Evaluation

Looking back on my game design project I am happy with how the idea progressed technically and artistically. As I worked on and expanded my game, the style of play subtly changed as I incorporated more ideas and edited others to fit better with my idea. Originally I had planned to create a third person, massively multiplayer online game, with a heavy focus on strategy and teamwork. This changed to a single player, third person, hack and slash with a “time-shifting” element to it. The “time-shifting” element was one of the main reasons for the change, as this would be difficult to implement into an MMO and it became quite a heavy focus for the game. Because the game went through such a drastic change, it kept many elements of it's old genre including item crafting and levelling. This borrowing of other genres attributes makes the game, in my opinion, fairly well rounded and also quite unique.




The style of art changed substantially with the change in game ideas and mechanics. Originally it was fairly realistic, with a dark earthen pallet to suit a serious MMORPG game-style. As the game became more casual, with an emphasis on making it as enjoyable as possible, the art style became more cartoon-like and the pallet less sullen. Taking place in three separate time-lines the game required three very separate ways of identifying which time the player was in. In the past, a primordial swamp type area, I tried to use dirty greens, peaty clay reds and dark blue colourings. Everything had to look slick and wet with the oppressive humidity of the swamps, and the creatures were designed to look streamline and amphibious. In the Jungles of the present time-line, similar but more vibrant colours were used to show that the swamplands had evolved into an overall nicer climate. The future time-line was set in the desert and I tried to make this look as different to the other two as possible, with very bright reds, oranges and yellows. Occasionally when I wanted to show a relic from the past, I would introduce blues or greens as an extreme contrast to highlight that it was from a different time. Towards the end of the concept art part of the project I tried to bring the more realistic style back into the game with the Cursed Tribe design. I was surprised as to how well it seemed to turn out and the colouring worked to further the sickly look of the deformed character whilst not making him look too alien.

The final concept piece I worked on was the “Evil Ganesh” character. With this concept I wanted to have most of the colouring very desaturated and other key parts very oversaturated to draw your attention to them. On some parts this worked quite well, on other parts... not so much. I liked how the head and the tusks turned out and this was what I was trying to go with for the rest of the piece. Unfortunately frustration and impatience marred the piece and I found myself rushing to get it done and out of the way, which is a pity as I really enjoyed the idea to begin with.

For my show-reel I used After Effects, a program which I have never used before. I was extremely happy with how this turned out and found the program to be fairly easy and self explanatory. I came to some difficulty when I wanted to have the “Evil Ganesh” character fading into colour, from black and white, whilst zooming out, but it just took a little while to figure out the easiest way to do this. After Effects is definitely a program I would like to use more of. I will probably use it again if I work in 3D next year, to finalise and render out animations.

I would have liked a better understanding of what the Portfolio part of the project was for. Coupled with the show-reel and the blog, it seemed a relatively pointless exercise. As so, I was not incredibly motivated to work for it and that part of my project is lacking. Clearer outlines as to what portfolio was about would have gone a long way, for me at least, in helping produce more work for it.

I have enjoyed putting together this blog, and it's nice to have somewhere online where I can show off my work. This, not counting my critical studies blog, was the first I had put together and was surprised as to how easy it was to make a nice looking website. It has inspired me to put together a collection of work, on a project that I plan to work on over Summer, on another website.

All in all I have enjoyed the project. Going through the motions of designing and coming up with concepts for a game has been a really informative and fun experience. It has made me realise that I really do want to take up being a conceptual artist as a profession, but it has also made me realise that this is not an easy job, by any means, and also that my own artistic ability needs drastic improvement before I can even consider looking for work in this sector. I have only started using Photoshop this last year though and am improving every time I open the program. Over the holidays I will be doing regular life drawing and shall assign myself mini concept projects weekly.