End of Year Review

As a whole I'm generally pleased with my game art course. There's been a wide range of areas focused on throughout the first year like drawing fundamentals, 3D modelling basics, recording design and thought processes, life drawing, character design and environment design. To be honest, I've covered so much I apologise if I've missed anything. It's been quite tough dealing with the work load at times but I always knew I had a mountain to climb when signing up to the course.
The two main aspects I have enjoyed so far is the character and environment design. I'm a creative person so the research and designing suits me really well. Something I particularly struggled with in these tasks, oddly was the huge amount of freedom we had. I find it a lot more constructive to have set restrictions so that my mind doesn't wander too much during the design process. So for me I would like to see some more constraints put in place for future design projects on the course, similar to the way 3D projects have a range of constraints.
I would also like to see a bit more emphasis on environment designing. The project that covered this was the one I found the most engaging and interesting to cover. So much so that it has kind of swayed me to want to focus on this area as I break into the games industry.
I have found the design tips and examples of design really useful in my critical studies sessions. It brought my attention to the small details that designing something like a character needs to make it a success especially when it comes down to how they are posed, clothing that fit them to the game etc. These are aspects that I take on board now when I design, taking on a slight graphic design role, making my characters more interesting. I definitely focus on silhouettes a lot more as a result of this because I think it's a good tool that gives you a good idea on whether a character will be eye catching and interesting to look at. I often get my flat mates to crit my designs during the design process to help me get a better understanding of what players of games want in a character or environment. This idea came to me from the great social network account that the course encourages students to leave feedback and view others way of working on. I also like the way that projects we get set encourage us to try things that we aren't particularly good at or never even experienced before. For example I have never used sculpey but I gave it a go for a character project and to be honest it turned out to be a complete disaster but I learnt from it and doing things like this build up a habit of teaching yourself things rather than relying on others which I think is a good mentality to install into us early on.
My passion is drawing, so for me as much as the course gets me to draw and express ideas then it can't go wrong in my opinion. I have learnt a lot from the first year and I am looking forward to what we will cover in the years to come.

Environments

Where to next? It's always frustrating to go back and forth in a particular area of a game not knowing where you can progress further isn't it? When constructing and decorating an environment the designers can utilize different methods to help guide the player to where they have to go. A particular technique that's used often is lighting.

This is a really simple example but if you entered this room, scavenged for supplies and could see no other option out, this piercing light that illuminates the human size crack in the wall would trigger your mind to automatically relate that as an exit point in that room. Exit point lighting is just making the goal obvious to the player, in theory acting as a huge sign saying 'hello, there's something interesting over here.' A similar technique is path lighting. This method is just an extension of exit lighting, highlighting a direct route that the player should take to get to the goal. In most cases, this method highlights the only route that's available making the game play seem more restricted and less realistic.

A particular method that I have experienced that helps navigate you through stages of and environment was in the Assassins Creed franchise. When entering a checkpoint in secret caves, the camera would take your view in a short cut scene, stopping at areas that you should head to, that suggests there are obstacles there that will help you reach your goal. This style of navigation is a little less straight forward than the previous two but I think it gives the player more freedom because even though the route shown is the highlighted one it's not necessarily the only one or most interesting one.

Another method I've witnesses used a lot is hinting. This is exactly how it sounds, giving clues to the player on where they can find secrets along the way. The key isn't to make the hint to obvious though. You could use the lighting techniques above to highlight routes for the secrets or you could add hints during loading screens. A game that applies hints to loading screens very well in my opinion is 'Rage' published by Bethesda. A hint often displayed is to 'scavenge' for items as much as possible to sell. This is particularly useful because you explore the environment more than you would usually and with the idea of scavenging embedded into the way you play you find yourself navigating and finding things more independently.

'Rage' is a game that particularly springs to mind when thinking of environments because it achieves everything I look for. The graphic aspect, developed by id software is phenomenally good. I can only describe rage as crysis 2 graphically with fallout 3's game play. The amount of detail built into Rage is staggering. It's easy to be overwhelmed with awe at the sight of rocky canyon walls that never seem to repeat and the meticulously designed cities. The story depicts an asteroid impact that wipes

Using 'Rage' as another example, I think that the environment, without a doubt, influences the atmosphere of a game. The stunning visuals of rocky terrain and abandoned, decayed cities is a big factor of what makes the simple story to 'Rage' much more believable and immersive.

The general style of 'Rages' environment seems to emulate the Colorado river in the united states with the orange tinted rock faces that contrast with the dusty polluted atmosphere of what's left of the cities. 'Rage' is highly stylized because it is depicting what people and places would look like after a natural disaster. On top of that the story is set in 2029 therefore the game shows stylized technology. I don't think any of these aspects hinder the realism to the game because the story plays with our perceptions, convincing us something similar to this maybe possible in the future. The designers have got the fundamentals of realism correct like people, movement, interaction and overall look of the game which strikes an important balance giving them a degree of lenience when it comes to stylisation of technology and cities.