Character Design- Silhouettes

     This week I have been focusing on what kind of character design I will be using for this project. A lot of people start the design phase by drawing characters in the silhouette form allowing them to focus on size shape and stance, without getting bogged down by the smaller details. For other projects I have always had a clear idea about what I wanted to create so this is not something I have approached before, however I decide that a project that was so centralised on character creation, and inspired by a game like "Fallout" that puts so much importance on characterisation, would definitely benefit from this practice.
     Though it does not seem like a complicated process, I looked up several tutorials, such as this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mySsKfhBrlo , on character silhouettes just to see how people approach this. Google images also managed to give me many samples such as the one below.

     At this point I have pretty much decided that I want my character to be able to fit into the fallout universe, however I want my model to be more realistic than from the current Fallout games, which are at this point reasonably old. As the guidance I am using for the project comes mostly from the book "ZBrush Studio Projects- Realistic Game Characters" this more realistic style will be appropriate based on the kind of methods eg. level of sculpting, I will be using. With this in mind my final character should look like it is a familiar part of the Fallout universe, but more visually familiar to a new release of the game, if such a thing currently existed.

     In Fallout there are three types of human or humanoid characters. First regular humans, these are usually either from the vaults, nuclear fallout shelters that humans hid in during the nuclear war, and identifiable from their blue overalls. Or else they are committed to one of the many other factions of the wastelands, whether their motives be good or bad.

 
     Then we have super mutants, these are genetically designed humans originally design to be a superior race, whilst physically dominating their opponents however, the majority are intellectually inferior and this shows....



     Finally the ghouls. These are humans that have been exposed to extreme radiation that has led to necrosis across their bodies. Some are still in control of their faculties whilst others have been too severely affected and have become feral.



   I knew I definitely wanted something resembling a human as my character model, but I had not decided which of the three I wanted to use. Therefore I decided the first three of my silhouettes should be based on deciding this.

          I decided to go with a human character for several reasons. Firstly as this is my first character project I figured I would benefit from making a model that I could find real life references for. Secondly my book that I'm using as a guide shows the creation of a human character and seeing as its the only decent start to finish tutorial I've found, I feel like that is the way to go.
      As I have decided on a human character there is more to decide. In the Fallout games, and particularly New Vegas, humans are normally attired based on their allegiance to various different factions, these often tend to look pretty distinctive from each other, some of different kinds of attire are listed below.

Power Armour


Tribal/Raider


Combat Armour


Pre War Attire


Vault Jumpsuit
When drawing my different silhouettes I tried to account for each of these different styles.

    I have not yet fully decided what faction I might want my character to belong to however whichever it is I should bear in mind, when deciding the smaller details, where the character would have sourced the armour, how/when was it made etc? These are important details when making a character fit into the Fallout world.

Fallout

     I will need to start planning my character for this project however before I started I figured I would do a couple of sketches just to familiarise myself with with the type of characters armour and weaponry that exists in the Fallout universe.

     This is just a little bit of a warm up to the project. The next thing I want to do now is to start making some character silhouettes to see what kind of style I like best.

BA6 Begins

    Last Monday we had a session with our tutor Nigel who will be head of out next project. One of the major things I learnt from the last project was that the best way to get past aspects of this course that I am nervous about is to work around it as a project. For this reason I intend to make character modelling a major feature of the next project.
     Initially I was considering a character from our BA4 project to create however my attention has been diverted from this somewhat. I recently began replaying the game "Fallout 3" and "Fallout New Vegas". On top of this a group of friends and I also went to a fancy dress at the uni bar dressed as fallout characters. Further more I have also recently been watching the Mad Max films. All this post apocalyptic narrative has made me want to do a character based around this. Interestingly this idea of the world running out of resources and the future of humanity came up in an argument at the last family meal I went to. I found it fascinating listening to peoples future predictions and then comparing them to what I think the reality might be like. This can be seen with many films such as "Back to the Future 2" where the reality of the future is vastly different to the way it is portrayed in the film.

Online Journal

    Since the hand in for our last project I have been attending meetings to discuss the idea of our year creating an online journal based around our course. The idea is that with this we could build a large audience and then showcase our work to professionals within the industry. We had had visits from Helen McCarthy, who set us a project when she came to NUCA last year, and she has taken on the role of editorial adviser and took part in helping us discuss ideas for this journal. I have put myself forward for a place on the editorial board and to some sort of article within the journal but this is all provisional for the time being.
    There are certain aspects about the journal that haven't been agreed upon yet, largely as to whether it should be used purely as a kind of gallery for our work, or whether we would actually be making a journal with various different articles etc. My level of input will be dependent on the result of some of these choices. One thing we have settled on as a group is the name Games AD (games art design). Logo designs are currently being submitted for approval and we will be attending a meeting tomorrow to make further decisions.

Finishing up

I used today to put my assets into UDK. This was not without its issues and one of the first issues I hit seemed to be related to the trouble I had with the pasted wheels and tracks mentioned earlier in this blog. Whilst everything else worked fine importing these parts of the model resulted in this ungodly mess

This was obviously frustrating so late in the project, particularly as it had worked fine in my earlier exports to udk. I opted not to combine both tracks and their corresponding wheels and this seemed to prevent the problem.

    I began to create a specular map for my model. this is not the finest work I have produced on this project however time was of the essence and I was adamant that all the textures on my object should be my own. This I applied to certain parts of my tank, it took a while for me to get the settings right however it worked eventually.

Now that I had my object properly placed in a UDK level I wanted to add more to the scene. I spent some some time trying to create a new terrain and alter it however due to my unfamiliarity with the program this took a lot of time and I found I was not able to apply a material to it the same way as I had with my tank model. I decided to abandon this for now and instead just made a small enclosed area around the tank with some pre made UDK wall assets. I repeat. THE WALLS ARE READY MADE IN THE UDK AND PURELY THERE TO CONTRIBUTE TO THE SHORT FILM CLIP I WILL BE MAKING FOR THE LEVEL. I TOOK NO PART IN THE MAKING OF THESE WALL ASSETS. 

When I was learning about some of the UDK features in online tutorials I discovered some features like fog and lighting. Though this was not part of the project I felt I could try it out quickly so have created a very light foggy effect surrounding the tank area. I also learnt that I could move the players start point so it began in the tank area. Once this was done I added the collision meshes to my now completed UDK scene, then made a short video which has taken its sweet time to upload to youtube.

     I also went back into maya and created some nice mental ray images of my model as well as a couple of animated turntables just to document it outside of a game engine.

     It is pretty clear that I have not achieved everything I set out to do in the learning agreement. Whilst this is disappointing I am still very happy with the work I have done. Even though I am working into the final hours of this project window I am happy at least that I managed my time better than before and what I haven't achieved is not through lack of effort. My work in Maya has come on considerable since the start of this project and processes that would have taken me an age to complete beforehand I feel I could now achieve in a much shorter time frame. It is disappointing to not have been able to create the full scenery around my tank, or do more with texture, animate it or create the sequence trigger that I set out in my learning agreement. But I learnt a great deal already about game engines with which before I had no experience using.  Overall it would have been great to do more but I am still really pleased with what I have achieved.

Bye Bye Contextual

     I have now finished with my contextual studies, there was only a little left to finish off so this did not take long. I brought up one last theme within it which was how game saves have opened up a new type of mechanic. Here I looked particularly at games such as Prince of Persia and the indie classic Braid.

These titles have used in game memory to support a new style of gameplay where players can, or even must, backtrack in time to complete the level. Using game memory to innovate a completely new type of game mechanic definitely indicates that saving capability has changed the nature of gaming therefore this will definitely be included within my essay.

Contextual Studies Narrative

Another major theme I looked at for my contextual studies essay was the development of narrative with game saving. As players are no longer starting a game from scratch every time they turn the console on it has created long diverse narratives that can be progressed with each play.


     Games such as Fable and Mass Effect 3 are brilliant examples, with ME3 clocking up around 90 minutes of cut scene time, this would have been unfeasible to expect the audience to sit through every time they played a game, which is what would have to happen without game saving.



These two games and others such as Fallout 3 have opened up a new feature where players do not have to follow one linear path, but instead have multiple decisions, moral and tactical, to lead them upon their own unique personal narrative. This is possible and evident in some games before game saving but not anywhere near the extent we have now. Whats more these choices are all the more important when they are saved and not wiped away every time you turn the console off.
     A lot of this extended narrative has created the impression among audiences that games are becoming more and more like interactive movies or novels. I examine this in my essay using quotes from the following website which I feel has adressed this situation: http://themovieblog.com/2011/are-videogames-becoming-more-like-movies/