Traditional Art: Boss Final

Finally, we took our design, and had to pose it out, and rendered it. It was very fun, and it allowed me to make some decisions on the design that would bring it to it's final stages. This is the final result:

As part of the assignment, we also had to make a sort of background for the character. All in all, it was all good fun.

Traditinoal Art: Boss Pt.3 (or, The dreaded Varuna)

So, while drawing, my teacher brought something to my attention that rather hurt my process. He saw the silhouette to my character's head, and found a character from the Shin Megami Tensei Persona series that had a head that looked particularly similar.

this asshole. 

So, Understanding that I can't just go ahead an continue using my head design, I went back to the drawing board and re-did the head from scratch, creating several different ornate heads that my teacher could look over and approve of. 

After a little while, taking the heads and re-drawing them, Jason (my teacher) came around one last time to give me the go ahead with the the last one as my best one. After that, it was on to the render. (Just to be clear, I posted my exploration page before, which showed the revised design- but I still felt this was a good post to make, to serve as a good guide for dealing with the problem of similar designs.) 

Traditional Art Final: Boss pt.2

So as we continued on we took our chosen one, and gave them an actual design, should their design not be as refined in the rough process.

 First, we gathered the reference that we wanted, to make sure we understood excatly what we were making, art wise. This meant giving thought to shape language, color, materials and everything that might be have to be thought of when making a character that's going to be rendered in 3D.

Then, it was back to drawing. Getting the colors, getting the line-work, getting just all the different thing to come together and create and actual cohesive design. This following page became a sort of digital sketchbook, that I used to help bring the character to a finalized design. 

Traditional Art Final: Boss

For our Drawing for Game Art class, Our last assignment was to create a boss character for our upcoming 3D assignment in the next semester. It followed the similar structure of the design labs, where we had to create several thumbnails and doodles, but this time they could be more representative- they could look more like actual things rather than just be abstract shapes that we had to interpret. Here are my 20 thumbnails that I made:

I drew these all out, doing my best to give them all unique and clear silhouettes and styles. 

After we got all of them, we went around, putting ourselves in groups. Before the groups, we got our drawings and chose the five best we thought we liked. Then we took our groups and critiqued the five  we liked, choosing the strongest one. From there, it was moving on the refinement and getting it ready for the final critique. 

Traditional Art: Workshop Final

Finally, my workshop took the shape that I wanted it to, and it was time to move onto the final illustration. we had a choice between doing a render of a room from a cinematic view, or a render of a room from an isometric view. Since I already had trouble conveying exactly what I wanted through the actual top-down map, I thought It would be best for me to just go ahead and make it and isometric illustration to give it the widest  amount of interpretation possible.

Here's the final result:

While I don't think the final result was as successful as I wanted it to be, I think I at least accomplished enough that it was a good learning experience. Hopefully I'll do much better in the times to come. 

Traditional Art: Workshop Pt.2

For our next part of the assignment, we had to refine the model sheets that we created, as well as fix any mistakes or other things that did not make any sense within our environment. My own environment was rather prone to mistakes, as I had several different elements that all had to be balanced out and be represented equally. This became a challenge in practice as I had to use all my own artistic skills to convey everything within one isometric map. In the meantime, here's the top down, revised and remade specifically for the class.

I added several details, as well as gave the models that are going to be a part of the scene more texture and design elements that gave them all a handmade feel. To convey the character's wealth hoarding habits, I left several pieces of gold all around the room, as well as a bunch of bags filled with gold. I also made his pillows money bags to give it more of a comical flair. The enviroment itself changed significantly. At first I wanted it to to be a sort of walking structure a la "Howl's Moving Castle", but it became apparent that I couldn't really convey this much without having to do the outside of the area, which was not part of the assignment. Instead, I opted for a less magical or mystical idea, and made the thing a sort of trailer park version of a hot air balloon, which would fly around from place to place, landing safely where the man wanted to go to collect more of the gold he wished to acquire. I also did a few lighting roughs, to see where I wanted to go lighting wise. 

Traditional Art: Workshop

For our Drawing for Game Art class, we had to create a small space in which we could have a character do work- a workshop, if you will. To begin this, we began a design doc, which had all our own idea in it, as to what the person does, what he's doing, when he's doing it, and when he's resting- all the different things that someone would consider when thinking about a space in which a character interacts. I won't post the design document myself, but I will post some of the artwork that I did for this assignment, including the final.

For my workshop, I tried to convey a sort of traveling-treasure hunter. So I went and created several quick thumbnails to show which spaces I wanted to show, as well as the type of area I wanted to make. I went into the nitty gritty with my top-down map. 

For the second part of the assignment, we made a top-down map of the room we wished to create. My room itself was extremely small (comparatively to my other classmates) room that was very vertical. It is going to have several different things either hanging on the ceiling or being protruding out of the wall, like the bed which is supposed to be a loft bed over the door. I'll post my revised sketches and things in the next post. 

Game Design: Boss Assignment

Completely seperate from our boss character assignment that we've been doing for our Drawing for Game Art class, in our Game Design class, we've been creating Boss battles! Well, to be more percisice, one boss battle, that we're alluding to with 6 different levels before hand. Things kind of got crazy when we decided that the majority of the class (read: 6 out of the 8 people) decided to all be in one group for this assignment, myself included. This way, we could go ahead and create the most over-the-top thing that we could in the small possible time that we had, with as little effort as possible seeing as we had a lot of people to divide up the work with. Here are the screenshots of my level!

My mechanic was teleportation, which you used to jump all the different platforms there to get to the portal. Thank you to Justine(BLOG), Walker(BLOG), Sterling(BLOG), Lois(BLOG), and Allie! (BLOG) for being great teammates!!

You should check all their stuff out. 

Traditional Art: Design Lab 2 Final

I'm rather proud of the final result, so I'm putting it here in it's own post.

 This is the Final for my Design Lab Assignment: 

Traditional Art: Design Lab 2 Electric Boogaloo.

For our next assignment, we took the drawings from the previous assignment and moved them all to full renders. First we took all the different drawings and finished their line-work. 

Traditional Art: Design Lab pt.3

For the last part for our Design Lab, we took 3 different adjectives and put them together in different drawings. Then afterwards, we took all our drawings, put them together in one page, as well as refined any drawings we didn't...fully develop.

Here are is my adjective assignment, lovingly titled the "Fore Fit" assignment:

Here are all my different drawings put together in one place, where we in the end critiqued them in front of the whole class. 

Traditional Art: Design Lab pt.2

For the next part of the assignments, we had to go over our textures and silhouettes, and draw over them. This way, we could find the specific and cool shapes that were outside of our comfort zones. In the end, we had to choose 7 of them.

Here are the sillhouettes, and doodles:

For both lack of time and imagination, I couldn't really find the character that I wanted out of doodles 9 and 15.  

Here are the textures: 

Traditional Art: Design lab

In my work for my major, our class Drawing for Game Art has had us create several drawings

In the next following posts, I'll be posting some of the art that i've been doing for it. First, the Design Lab assignment:

For this assignment we had to first draw several doodles and silhouettes to get a good nice, flowing style and specific, unique shapes.

Here are the doodles:

                                         

For the next part, we had to take pictures of several textures around campus, and use them for a later part of the assignment.

Camera Move: David Fincher

David Fincher's camera work is fantastic, and I really wanted to use some of his specific ones here- to be more exact: The one in Seven, where the camera's shakiness changes depending on who's in control. 

Boss Battle Analysis: Beyond Good and Evil Final Boss: DomZ High Priest

Beyond Good and Evil is an action-adventure game for the Ps2, that came out in 2003

Since it's initial release, the game has seen mass amounts of fan followings and has become a sort of cult classic among those who enjoy really cool stories told in the PS2 era of video games!

It also happens to be one of my favorite games, and it comes with a bitchin' final boss, that really makes the game all the more poignant and awesome. 

(WARNING: SPOILERS)

The Boss is introduced to you, story wise, once you finally are able to navigate the DomZ Lunar base, and put a stop to them once and for all. 

Gameplay wise, the Boss is split up into several phases, all of which have you defeating a bit of the DomZ high priest, until he is destroyed. 

It begins you off with a horde of enemies that flank you, which you can easily dispatch, but introduce you to the the sort of heavy traffic you'll be taking while fighting. 

The second stage, Creates a gigantic wall of spikes infront of the High priest, and starts bringing out apparitions of your uncle, who you have to use your companion to lift into the air and throw at the spikes to destroy them and then hit the high priest

In the third stage, the room floods with water, and the worm that represents the DomZ high priest comes out and takes you head on. It appears around you, behind you, on top of you, all needing the precise amount of time to be able to hit him. 

The fourth stage is a reitration of the second stage, simply without the spikes. Instead, he's shooting magic alien bombs at you, all the while throwing both enemies and your taken companions at you. 

The final stage, is the craziest. It really gives the phrase, Story informing Mechanics to a whole new level. The area begins to distort, the room floods again like in the third stage. You also have to fight the worm again in this stage, but this time, all the controls are reversed. Up is down, left is right, and you have to do your best to work with this on the fly, Just like Jade would while fighting the DomZ priest. 

Fourth Break (Game Design Concept)

Fourth Break

Breaking through the Fourth Dimension

Fourth Break is a suspenseful 3rd person platformer, set in an unnamed government testing lab, in the year 2537. You are one of the few test subjects that has survived taking the TIME ECHO DISPLACEMENT Serum, or TED. Using your TED ability, you and a few other surviving handful of subjects have begun to break through the fourth dimension, or time, and are able to jump from location to location, within seconds. But the government as created a large maze of obstacles and traps, all meant as a means to both test your new ability, as well as keep you contained from the outside world, and keep it safe from your growing new powers. 

Fourth Break's levels will be convoluted and confusing, to keep the player, as the test subject contained within the facility. Each level will use a combination of puzzle platforming, as well as puzzle-solving, and the use of switches, levers and TIME ECHO DISPLACEMENT to solve each room, and choose one of the four doors in the room, to allow them to continue in the great labyrinth that is the TED containment facility. 

Visual Targets: 

Labyrinth Map, and example room: 

Toy Ideas

1.  Speed pickups

      Lower speeds and higher speeds depending on pickup, running along a long stretching map, with randomly generated obstacles

2.Power: Grenade- Throw and destroy all objects in a circular radius

3. Beams: Shoot power beams from hand, destroy targets

4. Whip: Use whips to get to higher ground, or simply destroy all targets.

5. Light Labyrinth  

       Randomly generated labyrinth- and if I have time, Add a light to give it a more spooky feels

6. Blinking: Teleportation in short distance. Someone made a cool version of what I want to make here: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fo72I_k-M8s

7. levitation of objects, for puzzle based work

8. spawn fire from hands

9. Grow bigger and taller, for puzzle purposes

10. Dodge-rolling?? Very fast dodge-rolling

First Person Shooter Map: Dual Side

Set in the summer, in the middle of the day, the level is the administrative offices of an Oil Rig  Venezuela. Anyone who works here has been cleared out and has left, as the firefight has started, between the rebels, The Blue Democratic Party, and the government solders, the Red Berets.

The architecture is that of an Oil Refinery, with tubes and pipes all over, as well as pillars of smoke moving into the air. The building is a orange and brown office space, very similar to the ones found in Venezuela.

Like Venezuela, the surrounding area is mountainous, with desert-like vegetation growing around, and prior to our players arriving, The area's building will already be severely damaged by the ongoing fight. The offices will be in shambles, and there is tons of wreckage used as impromptu cover by both sides.

Multiplayer Level Analysis: Counter Strike: Global Offensive

Counter-Strike: Global Offensive is a free Multiplayer Online Game, that was released in 2012. A sequel to the popular Counter-Strike Mod for Half-life, it expands on the original sequel, Counter-Stirke Source, to give it's players a more expansive, and well made First Person Online Game experience.

The Game's setting takes place all over the world, and while not  having any actual story, all of it's environments are inspired by real world countries such as Baghdad, Spain, Italy and The United States.

Though the game has several different game modes, I will only be writing about Competitive game mode, and The classic, most iconic, and most played map, Dust II. 

Dust II is a large map, inspired by the some of the middle-east's most iconic (and rather stereotypical) crowded cities. Specifically those of Baghdad or Afghanistan.  The color pallet, the time of day, the way the buildings look worn down by sandstorms and on-going violence, all suggest a hot and dangerous feeling, which immediately invokse an alertness in the player, even if it is their first time in the map. 

Competitive mode in Counter Strike Always has to do with two teams, and two objectives. In this particular example, I will be using the classic Bomb Threat.

Two teams start on opposite ends of the map, The Terrorists, and The Counter-Terrorists. 

As the names suggest, the Terrorists take on the role of Aggressors and the Counter Terrorists take the role of Defenders. All the objectives that the Terrorists must achieve are located, no matter the map, on the Counter-Terrorist side. It is the job of the Terrorists to kill all of the Counter-Terrorists (CT), or achieve their goal- in this case, planting the bomb, and successfully having it go off. In the same vein, the CT can either kill all the Terrorists, or diffuse the bomb after it is planted. 

Competitive Mode takes place over 30 rounds, where the players will switch teams, no matter the score, once 15 rounds have passed. Counter Terrorists will become terrorists and vice-versa, allowing both teams of players to experience both sides of the map, giving them an edge in understanding the other team's side after having played it. 

The game begins with a Warm-Up round, allowing players to run around and jump and shoot the enemy team, without penalty or reward. This can give new players to the map a chance to run around and quickly become familiar with a small bit of the map so that they are not left behind once the action begins. As soon as everyone is connected and a minute has passed, the round begins.

There are only few game mechanics within the game. All players begin with a certain amount of money, a small amount in the beginning that assures all players can only buy simple handguns, and more money as the game progresses, provided that the player in question is either on the winning team, or has been killing a lot of the enemy team. The round begins, and players are prompted to press B, which brings up the Buy Menu:

While given unlimited amount of time and money in the warm-up round, On normal rounds, players only have several seconds to buy the guns, grenades and armor they deem fit to take out the enemy team, and get in position before engaging the enemy team.

Weapons in counter-strike work slightly differently than in normal shooters. If your gun does not have a scope, then you can't aim down it's sights. There is no aim assist, and the only way to make a gun become more accurate without a scope, is to crouch down, which makes the cross-hairs on the screen smaller. 

Even then, the amount of accuracy is determined by how well the player knows the gun they are using. For example, a P90 has a significant curvature forward with it's shooting, so experienced players know to shoot towards the chest or the legs of enemy players to guarantee faster kills. 

Aside from what the other players buy, there are no pick-ups or items spread across the game. Any weapons you pick up will be ones either willingly left behind by other players, or from the corpses of other players. The focus of the game is solely on the interaction between both teams and how well they can navigate and exploit the environment, not on who has the best power-up.

As the round Continues, the Counter-Terrorists take positions on Bombsites A and B, dividing their team of 5 into 3 and 2, depending on which site they think the Terrorist team is going to come after first. Terrorists make their way from their spawn to one bombsite, either all sticking together, or splitting their team- using some as distraction while other sneak in to plant the bomb. 

Counter-Strike's gameplay is that of hyper-realism. Flashbangs deafen and blind all players- friend or foe, certain guns have certain ways that which they have to be handled, and are not accurate if not used correctly, No aim-assist, and when alone and waiting for the enemy, footsteps can be heard and used for strategy- allowing players to call for backup should they hear the entire enemy team walking through a corridor. Players can even crouch and walk, giving up some movement speed for silent footsteps. Players can also get behind cover (without the game's help)- but should the cover be wood or any other easily breakable object, other players can shoot through it.

Terrorist's main goal is to plant the bomb. This means one member of their team (The bomb-carrier, which is randomly selected out of the 5 every time they spawn) must spend several seconds crouched at the bombsite, making them vulnerable and in need of their teammate's help. Once the bomb is planted, All players will receive  an alert, and the timer on the top of the screen, which is usually 2 minutes, will dissapear. The end of the round now all hinges on the bomb. It beeps faster and faster as it counts down, and unless the Counter-Terrorists diffuse the bomb, the round ends once the bomb explodes (and kills whoever is near it).

(In this example, I was the bomb carrier)

The Counter-Terrorists can diffuse bombs, but must spend 10 seconds doing so- unless they buy a diffuse kit at the beginning of the round, which cuts their time to 5 seconds. 

This mode is also more "competative" in that when you die, you can only look through the eyes of your teammates, and are not able to give away the position of the enemy team. 

The game continues, and whichever team wins 15 out of 30 rounds, wins the game! 

here are some extra screenshots of my Playthrough: