GA227 Board Game Commercial

Board Game for GA227 DONE! (ish)

Board Game Illustration

Print and Play Board Game links

Exile Print and Play Components PDF
*Print double sided short edge*

Exile Print and Play Rulebook PDF

AND ITS DONE! Finally got the PDF Files. Now to print the rulebook...

Board Game card initial template

GA227 Board Game Illustration WIP

Work in progress for our board game project in Game design. Was very interesting using color this time around!

FEWS

Visual Libraries

I intended this post to be a file dump of my practice pieces done on my free time but I just realized something pretty important. My visual library is currently extremely limited. What ends up happening is a situation where I have a base idea then I get stuck on details for the rest of the piece because I do not know what the design aesthetic actually is. To be fair most of the time I start something I have enough for a rough but I never become satisfied with what happens a few minutes later. I think I'm going to end up dedicating an hour a day purely on gathering references and just burn that into my mind over time. NEED MORE PRACTICE!

And here is a practice piece because why not... I need to learn how to render...

GA227: Thumbnails

Thumbnail comps of the box cover for the board game!

GA227: Board Game Prototyping Questions

Exit questions after 7 play test sessions so far.

• Are the rules clear enough by itself?
• Is it easy to understand the movement system?
• Which action card deck do people tend to draw from?
• Are the players forgetting certain rules whilst playing?
• Are the players still interested after playing for a period of time?
• How often do the players pass?
• How often do the players use action cards?
• Are the players using the Hinder or Help deck more often?
• How many turns does it take before the players can play through smoothly without referring to the rule book?
• Is the game too fast?
• How was engaging was the interactions with the other players?

Digital Painting Study

I would normally not post any of my works but this time around I think I made some progress in terms of digital painting so here it is! A rough value study of Ruan Jia's piece! + extra color dodge layer since I wanted to check how that works. Then again its a rough study so no detail and proportions are off (Need to learn how to render and control values first!)

Original concept by Ruan Jia

GA227: Theme and Concept

Concept:

"The path you choose will be your redemption"

My work in progress title and theme is "Exile". My main reason for choosing this is to go with an illustration style for landscapes. Game mechanics wise it would be a destination based game with cards. The concept of the game is based off cards that will determine how the players will move and have it affect another game system such as hit points or so (undetermined). The whole thing is to have players traverse through different landscapes and "create their own journey". Then again it is mainly so I can do landscapes.

The setting of the game will be something that is timeless in a sense because I will focus more on natural landscapes which does not depict specific time period. The locations would include things such as mountains, seaside, desert, ruins, caves, etc... It may include some fantasy based environments such as very high rock structures. The general feel for it would be like a sight-seeing journey.

The art style that I am going for are basic game environment concept/ illustration pieces that usually means extreme long shots. The time limit will determine how refined the actual illustrations will be hence I could only say that it will at least be value comps.

Examples:

Shaddy Safady Stylized Gallery

The color palette will be limited to mainly de-saturated colors along with one main primary color depending on the context of the illustration. For example, a forest based illustration will then have green mainly (just like the examples above).

Game Mashup

Main Objective: Capture Nuclear bomb for 3 turns to kill everyone

Rules: Players Play as a ruler commanding their army to go capture a Nuclear Bomb. They all start on separate parts of the board with 10 pieces representing their army. In order to capture the nuclear bomb they must get 5 of their pieces representing their army to the territory where the bomb is.  

Moving: In order to move you roll your single die and whatever the die lands on depicts the amount of spaces, or territories, a single piece of your army can move. The amount of movements is not restricted to one piece but can be shared with other pieces. So, if you rolled a 6, you can move on piece 4 spaces and another piece 2.

Gaining or losing cash: At the beginning of every single one of your turns you are required to draw a monopoly card, and whatever the card indicates, is the amount of money you gain or lose.

Killing other Players: You can kill other players by having more pieces when moving into the same territory as your opponent, but you are only left with the difference of pieces after that movement. So if you have 6 pieces and your opponent has 4 when moving into the same territory, you win this battle in that territory but are left with only 2 pieces.

Spawning more pieces: You can grow your army by buying more pieces, but the downfall is it is done through a faulty teleportation device. So you pay 300 dollars for each piece you want, and then you draw a card. Whatever territory the card indicates is where you newly bought army will spawn.

Game Ending: The game ends when a player has control of the nuclear bomb for 3 turns. The only way someone can capture the bomb from another player is by killing them, by having more players and landing in the same territory

GA227: Brainstorming Ideas

20 Quick Ideas!:

• Minority:
• Instead of players with this most point winning the round, etc… person with the least points wins instead
• Bidding:
• Allows players to bid against each other for … Balanced with 2 different point systems.
• Refresh:
• Players play new hands every turn to .../ discards
• Smuggle:
• Player tries to smuggle … pass the other players for points whilst they try to take … for themselves (misdirection)
• Vote Poll:
• Players have to vote for other players to ...
• Black and White:
• Theme, two completely opposite ends
• Virus:
• Infected players and normal. Infected could be cured by infecting the normals.
• Modular playing field:
• Player creates their own playing field using … to ...
• Asymmetrical:
• A single player with more power versus a group of players with limited resources
• Collusion:
• Teaming up with other players (not necessary but an incentive)
• Bet:
• Betting system, winner takes all
• Race:
• First player to … wins
• Mines:
• Players traverse over … and avoid being eliminated
• Trading:
• Players are forced to trade … every turn with another
• Maze:
• Players try to exit a maze with X exits (players block each other and exits unknown)
• Multiplier:
• Use a die to roll for X Multiplier to ...
• Swap:
• Players are able to substitute another player to complete ...
• Team Shuffle:
• Players compete with each other to form teams and play again as a group
• Last man standing/ Survive:
• All players lose points each turn and last man standing wins
• Bribe:
• Players are able to buy other players and use them after ...

Shadow of Mordor “Making Of”

This is definitely an interesting game in the sense that it caused quite a ruckus when it was first announced but was pretty well received after release. The reason why this game pulled so much attention was because it strongly resembles Assassin's Creed's gameplay. The climbing, the running animation, etc... It was definitely really weird to see how a pretty big franchise like Lord of the Rings would use assets from another big franchise (Assassin's Creed). I do not know the details but this definitely threw off a lot of people too. There was also some controversy with a ex-Ubisoft employee and that caused some confusion.

The biggest difference between the two in terms of gameplay is that Shadow Of Mordor focuses a lot more on its combat system along with a hierarchy system.  So far the game has been really really well received. Apart from that the game definitely looks like a step up from the previous Assassin's Creed and fells much more refreshing (minus the animations that throw me off personally due to the similarities). Monolith Studios worked hard on it and it definitely deserves to be given a chance at least!

But it still brings up the question? How did they get away with this?

GA227: Kung Fu Fighting Deconstruction

So the game that I chose to deconstruct is an old card game first created in 2004 and got Kickstarted in 2013 (which failed and did not get funded by the way) by Slugfest Games. The version that we printed out and played is the new version (a work in progress, so only core mechanics with no artwork) that is reworked to be played in a shorter time period.

Kung Fu Fighting Kickstarter

Core Mechanics:

Each player has 20 Chi which is the indication for the players health points. The main objective is to simply defeat the other players and reduce their Chi down to zero. Players actions are dependent on their base cards which act as a value for their attack and defense. Players have to attack the others and the opponent has to either defend or attack. Each turn a player must play a base card and they have the option to play other cards including Enhancements and Stances to boost the base values. The players are allowed to use as many enhancement cards as they want if applicable but it excludes cards that have the same name. Finishing moves are also able to be used at the end of any action as an extra component. At the end of the turn Cleanup is also applied where the base weapon cards and enhancements are removed from play unless stated otherwise by the card as an attacker. Defenders then simply return their cards to their hands (unless stated) after Cleanup.

Space:

Like most card games this one does not have a board or field that the cards have to be placed on. Any surface with empty space would suffice as the playing area of the game. The only real requirement stated by the rules involves the placement of three cards that are placed in the middle referred to as Yellow Punch cards. An additional setup that could be used is a mat that is used to count the players Chi (or hit points) and tokens of some sort could be used to count down each hit taken (recommended to use pennies). The playing space is a discrete two dimensional area in the sense that your cards that are placed onto the playing field are grouped by the card types. Base, Enhancements, and Stances are different types that the cards played will be grouped in. There are no visual indications of the boundaries on the playing field but is implied that the playing space is separated by the different types of cards that could be played. Apart from the main playing field the other areas include the main deck and the discarded pile.

Objects, Attributes, and States:

Kung Fu Fighting is a card game that is essentially very simple to set up due to it only containing the cards used to play the game. As mentioned above there is physical paper or board to lay down to use as a playing field so only "space" is needed to be able to play. Since the game does not restrict how the player counts down their Chi it is possible to either use a physical token of some sort or just mark off the Chi counter from the player mat. The cards itself are separated into three different types as mentioned before. Base, Enhancements, and Stances. Base cards are essentially your main action cards that state your initial status (hence why there are three "Punch" base cards on the field in case your hand does not have a base card). Base cards are also broken into weapons and non-weapons. These are basically the different types of bases that could be used (explained later with the conditions)

All the cards will include at least one of the attributes from an attack value, defense value, stance type, or spirit icons. Some of these cards may also contain special effects on them which could be evoked (such as a finishing move card that gains Chi, falls under enhancements). In addition there are also conditions that could be applied if the cards that are used follow the same attribute condition. For example if the other player uses a hand base card to attack, it is possible that a defense card could have a condition where its base defense will go up if the incoming attack is a hand. What this essentially means is that the state of the cards are dynamic and change depending on what card it is being played against.

Enhancement cards are cards that will add additional values to your base card statuses. Essentially working as a upgrade card. These cards are usually include stance specific conditions which means that it could gain even more stats when the correct stance is applied. To add onto that stance cards could simply be thought of as an element that could be added to your base cards that allow a larger variety of enhancement cards to be played. All of these can contain conditions that will boost specific values as shown in the image below. As mentioned above these conditions then change the state of the card to dynamic to allow a more diverse play style.

and your stances are:

Other special icons include things such as Spirit which adds an extra value dependent on the action (attack or defense) and finishing moves which consists of special effects.

Actions:

The three main actions of this game is to either attack, defend, or counterattack. Another way to think about it is that attacking is something that all the players must do and leads to the reaction of the other players, to either defend or counterattack. An important thing to remember is that to be able to start any form of action the player must play a base card for an action to happen. It simply acts as a template with initial statuses that may be modified later with Enhancement cards and Stances.

Once a player attacks the options that the opponent has is to defend or counterattack (only if their card allows them to). Defending and counterattacking essentially works exactly the same as an attack in the sense that you are using a base and applying extra values or conditions to it by using Enhancement cards or Stances. The core mechanics behind attacking, defending, and counterattacking are basically all the same making it very simple to execute.

No artwork on the test version!

Rules:

The rules of this game is pretty simple as the mechanics of the card themselves are not too complex. The main operation rule of the game is for the player to defeat the others by depleting their Chi to 0. This is done by utilizing the cards drawn. The foundation rules are essentially what allows the Enhancement and Stance cards to be used. These then lead into the written rules of the game as it simply states that a base card must be played for any action to occur. In terms of the game mechanics, it all occurs after the base card is played. 

The official rules then state the limitations of things such as the amount of cards in your hand and such. This goes along the lines of all players having 7 cards in their hands, they can draw at the start of the turn, they may also discard any amount of cards and redraw them back to 7 (with a special case that allows 8 total cards), and how any amount of enhancement cards could be used as long as it is not a duplicate. These are then the basic rules that then allow the game to be balanced and regulated by not having too many cards or things of that sort. 

Skills:

This is a game that requires more tactical play than anything physical. How well a player plays is based off their composition of cards. The rule that allows the players to discard then redraw allows them to have a chance to strategize how they want to play (in the sense that they could lean towards a specific stance, base card type, etc...). The portion of the game that heavily focuses on skill is how a player chooses to use their cards. To either save it for defense or pool everything to attack. An example would be to use certain enhancements before getting a stance too boost the statuses even further.

Chance:

Luck is something that actually affects this game quite a bit just like most card games. The luck of the draw is essentially the main thing that it applies to. The main thing that allows a successful play is the right composition of cards, e.g. a base card boosted with a stance, and enhancement that uses the same stance. This is something unavoidable but definitely something that could be balanced as one issue that could easily be pointed out is that the more players there are the less chance you have to get the right Stance and Enhancement that works together in synergy. The biggest flaw in this game is with the Enhancement cards and Cleanup. From what we went through we are able to stack Enhancements and that creates a ridiculous boost in the base stats. It would have made sense if the trade off of that was the cards used get discarded but according to the Cleanup rules of the defender they will get their cards back (unless specified). An easy fix for this to reduce the chance factor of stacking Enhancement cards would then simply be to limit the amount of Enhancements that could be played or fix the Cleanup rules.

As a bonus here is the Old game vs. New game.

Blur Studios

So I just came across this video of Blur Studios studio tour and it felt weird watching it. Blur is definitely one of the most competent studios out there but what threw me off this time around is that just a few days ago Blur laid off their whole concept department. I have not looked much into the whole situation but seeing a whole department being let go (especially one as big as Blur) is quite weird. It was just a few months ago that the tour video came out and it talks about how important each team is. It is just unfortunate to see a bunch of talented people let go so sudden (They were all let go on a sudden notice). Seeing how well off the studio seemed to be doing and what just happened just shows how unpredictable things are now a days. They were all excited about new tech that would have allowed them to focus more on the creative side of things rather than the technical and seeing a whole department gone is really weird. Best of luck to those who have moved on!

AO Painting!

One interesting digital painting technique that I came across is called AO painting. Or in other words ambient occlusion painting. I haven't actually looked into it too much but THIS person here is onto something. With just AO painting it would seem pretty limited in terms of the lighting but when its done right it really does look amazing. A lot of the time the style is more used for stylized characters but Jiyu-Kaze's works proves otherwise. It is definitely an interesting technique to use that I would like to try but for now I think I'll learn more trying to paint normally. I'll give it a shot one day... one day...

Noctis - FFXIV by Jiyu Kaze

That is a painting! looks like the game itself!

ZTree Plugin and Design

ZTree Plugin

Not sure if people have seen this but it seems to be a pretty cool way to create easy trees in ZBrush. Why I want to bring this up is not only because it is a cool plugin but I want to mention a new class that may show up next year that relates to this. From what I know it will be a class that studies design in nature and how it works. So there will be things such design of trees, aquatic creatures, rocks, etc.. Why I want to mention this is because I believe that it is important for a game artist to actually understand these aspects of design. There is a large difference between using a plugin just to save time to create "good" looking trees and actually designing a tree that may exist in the world.

Reference is something that is used all the time by artists to pertain the realism in their works but I do believe understanding the subject matter is even better. In a real world working situation either way is viable as long as the final product is up to par and meets the requirements. The best example I could come up with is the difference between the more observational figure drawing and constructive figure drawing. It is great if you can draw something in front of you in great detail but what happens when you do not have reference. It is definitely possible to gain that knowledge over time but why not do it right from the get go? My final thoughts is just to say that it is extremely valuable to understand what you are doing rather than just diving straight into it.

Studies

Considering that we are Game Art students it is quite hard to actually find extra time to work on our traditional mediums or simply the 2D side of things. It is not that we do not have time whatsoever but if we want to actually get good at the 3D side of things, that is where most of our time is spent. It really is a shame that it is so hard to balance out our works as there are so many things to learn with so little time. If we had a digital painting class last year instead of traditional animation (which is happening this year I believe), it would have helped us out so much. No one can really blame the school because I believe that as now a days schooling is an additional tool that we use to help improve ourselves (A very expensive tool that is). Self study is still a huge part that will push our skill set along the way and to me a lot of people have neglected this part. If you were to listen to any successful artists working in industry now you'll easily see a common trend. They work hard. No one was lucky and happened to be good. All of them spent countless hours and got to where they are now so why aren't we doing the same thing?

Here is an example of a great artist. Ruan Jia. His illustration and concept pieces all look great but you have to know that they all practice for countless hours to be able to reach that point. The art foundations aren't just a thing that art teachers talk about. They do apply to everything you do even though you may not see it. Well, even the great Shaddy Safadi quoted: "If you are not even good enough to recognize why this piece is great (referring to Jamie Jones), then it shows that you are bad".

Print N Play Games

For our Game Design class we were tasked to go explore different print and play games and analyze them.

List of PnP games that I've looked at are:
- Eight On Eight
- Magma
- Rough
- Dungeon of D*

EIGHT BY EIGHT

So the first game is Eight By Eight. In terms of construction for a print and play game it is quite basic. It requires the main board which is a simply an 8x8 grid with another row of 8 on top colored in black, tokens to represent the players, and an eight sided dice. Presentation wise it is very basic and bare bones. As a more casual game it does not matter as much as I'll explain later on, it is a variant of Connect Four.

The goal of the game is for the players to try and get 5 consecutive tokens lined up vertically, horizontally, or diagonally. The game is simply played by rolling the dice that determines the column or row that the token will be placed in (choose one). The opponent is simply tasked to stop you and try to line up their own 5 pieces. This is essentially like connect four but the placement is decided by the dice roll. The twist however is that the players are allowed to "blackout" and cancel out one of the rolls. The cancelled roll will then have a token placed in the black row on top and from then on any rolls that land on that number will force the player to skip their turn.

Overall the game is pretty simple to play and understand. No complex design or anything of the sort. In terms of its design I would definitely have to call it out. For the majority I believe the game does work well enough as a Connect Four variant that adds in a factor of luck. The "twist" in this game however is questionable. If you were to call a blackout, this would cause you to lose your turn and effectively the row and column that is blacked out (a total of 15 out of 64 spots will be lost by a single call out). This simply means you will effectively eliminate your own playing space and give an extra turn to the opponent. The only realistic use of this "twist" is as a desperate measure when you are close to winning the game (essentially a re-roll for your last piece).

The verdict, the design of the twist is extremely flawed and  acts more as a self crippling device if used incorrectly. A possible way to fix this is to eliminate the turn skip of the blackout into a temporary skip for X amount of turns instead if the number is rolled. The game itself without the blackout rules is fine and the twist would have been fine if not for its extreme skip mechanic.


Next,

MAGMA

This next game is a quite simple. No real twist or anything but a good example of a variant done right. Construction is also very straight forward only requiring the board and tokens for the player. The aesthetic of the game is pretty simple with a somewhat visually interesting background for the board (note: the print version for some reason does not include the rust texture seen below, so it becomes extremely plain and simple being plain white).

This game is essentially based on area occupation. The players are tasked to occupy as many spaces as possible using the tokens to section off areas. This game is essentially an extremely simplified version of the ancient Chinese game called "Go". It takes in the same premise of blocking the other player and obtaining space created through the pieces. Go however allows the player to eliminate other pieces by surrounding them whilst this game does not have anything of the sort. The simplification that magma uses is the elimination of "eating" the other other players and simply does not allow a players piece to be placed/ jump over the other players. And the hexagonal board that starts on the two sides also create a very different feel for the game.

Overall the design of this game is straight forward and makes a good simplified variant of  the complex game of Go. There is no real complaints against the design other than that the playing space may become a bit to small for a play through with more than two people. The game does go by pretty fast after one play through as the players get used to the placement style and just tend to move on quicker than usual. The game is balanced and does not require much.

ROUGH

This game is something that breaks away from the two above (not exactly a board game). It is a card game that is based on completing the objectives of the cards so it is essentially a game based on competing in mini games. The mini games ranges from physical challenges, simple trivia, and completely random things that could instantly fail a participant for no reason. Five cards are drawn and the last man standing wins (also eliminated by running out of cards). Honestly there is not much to learn or say about this game other than that it is just pure fun mayhem. The game may have ridiculous balancing issues (such as failing the player who happens to have picked up the "Worthless" card) but down to its core mechanics, what allows it to work is the human interactions. Unlike the other PnP games out there this game does not put you into the shoes of someone else. It purely focuses on YOU and because of that it makes the ridiculous mini games much more enjoyable.

Ultimately this is a very bare bones games with ridiculous conditions and odd specifications. Design wise there is not much to it either other than the balancing of the mini games. But with the nature of the game being "Rough", its overly exaggerated mechanics make it a fun game to play. It may not look the best as it consists of simple cut out cards but it is undeniably an enjoyable game.

Current game consists of a slapping contest till one loses in the background (which will keep on happening in the background till one loses) and a staring contest.

Other game situation examples include: Not being able to talk whilst two people are holding up a table and folding a paper plane to see which goes the furthest! Fun times (played for about 3 hours straight)!

DUNGEONS OF D***

I am just going to say this right off the bat that we did not want to play this game at all. The problem is with the game type itself. Unlike the first three games mentioned within this post, Dungeons of D is a role playing game. The main thing that struck everyone is the instructions. It is a huge wall of text that immediately turns away anyone who is not genuinely interested in the game. It is true that we do not know if it is fun or not but the excessive amount of instructions/ construction that we would have had to do to play this game is deemed unworthy as a pay off.

By design that is a failure in the sense that the game is unable to keep the interest of the player (especially new ones) from the start. The problem is not within the wall of text alone as the visuals that accompanied it is fairly week. An uninteresting blank wall of text is something that most people would rather opt out of and move onto the next time. Visuals are created to help gain interest and lead around the eye but in this case the game failed to do so. We attempted to play this game but did not get very far due to the high amount of information that was needed to start. As none of us were too thrilled for role playing games it did help the cause (nether did the average 1 hour of play time not including setup).

I have to say that the problem with this game is NOT due to its actual game design since we did not go very far. The problem that I want to point out here is the overarching design of board games in general. If the design and presentation is weak, it will immediately turn away new players or lower their interest. There are many factors that separate the game types from your casual games (examples above) to a niche game type like role playing games. The amount of social interaction, the time span, etc... It is extremely hard to bring out everything and talk about design so to sum it up. Everything matters from the moment the player sees the game till the game is finished (I wrote my research paper last year on the same subject as this so explaining it here would not fit).



It is hard to exactly determine the most desirable PnP game due to the niches but so far what makes a good PnP game for me is simplicity and presentation. The faster the game is set up, the less time there is for the players to lose interest. The social interaction aspect definitely became one of the bigger influences within the decision of which game was more fun to play.



Good game design is something that is extremely thought out and is hard to fully explain. I cannot stress how many different factors are compiled together to create something of quality. Essentially everything out there from business, literature, to art requires a large amount of knowledge about design to execute. Nothing happens by accident in the design world.

Go read this book.

FREE TIME!

With the extra day off I finally made some room to just drop dead and lay around. Well, only in terms of homework at least. Now that I look back 80% of the time I hang out at my friends place I'm always trying to do some form of studying. Last year it was studying Glenn Vilppu's methods for figure drawing. Image below... that's what you call a master.

Vilppu Academy

This definitely helped me out so much last year that I can't stress it enough. In comparison to our schools "Observational" figure drawing, Vilppu's constructive/ imaginary figure drawing helped me out much more. I was also able to attend one of Vilppu's classes during spring break and that was quite eye opening. To see such a proficient artist doing what they do best in person is more inspirational than anything. Now that I feel somewhat comfortable to move forward myself for drawing I am now going to focus on digital painting.

I have nothing against traditional media but I simply have no time for it so photoshop is the way to go! I have no experience whatsoever in painting so its definitely going to be especially tough for the next few months. I mainly do figure painting (mostly portrait as of now) for practice/ study purposes. Sometimes I do comps just to practice on the broad values and silhouettes for environments but I have to admit that I have yet to have taken it much further than that. Something that I do for fun in terms of painting are Mechs and Jets (simply hardsurface stuff). It's just what I want to do so yeah...!

This ones a study of Shoji Kawamori's illustration for Macross. I'd say it was around the time of this painting (early on during summer) that I actually tried to paint digitally (although my tablet broke halfway through the summer and I couldn't move onwards, it was horrible...). Its a fairly quick study as I wanted to try broad strokes and overall value (more like a comp study). Basically what I was doing, and will be doing for the next year, is just to focus on values only. This next image is something I did yesterday because I realized that I have not painted something that I really wanted to paint for months now. Annnnd that would be Mechs!

I've got to say that it's so refreshing to do what you want once in a while. It just feels really enjoyable when you do something that you genuinely like or want to do. This piece is really nothing as I just spat it out remembering that I haven't done one in a while. It technically is still a study piece as I am still trying to figure out values with it. I am focusing more on painting techniques and values right now as feel that I need the basics before I could do anything. For example I did not spend any time designing this guy here. I just did a quick sketch and proceeded to paint over it. Once I am able to grasp digital painting better I'll then actually pay attention to the design (notice how theres pretty much no detail whatsoever apart from the small amount of scratches I added for texture).

Annd that's it for my non-nonsensical post for the day! Enjoy my bad works on my journey to learn how to paint!

Conferences/ Shows!

After hearing my friend bring up the Game Developers Conference (GDC) for 2015 it reminded me that these conferences/ events existed. Being tied down with work all the time (recently) really does make you lose track of things. The two events that I would definitely like to attend the most during my time here in the States (whilst studying) would easily be GDC and the Massive Black Workshop. GDC for sure due to it arguably being the most relevant event for those who want to enter the game industry whilst the Massive Black Workshop is something more of a personal interest. As a sophmore it is not necessary for us to attend GDC just yet but it will definitely be a plus.

It would make most sense to enter through the volunteer program for (that is yet to be announced for 2015 sadly) GDC as it is quite pricey to go on our own expense and I have no clue what you would do going in with a student expo pass. Being a volunteer would put you into a group of people which is the more optimal option but then again the spots are limited (not to mention it is happening the week after spring break). The Massive Black Workshop on the other hand is a workshop that invites a fair amount of prominent artists in the industry. The reason why anyone would want to go there does not need any explanation!

I don't really know where I am going with this but I guess it just hit me that Tokyo Game Show (TGS) just passed this week. I'm just tired I guess...

Assassin's Creed: Revelations Trailer for GA227

So this is a trailer remake of the Assassin's Creed: Revelations that we had to do for our game design class using clips from a B role. The time limit was 35-65 seconds and we had some minor requirements such as basic animations in Adobe Premiere.  Most challenging part was definitely getting the music right as the audio is what makes or breaks a trailer (At least for my workflow). 65 seconds was our maximum length and that proved to be a challenge at times (hence the rushed feeling at times in the trailer). The trailer did come out well  even though it uses a lot of generic modern trailer techniques. At least in that sense I did learn what I was supposed to for this project. The export quality is acceptable but since its the correct preset requirement it'll have to make due!

Enjoy!

VFX: A New-ish Fascination

So a while ago I came across this video (Vimeo link) and it pretty much spiked my interests in VFX by at least tenfold. The video shown above is a demo reel done by Big Lazy Robot VFX (aka. BLR) for 2013. As someone who is constantly flooded with CG content all the time, I'd say that it is easy to take things for granted and forget how far technology has come in this day and age. The combination of my fascinations with robots and dynamic lighting effects make me want to learn more about the VFX world. I can not exactly put it into words but I'd just love to find out about the process of VFX one day to see the differences between the Video Game world and the Film VFX world. This includes the modelling process to the whole pipeline to see how things are (as there are many artists out there who constantly dabble into both fields). I do not have much to say about the video except that I really like how awesome the reel is!

Another big factor for me being fascinated by the VFX/ film industry is also because of the following video.

This video here is an homage to the cult classic Ghost In The Shell directed by Ash Thorp (Vimeo link with credits). The project really intrigues me to see the sheer amount of creativity and skill put into it by a very talented group of artists. I can not say for sure what each person will get out of watching this video but for me it is a big amount of respect and admiration for those who worked on the project. I will not go into much detail now but Ash Thorp will get his own little write up in the future.

Game Art Atlas

Sometime during the second semester of my freshmen year my friends and I had an idea to compile a bunch of resources that would be relevant to us Game Art majors and created this blog: Game Art Atlas. These resources ranged from things such as ZBrush Central, Game Dev Map, and Gamasutra. If anyone has ever head of Level UP! then I would say we were creating their resource section but making that our main focus instead of overpaints and streams. 

It was an interesting idea to see who has come across what kind of sites/ resources but the whole idea ended very fast. Basically after I started all the template and layout (everything on the site so far) everyone bailed. It was disappointing to see that the very thing that we were going to create to help aid us along the way in our course was abandoned right off the bat.

A good thing however on my end was that it kick started my own research/ studying discipline. Instead of publishing everything to the site like I intended to I simply gathered everything I found useful and stuck it into Google drive. This ranges from tutorials to lists of artists. The Artist Atlas section that I put together was then what started my pursuit to discover different artists out there and that has been a great source of inspiration for me. Maybe someday I'll restart the blog up from scratch again. Someday...

GA227: Freshmen works

Figure Drawing:

Gestures 

Clothed Figure

Academic Drawing

Cicero Cast Drawing

So the pieces that I decided to put up from my freshmen year at Ringling are from the figure drawing class. I'd say that the area that I improved on the most is definitely in figure drawing as I self-studied Glen Vilppu's methods and got pretty far from where I started in the beginning of the year. In comparison to the typical observational drawing figure drawing that we're taught in class, I preferred the more construction based figure drawing method by Vilppu. This definitely is a plus for us Game-Art students as it forces us to think in 3D space and get used to the construction of the human body. One thing that did drag me down though were the shading aspects as Vilppus method was more focused on showing the form through conceptual lighting (look up his works and you'll see its similar to wire-frames). FYI the academic drawing does not reflect the conceptual lighting as that piece was experimental and kind of a failure in terms of what I tried to achieve. 

The pieces that I picked don't exactly show everything I've learnt as they're just homework/ assignments. For example the cast drawing shows nothing that resembles Vilppus methods due to the forced cast drawing shading but the construction of the face is well defined (for the most part). I do not believe that these pieces are better than any of my sketchbook pieces that I do for practice as in my opinion, once you've become somewhat proficient at doing what you do, any work that you do should be on par or better than your previous pieces. I do have to admit that I'm probably very rusty now as I'm trying to learn how paint (mainly digital). Hopefully I would be able to achieve the same kind of progress in painting as I did with my figure drawing!