Beginning the Side Scroller Project

After two short projects we’ve moved onto a longer one.  We’re working with the whole year together on one project and we’ve been split up into groups within the projects; groups of three environment artists each with a concept artist for each of the four levels, a group of five character artists and two engine artists. Though we’re in our own separate groups we knew from the beginning that we’re going to be working together and across groups on a lot of things.

Our brief was to create a side-scrolling game that would take inspiration from Trine 2’s fantastical scale and colours. The Four levels would be themed; Hot, Happy, Cold and Scary in that order.

I was the concept artist assigned to the third level, Cold.

The game levels layout

Initially there was a lot of talk on changing things, the brief was received and we weren’t sure on some of the points; the game ran right to left rather than the more conventional left to right (a fact that some early concepts didn’t take into consideration) and the order of the levels was called into question; wouldn’t the first level, as your introduction to the game and your starting point be Happy rather than Hot? Though they were talked over, these issues weren't changed in the final piece.

Each level began generating ideas and building reference mood boards and the four concept artist’s met to produce a style guide. During last year’s Off the Map project we produced a style guide together so it was something I was familiar with but the larger scope of the project and the lack of art direction we’d received meant there were many conflicting ideas and aims that we had to reconcile. Groups immediately went in their own direction and pulling it all back into a cohesive game with a style that everyone was happy to work in was a challenge.

The concept artists came up with a style guide; We looked at everything from super stylized games such as limbo to realistic games like Hitman two in order to decide on a uniform style and theme for the game. In the end we drew from Trine for its fanciful scale though we chose a slightly more toned down colour palette:

The style part of the style guide and game colour scheme

In cold level we began looking at many different things to draw inspiration, from the colds of space to the submerged factories found by urban exploration. Though we initially steered away from traditional 'cold' images we were warned against colour schemes and images that didn't bring a truly cold feeling to the level and we picked something quite traditional. In the end our choice of a mountaintop castle or temple fitted in very well with the other levels ideas which seemed to lean towards a 'pilgrimage' style of narrative.

 

Side Scroller: Style Guide

When starting the Side scroller project it became quickly clear that we'd need a style guide to hold it all together and this fell to the concept artists to do.

We looked at everything from super stylized games such as limbo to realistic games like Hitman two in order to decide on a uniform style and theme for the game. In the end we drew from Trine for its fanciful scale though we chose a slightly more toned down colour palette:

The style part of the style guide and game colour scheme

The style guide we produced contained the overarching concept of the game – as a pilgrimage through numerous areas – as well as overall game look guidelines and guidelines for creating architecture and other elements.

We also included information on what to expect when it came to architecture, though we were inspired by Cambodian structures like Angkor Wat we wanted to include Art Noveau influences into our patterns and decorations. I produced a rune alphabet for all of the levels to use to create a feeling of a shared language or culture between the very different levels.

The Rune Alphabet used throughout the game

I’ve never had to create a style guide for many people to use independently before and trying to create something flexible that could be used to create a cohesive game that contained very different environments was a challenge that was eventually overcome by creating a style matrix that could easily be referred to as assets were being created.

The Style matrix

In the end the style guide was successful; the game flows well from level to level and none stand out as being a different style or feel

King of Death: Post Mortem

Our second project of the year was to produce a scene, throne and character that would represent the king of death. This is the first group project of the year and lasted for two weeks.

Of projects we’ve got, this one is one of the more interesting and we quickly got a lot of ideas, initially we ran wild, collecting every piece of inspiration we could think of and collecting them into a Pintrestboard before we decided on a couple of ideas; an amusing take on the theme with an unlikely hunter as the king of death, we looked at small predators like cats and even animals like mice which wouldn't be threatening.

this kind of idea generation worked really well and we found that as a group our ideas worked well with each other.

We also stumbled onto information on a lake in Tunisia which calcified the corpses of animals and birds that died in it, leading us to a theme which would eventually become our project; Death as an aspect of nature. We took the calm feel of the lake and the still water forward into our concepts and mood boards and we set out to produce an image of death not only as a natural process or entity but also as a beacon and a quiet, calm presence to the people it’s welcoming.

When it came to concepting we chose to produce initial sketches and then split off to concept a piece of the scene each. Though there were four elements and five team members we divided up well and I was in charge of the clothing and general body shape of what we wanted to be an androgynous, regal character (As another group member created the face)

in order to produce the misty feel I tried a new way of working with pencils; erasing the smudge graphite to create form and highlights.

You can see the beginnings of what would become the character's mushroom crown here!

Up to this point I’d been thinking of the character in terms of a pale hole cut into a dark space and initially I had trouble coming up with concrete clothing designs for the character, though I quickly settled in the mushroom theme we I went through different silhouettes and styles as the costume needed to reflect the personality of a character which would not move, speak or interact with the viewer.

Draped clothes that emphasized elongated limbs, slinky lines and cloaks that emphasized a proud, shoulders-back posture quickly became the favourite and building these up on the androgynous form the brought me to a set of five images 

The character ultimately became a combination of these images, since somewhere deemed to masculine or feminine (the first and second being female figures)

We went back and forth on including hair for quite a while; Striking the balance between a human character and an alien one was carefully debated as long hair is a typically feminine-associated trait it’s inclusion tended to tip the scales of the character.

At this point I produced the first final concept, which initially included the half ‘shaved’ head with mushroom growth. A lot of factors in this concept ended up looking too feminine and it was changed to the final concept.

The final concept did away with the hair altogether in favour of a ‘crown’ of a mushroom bloom that extended down to the shoulders. More of the chest was exposed as well and what was clearly readable as fabric was changed to look more like the tendrils and webbing of mushrooms which was leant away from after the initial concepts. Coupled with Rachel's lovely designs for the face and head this concept was passed onto different members of the team to be modeled.

Modelling is where I fell down a little during this project. My portion of the work was on the rocks that would make up the character's mound base I used a lot of programs and techniques I'd never used before and I would have liked to produce more but progress was frustratingly slow on practically every level. Still I'm proud of what we produced as a group; this was a two week project and in those two weeks we worked efficiently and communicated well. Without the luxury of time that we had from last years group project we had to work efficiently and cut to the centre of things like concepts and ideas. It was a refreshing way to work, without getting mired up in things. 

With the chance to do this project again I'd definitely take my time to re-do all the rock! though they look good in the scene I wish I'd had the time to go over them again and fix them properly and produce something I'm really happy with.

As a group we worked wonderfully, having very similar ideas and goals really helped and especially after we got organised with our individual tasks we ran the entire project smoothly to produce something that hit not only the brief but our groups aims to bring out the natural  aspects of death whilst still keeping that regalness.

Our key concept image:

By Findara Mcavinchey

Throne concept by Chelsea Lindsay

Beauty Screenshot:

 Our character Concept:

Face concept by Rachel Cox

My own clothing/body concept

Beauty screenshot:

Week 3: King of Death

Week two of this project was a major source of frustration to me. I used a variety of programs I've never used before and found that I was taking longer at everything than I felt I should be.

this was the first time I'd ever used Zbrush and something about the interface and workflow meant I had a huge amount of trouble producing the modular set of rocks I'd been tasked with.

Once I had the hang of it I did not find Zbrush unpleasant, but I found I had trouble at first.

 

Even unwrapping gave me trouble as I used re-topology tools for the first time here as well.

 

Eventually I produced a set of rocks but I would prefer to have produced something I could be more proud of and in the future I'll be retrying this when I have time.

 

 

Week 2: King of the Dead

This week we started our second project of the year. Our task, in groups of four was to produce a small scene consisting of a throne a back wall and floor and a character to represent 'death'.

 

My group set about trying to find a way to represent death in a less than usual manner; the obvious ideas of a cowled skeleton mounted on a horse and carrying a scythe were quickly placed aside in favour of more unusual ideas.

 

Our initial Pinterest board of inspiration

 

We cast the net broadly at first with our initial idea generation. Looking at popular representations of death in religions of the world or in media and stories. We also looked at those who effect death such as big game hunters or predatory animals and plants. When we found a Tanzanian lake that would fossilize the bodies of animals that found their way into it which was an image that we found particularly compelling and started us on the route of the lake scene.

 

We did not initially decide on only one idea, we toyed with a more comical idea of a cat as a big game hunter but eventually settled on our final idea.

 

During this time we also decided on our style; a slightly exaggerated realism inspired by the exaggerated physical forms of Otto Schmidt's art.

 

Our final idea, refered to as 'Lake' was to represent Death as a part of nature. A calm influence and an end of things to be met without fear in the end. I liked this idea as it lined up with a few personal beliefs that dying, not Death is the thing to be scared of.

 

Final Pinterest Board

 

We decided to portray Death as a thing that grows in the darkness and as a beacon to those lost. With this in mind we set about concepting. Initially death was to be in the lake, but quickly rose onto a plinth to display status and to accentuate the journey into death. And Death as a beacon.

 

Though we started off generally concepting, we moved onto more specialised areas and I was in charge of designing the general body and clothing of the Death character. An initial challenge was to create an androgynous form for the character.

 

Final design

Week one: PBR Practice Project

Back from holidays and maybe not as rested as I’d like to be our first project was an enjoyable one; PBR or Physically Based Rendering is a real time rendering exercise that takes into account the real-life properties of a material in order to replicate it as realistically as possible in the game engine.

PBR takes into account not only if the surfaces reflect light but also how they scatter – or don’t scatter the light that hits them, combining metalness maps, roughness maps and Albedo maps with the familiar normal map to give you the basic information for the materials.

Your Albedo map is your new Diffuse; with minimum ambient lighting and as little specular information as possible the Albedo represents the colour information of the object if all outside influences had been stripped away.

The Metalness map is about what it sounds like, anything that’s made of a metal is white on this texture and anything that’s not, is black. Though grey is sometimes used for transitions between the two or for things like dirty metal, it’s really a minimum.

Roughness defines how the material effects the light that’s bouncing off it, the blacker the area of the map the more precise and in focus the reflection will be.

Extras can be added like Subsurface colours but combining them together it makes it possible to create an accurate representation of pretty much any material, provided you know the properties of it.

For this project we were to produce 9 different materials; Wax, Steel, Copper, Rust, PVC Plastic, Car Paint, Leather, Gold and Stone but after I’d completed those I went on to produce some of my own; Brick, Wood, Mirror, A cracked rock with Lava, skin, velvet, fabric and iridescent car paint.

Top Line: Fabric, Iridescent, Lava Rock, Skin, Velvet

Middle Line: Leather, PVC Plastic, Car Paint, Rust, Stone

Bottom line: Wax, Gold, Steel, Copper, Mirror, Brick, Wood

Some were more successful than others but I found this type of texturing a joy to work with. With a little work it was possible to create gorgeous textures quickly and simply. The real-time rendering of things like reflections means that Cube maps are not needed.

Overall this project was a success though there’s a couple of materials that I’m going to be re-doing in my spare time (Velvet and Iridescent in particular were head scratchers) It was a great way to start off the year learning something new and seeing some nice results pretty much immediately. Can’t wait to see how I can use it in later projects!

Some of the materials up close and their material’s windows:

 

Gold was supremely simple, but produced such a good result.

Iridecent in particular was a challenge; getting it to look like this was relatively easy it was a matter of replicating the carpaint with an additional coloured map over the top for the coloured shine however getting that texture to react to the movement of the camera is something I wasn’t able to find and something I am still looking for.