can lead to a lot of risks - you should always rise to the challenge and take the risks as these can end up paying off in ways that you didn't expect. Even when risky, you need to try new ideas - to avoid your work, and your life, getting stale. Andy Cheetham seemed to have quite a successful career behind him, and his business has had a lot of influence on companies in some very major ways. Although he had quite humble beginnings, he bit down and didn't let it stop him, and encouraged us to persist, no matter what. This is because with persistence comes eventual payout, and sometimes even when in a dry spell you can come up with new ideas because inspiration can come from anywhere - even choosing to do something as simple as adverts for your family chip shop as he did. So he told us about his journey, and put a lot of emphasis on the fact that everything he did was about the journey, and realistically "anyone can have a good journey." So as you progress through your life journey you need to remember to be curious as that is where you will find inspiration, learn, grow, and become all you can be. Alfredo Cramerotti was very straightforward and to the point, saying that you should always take charge of a situation, and make it your own. Sometimes something is good for you, and sometimes it isn't and you need to realise which situation is more accurate. Even so, you should never shy away, but instead face challenges, because that is where you will reap the most reward - something that resonate with what Tamara said. Collectively the panel ran into the last minutes of the talk, at which point attention was starting to wane but the majority of the most vital points were made in a very quick way, likely due to the time running out.
How to get a creative job; stop procrastinating… and other useful tips! Simon Amor is a recent graduate of Glyndwr. His perspective was unique and incredibly relevant to us, as he has broken into the creative industries and made a point letting us know the realities of getting a job in the creative industries. Rather than just promote yourself as someone that can do work, focus on the difficulties you've encountered and overcome because companies are looking for problem solvers. Regardless of what industry you want to get into you need to make sure you give 100% of your effort, because you need to stand out from a crowd of other people that may be just as talented or capable as you are. The most helpful advice he gave was about presenting portfolios, saying that you should have 6 main pieces that you show, since that will be a good thing for employers to see. Then have 3 more pieces that you can show at an interview, and all of these should be projects you can talk about. Your process is just as important as the polished image, and so you need to be able to talk about it, and not be afraid to show it because the employers want to know that you are capable of working towards the end result. This means you should show your process. If you do end up getting work, freelance or otherwise then (as much as you can) never work for free. Remember to be interesting, not pretend to be - and what that means is that you should be comfortable with who you are but make sure to make an effort. The work that you do has a story behind it, and you shouldn't be afraid to tell that story. Make sure to start now, because your work is always changing and becoming more and you should try and build yourself up more as soon as you can, this will help re enforce your work and yourself. Lastly, keep working and don't stop - because as soon as you stop, starting back up again is the hardest thing you can do - but keep in mind that taking time to yourself is important. Give it your all when you can, and take time for yourself when you need it. Between Art and the Creative Industries The last talk of the day was very interesting, but I found very little in the way of advice. I think the creative journey of the artist was very interesting, and it showcased that you can do what you want, without letting yourself be held back, but it was very focused on the life and career of Ioana Pioaru. Based on my thoughts in my first week I decided that I want to work on my video game project and put the Golem to one side for now. This is largely due to the fact that I feel I'm at odds with the design of the character and I find myself consistently seeing more work that will slow down the project - so I've decided I'd start on something new and make my passion project my main project instead. This will make my work a lot easier as it's a collaborative project, which means I can focus on the creative aspects that I enjoy. The project has been, temporarily, called the DayKnight Cycle - which was a joke that was made during the early discussion stages of the project. This is because the people part of the project are from a community called the "DayKnights" and we considered having a Day/Night cycle during the game (which we have decided against). The concept for the game is, loosely speaking, a dystopia (or even post-apocalyptic) setting in which there are no clear signs of other people alive. The entire game is meant to feel extremely lonely, so we've decided to have no other organic characters, but we didn't want to have it be entirely lonely - so we decided that we'd have robotic characters that help give the idea that the world is very technologically advanced, which will be emphasized by the design of the world. To make sure that we're all working together properly we've been having weekly meetings, in which we assign work and projects to each other and critique each other's work. To get an idea of the aesthetic we were asked to block out some things to get a quick idea of what we want the game to look like. These didn't need to be specifically optimized or polished, but there were meant to indicate something of an idea. The one I came up with was well received, but I had more critique about it than others - specifically that it's all very blocky, which isn't much of a problem for the people involved in the project though, as they didn't expect it to be particularly polished. Our main concept artist came up with these two pieces that showed the world in a far broader scope, large towering buildings that are crumbling, tiny bursts of colour, a thick metropolis that spans the entirety of the landscape. This helped us give us direction about how we wanted to portray the world. The density helped to compliment the narrow design that I created, where everything seems towering and oppressive to the player, and all the areas are claustrophobic. The one problem that we saw was the in your face skeleton, which we didn't want. It felt too grim, and although we wanted the world to be dark we didn't want it to be grim, instead we wanted the fact that there's nobody else to give you the feeling that something's wrong with the world. Once we had a good feeling of the art direction, we started to work on the main project. The concept art for the first part came with these two ideas, the stories that our writers came up with both focused on this sort of jail idea (something which we discussed amongst ourselves, and decided that we wanted). The main thing that we had to decide was whether we wanted it to be a traditional jail, like the one in the first image, or something more suited to a sci-fi environment like the second environment, and so we thought back to the story to what we wanted and decided that a sci-fi look would make more sense, that your character is actually incredibly old but has just been cryogenically frozen for a very long time and that's why the world's changed so vastly. So I started thinking about how I want to do it, and started thinking about what the room that you first see will look like. I started working on the different pieces of the environment. I created these stasis pods that line the edge (extremely densely) and the floor, and handrail that would keep the player from falling down the centre of the tube. I took these and then quickly duplicated the environment and pulled it upwards. This gave me a really solid idea of what the jail will look like, and upon critique it made sense for it to be like this. It gives a nice visual of this circular prison, and keeping with this idea of a sci-fi prison. I progressed by building this arm out of simple geometry, to try and get an idea of what I wanted it to look like. I took some inspiration from GLaDOS from the Portal series. Though I wanted parts of the design to be more angular, and less sleek. I'd think that I want to make it a bit different, more directly functional and exposed so you could see a lot of the mechanical workings. The blocking out will help provide a very basic start to the design, but I'll definitely go through and redo the design. I decided that the design was too cluttered, and decided to cut the amount of the Cryopods in half, to open up the area a bit more, and then started placing some simple lights in between every other gap, which I thought worked really well. To see how the placing would work I placed some ambient lights where I had placed the models of the lights, and rendered it to see how it would look - and I think with some tweaking it can look really great. Next I went through and added in some textures onto the Cryopod. I didn't need them to be perfect, as the whole appearance of the game will be quite simplistic, I just needed them to convey the sort of look that I wanted to. I may go through and make them look a bot better later on, but for now I'm really happy with the look of the Cryopods. Then finally I played with the arrangement of the pods, to see if I preferred them straight or alternating, and honestly I think that I don't really have much of a preference. I think both look good. Moving on to design the level layout I thought about what I want the player to feel like, and so I decided on two main sections. Underground (the first image) and above ground (second image). I wanted it to be clear where the player could and couldn't move, and be able to simply plan where we want to cut off sections. This provides a simple and easy to read explanation of the level design, what we want the overall layout to look like, and paid some attention to what the prison's capacity would be. I figured out that I wanted the prison to have a high capacity so I'd need at least 5 levels, and then could add more at a later date if I felt like we could use it.
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