Year 1-2 Directed Study!

Further to the meeting this morning, the directed study period should focus in the study and application of one of the three areas of specialism listed below. These areas of study will guide your development throughout the course, and eventually, your career. By the end of year two you will be asked to identify a preferred specialism and area of study – now is the time to start exploring what that might be.

1.       Concept Art

                             Iterative design process (2D and/or 3D)

2.       Game Design / UI

                             Game design document

                             Interactive prototype

                             User Interface (UI) / User Experience (UX)

3.       Game Asset

                             Character

                             Environment

                             Artefacts

 

Once you have chosen an area of interest identify and research job roles, industry variations, and develop the necessary skills required your chosen field. Please note: You will not be duty bound to this topic forever should you change your aspirations within the course / career!

What does it take to be a Concept Artist for Blizzard?

How do studios (big / small) develop and communicate game ideas?

What are the key factors for creating a ‘AAA’ style game asset?

PAL Summer projects, gotta keep busy!

It's been a long while since I've written a blog and although it's nice to have a break, its probably for the best if I get into the habit of blog writing again. I was accepted to become a PAL, which stands for Peer Assisted Learning, ad my role is to be a mentor to upcoming First Years which gives me great joy, being able to pass on advice is always a good thing especially for people who probably felt like I did before starting Uni, nervous ... unsure of things. helping people is a very nice job indeed!

The job of a PAL was to set a Summer Project to get the firsties thinking about drawing and getting into the practise of making sketchbooks with both imaginative and real drawings with both 2d and 3d aspects! For my own project it has to coincide with the directed study set by our tutors, for that I will choose to study up for game asset creation and will make a different blog post for that another time.

For my project sketchbook I am going to do more environmental studies as I felt these were my weak-points, along with life like drawings, I will aim to explore my darker side and use my interest in the occult to create two final pieces both environmental and character design. My character designing of late has been a bit underwhelming so I hope to 'get my groove' back so to speak over the course of this month in preperation for Year 2 ... eek!

Researching into importing, textures, baking. Oh my!

http://wiki.polycount.com/NormalMap/ The polycount Wiki was very helpful for research!

http://youtu.be/hANTXvM4V0M a video about normal mapping, very helpful!

http://download.autodesk.com/global/docs/maya2013/en_us/index.html?url=files/mrfMS_Baking_to_textures_and_vertices.htm,topicNumber=d30e671428 The Autodesk website has been a god send when I was stuck at home.

http://youtu.be/tb9zkYr9sf4 a video about starting up in UDK.

http://youtu.be/OH6BmcKcFwo This helped me so much when looking to create a water terrain.

http://youtu.be/EtR-4vA6wAg another great video about importing terrains, although I didn't use this method I found it very helpful to watch for future projects.

https://forums.epicgames.com/threads/708414-Exporting-a-level-from-Maya-to-UDK the epic forums are so helpful when stuck.

http://download.autodesk.com/global/docs/maya2014/en_us/files/Painting_in_2D_Create_seamless_repeating_textures.htm information about creating repeatable textures, so helpful, again the autodesk website it awesome.

CS work, Haroun and the Sea of Stories!

Well it feels weird writing a post about my CS work as this will be my first, but this one is different as it's the first CS project that won't result in an essay (phew). We were assigned to read Salman Rushdie's book, Haroun and the Sea of Stories. for our presentation our studies should explain.

"1. What is 'Haroun and the Sea of Stories' really about: can you show that meaning through selected quotations?

2. What has influenced your choice of characters?

3. What factors have influenced your design? - Refer to the presentation slides entitled 'Representation' on the VLE for contextual, structural and visual frameworks for analysis.

4. How will your characters give a player a fun and interesting experience?"

As I read through the story I was drawn to 'The Gardeners, in the story they are described as hairdressers of the Sea of Stories, unknotting, cleaning and generally taking care of the stories. I was drawn to the character of Mali because of the way he is described as having a purple flower for lips and having a body made of weeds/vegetables. I took the character of the Gardeners and interperated them to be like Psychologists or some form of Psychiatrists, with the way that they don't speak much but have quite soft voices, also that they sort through stories.

I have a mental image of how I would like to represent the Gardeners if they were going into a video game, but I am also trying not to be influenced by 'flora/fauna' style characters already in games. For the mouth of the Gardener which is described as "a lilac coloured flower positioned in it's head where a mouth should be" I decided that if I was running with the Psycologist/Psychiatrist idea that the flower should be one associated with calming, so I looked up Lavender and the colour purple.

"Purple combines the calm stability of blue and the fierce energy of red. The color purple is often associated with royalty, nobility, luxury, power, and ambition. Purple also represents meanings of wealth, extravagance, creativity, wisdom, dignity, grandeur, devotion, peace, pride, mystery, independence, and magic.
The color purple is a rare occurring color in nature and as a result is often seen as having sacred meaning. Lavender, orchid, lilac, and violet flowers are considered delicate and precious.
The color purple has a variety of effects on the mind and body, including uplifting spirits, calming the mind and nerves, enhancing the sacred, creating feelings of spirituality, increasing nurturing tendencies and sensitivity, and encouraging imagination and creativity."

Lavender has been used to calm and soothe nerves for years, also it is long and looks mouth-like, I would divide along the stalks to create an opening mouth that is lilac in colour. For the body I will try to make a smart outfit out of vines, I don't want him to turn out weird looking as I want the audience to feel like the character has a serious role but still looks fun and engaging. I don't want him to look like this!

or this!

 
For now I am still trying to figure out the hidden meaning in depth, I feel quite outsmarted by a childrens story :S

More Screenshots

The castle is just about finished, just a couple more items to add, feeling really good about this, was panicking at the start of the week worrying I wouldn't finish, that I would be FAAAAR behind everyone, but just a few days hard graft and my castle is on the brink of being UVed, I'm not too comfortable with doing this but as a lot of my objects are repeated and pasted it shouldn't be too hard!

For some weird reason even though they were all placed in the same equal spot the towers which should have all aligned, didn't. I had to move the two left towers in a bit so the all lined up, this won't affect it in the long run, it just makes everything look neater :)

 

Taking shape, and a Brazen Bull.

Everything is starting to finally look ready for UVing, there is still a little to do as far as accessorising goes, the thing I think sets my model apart is the fact that the objects around it add more to the castle and as such I want to make these look as good as the castle does, if they don't the castle loses a major part of its theme.

I really wanted to do a Brazen Bull in my castle, although not typically a Russian/Eastern European method of torture I wanted to add one in to fit with the torture and criminal theme but to add depth to my character who I want to appear as a rich and knowledgeable woman who reads about the wider world. Here is a little info on the Brazen Bull.

"The Brazen Bull, sometimes known as the Sicilian Bull is one of the cruelest methods of torture and execution out there. Designed in ancient Greece, solid brass was cast into the shape of a hollow bull, with a door on the side that opened and latched. To begin the execution, the victim was placed inside of the brass bull and a fire was set underneath. The fire was heated until the metal was literally yellow, causing the victim to "roast to death". The bull was designed so that the screams of the victim would come out sounding musical for the enjoyment of the executioner, the inventor of this form of punishment ended up being executed inside of the Bull."

 I was a little worried about how I was going to create this item, but fortunatly there was a ready made bull in Mudbox that I exported into Maya, although it up my polys I was very glad to have a ready made item, I made the horns a little wider and made a 'hatch' on the belly and made a hollow tube shape underneath it for the fire pit. I placed this item underneath the fake door near the top of my castle, the idea is that prisoners inside would somehow get free, find a door to knowhere and look down, only to see the bull. I wonder about my imagination sometimes :/

 

Seeing a few improvements.

I still don't understand Maya .... so many buttons .... BUT, I can see myself getting a little better each time I go to do my model, I know I am a little behind everyone else in my group and my progress is a little slower, but I am okay with that. playing the mental game with myself is still difficult, I do have a long way to go, but again that's okay! Opening Maya doesn't scare me so much now and every time I create something I get a little jolt of joy!

Here are some more progress screenies, nearly there! I still need to make it a little more 'built up' looking like the Winchester Mystery House does. Making things look good but from different styles is tricky but not impossible now. I think my Castle does look like a bit of a mockery to the aspects of the style of the building, seeing as a lot of the Russian Architecture featuring onion domes are buildings of Religious purposes and my Castle is a torture building, but still features its Crosses and signs of Christianity. I love it!

And just for giggles, creating the Gibbet with the model inside created a rather 'Han Solo in Carbonite' effect.

Maya Screenies.

Here are some of my Maya progress screenshots, this was my first attempt. It was all going well until I realised that one, I had stuck the domes on too soon and they were all in centimeters instead of meters, and I could not get them to scale right .... so deleted that one! Although I did learn how to make a Gibbet which was fun!

Next attempt went better, got the scale right and the scale man actually looked less like giant Ant-Man. Huzzah everything seemed to be going well (for 4 hours) up until I was trying to create edges along the floor levels of the castle. I accidentally deleted two REALLY important edges without realising it and no matter what I tried I could not get them back in, lesson learned however ... CHECK EEEEEVERY LINE BEFORE DELETING ANYTHING! EVER!

On the third try I tried to keep simple as possible so I wouldn't get frustrated with the program (which I had to uninstall/reinstall at this point) as it was being rather glitchy. I took my time and got the castle sorted and the turrets/domes all sorted ready to make more beautiful. Next thing to do is add the windows and sort out the balcony, then do the bridge. So lots to do :)

 

More Mind Maps.

As the title says here a couple more mind maps for addictions to my castle. I love the idea of a portcullis on my castle, if it is going to be such a terrible torture building then it would need to repel enemies and lock people inside, so bars on the windows and portcullis's to make sure if people don't leave. Also looking at balconies for ideas for my blood bath platform.

Turrets and Onion Domes

I have started a few drawings and colour tests for the onion dones and the turret colours to see how the colours will look with darker brickwork as I was told by my tutor that this could be a tricky thing to pull off depending on how dark I made my castle with the ideas I had.

I started by creating a 2D basic onion dome then tried a couple of colours, tried a golden dome, then tried a coloured one. I like the idea of having the two different styles as across Easteren Europe they have different variations of the domes.

Trying out different styles of Onion dome, with the panels that are different colours and bump out more. The golden one will be completely flat round with no features sticking out.

I tried drawing a perspective view of the bridge linking the turrets. I like the thought of the turrets actually being used as part of the castle, I'm thinking of these being the four separate torture chambers, so each of these will have different stained glass colourings to reflect these different rooms of torture.

I like the bright colours with the sandy coloured rock. I want to use a darker version of Limestone such as Volcanic Limestone. There is a Volcano called Kara Dag Mountain which rises to a height of 577 meters between the Crimean coastal town of Koktebel.

Practising here trying to work out how to draw the ice-cream cone style domes, it was more complicated than I thought so I don't know if I'm going to be able to replicate those in Maya with my skill level. Maybe I will be able to do these as flat domes and then place a pattern on the top that is shaded to look 3D.

Tried another view of the castle in photoshop. I might add an extra turret and dome in the center that will be the golden one.

Then I got bored and started drawing a face and got distracted so decided that was it for the night.

Little bit of progress!

So long since my last blog post, life is a drag and I have had no inspiration or creative mind. I have taken pictures of the basic plans for my castle. Will have to draw up some versions to add colour for when I add textures and effects.

Front view.

Trying to work out how the bath and the blood fountain will look and work

Front of the castle and top view. Also a gibbet I will have dotted around the castle.

and a different version of the bridge

Norwich Castle Museum.

As a Norfolk gal I have always seen and been around the Castle Museum, although I am scared somewhat by this project the fact it's based around one of the largest buildings throughout my childhood and into adulthood that I never get bored of is what drives me to keep going with it.

As such I want to keep very closely to the part highlighted below. For me it starts with researching the castle, and finding out things I didn't even know despite visiting the Castle many times before. I want to try and stick around the same size and shape as Norwich Castle, as to me the cube shape is to me the typical image of a Castle that also stands as a Keep. As I want my Castle to be somewhat impregnable and fill people with horror when they look at it from however far away. This shape and the position of the Castle will be important.

"Norwich Castle was founded by William the Conqueror some time between 1066 and 1075. It originally took the form of a motte and bailey. Early in 1067, William the Conqueror embarked on a campaign to subjugate East Anglia, and according to military historian R. Allen Brown it was probably around this time that Norwich Castle was founded. The castle is first mentioned in 1075 when Ralph de Gael, Earl of Norfolk, rebelled against William the Conqueror and Norwich was held by his men. A siege was undertaken, but ended when the garrison secured promises that they would not be harmed.

Norwich is one of 48 castles mentioned in the Domesday Survey of 1086. Building a castle in a pre-existing settlement could require demolishing properties on the site. At Norwich, estimates vary that between 17 and 113 houses occupied the site of the castle. Excavations in the late 1970s discovered that the castle bailey was built over a Saxon cemetery. Historian Robert Liddiard remarks that "to glance at the urban landscape of Norwich, Durham or Lincoln is to be forcibly reminded of the impact of the Norman invasion". Until the construction of Orford Castle in the mid-12th century under Henry II, Norwich was the only major royal castle in East Anglia.

The stone keep, which still stands today, was probably built between 1095 and 1110. In about the year 1100, the motte was made higher and the surrounding ditch deepened. During the Revolt of 1173–1174, in which Henry II's sons rebelled against him and started a civil war, Norwich Castle was put in a state of readiness. Hugh Bigod, 1st Earl of Norfolk was one of the more powerful earls who joined the revolt against Henry. With 318 Flemish soldiers  that landed in England in May 1174, and 500 of his own men, Bigod advanced on Norwich Castle. They captured the castle and took fourteen prisoners who were held for ransom. When peace was restored later that year, Norwich was returned to royal control.

The castle was used as a gaol from 1220, with additional buildings constructed on the top of the motte next to the keep. These buildings were demolished and rebuilt between 1789 and 1793 by Sir John Soane, and more alterations were made in 1820. The use of the castle as a gaol ended in 1887, when it was bought by the city of Norwich to be used as a museum. The conversion was undertaken by Edward Boardman, and the museum opened in 1895.

The forebuilding attached to the keep was pulled down in 1825. Although the keep remains, its outer shell has been repaired repeatedly, most recently in 1835–9 by Anthony Salvin, with James Watson as mason using Bath stone. None of the inner or outer bailey buildings survive, and the original Norman bridge over the inner ditch was replaced in about the year 1825. During the renovation, the keep was completely refaced based faithfully on the original ornamentation.

G. T. Clark, a 19th-century antiquary and engineer, described Norwich's great tower as "the most highly ornamented keep in England". It was faced with Caen stone over a flint core. The keep is some 95 ft (29 m) by 90 ft (27 m) and 70 ft (21 m) high, and is of the hall-keep type, entered at first floor level through an external structure called the Bigod Tower. The exterior is decorated with blank arcading. Castle Rising is the only other comparable keep in this respect. Internally, the keep has been gutted so that nothing remains of its medieval layout. The uncertainty surrounding the keep's arrangement has led to scholarly debate. What is agreed on is that it had a complex domestic arrangement, with a kitchen, chapel, a two-storey high hall, and 16 latrines."

Mind Map Collections

Here are the mind maps displaying all the imagery that I will use as inspiration for my Castle. All images are from Google.