The Snatch

Today I suddenly realised that on graduation I'll no longer have access to the Web CT, and leapt onto it to download all the modelling tutorials! Hahahaha.

Since I didn't have a lot of time for the modelling side in my final semester, focusing more on digital painting , storyboarding and GDD work, I'm making some models now for experience and as portfolio pieces. I'm working to a 2,000 triv limit this time, so double the count of Diz, and roughly what would appear on a character in a PSP game. Low poly modelling seems to be more in demand, and I think it builds good habits too.

By the way, I found this good tutorial on low poly character modelling, it's for 3ds max, but the basic ideas are transferable and it's very clear:
http://www.3dtotal.com/team/Tutorials_3/low_poly_character/low_poly_01.php

I want to make a nice human model using photos as a proportional reference, then texture and maybe normal map it (I want to learn how to normal map, it makes such a huge difference to low poly models) and take a nice render. That's my new project!

This was a triumph...

So, uh, I guess this is the end of my course...
But I don't want it to be the end of this blog! I need a space to put my games design related rantings and stuff anyway.

I came to a really strange realisation yesterday.
See, I have always considered myself an RPG fan. Some of my favourite games to play are things like Knights of the Old Republic, Final Fantasy, Eldar Scrolls, Chrono Trigger etc. But yesterday I suddenly realised that actually I'm pretty indifferent to the gameplay of RPG games. I don't hate it, but I generally don't look forward to the gameplay parts, rather being interested in the story and characters. I'm not saying that levelling up and finding new items isn't ever fun, sometimes it is, but ultimately it's not the main draw of the genre for me, particularly with JRPGs.

I realised that what actually draws me to RPGs, particularly NWN2, KotR2, Planescape Torment and JRPG games is:
1. Travelling to fantastic locations as you follow the plot.
2. Ensemble casts with interesting group dynamics.

I think a lot of JRPG fans are the same. One big difference between the fandoms is that WRPG fans tend to talk about character builds and stats and their favourite classes and weapons, while JRPG fans tend to talk about which character they like best, what their favourite relationship pairing is, what their favourite part of the plot was.

So...If I'm not actually interested in the RPG mechanics, why not remove them and replace them with something else? Something that's more enjoyable? Kingdom Hearts did this very effectively, though it doesn't have a big ensemble cast, just a 3-man party.
I guess the main obstacle is that RPG mechanics make it a lot easier to manage a big group of characters, being tactical and often turn-based. Making an action game that still allows a bunch of people to run around together and interact and have conversations is a bit of a tricky one, but it must be doable.

So, I guess my dream game would be an RPG that's not an RPG in gameplay terms. My absolute ideal game would probably have the smooth and exciting gameplay of Prince of Persia or Zelda, the fantastic world building, story and party dynamics of Final Fantasy and Planescape Torment, The polished finish and epic set pieces of Kingdom Hearts and the witty dialogue and invention of Psychonauts.

Now all I have to do is convince somebody that it's a good idea... hahaha.

I'm still alive.

Christmas and Psychonauts

Happy Christmas, everybody!
I'm about to graduate, I guess. But I don't know if this blog will necessarily end when I do. I actually quite like having a special 'games design' blog.

For Christmas this year, my friend got me a copy of Psychonauts! It's generally considered an underbought cult classic game. I've only played a couple of hours, but I can already see why it gets so much praise. It's one of the most quirky and original games I've played. It's also totally immersive. Everything about the game world seems to have a strange but consistent logic to it, including the visual style. When you play, it feels like you've entered a new world. This is how a game should be. This is why games are such a fascinating medium. Watching a chase in a film is exciting, but it's nothing compared to the opening of Halflife 2, where you're living that frantic chase. This factor of having the player character's situation reflected in the gameplay is what sets games like Psychonauts and Half Life apart. Even as a huge Final Fantasy fan, I have to admit that it's kind of a shame when something really cool happens and you just watch the cutscene of it. In Psychonauts, for example, there's this bit where you get stuck in a weird white space, and you're in in-game gameplay stuck in it while the dialogue goes on over the top as you try to work it out. When you work out you have to smash it and smash your way out, it seamlessly changes to a cutscene to show the consequence of that action. It captures the character's feeling of being stuck and unsure what to do, because the player is stuck too!

Overall, Psychonauts feels like a game where every cool idea the design team came up with got stuffed into it rather than dumbed down or left out by executive meddling. There are issues with the gameplay. The camera and controls can be glitchy, and it doesn't always clearly show where you're meant to be going. The level designs aren't bad, but often the lack of use of colour and lighting to draw attention where it needs to be (as seen put to excellent use in Portal) causes things to get confusing. One good thing I'll say about the gameplay is that it's impressively seamless. It runs very smoothly between 'modes', areas, menus and cutscenes. Oh, and as a final note, it has the same writer as Portal, so, obviously, it's hilarious and full of dark humour.

My friend got it off gog.com (good old games) which I hadn't seen before, but it's awesome. They sell good classic pc games from the past 15-odd years for low prices. They have a lot of good titles there, so I'd recommend a look! Especially as there's a sale on! ^_-

Still Fighting

Yeah, okay, I have been doing stuff, it's just been largely on the written and boring diagrams side of things.
The hardest part of making a game of this kind is that the characters are all fairly ordinary human beings. It's not all fantastical . This is definitely a lot harder than designing a Fantasy game.
Keeping things quite loose for these character bio images. Fits with the mature and down to earth feel of the game. The hardest is proving to be the character Julia, a faded celebrity in her mid-late 30's. It's hard to capture a sense of somebody who is very glamorous and pretty but with an edge of faded glory and desperation. It's not a character I've ever really had to depict before.

Black and White

Some bits and bobs. portraits of characters, The Captain and Keisuke. Not based on photographs. I wanted to construct faces from scratch rather than just using photos. Tutorials like these are very handy for stuff like this:
http://cedarseed.deviantart.com/art/Guide-to-Human-Types-part-1-32046017
http://cedarseed.deviantart.com/art/Guide-to-Human-Types-part-2-33220929
http://cedarseed.deviantart.com/art/Guide-to-Human-Types-part-3-34877428
Keisuke was a lot easier to draw for me. I live and grew up in an area with very little ethnic diversity, but I did live in Japan for a year, so I'm more used to the typical details of a Japanese face than an Afro Caribbean one!

And yeah, I just spent a couple of weeks teaching myself how to paint more realistic style faces. My comic line art style just doesn't feel right for this game, plus I don't particularly like digital painting with heavily stylised faces (unless the painting is purely for colour or shade, it kept simple and used in conjunction with line art, like the work of manga artist Nana Li, where it looks awesome). I think it's fortunate in a situation like this, that despite drawing manga style, I tend to spend a lot of time studying real anatomy, and tend to stick to naturalistic proportions. If that weren't the case, it would have been much more difficult to make the transition!

The room isn't as good because...well, I am not naturally very good at things like that. I've given it a go, but really I find inorganic and geometric things very difficult. The more organic elements there are in a room, the easier I find it generally, so a ramshackle cottage would be much easier than a minimalist space ship cabin.

Paragon

This sure is a fast way to make art! This only took about 30 mins. Starting to understand why it's used for concept work so much, as an atmospheric and fairly finished full colour image can be created remarkably quickly. While it is tricky because I've just started learning, I'd say this is actually a lot easier than manga. Manga is deceptively hard, as the simplicity and clean lines are far less forgiving than painting, and you can't always just chip away at something until it looks fine, particularly with physical rather than digital inking. I don't know why they think we're hacks. -_-;

I think I'll use Digital painting for the mock screenshots in the FPT project. It's a lot faster way to make a finished looking image than line art and inking and stuff. I think monotone painting will work really well for a nice noir-ish feel anyway!

Tatatataa taa taa tatataaaa!

Look, I know that the subject matter is not related to the project, being a picture of Cloud from FF7, but I'm very pleased with my progress in Digital painting today.
It's so useful having a lot of artists as friends at times like this. Since saying I wanted to learn, I've been given a huge amount of advice, resources and links to tutorials!

I feel a lot more confident about using digital painting for this project now I've discovered it's not actually all that hard to learn.