One of the things I mentioned in my first presentation when I joined this course was my interest in Tarot cards. One of my favourite games that wields this concept is the Persona series. And i've taken a lot of inspiration from this game so I thought i'd share it and g through some aspects of the game I really like. I'm only going to focus on Persona 3 though.
This game is a card based game and is inspired by Tarot cards. The enemy designs are really well thought out and each represent a certain class of tarot. This is the first game that i've seen that has tarot based designs and I never thought about how much of a great concept it would be and I really loved the way they incorporated that into the game.
This is some concept art of one of my favourite characters called Koromaru. I think for an animal he has such a great sense of personality and that really goes for all the characters in persona including the 4th game. I think they combine a great mixture of characters that have different characteristics and different backgrounds and it's really nice to see how their relationships evolve as the game unfolds.
This is some concept art for the Personas which are basically symbolize each character. As well as having such amazing designs I really love the fact they change and evolve when the character does because essentially they are all in a situation where they have to confront a side of them who they reject. This also teaches you a really valuable lesson in life which is to not let others change the way you are and just to accept ourself and be comfortable being you.
From this you can see that I really love digging into the meanings of storis and story telling is something i'd like to be a big part of my work in the future.
These are some environmental concept arts from the game. The atmosphere created in these areas using lighting, colours and sound is amazing. I have to say that this game in particular has a really great soundtrack.
I really like the architectural side of environmental design so this is something that I really want to take on board and perfect by giving myself some independent projects over the summer.
While exploring different media for the Context of Practice final piece I bumped into a really nice kinetic typography video to one of my favourite songs from the wonderful Persona 3.
The visuals for this and the layout is really stunning. I love the use of tonal colours because it keeps in fresh and clean. My favourite part has got to be this part where these hills are created and then the japanese characters fall off the sphere like leaves. It's a really nice effect and after looking at a few tutorials online it seems quite simple so i'd like to practice kinetic type at some point.
The editing and syncing with the music is spot on but at times I think its a little too fast perhaps but the song has quite a fast pace anyway. Maybe it's just me?
Overall, a really stunning piece of kinetic type. The fact i's done to a soundtrack to one of my favourite games is just a bonus.
I really love this animation. It's one of the best spins on the Little Red Riding Hood fairytale i've seen. The simplicity of the different shades of red is really nice and soft on the eyes and also ties in with the title and the theme. The characters in this piece re really sweet and have a great sense of character. The wolf is adorable and it looks like a hand drawn animation and given that the fighting sequence is very nice. Again very good story telling and the use of red in all sorts of different tones and saturation levels is something i'd definitely like to co-operate in my own work.
This animation I found quite interesting because it uses a mixture of different kinds of animation. The house scene and the characters being in 3D and some features being in 2D. I always thought that you had to specialise in one or the other but now i've seen this I'd like to perhaps have a go at trying to create and find a balance of the two worlds of animation.
Oveall this animation hasbeen very inspiring and is a good idea for an independent project or something to take into consideration when I move into the 2nd year of this course.
Back again with another tear jerking animation. I know i've said this in the last few posts but this is verrrryy beautiful. Again, taking on an important concept, in this case, pollution, and creating a story with it accompanied by great visuals. This animation for me really highlights the importance of silhouettes because of the Tim Burton-esk/steam punk style.
This is another very beautiful piece of animation. The style on this is quite unique and got me thinking about how I could improve my creative skills and put a stamp or signature in my work. At this moment in time I don't really have a distinct drawing style which is something I'd like to work on over the summer and the years to come.
The texturing in this animation is really nice~ It reminded me of the Comfort adverts with the fabric textures and patchwork. This is something I really like and perhaps when developing a style, this is something I will take into consideration.
Anyway back to this animation!
This animation is another emotional journey and is again quite story riven. A lot of the animations I seem to like the most are story orientated so perhaps I could look into what makes a good story.
The idea behind this animation, the concept is really good. I love the idea of her kind of finding her purpose in life and what path to take and such and I think I was moved by this piece because it reminded me of myself an my situation with a career path so.. creating something that has deep meaning and appears relatable to your audience is also another important aspect in any creative industry.
Sadly I couldn't embed this video but I bumped into this rally nice Pixar short on Youtube after digging up some of the animations I wanted to blog about.
This animation has such a good story and sense of playfulness. It really touched me and I think that being able to move your audience is really important because it's one of the ways of capturing who ever is watching or in terms of games, whoever is playing. This is something that I really want to master with the years to come on this course. I'd rally like to tell great stories and be able to trigger certains emotions.
So I have finally finished my level for my scenography module and i'm really happy with my final outcome. I think the little effects like the bloom when you look at the sun and the particle system I added in Unity made a big difference and really helped polish it off.
I have to send a big thanks to my Joshua Scott for composing my music for my level. I really enjoyed working with him and sharing my work. It feels really good to collaborate with others and potentially have connections outside of college. This is something I might do more often for future projects.
The stairs are a little tricky if you stop midway which if I had more time I would defiantly go back and fix. I did try ramps but I still managed to get caught so I decided to take them off. It also looks more realistic as you go up and down stairs.
So here is my final product and I hope you enjoy it as much as I enjoyed working on it. Feedback is always welcome; this is just the beginning.
So after putting my new castle together with my trees and reorganising the layout I moved onto adding the finishing touches.
From this screenshot you can see that I was actually going to give my castle a glow until I found out that Unity doesn't allow this so I looked into it and thought that maybe I should add a bloom effect but because of the level of whites and yellows used in my level I think the glowing would be very overpowering.
As for the little details, I wanted to add falling leaves by using the particle system and for a test just changed the colours of the fairy dust and after talking to a few people about how it looked I didn't think that changing them into leaves and such was really necessary because you can see from the colours what it's suppose to represent. And it can be anything from leaves to blossom, I'll just let the players decide.
This is an in game screenshot of the finished piece. You can't see much of the blossom stuff floating around but you can get the idea of my game space. It was originally meant to be in a forest but when I was sculpting the terrain, I thought that the maple tree brushes in the terrain package are really dull in comparison to my own models and it looked very out of place. So instead I created a isolated are with the sun creeping over the mountains.
This last picture just shows the lens flare I added when you look at the sun at the beginning of the game. I think it's a really nice feature that breathes a lot of life into my game.
Okay so after modelling my trees I went back to my castle and redesigned my main tower and added some more elegant features to my castle.
As you can see I sorted out the white and red colour scheme and tried my best to balance the colours out. I'm pretty happy with the dashed of red in the design on the columns and the top. The dome at the top adds a point of interest when you go up the tower and I'm thinking of adding windows at the top to show off the texturing because I spent a long time fixing that window up in photoshop to fit the colour scheme.
Here I added some nice detailing of red ivy climbing up one of the towers which I'm wanting to put a spiral staircase down. again showing off the textures and creating more interest within my area. I was thinking about adding more ivy around the castle but I didn't want to go too overboard because the trees are already quite vibrant and decorative.
Here I decided to add a bridge to my castle because what's a castle without the good old classic bridge? then again I don't have a moat around but I still wanted a bridge. As you can see I did a arched bridge to begin with but it looked so out of place although it looked pretty good close up where you'd be able to walk under. So, I decided to make a basic bridge and put the posts all the way across to give my game space a sense of continuity.
Here are the textures I used for the window and the door. The door actually looks pretty good close up but with the brief beging scenography I built the bridge so you can get a better look at the castle as a whole and appreciate your surroundings a bit more.
Baten Kaitos: Eternal Wings and Lost Ocean is an RPG developed by Tri-Crescendo and Monolith Soft, a well established game development company that has worked with some great titles such as the Xenosaga and the recent Skyward Sword.
Baten Kaitos is one of the many beautiful RPG games I've played. It has some of the most stunning environment work which has been achieved through a mixture of pre-rendered backgrounds and FMV (film motion video). This combined with the unique battle system, great character designs and one of my favourite composers, Motoi Sakuraba, makes a game that's worth playing.
Just to help you get a feel for the game, here's the game intro.
When I first watched this opening I was totally captivated by the graphics at the time. The characters and the settings were beyond amazing.
I was actually shown this game by one of my friends and after watching the opening sequence I went out and bought the game.
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Story
The story revolves around a world in the sky. The story states that an evil God called Malpercio engulfed the ocean leaving a number of floating islands in the sky, which ultimately make the world map for the game. This evil god was then defeated and sealed by a group of heroes. The heroes sealed the evil God in the form of 5 "End Magnus", Magnus being the term used for a magical seal or container which can be used to store items.
NOTE: I'll be going into more detail about the world map and about what Magnus are in another section.
Long after these events have taken place, the people of the sky had evolved in such a way that it was pretty much standard to own a pair of wings.
In a small rural town on the outskirts of the city, is where your adventure begins with the introduction of the protagonist, a witty and ill-mannered young man that goes by the name of Kalas. Kalas wakes up after suffering from some serious injury to the head which has made his memory a little hazy. And to my surprise, despite the fact Kalas is the protagonist, you actually take on the role of his companion, the guardian spirit.
From here on out, the plot unfolds as you start to explore this world in the sky, making friends who join you in your cause to put the God Malpercio to and end by collecting the End Magnus before your enemies do.
Baten Kaitos is a role-playing/puzzle game. I think these two aspects come hand-in-hand really otherwise games wouldn't be as fun as they are if they didn't get our brains working. Anyway, I think the concept they took on for the role play side of things is pretty interesting. Because your role isn't that of the protagonist which is a very strange and rare thing to find among games these days, the control you have over the main character is obviously approached differently. It's more similar to giving advice to a friend. This is actually a nice alternative to having control over the protagonist or 'being' the protagonist, which is more commonly seen in most games.
The Magnus I mentioned earlier, is the name used for a card that seal away items enabling you to carry around anything from food to weaponry, large or small. These Magnus play a big role in this game because you use them for pretty much everything including the puzzles and quests that you come across in the game. I think the way they've given such an importance to Magnus is actually really cool because to me it puts life in perspective a little by showing how small things can have great power over us and how we live. A good example of that being money.
Magnus are also used in the unique fighting system this game introduced. Because they're in the form of cards they use a card-based battle system. No surprises there huh? But anyway, Magnus can be used to store anything, food recovers your health and weapons deal damage. You can also take photos of all the enemies and bosses you come across and sell them to make money so you can buy more Magnus to make a powerful deck as the adventure goes on.
Another great things about the items that you can collect is that they age over time. For example... Milk turns into cheese and then into yoghurt. And if you leave food for too long it will rot. I found this idea really creative and it really helps add the passing of time in the game world.
Kalas is the protagonist of the game and he's got quite the story to tell. As the adventure unfolds you find out more about his background which is one of the things that drives him to continue. He seeks revenge on a man called Giacomo for killing his grandfather Georg. One of Giacomo's subordinates Ayme, left both Kalas and his little brother Fee injured after burning their house down. They managed to escape but only got so far before Fee collapsed and died in his arms. There are some more things you find out later on but I won't mention anything cos that's for you to find out.
Kalas is very good in battle because pretty much all of his attack cards can also be used for defence so you'll never really find yourself in a sticky situation. He can also wield all of the elements which makes him very versatile in battle.
Xelha is the heroine of the game, she has a very caring nature and it quite fragile and naive at times. She is however very strong willed and driven and she plays a very important role as the story unfolds.
She's a magic based character and can use all the elements but her special moves are light based so it'd be wise to build a deck that doesn't include dark elements. Because she mainly wield magic cards you tend to find she has a lack of defence cards so you struggle a little at the beginning of the game when she eventually joins your party.
Gibari has a very bold personally and is quite loud and full of life. He's a very carefree guy and lives life as a humble fishermen from Nashira. He absolutely loves food and always seems to be hungry but he also seems quite hungry for action and never stops until the job is done. He is a very determined individual.
In combat Gibari is similar to Kalas in a sense that pretty much all his offensive card can also be used for defence. Being a man of the sea his final attacks are water based.
Lyude is a very humble military officer and appears as an enemy when you first encounter him. His story is quite a moving one and although he is always perceived as a coward he is one of the bravest characters and his strength grows as his story does.
I think Lyude is a very difficult character to use especially at the beginning because he wields both light and dark magic and because of this conflict of elements his moves are really hard to link up. Lyude is probably best to use when you gather more cards as the game goes on.
Savyna is a very mysterious woman. She's very to herself and is a woman of very little words. Her background has quite the story to it though and is probably the most intriguing character out of all of them because she doesn't give a lot away.
Just like Lyude she wields conflicting elements, fire and water and is a funny one to use until you polish out her deck. If i remember correctly though, she is the fastest character which is a very useful thing because no one likes to make their move last.
Mizuti I another mysterious yet very loveable character. She's very quirky, knowledgable and wise. And her hometown is very beautiful and has a lot of mind boggling puzzles and secrets.
In combat, Mizuti is very much like Xelha and is a magic user of all the elements so I recommend having either one or the other in your party because it's better to have more variety otherwise I think the game will be quite challenging.
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Environment/World Design
The environment concept art for this game I find is really something. It looks very strange to begin with because the way the background has been put together (combination of pre-rendere backgrounds and FMV backgrounds) is something the eyes aren't exactly use to seeing but I think it works really well and definitely puts a unique stamp on the game.
These are just a few of my favourite places you explore in the game.
I really like the sharp angles and the shapes in this background. They're very unusual and add a nice quirky edge to this baron village. It also shows a huge contrast to the design of the sweet town underneath but I do think that the aesthetic appeal of the game itself overpowers the story plot sometimes.
This town is probably my favourite one. You can't go wrong when everything is made out f sweets! I really love the lighting and the colours in this town. They're very light hearted and fun and the little faces even blink! This picture also goes quite well with the current brief because I chose a fairytale theme and this ha a lot of reference to Hansel and Gretel, not just because of the sweet buildings but the story plot when yo reach this place gets quite interesting.
I put these two images in there to just show the beauty of the 'overworld' when you travel in and out of towns.
Overall this game is gold in my eyes but the only faults I could give it is that the aesthetics of the game overpower the story and you can sometime forget the plot and lose track at what you're doing because you're too busy admiring clouds. The second being the voice acting. The quality of the voice acting is very poor yet the more i played it the more Kalas' arrogant personality and voice grew on me so you never know~
So if you ever come across this game, get it! It's one of the great games that was released on the lovely Gamecube.
So although I originally wanted to work with the purple/cream colour scheme I picked up on from my concept art, now I've settled with the Autumn season and the maple tree I decided to go with a nice simple white castle with red roofing. After I decided the colours I was going to work with I immediately thought of Princess Peach's Castle from the well loved Super Mario 64 and I decided to whack it on here as an in game reference of the kind of thing I might create.
My castle is obviously gunna be a bit more updated as far as texturing is concerned but already there are a lot of similarities in design when compared to Peach's castle. The huge tower in the middle of the castle is a feature I've also included on my own model and after looking at this image, although minimal design aspects are sometimes better I think I'd like to add a little more spice to my middle tower because it's almost like the centre piece of the castle.
This was a quick update to show what the castle looks like with the trees I made and the overall layout I'm going to be using because my idea has changed a lot and everything within that has developed as well.
The whole idea of my layout with the bridges and stairs connecting different parts of the level is still the same it's just been arranged and presented in a different way. Rather than it being a village it's one huge castle that you get to walk around and explore.
Here you can see I made a path in through the trees. The reason I did this isn't just because it'd almost be like an area of interest but it's a great way for me to show off the different textures I've used on my tree. I also think it's fitting for the overall module which is sceneography.T
I decided to work on modelling my trees while I think about what direction I'd like to go with my castle. I wanted to go for something with a bit more colour so I decided on an Autumn feel and I was browsing the internet for different kinds of trees and I was really drawn to the Maple tree. The colours were also with the season I decided to work with so it was a win win.
This is the finished model of my maple tree textures and bump mapping included. As you can see from the screenshots I decided to use two different leaf colours just to add that little bit extra and make it more colourful and appealing to look at. As you can see though this tree ended up being quite complex with lots of polygons and such because it was really difficult to properly populate the tree until I was happy with it without making a tree with a highish poly count or at least I think it's high?
Anyway moving on. Here you can see the texturing and bump mapping for the tree. I found a very nice, seamless semi realistic bark texture that has a really nice grain which is the main thing I look for when making a good bump map.
Overall I'm happy with the tree model because during the low poly tree exercises I struggled with modelling and uv mapping the tree. I feel lot more confident about it now though and I might carry on modelling some trees just for some practice on the side maybe an independent project here and there.
After struggling a lot to settle with a castle house design I decided to drop the house bit and just work with pure castle instead. So far I've made a few basic towers and the main body to the castle. The design overall is looking very classic so I think I'm going to try stone and brick textures. This design has no roof at the moment and I'm contemplating whether to add on or just leave it and make it all stone but I'll get to that when I start experimenting with textures.
So this is a basic model I did based on my concept art and it doesn't look all that bad but it lacks so much character and style. It's very boring to look at and I'm not very happy with it which moves me onto my next design underneath.
This is the second house design I came up with. I like the overall shape of the house, the roof has a lot of character and looks quite quirky and the colour scheme actually works nicely. I'm happy that it's not looking so stiff any more but in doing this I've strayed away from the castle theme. This design is great if I were making a cottage scene but as you know I wanted it to be a castle house and the design so far has absolutely no reference to castles maybe aside from the roofing perhaps? Either way I still gotta do a lot of work with my design.
So today we were introduced to the game engine we'll be working with for the next 3 years. Unity is a great piece of software. It's very flexible will tool sets and allows you to really add the finishing touches to your models. The basic tools (move, rotate, scale) were easy to pick up because they're pretty much the same in Maya and across any 3D software which I didn't actually know. On that note there were a lot of new things introduced to me when I was going through the basics of the program and I've put up some screenshots to demonstrate some.
This image shows several different things that were new to me but first I'll start with the lighting. In Maya I've messed around with lighting, shadows and reflectivity so this wasn't exactly new so to speak. The standard types of lights being the spot light, directional light and points light were easy to grasp but it was only until messed around with all this lighting in Unity that I discovered how lighting can really have an effect on the kind of mood and atmosphere of a game. It's one thing to see it when you're playing on a game but you get a real sense of meaning when you try it yourself. Here you can see I was trying to accomplish a night time setting by tinting the light a blue/purple colour which I think actually worked pretty well~
The skybox is another component in this image. The sky box is very simple to set up but very effective but I've still to learn hot to perhaps set up my own skybox but for now the default ones are all good. I think the skybox definitely works well with lighting and would also have a big impact on the kind of lighting you decide to choose dependant on the time of day. Here you can't see the source of the light but the colour is suppose to work along side the night time setting. It's not too bad for a first go~
The next thing is the water. Now this particular asset is only available on Unity Pro but it's a nice and easy way to add some interest in your scene. I've recently downloaded Unity 3.5.1 on my laptop and you can get different water effects such as a more calm and slow one which would be ideal for lakes. I also had a go at changing the colour but I actually think it looks rather strange. I tried changing it into a orange colour to go with a sunset drop I made but the colour is only visible from some angles so I don't think it worked very well.
This was a package that really surprised me because it was a lot easier to achieve this look than I thought it would be. Here I used the terrain tools to create everything from hills to mountains in the click of a button or rather a click and hold. The terrain tool is amazing for creating a suitable environment for your models as you can see below.
This is basically a more detailed version of the loading docks I made at the top but this time I added a rocky terrain to surround it and you can see how much of a difference it makes. It's now starting to look like something slowly but surely. All it needs now is some texturing~
So, sticking to the terrain tools you can paint textures on your terrain. At first I experimented with the pre-set textures which aren't actually so bad but to achieve a more realistic environment the trick is to use more than one texture so I went hunting on http://www.cgtextures.com/ to find some appropriate rocky/mossy textures to add to my piece. I think I used 3 overall and it's starting to look pretty good. I don't think there's a limit to how many textures you can really use but I do think that too many would swamp the environment and for this dock I've created here, the terrain is part of the background so it doesn't need to be in such great detail plus, you don;t want to draw attention away from your main assets.
This is my finished piece and the end of the Unity tutorial as it were. As you can see I've also added in some trees which can be found under the terrain tools as well. It has many trees, textures and plants to offer but these are only good for decorating things in the distance like I've done here otherwise it's more of a modelling job in Maya.
So overall there was lots of new things that I learned by doing this dock exercise and I'm more than sure it'll all come together when I start creating my own level.
Okay so before I move onto doing any kind of modelling I decided to block everything out in Unity to get an idea of my game space. From the notes you can see that I was thinking of using the purple and cream for my colour scheme but I'll have to experiment on how I can incorporate that without it looking really odd and out of place.
These are some new mood boards made prior to my latest concept art of my Castles in Trees. As you can see from the tree house images, I really liked the idea of having a spiral staircase heading up towards the house and you can see that the style of houses I looked at are all wooden and cottage-like. I'm now trying my best to keep to the theme a little more so the cottage look would be best I think.
This next one is more focussed on castle designs. At the moment I'm not sure whether to try a more modern or classical style yet or even a combination so I've tried picking up some nice designs that I could take influence from and just go from there really.
So after a long time of thinking on how to make my idea more fairytale related I figured the use of castles will close the gap so I present to you, castles in trees! Funnily enough it took me a long time to come up with this idea because I was trying to find other ways around it like using scale to my advantage to make things look less realistic in reference to Alice in Wonderland but nothing was really clinging to me. So, I sat down and looked through my mood boards again and started re sculpting my village into a castle village community. I took a lot of inspiration from castle houses and tree houses and eventually drew up this in a combination of Paint tool SAI and Photoshop.
As you can see I also had a go at colour theory which is something I really want to get the hang of for my concept art in the years to come. I'd like to think I have a good eye for colour and knowledge of colour combinations because of my interest of character design from a young age but there's still a lot of things I don't fully understand, colour theory being one of them.
This colour scheme I have going here is something I might actually bring to my models when I come to textures them but I'll have to experiment with that. I do think that the colour scheme is fitting for my fairytale theme though.
For this image I decided to use silhouettes which is a nice change to doing sketchy outlines and details. It's very simple yet effective and silhouettes are very important through concept art anyway. The silhouettes also allowed me to focus on the colour theory side of things a little more as well but next time I'd like to try with a more details piece.
Okay so for my level what better than to start with some mood boards to help jog my imagination. The theme's that I've been given to choose from is the reconstruction of Kirkstall Abbey which is down the road from me, A UFO crash site or Fairytale. I have decided to choose fairytale and my first thoughts were to create a a village community of some kind so I was kinda twisting the brief a little towards the fantasy side of things.
Here are some mood boards showing the kind of things I was looking and taking influence from.
Here I was looking at cottage and house designs that I thought would work well with the theme I chose but as you can see most of these are actually models for elven villages so take a guess where that lead me.
You're absolutely right, elven villages and trees, forests and everything wonderful. I started to look at some quirky yet beautiful designs to get an idea of what's already been done and what's out there so I could create something a little more unique which is a difficult thing for something that must have been done thousands of times.
These are some doodles I did for my village idea. I really like the direction they're going in but after presenting my work so far I noticed that I was straying too far away from the brief. Although I allowed to go through with this idea I thought it be best to rethink my design and turn things around before I went any further. W
These too Posters were done in Photoshop. I used several textures and combined some photos to create a realistic looking film poster for the game Zelda. I looked at several different films such as Lord of the Rings and took from them the character arrangement and different ways of getting across this fantasy element.
This is an additional part of the practical side of the brief and here the focus was Typography. I decided to take the hearts from the zelda game as they are easily recognisable and I created two posters using that formation. I'm really happy with these posters. From the people I showed it to, the bottom one was a little more obvious in comparison to the top but when you can see it it becomes quite hard to miss.
This is one of my favourite things i've created up to date :)
