Elements of game design, part six: Visual composition

Recently, I got critted on one of my Abbey Park digital paintings, It was a study of a certain scene, copied from a photo, I had been told the scene didn’t make sense and there were no main features.

It made me realise, that I forgot I was an Artist. As stupid as that sounds, yes, I’m an artist, I can’t just copy photos and hope for the best, I need to composite my own scene, only using elements of what I’ve seen, like the old masters did with their paintings and masterpieces. Though even with all of their iterative processes, they are still using their own instinct, their “artistic eye” to decide what would fit and look best to them.

Mastery of composition is crucial if I want to be a great artist. Sure I copy a photo and create amazing photorealistic paintings, but if there is no composition, planning or any thought put into it, it’s kind of a waste, it’s good for experience for painting and drawing etc, but the actual painting will have a void and no meaning/ purpose.  If I want to succeed in creating a good visual piece of artwork, I need to be able to convey the key elements of a scene in an intelligent way.

So, what are these principles that many artists and the classical masters use?

Well after doing some googling, I came across 2 very easy to understand pages which explains the elements and principles of design very well:

http://www.johnlovett.com/test.htm - Both elements and principles of design

http://char.txa.cornell.edu/language/principl/principl.htm - Principles of design

The elements of design can be broken into Line, Shape, Direction, Size, Texture, Colour and Value.

They are the basic building blocks to what the visual components in a drawing or painting would be.

Whereas the principles in which these elements are used in is more important in my opinion, as I discussed above, an amazing photorealistic painting is nothing if there is no thought or time put into composing the elements of the painting.

These principles can be broken down into Balance, Proportion/Contrast, Rhythm/Harmony, Emphasis/Dominance and Unity.

It’s a problem solving activity trying to juggle all these principles with your elements to create amazing pieces of artwork. They aren’t called masters for anything, after reading the 2 articles above It kind of opened my eyes to how much thought and time they must have put into their masterpieces.

 

In a game, it is even more complicated as there are dynamic elements as well, the player will have to interact with the environment, and to compose an artistic scene and experience for the player at the same time, is almost like working on a movie but with a bit more freedom and more to think about.

 With film the director controls literally every shot and scene that the audience will see, whereas in a game, the player can look wherever they want. So there are less limiting factors but more visual elements needed to make the scene look compelling.

Creating an environment in a game is a bit more complicated, though it still can use the principles of design as mentioned above, sure you can just put your assets wherever you want in your scene, but it won’t have any impact or look good at all, even if the individual assets are extremely well done.

Now that I think about the games I’ve played and the environments that I remember from them, they do follow these principles, I never realised until now how awesome that is

Elder Scrolls: Skyrim

I recently read an article on Gamasutra on visual composition in games:

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/185676/the_aesthetics_of_game_art_and_.php?print=1

It’s an interesting and relevant on the visual aspect of video games, essentially it says video games also rely on the same design principles as used by classical artists and painters and gives a few examples of how and where these principles have been used and that how understanding more about these techniques and principles leads to a richer game experience.

It talks about how they have been used in environments, characters, the pathways that are in the games, even the UI and how it evolves as you progress through certain games.

Creating Maps and levels with these techniques

I’m certainly going to try and use these techniques in my visual design work, and even the group project that we will have. It will be hard to employ but why not start now so I have a lot of time to improve.

Elements of game design, part five: Planning and Concepting

Here is another instalment in the Elements of game design series of blogs.

 As with most things in life, Planning and preparation is everything; And designing a game needs to be planned and prepared before any production can begin. I’ve stated before that it starts with an idea or concept, which then gets discussed, developed and changed many times before any type of concepting or artwork for the game can be produced.

Concept art develop for Syndra, A character in the game League of Legends - Riot Games

The planning and concepting stage for most industries and businesses be it games, movies, books, TV shows etc, I think is the most important stage because it entails what the whole idea, game, movie, etc will be about, how it looks and how it plays. It gives everyone a clear idea of what everyone’s job is, what it is they need to produce and what the project is about.  

In game development, Artists either in house (if the company is large) or freelance are hired to produce a whole lot of thumbnails, initial sketches and designs for the environments, characters, all for the purpose of making production and helping 3D artists visualize the game and then create them quickly, without even thinking out it too much.

Everything will be a lot easier since the designs have already been produced and plans have been laid out so everyone can just get on with their jobs without being lost. It’s also a lot cheaper to concept out lots of designs rather than to produce them out of nothing halfway through production, as it wastes a lot of time and the production chain would be halted. 

Final Design Concept for Syndra

For example if there weren’t any designs for the 3D artists to base their models of off, they would take a considerable amount of time trying to make the 3D models just from their head, or use crude reference from the internet, which would waste a whole lot of time, and in the end produce very poor and inefficient results. Compare that to if they did have great concepts and drawings from concept artists the 3D artists would know exactly what to model and wouldn’t waste any time.

If a game is poorly planned it may cost the company millions if it’s a big budget game, as they say, time is money, and in the games industry it can be the difference between a company going bust or being incredibly successful.

One example is Blizzard Entertainment.

With the huge success of Blizzard Entertainment’s World of Warcraft, they started working on a new MMO codenamed, “Titan” in 2009-2010 and with that came a whole load of planning and concepting, Although they had to push their “reset button” for an unknown reason in May 2013. The team of about 100 developers had been cut down to just 30 developers, and Planning and Concepting started again.

 The President of the company Mike Morhaime stated that the company is in the process of selecting a new direction for the project, and re-envisioning what they want the game to be. Blizzard are known to have gone through this iterative process with their previous titles such as Starcraft 2 and WoW.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=b_wKb9Wv5XQ‎

It goes to show even for a huge company like Blizzard, planning is crucial, they have essentially lost a lot of money and man hours making a game which they have to reset, probably due to it not being up to company standard

http://venturebeat.com/2013/05/28/blizzard-delays-unannounced-mmo-until-2016-resets-whole-project-exclusive/

Thief Concept Art

Last year we had a few projects that required planning and concepting such as the reef character project, where we had to create a human character which lives and thrives on the reef, I had to go through the planning and concepting processes as usual

References -> Moodboards -> Initial Idea’s -> Thumbnails -> Developed concepts -> Final Design.

Without any of the moodboards, research or initial idea’s I would have been lost, As I didn’t really have a wide knowledge of what lives on the reef,  so I had to plan and research, then look at reference before I could start concepting, developing any of my designs and finalising them.

Although I knew I could have kept on going on and developed my Final Design even more, going through more iterations and perfecting my design. There’s always more you can add, or do, to everything.

I personally think Planning is a bit more important than concepting, because planning is what you do before you actually start to concept, Planning is creating the initial idea. It also includes hiring different people/studios for different jobs, the scheduling, how everything is going to work and what everyone is going to do, Without planning, there is no real goal for concepting because there aren’t any idea’s

Reflecting on year one and ambition for year two

 

Thinking back over what I did last year reminds me of how much I could have achieved with the time I had. Even with these blogs I could have done so much more and put more effort in, but that never happened. I was lazy. I guess my determination wasn’t there when I needed it to be.

It wasn’t that I found the course hard at all. It was just me not doing the work on time, and leaving it all till the deadline. This led to me doing nearly half of my visual design finals on the last week of the deadline before the summative assessment, and although I didn’t manage to finish them all I got through in the end.

I have come a long way in terms of my 3D art compared to the start of last year. I feel like I had my head round 3D from the architecture project after Christmas last year. I still need to refine my texturing and unwrapping but I intend to achieve that this year. All that was bugging me was actually getting the work done on time.

For my 2^nd year at game art I really hope to improve my visual design skills, especially digital painting, which I have barely touched and since we had to do all of our work in our sketchbooks last year, and the fact that I didn’t improve like I was supposed to since I did most of the work and development in the last few weeks. Hopefully I don’t make that mistake this year well I will at least try not to.

 I’ve decided that I want to pursue a career as a 3D environment artist. This is because I like making lots of tiny assets and building up a nice environment or level, rather than focus on one extremely detailed character since I think I would get bored of spending so much time on one 3D model.

I also intend to learn and have some confidence/mastery over the program Z-Brush, which is a 3D sculpting software used to create efficient normal maps with high detail which then can be baked down onto a low poly model.

 This might prove to be a challenge since I’ve never used a program similar to it or sculpted anything before but that’s what internet tutorials are for and with the new 3D lecturers Mike and Max teaching us it will useful.

  Since this is the year that will count towards my final degree, I really need to put my full effort into everything I do, quality and quantity wise. I really want to get a first in my final degree and hopefully have a job lined up so I won’t have to be unemployed after doing 3 years of work.

I have been afraid of the job prospects, as a few of my 3^rd year friends, now ex graduates with firsts in their degree still haven’t managed to land a job, even though their Final Major Projects were absolutely stunning. 

In order to achieve what I want is very simple; But incredibly demanding and energy consuming for me in particular, someone who has a big procrastination problem.

-        Having a good timetable and managing my work.

-        Drawing every single day, at least 30mins of gesture drawing every night.

-        Eating well and exercising well. (Gives me more energy and motivation to do work)

-        Being on task with my 3D and 2D work. And actually work while I’m in the labs and not doze off or become distracted for long periods of time.

-        Producing at least 12 digital thumbnails and 12 sketchbook thumbnails for each visual design project.

-        Reading a book of any kind for at least 30mins or 1 hour every week.

-        Writing a blog every weekend.

If I can manage to keep this up for at least a month I would have crazy results in my development as an artist and a person. I will need an insane amount of discipline if I am to pull this off though.