Storytelling in Games

In my opinion, storytelling is one of mankinds greatest assets and probably one of the oldest. I love stories and from a young age I have always wanted to construct my own stories, listen to others stories, watch films and above all else i have loved to read. I believe that for a very long time now people have been extremley lucky in that we can access an almost infinite amount of stories through the miracle of books. I find books so amazing and i believe that they have and always will be among some of mankinds most cherished items. I find books so much more immersive than any film, and a book dosn't restrict us visualy unlike a film and we are allowed to let our imaginations run wild! I will put my rant about 'the miracle of books' asside for another day (or blog) though and focus more on storytelling in games.


Before i move on i just want to talk about what i feel makes a good story and, just as important what i feel makes us good storytellers. I feel that most importantly a good story must involve its auidience even if its just within thier imagination, it should move the audience. A good story for me should also have direction and purpose. These next two i feel have the most strong connection with a game, and they are that a good story should always have a strong character or characters and a good story should always create vivid imagery which couldn't be more true than with a video game! 


So what makes us good storytellers? Well obviously the human brain is quite a marvelous thing, and is the engine, the power behind our 'imagination'. "The faculty of imagining, or of forming mental images or concepts of what is not actually present to the senses." What saddens me though is that as we grow older, i feel that we are forced out of our storytelling abilities and that we have to struggle to keep our minds as open as they are when we are young. I feel that as we grow older our minds close and we begin to find it harder to look beyond 'the real', but i feel that we should cherish our vivid imaginations, it is a great gift to have!


So finally, does storytelling make a good game? Well obvcourse it does. To me the whole point of a video game is to immerse the audience in an interactive experience. I think video games (some atleast) have taken storytelling to a whole new level, they have proven the point of how valuable a strong character is, and through control, the ever growing vividness of the imagery, and the immense interaction provided, like I have said, video games have taken storytelling to a whole new level and i feel, like i have mentioned in one of my earlier blogs that they may one day replace films as the more common medium to experience and immersive and vivid story.


Oh and by the way, a good story should always leave an imprint, make us remember it and leave us wanting more!

Art Direction for games

The director of a film is always one of the highest roles during the film production and is perhaps only second to the producer. The same applies to the role of direction within game development and is therefore equally important.

Within the art studio the art director is in control and responsible for the visual style and quality of art in a game. The main clue is in the name f the job role, and so, the art director is responsible for defining the visual 'direction' of a game, this will include everything a player can see in the game as well as colour, mood, tone, texture details, and will cover all aspects of the game, character, environment, assets etc. The art director works closely with the games designer and carries the burden of communicating the vision of the game to the art team and therefore one of the most important aspects of any directors job is to pre-visualise the end product to ensure there is a consistency of style throughout the project.

Art direction is an extremely important role, particularly now when games companies are under huge amounts of pressure to deliver first class game titles with virtually no margin for error and project budgets reaching into multiple millions of pounds.

The art director should work closely with the lead artists of a project team to ensure that the game designers vision and the artistic vision for the game are carried out and achieved in the final product. Also, with an art director and lead artist working closely together they can take on certain jobs together meaning aspects of the project are completed more efficiently and again retains, or should retain consistency within the game's final visual outcome. 

It is the job of the art director to have an open line of communication with all of the team. Again this will ensure that consistency throughout the project is achieved, but will also ensure that the game designer's vision is achieved within the final product.

From watching the special features of 'Black Hawk Down' I made a few notes on important aspects within the art direction of the film that I think can be applied to art direction in any field;
-To gather as much reference material as you can, they referred  to this as 'pin-ups'.
-Photograph own stuff (scouting).
-Storyboard, this is to ensure exploration before doing something final and includes information within sketches and drawings
-A response to the visual imagery.
-To pre-visualise the end product.

Its all about the art!

Character Modelling Project

Ahhh, where to start with this one, the good or the bad. I really havn't enjoyed this project. There's probably a few factors involved here, my first impression of this project was that it was to focus on our understanding of basic anatomy and our modelling skills in respect to that, obviously an understanding good anatomy is a challenge to begin with, but that isn't to say I don't like a challenge, and I do thoroughly enjoy life drawing. The project also began quite well and at a good pace I'd say, the actual base mesh of the gladiator was fairly successful, including building the head and hands, the only issue with this was that I had used a few too many tri's building the hands which was easily fixable.

I was also able to put together a few concepts for ideas in regards to armour and weaponry which enabled me to finish the model with ease as I knew how the final mesh was going to look. Unwrapping was also a good step, I do feel the unwrap stage of any model is one of my strongest attributes and I was able to pick up the 'Pelt map' function quite quickly and apply it to the mesh efficiently.

 

I suppose the texturing process went okay too now that I think about it. It was hard to match skin tones on the different parts of the body which led to some minor (hardly noticable) seams.

On the other hand rigging was hard, not only because my version of 3DS Max had an issue with the Skin modifier, which I was advised to use over Physique by many of the second and third years, which led to me using the Physique modifier anyway, but it was also the first time I had rigged anything. Although it was difficult, it was a good learning process and I was able to get to an 'acceptable' point with my character.

So, the modelling went okay, so did concepting, unwrapping. Texturing was fun and looked decent on the mesh and rigging wasn't the complete failure it could've turned out to be. So, the bad? Well, overall I am just disappointed with the outcome of this project. I think I am comparing it to the last (vehicle project) too much, but all along with this project Ive just felt like it wasn't progressing and just hitting walls. The project never felt unique. I think my biggest issue with this project is that I find it really hard to enjoy any character work, its not that its too hard, I just don't aspire to being a character artist, I much prefer environments, vehicles, assets, all parts of a whole environment. It may be because of who I ma as a person, exploring new worlds seems much more interesting to me than meeting knew characters, its just how I feel right now. At the end of the day I don't believe I worked as hard on this project as I could've, especially in relation to the last project, but again I can say I was much more enthusiastic with the last. I'm hoping that these feelings are in most part in relation to this specific project and not character design as a whole. I definitely want to do another character project, sooner rather than later,  either way I know its something I can not and should not avoid.

 

Game Production, The vehicle Project

Just a quick summing up of this project before it's too late. Wow! great project for me, right up my street, vehicles and such. I initially had some problems when I began to build the van, in that every time I extruded a face/ poly it would have a turned edge right across the front of it. I'd watched some fairly comprehensive videos on edge modelling so I was feeling fairly confident to begin with but when this happened it was just annoying! I though I was doing something wrong, that it must've been my fault, but in the end it seemed that resetting the normals resolved the issue. I was also able to pass this information onto some of my peers.

The aspect of the project I was most looking forward to was the texturing, I decided to step away from using my reference photographs to texture as obviously with a van, they're not the most exciting to look at and my van would just end up having some company logo on it that had no meaning to me personally so I decided to paint my own textures which turned out to be highly successful! I decided to texture the van based on one of my all time hero's, Valentino Rossi's, recent WRC Ford Fiesta RS.

The texturing was hard, especially trying to make sure that it stayed as closely as possible to Rossi's Fiesta without looking like I had just stuck things anywhere. It was also difficult trying to make larger 'vinyl's' that covered more than one panel of the car join properly on the separate panels. In the end the texturing went better than I could of hoped though.

There was one final disaster worthy on making its way into this blog post. Once I had finished I decided to try and grab some nice renders using Marmoset. I had never used it before, only heard second and third years suggesting it, I had also seen some examples of second years work which had been renders in Marmoset. So I downloaded the trail version and began to teach myself how to use it, I was doing quite well too, I had managed to figure out how to export my .Max file as an .Obj file so that I could apply different textures to the different objects within the scene, and then it happened. Marmoset crashed! not only did it crash but in doing so it managed to corrupt my .Max file (which wasn't being used anyway), my photoshop files for the textures (which also weren't being used) as well as my .Tga texture files (the only files that were actually being used by Marmoset out of the lot). How?! Thankfully after much panic I was able to recover my files from a variety of different places, I had to work into my diffuse layer slightly but I was able to get my files back to where they where. Phew.

Game Design and Gameplay

Game design is the process of designing the content of a game, this could be for a board game or a video game. Obviously for the benefit of my future im going to focus on game design for video games here. Game design includes a number of core elements which include the content and rules of a game.

The design of a game will always begin with an idea but today the initial design will take the form of a game design document which will consist of the games design for use during development. The document will include things such as background, gameplay, storyline, environments and levels, characters, the rules of the game etc. These documents are extremely effective today as game studios usually have large teams working on any one game which means that as the game develops  each element remains consistent with the next. Early in video game history (70's), video games sold commercially were developed on a much smaller scale and often developed by maybe only a handful of people who would take on several roles, the actual game designer would of most likely of been the lead programmer and in the case of Sid Meier, this individual sometimes made up the the entire art team as well.

Today the design document will be very concise and detailed, it will also be clear and well ordered to ensure that the whole team working on a video game know everything there is to know regarding the titles direction. The primary function of a design document is to serve as a reference or instruction manual for the development team (artists, level designers, animators etc.) so needs to be easy to read and follow and today the document will typically go into lots of detail regarding all of the key elements of the game including, objectives, level and environment design, character design including characteristics and personalities, enemies, music, graphics, narrative and gameplay etc.

So what's the difference between game design and gameplay? Well for me it seems 'game design' is everything, the hole shabang! and gameplay is an integral part of the game design, one of the 'key elements'. The actual gameplay within a game design document should detail how the player interacts with said game. There's a very fine line between the game design and the game play it seems, as gameplay would most likely be one of the largest components of a game design document, but what sets gameplay apart from the other aspects of the games design is that it describes the interactive elements of a game. Actually another word sometimes used for gameplay is game-mechanics, and it is what distinguishes a game from other non-interactive media such as books or films. Certain elements of game design may be listed under gameplay which might include reward systems, the actual interaction between the player and the environment including objects within the environment. To summarise gameplay is the overall experience of the game design.

So what makes good game design? Well I'd say that all entirely depends on the games genre, and more importantly whether the game is a new IP or a sequel and if the game is fictional or based on true events such as a sports game. Overall its the vision for the final product which is most important to me and the more detailed a games design document is the more likely that final vision is likely to be attained, but this would also be affected by the size and skills of the team working on an individual game.

So were do I stand as a video game artist within the game design? Personally I feel I play a huge role, and not only within the games industry but in any. The actual artistic approach with anything will always play a vital role in the interaction of the viewer and the subject, ie; the gamer and the game. The artistic approach of a game is needed not only to make levels and characters, but to convey emotions and feelings. I'd like to think that any artistic role should be creative and within the game's industry it is the artists job to create what a game designer can only put into words as best as possible in relation the designer/ designers vision.

SO just to keep you happy Mike, is FEAR greatly different to Pac-Man? There are so many answers and all of them are right I'd say, if you pull back the curtains then the two games would appear very similar, particularly in terms of gameplay and objectives, you run away from enemies through corridors which is meant to be quick, jumpy, and increase suspense but newer technology means that FEAR is more interactive and therefore provides a greater experience for the gamer than that of Pac-Man.

Reef Character Visual Design Project

This is just a quick summing up of this project now that's coming to an end, I'm just completing my sculpey model of my finished character. Initially with this project I had some strong ideas and was quite eager to get started. The task seemed quite open in terms of which direction we could take the character, the key word given to us being 'humanoid', which said to me something which has 'human' form (ie, a head, two legs, tow arms etc) but dosn't necessarily have to appear human.  A few of my peers didn't seem to like the openness of the project being given, I cant see why myself, to me this meant the results would be much more diverse and most importantly in no way wrong, the actual process of our design seemed the most important thing. My initial idea then was to create a more stylised character, thinking more along the lines of Pixar and Dreamworks, I decided to do this as my vehicle design project was taken with a more sensible and practical approach.

Thinking along the line of 'reef' my first thoughts included bright colours, warm climates, clear waters, sandy beaches, the Caribbean, sea life. As I wanted my character to be taken with a stylised approach I felt it needed to have some sort of overall image and personality and after spending some time in DMU library I settled upon the idea of creating a 'Rasta-man', 'Rastafarian' character. Here was my big problem, I had instantly settled on ideas, I brought together some strong mood boards and imagery, but I had to clear an image of how I wanted my character to look in the end which I now see completely stunned all of my conceptuality and design from the word go. I immediately began designing my final vision which is completely stupid, I came up with some sort of turtle/ old, decrepit Rasta-man character which was quite frankly crap. I was too busy trying to put all of my thoughts into one final image straight away without any prior concepting and it was going completely wrong, I didn't just want a human with bits of coral attached to it or a sea creature stood on two legs but I kept arriving at the latter and it wasn't what I wanted. Again, the problem was clear, the images and ideas of where I wanted to take the character where too strong and that includes what I had in mind for storyboarding and it was wasn't taking me anywhere exciting as it wasn't giving me anything that I wasn't expecting.

 The character wasn't what I wanted, and for me personally it didn't seem to 'fit' into any specific game genre so therefore wasn't suitable. I decided to back to the drawing board and start from scratch employing some of the techniques that we were shown at Mitch Small's initial concepting lecture, I started with a human form silhouette and began to work into quickly and without much thought for the final outcome. These concepts were much more open for a final direction and I settled on one in particular and began putting together a mood board to use for working towards a final. I had now begun to take a completely different approach in terms of the characters 'style'. Going from a cartoon-ish feel to a much more real, horror/ enemy feel, the whole thing felt like it would be accepted much easier into a game environment. In the end I settled upon a fish-skeleton/ monster type character, the idea was more of a twist on my initial thoughts on 'reef' in terms of colour and a sense of calm, this character was more of a 'risen-dead' from the dark, colourless depths of the ocean, the idea that the character didn't belong was kind of unsettling and I was pleased with the results.

Overall I admit that I didn't really enjoy the project. I don't know whether that is because I'm not very keen on the idea of character artist or because the whole approach was new and it meant the project was more difficult in terms of finding my way. What I do know is that if I were to do the project again I would employ some of the techniques I have learnt in this project, which would make the process easier and in turn probably more enjoyable. I certainly hope to do another character design project before completely disregarding the idea of character artist, at the end of the day the chance now to explore new grounds, probably get them wrong, but not have to worry is probably a chance I wont likely get again.

Back to the Grind

Just a quick reflection on how the new semester has started. Overall quite well I'd say, unfortunately I'm still feeling quite tired on a regular basis which is making work seem difficult, mostly just to focus on what I'm actually doing but I'm trying my best to keep positive! We have been given our new Game Production project which is the Transit van, unfortunately I haven't started until this second week so I really need to get my act together with this one. I'm slightly annoyed at myself as not only is it a project I have never done before, it is at least, some kind of vehicle which I'd expect myself to be quite eager to get on with, my aim is to have the model finished by next week so I can really push on the texturing. This is the first project that also requires a design document so I'm going to try and make notes on how the project goes along.

Visual design has been great, this week we were looking at blind contour drawing which is always enjoyable, particularly as a group, and it began to feel like the class were becoming closer as we were interacting much more and generally having a good time. I also thoroughly enjoyed my self directed study, firstly the photographs of myself making a variety of different expressions which I got a slightly carried away with, (instead of taking 9 photo's I took 22!). I then did some blind contour drawings from the photographs which I developed into final water colours which can be seen in the pictures below. The water colour idea was actually inspired by an artist (agnes-cecile) I found on deviant art of all places! (I actually never look on deviant art, maybe I should make it more of a regular thing!). I also did some blind contour drawings of a 'street-scene', actually a block of modern flats, which I again developed into water colours using the same technique as the expression pieces. We have also begun the life drawing sessions which I don't feel is my strongest area, I don't particularly want to be a character artist anyway, but I always enjoy life drawing anyway, I know it helps me to become a 'better', more observant artist and I can usually produce a few fairly decent pieces, I will post some work onto my blog as soon as I have them scanned.

As for Critical Studies, things are as usual. At least there's some stability in my life! Obviously last week, first week back, we were supposed to go ahead with presentations on a game review we had done which didn't happen, I was a little dissapointed, but I reviewed the game in my last blog which I still enjoyed and feel I was probably able to include a little more anyway.

Other things to note? Our new Visual Design project seems fun and interesting, the Reef project, I have a few ideas buzzing around in my head. Also been some good programs on TV recently, a new series which actually coincide with the Reef project Great Barrier Reef on the BBC. Two programs also on the BBC with Dr Kevin Fong, To Boldly Go Up and To Boldly Go Down and again on the BBC the three Stargazing Live episodes with Brain Cox and Dara O'Briain where really cool. There was also an extremely good Horizon program, BBC, titled 'Playing God', which was extremely interesting.