BA3: CS: character research

For my CS project have to choose one character from the story her room and the Sea of stories the character I chose to was the hop-o. The reason for this choice was because of the main characters connection to this character and also this character’s attitude towards the other characters within the box. Also because he is technically a robot which I felt had interesting design points that I could exploit. At start this project I decided to look into other robots and Robotics creatures to hopefully gain some ideas into what I wanted my character to look like.

The first example of robots that are came across was the terminators from the movie franchise terminator. I went to these first to get a look of how robot like humans would look like and how true this film they have tried to replicate a human in robotic form. Here is an example picture of one of these robots.

An interesting feature about the robots that I find appealing is that the frame of the robot is set out like a skeleton with the muscle type areas being made up of pistons and joints to build up the robots frame.

Were looking more deeper into robots I came across a film called I robot which is a more modern take on the robotic form comparing this one to the terminator they fleshed out the robots in a way that made them feel more human here is an example of one of the robots from the film.

I prefer this example to the terminator film because of the fleshed out appearance at this robot has and it’s something I can try and aim for with my character design when I come to make it. I think one of the main reasons that this character seems to be less threatening than the terminator is because of the shape of the character. As in this article

 http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/185676/th

The article mainly states that when designing characters sharp jagged edges tend to replicate danger and hostility while soft edges tend represents kindness and I think that it’s fairly apparent within these two examples. For example the robots from my robot has a very smooth sleek design and also a human face and this gives them a less threatening locks and say the terminator which features a lot more jagged edges. This is certainly a feature at the line, have to do consider when designing my characters as it will help me distinguish whether this character is a friend of four up so without explaining.

The research I looked into of creature similar to the one on design this creature is Songbird from the game Bio shock Internet the reason that it appeals to me so much is because of its design of part machine part bird here is an example picture of the animal

Though this creature in its design is more steam punk I still find it overall concept to be extremely interesting. This is almost a direct lock that I would like my character to look like and even the character songbird is similar to the hoopoe in its purpose as it is the protector of Elizabeth in bio shock the hoopoe is almost like a protector of herrun within the Sea of stories. I think with my design I Wanna keep it similar to this character but not in terms of the steam punk aspect I would like to create an either modernised version or are almost mediaeval concept as I feel that the hoopoe belong in sort of time.

Design I’m really starting to find interesting is a kind of cross between a old-fashioned gliding aircraft and that of an eagle mainly because from my perception of the book it’s almost like the hoopoe was a old-fashioned robot that was organic but also mechanic in nature but not advanced like some of the robots or even the songbird and this why feel that my hoopoe should be an old-fashioned kind of robot

As for the organic side of the hoopoe I wanted his frame or skeleton if you will to be that of an eagle as eagles are almost kings of the sky just like hoopoe is and also because of how majestic the eagle is in its flying. Why would hopefully like to do is take the frame of the eagle and add in almost like robotic adjustments to show that he is both organic and mechanic this way it will keep the best of both having his form other majestic eagle or his structure as a mechanic

Summary:

from the research of summarise that I would like to design an eagle type bird with almost old-fashioned robotics not similar to steam punk but more old-fashioned in comparison. I’d really like to do this by replacing certain muscle structures within the bird will almost an artificial structure similar to the ones in the terminator and I robots robot. 

BA3: CS: colour studie

Here is my drawing of my final image for my character who is meant to be the hop-o but with an old-fashion style robot look.From my search of looking into robotic designs from looking at the muscle construction of a robot it is often displayed as Pistons than organic creatures which have muscle I wanted to join this to the hop-o as the hop-o and the book is described as a robot but I also wanted to make this look old by making these Pistons within its certain body parts looking as if they were wooden.

BA3: CS: value studies

here are some value studies that i have made based on the silhouettes that i made i pick two of the the silhouettes to draw on top of.

BA3: CS: silhouettes

Here are some silhouette ideas I made for my presentation where we had to make a character so here are some of the silhouettes:

 

BA3: CS: Random character analysis

The story of TankO the watcher

This document will be a story about a drawing that I received a Marmite contextual lessons where we were in a group of five people and we all had to draw one section of paper reached to create a random character as from my image the character doesn’t seem to have any legs and look stationary throb using this to his advantage and also because he has two heads in this makes the perfect character lookout.

Once upon a time in a dark deep forest Tanko awoke from his sleep as his second haed on top of his first had already been a waek and was giving him an evil stare. “Why do you sleep so much” said evil head “I don’t just like to dream” said normal head “typical excuse you lazy excuse for a lockout” said evil had “how Rude are you today didn’t sleep much I see” said normal head “yes because I was looking out for things on the road unlike you dreaming about running around in fields” said evil head “I wasn’t and how do you know what I was dreaming about” said normal had “are you for real we share the same body we have the same dreams of course I would like to runabout but were a lookout so we should lookout” said evil had. As normal head started to look around he didn’t notice anything as the forest looked as dark and scary as it did the day before he locked down towards body to try and check if things had changed but no he still had a chest of her hourglass figure and the pivots to stock into the ground he’d often thought that he would wake up one day free with his own body to do what he wished but now he was stuck here for what seemed like all his days. “Hey hey hey first customer of the day” said evil head “how come you’re in such a good mood today?” said normal head “ I can always send them the wrong way into almost certain death haha” he chuckled darkly “you make me wanna hit you into the side of the tree sometimes evil head”said normal had “come on it only bit of fun it’s not like they’re coming out of the forest anyway you know that above most people be quiet the first customers coming” at that point normal had froze knowing that it was evil heads turn to give directions and he could go second to hopefully correct his mistakes. But as the character came around the corner and into the site of the pillar he stopped and shouted “you there do you know the way to the Princess” stand in a clearing was a six foot knight in the shiniest armour possible. Even evil head have to turn his head left to avoid the glimmer of his amour  “while watch where you point that thing son” said evil head keeping his eyes closed the night lifted up his visor and bellowed “well if it isn’t the famous pillar” clapping his hands together and delight “so which one of you is good and which one you was bad” he asked nicely but as normal head could not respond as it was evil heads turn he simply locked away from the knight “so it must be you want up a” he shouted at evil had “yup  good guy aright” “ha ha hah fantastic so you know this place pretty well then you’re?” He asked hoping for a great answer “ you can bet your mirror armour that I do sunny Jim” evil head said with a pleasant smile “so which way is to the Princess” he asked eagerly drawing closer to the pillar “all you need to do is follow the path straight on and enter the swamp till you get to the other side and she’ll be right there waiting for your” evil head gave another heartwarming smile “thank you pillar its been an honour” the knight bowed “oh no oh no the pleasures been all mine brave knight” after finishing his bow the brave knight talk is sorted out at the ready and charged straight to the swamp out of sight from the pillar. “You’re a very bad head you know that?” Normal head said in a disapproving manner “I sure am buddy” evil head said with a malicious grin on his face.

BA3: CS: Two character reviews

Hotline Miami: Jacket

Story

Jacket is a character in the retro game Hotline Miami part of the multi-character that storyline jacket is one of the longest storyline with an Hotline Miami taking a major portion of the game as his journey into murder. It all starts with jacket waking up in a room with no memory of what he is door Norway is bent then enters the next room with three people are sitting on couches all wearing different types of masks the asking three different questions the horse is represented as blue the chicken is represented as orange and the owl is represented as red as that give an indication into how they behave towards jacket. The horse is currently jacket asking simple questions like how are you and are you okay while the man in the chicken mask asks jacket direct questions directly correlating with his actions and offering brainteasers into jackets past for example he will talk about D like hurting people as a question and where are you right now to really probe the player’s mind into what actually is happening to them. The owl on the other hand is different to the other two in the way that he is immediately hostile towards jacket changing contempt like get our fear and why you even hear any more obviously not wanting to help jacket in his pursuit from knowledge and this past. These three characters take jacket onslaught of a past flashback into all things he has done over the last months starting off with his first introduction to the man in the chicken mask where the man in the check must forced into killing mobsters in order to gain a suitcase. This is the first mission that the player plays and introduces to all these characters and jacket. Throughout the current levels jacket gets mysterious phone calls from his apartment which seem innocent until they are subliminal messages telling him to go out and kill certain mobsters at certain places the point of the story is to work out who justice sending phone calls and why they are calling you throughout the game jacket gets multiple visits from the three masked men and the asking probing questions into how he feels about what he is doing and do even know why he’s doing it. Near the end of the game the masked men say goodbye to jacket so that they’ll never see him again is at this point were jacket flies off of from reality and goes solo in terms of vengeance. In early emissions jacket saves a prostitute from being killed then later on the prostitute is killed within his apartment as well jacket is shot important to occur this is the point where jacket breaks out and seeks revenge upon the killer finding out that the killer had also been receiving phone calls the same way he had he then goes on a final desperate mission to find out who is ringing him. As well as jacket story there is another story layered upon top about a mysterious biker but as you plays jacket you kill this biker but upon finishing jacket’s main story you get to play this by getting an alternative reality. Jacket at the end of the game defeating the final boss relaxes and takes a smoke while the game ends shown that jacket had taken down the entire mob single-handedly and this prompts the end of this story.

Charter function & design 

As with Hotline Miami has jacket is one of the main characters of the whole game the game does focus around him and his journey. Because of the games top-down shooter aspect and fast pace this only allows for a top-down view of jacket only shown his infamous jacket and the mask that he is wearing his character lock is very similar to the enemies that he fights but the only significant difference is that as the player is playing as them they cannot get confused as to which is which because of this the developers have to devise how to make jacket stand out from the other enemies on-screen as they look so similar to the way that this was adding custom masks with a player can choose a selection of masks which would give them certain buffs but would also show up on their character when they went in to play.

Character point of view 

In Hotline Miami the default camera setting is a top-down view of the character this does not change across any of the characters and is a constant throughout the entire game

Does the character conform to a certain character stereotype?

In the case of jacket he tends to conform to stereotypes the villain and the hero how we does this is that throughout his murderous campaign he kills without question and without proper reason even though it is almost beyond his control there is not a question of dust jacket hate what he is doing which offers a dark insights into how he really might feel but also in one of the missions jacket is offered a moment of compassion where he saves a prostitute from dying and nurses her back to full health some have speculated that this is meant to be a symbol of jackets humanity and with her death later on in the game this is meant to show the point in which jacket snaps and doesn’t take the orders from the phones any more than just goes from rampage which may show his full form in becoming a psychopath

What does the character look like and what style might have influenced?

The graphical designs in hotline Miami is very 1980s pixel-based graphics in my opinion I think this perfectly represents the game and shows that these graphics may be old but they are still beautiful as well as this it fits into the whole Miami in the 80s feel without showing the backgrounds of Miami though pixilated almost like that being viewed by someone on certain drugs. The pixel design is obvious the influenced by the early development of 2-D game and even interviews with the lead designer of the game is questioned why do you use old graphics and he says because they look amazing it truly is just a preference that the designer is using these graphics rather than a limitation or are graphical style but is very apparent from just playing the game that is inspired by a Lee 2-D shooters

Payday: the heist & Payday 2: Bain

Story

In payday to pain is a lesser character compared to the four main protagonists played through by the players gain is more of a back-door negotiator offering advice to the plays during in game pastes and also is the leader of crime net which is the criminal organisation which you use to plan your high street in payday to Bain organises all haste to you when you’re going to do along with his multiple deals on guns and different types asks your place to work. As head of crime that pain is in contact of multiple people at once such as arms dealers senators or just plain dirty mobsters is Bain’s job to put you in touch with these and get you the jobs to get you your payday. Baines real identities have revealed through payday and a storyline about him doesn't exist all information about pain points to a mysterious man who constructed a criminal organisation by himself and works alone.

Charter function & design 

With pain as a character he does not have much design or function within the game being mostly of voice-over telling you saying hints and giving you advice paint only design his voice-over his never seen by the player as a character or person which gives painless more elusive field towards his character so this doesn’t give pain a design purpose as he only has one function so does he does not have to conform to any set designed to fit that function

Character point of view

As this character is almost like a voice-over he never has a point of view within the game he only ever see is the heist from afar through video cameras or eyewitnesses

Does the character conform to a certain character stereotype?

In terms of stereotypes of characters being does conform to the “Hero helper” as he offers advice to the team coughing giving them pointers let the men on useful information other than this pain almost has no other character stereotype he is only existence is to help the player progress through their tasks of heisting

What does the character look like and what style might have influenced?

As Bain almost not shown at all in payday he has no influencing art style or locok to the only information gathered about him is his voice only small pieces of video of ever seen a pain but is taken from the live action images from the games web series and doesn’t actually show a particular art style that the character could have been influenced by

Bibliography:

http://payday.wikia.com/wiki/Bain : information gathered on the character pain

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hotline_Miami : information gathered on the character jacket

BA3 CS: Article analysis

My  analysis of :http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/185676/the

As a small part of my contextual studies work I passed to review this article by game Sutra goes into the nifty gritty details about character and level design. In this document I will be reviewing this article and looking at the different messages to propose about games design and how this article talks about principles that have influenced ancient art and also modern games.

On the first page of the article goes into massive amounts of detail about three different shapes that are commonly found within artists work. These three shapes are cube circle and a triangle each one is meant to represent different meanings for example they say the circle shape is an example of innocence, youth, energy and femininity it also says about the square that that represents maturity, sustainability, balance and stubbornness then finally mentioning the triangle which is meant to represent aggression, masculinity and force. They then go on in the article to show examples of this within different types of media whether it be arts or common logos found today. The use the example of the Disney logo saying this is round as though to look innocent as this company that creates children movies this fits in very well with their audience and the also site logos bands like anthrax which is a heavy metal group is this representing the triangle as the text is jagged. As metal band as well is given that they are not interested in a child audience but by more mature audience and so they use this jagged shape to show the aggression without even telling the audience what they are about.

My thoughts on this this hypothesis is that it is fairly accurate in that circle do offering represents youth while squares represent security and triangles represent danger but I think to the extent that the writer of the article is using it goes a bit too far as in the article the writer tries to say that almost every design is influenced by these three shapes which I would disagree and say it is much more of a subliminal message that is often used vary slightly within certain pieces of media but I feel that hair overview of the hypothesis is correct and I would agree with.

On the next page of the article the writer goes into detail about certain pieces of artwork that include the shapes within their design such as a few historical paintings are meant to show different messages some of horror and some of happiness. The writer then goes on to say about how the shapes within a game environment have to be a lot more dynamic which is true. She talks about how in gears of War one of the maps is trying to represents part of its logo by being in a skull shape with multiple jagged edges but as the game is in three-day player does not get a view of the map from this Birds Eye perspective. So it shows that the shape has to be used in multiple ways to have effectiveness on such an in-depth media such as games. The writer then goes on to list five different game related features that do consist of these three shapes and how they affect the. The feature she sites are character shapes, character animations, environment shapes, pathways and player gestures.

With this part of the article I completely agree with the writer she does show valuable insight into piece of artwork and how they have used the shapes to their advantage and how they are very subliminal in their messaging but very effective this is a area that I have never considered before and has opened my eyes to certain possibilities that I can use within my designs I found this insight to be extremely useful and think her findings are well founded and well researched.

The writer then goes on to talk about Mario within the next page she talks about how the three different characters Mario, Luigi and wario and how they are different sides of the same coin representing the three shapes still being similar to a certain character archetype. She cited in the article that the three characters are based off one shape and that they all body disc different aspects of the three different shapes for example Mario embodies the circle shape with his circle moustache circled eyes and almost circle like appearance. She then goes on to cite luigi and how he is representing the square as he stands taller than Mario and has a more solid demeanour and he is the embodiment of the stubborn square. Then she goes on to talk about wario and how he represents triangle has his features like his moustache eyes and even his body structure are more jagged than the other two characters giving him an indication of the triangle which does trigger aggression and fear. Even to me someone who has never played many Mario games I know from just looking at wario that he is a villain and this is partly down to his triangular edged shapes.

As well as the Mario representation the author then sites a game called the journey and how this shows that character animation can still be influenced by these three different shapes. The author talks about at the start of the game that the player is able to move freely within environments without much resistance being three and also the environment around them is very smooth with no jagged edges as well the close of the player shown to be very loose with no jagged edges visible to other this shows that the circle shape lets the viewer have a feel of calm atmosphere. But then in the game when the character moves to a cold area the environment becomes jagged and so do the characters moving very slowly and jagged leaf through the snow clutching themselves are not moving gracefully as they once did before this instantly shows that the characters are in a dangerous even hostile place.

Again her findings on this turn out to be very true as even I can see this change within environmental look and personally I never saw this type of influence before the game and now that I looked more closely into it I can see it so perfectly and is an interesting concept that I’ll have to look out for within future games.

The article then goes on to talk about how characters move within their environments such as with a game like the journey the animations of the characters are often fluent even in the dangerous environments but take another game I gears of War for example as the writer has shown that the movements of the character tend to be faster and more of a knee-jerk reaction compared to journeys animations this again reinforces the triangle circle complex.

The final point that the article makes is about the environments used within the different games to for example gears of War often consists of jagged edges with very limited amounts of smooth edges while the journey is almost a polar opposite to gears of War. It shows how all this adds up very solely to create these difference subliminal messages that the audience feels towards these two different games and it’s very interesting to see Ali play out when it all pointed out to you in this way.

The final point that the writer makes is about actual fundamental games design itself. Talking about inching games like pinata, hide and seek and baseball and explaining how these are similar to the sheeplike complexes but also they are different in the way that it joins all three of the different shapes together for example pinata is often played in a circle with people on the outside representing squares by the personally inside representing a jagged edge for example they are the one holding the bat. Shingles on to talk about hide and seek how this consists of one seeker who is the triangle and all the other hide is representing circles while the environment which they play in is the squares. Finally she talks about how baseball is set up like a triangle with eight people who are the fielders represented as triangles against one circle showing that they are all ganged up against one player. The writer then goes on to say how levels are often design like this with the first level consisting of the player being viewed by all in the first stages then in the second stage the player is often required to go seek and find others and then in the final act the player is confronted by one large character or multiple characters in a final confrontation.

Again I can totally see the articles point on this and it does seem very logical in the way that this is set out but I do think that the writer is putting too much emphasis on the shapes influence within actual level construction I would disagree with this but say that it does have some subliminal value but not a massive influence as to structure out levels in this way.

Summary

Overall I like this article found to be very interesting and influential and may even help me to create better work in the future as I will make sure to consider these three shapes when designing characters or environment but I do think the reader takes the shapes onto much and thinks they have a much wider influence than they actually do but I could only find this doubt within her final argument about how the shapes influence levels but on all the other subjects I would totally agree with her hypothesis as it does seem very logical that the shapes have such a subliminal influence.

BA3: Game engines images

Here are some of the finished renders within the game engine of my Castle placed within its environment upon a cliff the images look through the different lighting effects but upon the Castle and also shows what the Castle would look like within its game engine and its environment.

BA3: model creation and textureing

Here are some final images of the main Castle when I finished modelling. The main Castle is made up of one bridge which leads to a courtyard then another bridge which will use leads to the main keep all being surrounded by walls with towers at each section the main keep is made up of the main structure with four smaller towers on each corner and then mean tower placed upon the top of the keep the courtyard is made up of chairs and garden pots along with a statue.

Here are some screenshots of the finished texture on the Castle. The main Textron used for the bridges and castles was a stony texture and I use this the most of the outer walls this was so that the wall and the towers would not stand out from each other and look like they’re connected the main courtyard consists of a stone floor used on both bridges and the main keeps floor most of the plant trees within the courtyard a movable marble texture and the main keep itself is made up of a vanity texture along with its four towers and it’s one big tower as well as the arches and pillars placed within the main keep they asked made up of the same granites texture this is an order to make sure they don’t stand out when placed next to the main keep.