Wednesday 20 December 2017

Year 2 - Unit 66: 3D Models for an Asset Library - Assignment 2

Unit 66 - Assignment 23D Models for an Asset Library


(Links to drawing in blue)

Stimulus:
The brief we were given is to create a game that is based off the film Big Trouble in Little China. We then gave ourselves the brief of creating separate parts of the game each whilst still working together.

Ideas:
Before I started creating my first NPC I did quick sort of brainstorm or mood board, this was for a character called the servitor of the outer Gods. It included the colour palette I decided on, basic sketches have been included of all the different parts of the creatures body, these included the tentacles and suckers it uses to smother its victims. Any of the colour was done with some basic oil pastels that were blended into the acrylic paper. After that first basic brainstorm I then developed this idea to a more in depth and clearer diagram of the main two different angles/perspectives. I did this in charcoal to try and use the smudge it creates for the haze that is shown over the creature, the haze grows as your sanity level decreases. This idea was then completed with a fully shaded side view that clearly shows what different parts of its body the enemy has. I used a basic sketching pencil in 2B and some blending stumps, I also used the stumps on the two documents before, once to create the haze effect and another to blend the colour of my oil pastels together. Although this creature is not an original idea it was developed in an original way, once I had the basic concept nailed I then added details that I could not research. The front view was something I made up and I messed around with the different scales of its body. I feel as though that when I go to create this in Maya I will struggle with the polygon count as it is a very detailed creature. Each of us in our team decided to the concept art for one of the main enemies each, one large, medium and small, this assured us that we could do some work independently and have a chance for our creativity and flare to shine through. This creature will appear only in R'lyeh, this is because it is only a water based enemy, it will serve as Cthulhu's minion and there should hopefully be many throughout the level that you must defeat. This was one of my final ideas because it was the first one that I had the intention of using, once starting its generation I realised how much I loved the idea of going further. I had to set the first two sketches with hairspray to avoid the colour/charcoal from transferring or smudging. Time Lapse for the first drawing of a servitor of the outer Gods. 
I then did some concept art for Gracie, this was one that completely came from my mind. I decided that I didn't want her to be like she is in the film, I wanted her to be more of a calm companion that could really see into the hearts and eyes of Jack and the enemies. This is why her concept art/sketch contains her cross legged and mediating, as a 3D model I like to hope that she will be wearing the clothes in my drawing and she won't be too difficult to create. Gracie never really had much development because her figure was made up, I started drawing what I wanted her to be and it just slowly developed into who she is now. Whether we actually use Gracie in the game is an idea we are still playing around with, however I personally feel like it could help the game gain a few more woman players.
Jack Burton's concept was probably the least thought out but most detailed drawing I did, I created the art from scratch with an action shot as a reference to base it off. He is decked out in his basic outfit from the film and is drawn in biro, biros are one hundred percent my favourite media to draw in however they are very hard to clean up if you mess up. I did slip up around his fingers on his right hand, I had the mistake of making them way to large in width, luckily with the use of shading I was able to define the hand further and more or less recover the drawing from its near fate. Biros are hard to work with because you can't use them like pencils to shade, no matter how much more or less pressure you put on the pen it will still be the same shade. To overcome this barrier I had to use a cross hatching technique to add depth to his finished character. 
I'm pretty sure the first sketch I did was of Cthulhu and this was an idea that we had as a group, he is probably the main reason anyone would really want to play the game. He is character who will be extremely large so the polygon count of his 3D model will have to be kept at the back of our minds at all times. Much like the servitors of the outer Gods he has a lot of tentacles, especially hanging from his haunting face, this is the thing that I really I had to focus on with his concept art because it's the most noticeable part about him. To achieve this I used shading to make his tentacles more pronounced, I only did his head as I wanted to create something that wasn't copied and the only way I could think of doing it without going in over my head.
The first environment concept art I did was of the pier, this was created before we decided to set in New Orleans so it isn't the most accurate drawing,  I saw an image pretty similar to the one that I drew that I decided to base my sketch off. I made my pier with the intention of it looking as though you were on it with the perspective used, it started off as a simple pier but then I added the foliage in the back with the water to add a little more detail as it was so plain without it.
I then created a willow tree with a uni-ball liquid pen, this media was surprisingly hard to work with as it smudged so easily. I started off creating the tree trunk but I then realised if I carried on this way it was be smudged within seconds. I left the trunk to dry and once it had I went from the left to right creating the weeping branches in a simple fashion. Once it was all dry I went back in and added shading with small lines going up the branches and trunk, without this it looked bare and unimportant. 
Surprisingly, the last thing I did was create a storyboard, once I had a sound understanding of our main ideas I felt that I could create a storyboard that fit our needs. The story was based on what we wrote as a team and I did some very simple sketches to add further illustration to what was being written down. I wrote the plot down first, numbering it in chronological order in coloured ballpoint pen. I then added the simple drawings at the end, I can't really explain much further what I wanted to get from it but you can just view it  as I think I made it very self explained.

Legal and Ethical considerations:

One of the legal things that we did consider was the copyright factor, this was not an important worry as unless our game was published the models would be ok to copy. However, although legally it wouldn’t matter the work still would’ve been plagiarised  and it wouldn’t be credited as our own work. Ethically wise I know that confidentially is not such a key thing to focus on, especially in games creation and 3D models. It protects the information of people involved, this could affect anyone we had take part in a survey to determine whether or not people would actually enjoy our game. They would enter things like their age, gender and other personal questions, this would be under the data protection so they wouldn't need to put their name or address for their own safety. Decency would contain what is considered acceptable, whilst 3D modelling this will include properties like nudity, blasphemy, violence and sex. Even when I created my first ideas I had to consider how I annotated them, any swearing would not be acceptable and may seem like the creation is not a serious process. Drawing and models shall not contain nudity or sex, our game has been given a target audience of the age 16, any game containing those would have to be used my gamers over the age of 18. The representation that I use is widely diverse and involves all genders, race, sexuality and religion. The reason I, and many developers, decided that it should be so inclusive is because the game then aspires to much more of a wider audience, also it avoids the possibility of a bad name for the game based on a sexist and racist front with the character art. If I were to relate this to the brief the most obvious issue would be not succumbing to the stereotypes of the Chinese people and culture, luckily the only real link to the film is Jack Burton and his truck so we have a lot of leeway with the character development and environments.

Specification:
Our target audience is the male gender who are above the age of 16, the maximum age will probably be around 30 however that does not exclude people over that age. People who enjoy the voodoo following and are fans of Big Trouble in Little China will also be included as well as people who enjoy action adventure games. The reason it will be towards people over the age of 16 is because children who are under that age and witnessing the violence would make the game be considered inappropriate. The visual theme of our game is very photorealistic, the first scene will be based off a real place so getting it to look perfect will require studying photographs of the place and making the environment and 3D models look realistic enough. The main character is Jack Burton who has swept back hair and a muscular body, this should come across in the game as strongly as possible without going over a specified polygon count. However this is one constraint of the many, the larger the polygon count the larger the file size. Having a high imagine resolution is of course quite a key part to the immersion of a game but again comes with a cost, large file sizes and even the possibility of it not being to run or render on the PC being used. If the output size is large then the export and import time will take a very long time, not making it worth the wait. File types can be a large issue, if you don't use all the correct types then you will most likely have issues in the future with getting everything to work together and opening files in the right applications. File sizes are what everything basically comes down to, large file sizes cause the issue of opening and exporting in a slow and ineffective way.



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