Planning & Concepting

Rome wasn't built in a day..or so I'm lead to believe. Anything of value has had a huge amount of thought, planning and preparation behind it. This is the same for architects as it is for film makers, photographers, lawyers, cheese cake factory...etc so obviously the games industry is no different.

Everything starts from an idea, a mind fart. But in order to make that mind fart a reality you have to begin the process of pre-production (could have easily made pro into poo, I hope you realise that...)

In our line of work, pre-production takes the forms of analysing, research, gathering reference material, documenting, group work, gathering ideas, concepting and organizing...yada yada yada. It is perhaps the most important stage when it comes to creating games, and thus should be thorough. It is the same with creating a piece of art.

Although it isn't uncommon to have artists that paint out of passion and put little thought behind their art, when you are an artist for video games this simply wont do. Usually you start with a brief – an outline of what's expected of you given to you by your boss or a client, which you have to analyse and develop. If there are any huge themes in the brief (i.e. cloud ninja fluffy limbless world) then you will be expected to research and gather relevant resources on this theme. One you finally begin concepting, you will constantly be given feedback and critiques for you to consider, resulting in the scraping of many ideas and re-concepting and re-designing it all over again...this happens alot.

So  a while ago when I was in college I was asked to design a logo for this woman's website. She was setting up her own company for autistic children and helping them learn. So I said I'd do it for free and she gave gave me a brief on what she wanted. If I remember correctly it was something like "I want a sun, incorporate a sun". So with the descriptive brief that not even J.J.R. Tolkien could write I set to work. Unfortunately I don't have any of my initial crap sketches but I was reeling through random ideas and produced this image;

Not the best thing in the world but I sent it to her and got her feedback, she didn't like the chalkiness of the logo and wanted a revised version.

Revised version done and she hated it even more lol. She likes the sun and thing going on but wasn't sure about the background she wanted it less dark and less colour (specifically only use green, yellow and blue) and she definitely wanted the text changed. White on black your weakness Mike and instead wanted Navy text.

Revised edition 2...eugh but I have to do what I'm told. After this she didn't like the font and soooo...

After all this she decided on a text but background had to change again, just blue and green and a sun with a body was just weird so...

She picked one of these in the end as she never answered back but god it hurt me to send it. I was like...*barf*, but it's kinda going through what I was talking about. We go through a process of planning then once we concept its still only an initial stage. Most of the time you have to keep revising stuff until your employer is happy. This could take from 2 revisions to 2000 revision. But you are paid to do as you're told and sometimes you just have to do it.

I think I got off track a while ago but I was going through CGHub and came across some nice sketches and it shows a thought process and many alliteration to try and create a more ascetically pleasing image, may it be character, environment or in this case creature. I will place them at the bottom of this blog. Pre-production is important and every aspect of making a game is considered and broken down into a structured list of requirements. This branches from Resourcing including supplies, staff, outsourcing...etc. to research which includes market research, archive research i.e. Clearances which are used to get access to certain copyrights and IP products, people and places. Also MCPS (Mechanical Copyright Protection Society) this is where you can get access to the right to music. Even Model release where you need to get the permission to use the likeness of a person in your game i.e. Mitzi Martin in NOLF.

I could droll on forever but i'll wrap up with my experience of planning and concepting. Usually like all students here I think y first design is my best. I admit that but when you are forced to keep working on it, changing things up makes a big difference. You have to get all the generic crap out of your brain first and then you can get to the good stuff. I'm also learning to look at my images in a more conceptual way thanks to Feng Zhu. I've mentioned him in the composition blog, by doing this i can analyze what is going on and construct a scene which is nicer than just a random pile of shapes conversing to a single point. The key I think is not to get attached to your work, just do it and don't be full of yourself. If you start to think your good enough for industry or whatever that's when you stop caring and you put less effort into planning a painting. If you constantly analyze your art and critique how it flows then in the end you will end up with better art...simple. Now I'm tired, here's the pictures I promised you :)

Art Update

As you never get to see my art because I'm stingy I'm gonna share with you now :)

Visual Composition and Stuff

What is composition? Well It is the arrangement of objects in a scene, the better the composition, the more ascetically pleasing the image. Oh lord I sound formal. So lets talk about composition, how many different types are there? Well each art form has it's own set of rules, for example you can get different types of composition in photography than in painting, also cinematography has it's own set but there are some that everyone follow.

The basics of composition starts with the rule of thirds. This technique is based on if you split your page/screen or whatever into 9 sections you have 4 points of intersecting lines. These points highlight the most important part of the image and therefore you should put something there as a focal point. This is no an exact science, many artists put things off the points to have more freedom. But blah blah blah im talking crap.

Next you have the circle, this draws you down to the focal point with a series of objects leading you that way. Its forcing the reader to look at the focal point and so artists usually combine this techniques with the rule of thirds and viola your guaranteed success...right?

Another famous composition technique is the Fibonacci sequence, this draws you into the focal point of the image using a set of mathematical mumbo jumbo apparently i.e more detail/focal point in the point of the spiral and less as you go out.

Okay it's pictures time, so much easier to show in pictures. Here is a picture I found on the web just a random waterfall scene but it follows all the compositional rules I just mentioned. This makes for a nice shot but there’s so much you can do with images today why just stick to the generic point and click? You see in the rule of thirds you have the most prominent waterfall taking up two cross points in the picture making your attention go there immediately. You see in the circle that the composition draws you into the foggy focal point, it takes you down this path leading your eye across the photo.And in the Fibonacci spiral the clouds even draw you toward the focal point due to their direction. 

But there’s so much you can do with images today why just stick to the generic point and click? you see in the image below the photography used a fish eye lens to distort the perspective and it has this awesome curvature that almost resembles the Fibonacci spiral in its shape. 

So what about art? We have the freedom to create whatever we want but if we don't adhere to the basic rules of visual composition then the reader will get lost and won't be able to tell whats going on. So lets take an example of good and bad composition.

First off good composition, here is concept art from assassin's creed. Altair sits on two cross points on the rule of thirds and is the most important part of the scene but you see the ledge he's standing on is shaped like an L. This frames the picture as well as leads you to the focal point. One you hit there you then follow the line of people in the distance. They are walking left and so your eye does to. This leads you to Altair's target, although its in the distance and you don't have much detail you can tell all this from just the way the picture is laid out. Even the eagle is point at the target for you. Make it easy for the reader to read...simple. I did some flow lines you see everything points you in the direction of the target and it flows nicely. Even the background birds have a meaning.

Example number two, this is a choreographed scene that has been rendered for concept purposes but to me it's unreadable. The large expanse of white sky separate the image into  two parts and so you are forced to decide. I picked the dark side and ended up staring at the overly large hand and thought it was a face for a while as I got distracted with the pink shirt. after eye flicking I found its tiny head and it make a little more sense. The horizon line is purposely low but it just looks wrong, if you put the horizon line so low you expect some sort of perspective change to emphasis the fact. Other words it doesn't have a purpose. The lines follow the perspective to lead you to....nothing...great how anti-climatic.

So this leads me to the task in which Mr Powels has set, above is my first final of the year. It's alright, I choose this image because it had the most components to change about and I'm pretty pleased about the composition. Time to cut and paste. Below are eight thumbnails of the above final, rearranged to see if I could make any more interesting compositional decisions using the exact same objects.

So the first set of four, not bad not bad. I hate the last one as having the gazebo right in plain view is very distracting. The third one I quite liked as it draws you to the focal point using the trees and emphasizing how far away it is, perspective actually works kids.

The next set isn't as strong but I like the last two. I used the framing technique in the last image to structure the picture and keep you within the bounds of the painting. You are took up the trees and follow the sky back down to the gazebo, the point of interest. In the image to the left of that I used skew to give the trees a tilt, using circle composition to draw you in to the focal point again.

What have I learned? Well doing this quick minute mock ups really helps visually of what you want. You can have all the theory in the world but if you don't do anything it's pointless. It's like 3ds Max, you can read hundreds of books but if you don't actually get on the program and muck about with it then its all a waste of time. Recently I have been watching Feng Zhu's youtube posts and it has really helped me understand why we construct paintings the way we do. Feng Zhu is a concept artist and holds a very expensive but awesome school in teaching concept art, so you see student examples and how he changes them to make them work visually. He talks about flow lines and composition as well as colour and number of useful techniques to help you produce work faster and be more thoughtful when doing your art. I highly recommend watching his videos;

http://www.youtube.com/user/FZDSCHOOL

Composition...Nailed it lol.

Animal Cruelty – Kill the killers

If you think the video of that woman putting the cat in the bin was bad, get prepared for some sick shit.

Okay recently through my daily browsing on Facebook I have been noticing a lot of articles relating to cruelty to animals. At first I thought it was some sort of cult going about killing animals because of some twisted view on how to get to heaven or whatnot. But as I researched it became more clear that humans are just...*insert F and C curse words*. Excuse the language but I'm afraid you will agree with me as I go on to explain more. Discretion is advised so don't click on any links I put up unless you are prepared to see some disturbing images and videos.

So the first thing I noticed on the old facebook was a dog that had been tied up and attached to a car and of course the twats dragged him along the road. The picture showed the dog with red marks all over his body from where his skin once lay. This intrigued me, what fucked up person would do this to an innocent animal. As I browsed more I found another image in which men had pressed a kitten up against a fence and tortured it until it died. Humankind...should me more Human-unkind, bad joke but its late and I’ve watched a lot of shit tonight.

Recently Sai has had the misfortune of having an animal killed due to poisoned chicken, and it was then I started to think about a cult going around. Why else were there so many animal deaths popping up around the world? And so my search began on the web and my rock hard stomach would soon be tested.

On the web I got the cases of thousands of birds just dropping from the sky...okay this could be poisoned or something...wrong the fact is that the birds were just greedy bastards and ate too much and ended up dying...I know WTF. In other incidents hundreds of fish were found dead...again could be people, you know grenade tossing and all that jazz...but nope, the fish were most likely washed up due to the cold waters and mass procreation causing too many of them. So after reading about fat birds and sex loving fish I decided well if I can't find stuff maybe there hasn't been as many animal cruelty acts as I first thought. Wrong, all you have to do is refine your search.

So Youtube ended up provided some “interesting” links, if you can call it that. The link below is about Australian cattle being exported to Indonesia for Halal meat. For Halal meat it dictates that a well sharpened knife is used to make a deep incision that cuts the front of the throat, the carotid artery, windpipe and jugular veins but leaves the spinal cord intact, the head of the animal that is slaughters is pointed towards Mecca. It is then left to bleed out which can take up to 10 minutes depending on the animal. But these exported cows where tortured, the men snapping the tails of the cows, gorging out their eyes and pouring water into their noses. This is just wrong, since when did we get away with doing this to innocent animals. If these cows must be killed then it should be done in the most humane way as possible. The video below is quite distressing and I do have a big love for cows so it was a little unsettling watching it but I feel like I should write about something that is important to me.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNA-dwGeexw&feature=related

This link lead me to other acts of humans brutally murdering animals and brought me to a video about protesting of the violent abuse dogs are given in Chile. And so I searched, the article below accounts multiple acts of brutally to dogs.

“In one disturbing report, a family's German shepherd was romping around his fenced-in backyard when a neighbor threw a chunk of meat over the fence. It was laced with Strychnine. Apparently, the neighbor was angry that the dog was barking. He died shortly after. “

“In yet another instance, around 85 dogs were rounded up and killed in La Moneda in order to get them off the streets to prepare for a political event. “

“In Rinconada (also known as "hell on earth for dogs"), dogs are routinely — yes, routinely — poisoned, beaten, stabbed, shot at and ran over. “

http://news.change.org/stories/chiles-dogs-in-peril-group-calls-for-aid-after-mass-killing

My thoughts on this... well lets just say some people have to die. Treating animals like they don't have feelings is just inconceivable. Why people do these sort of this I do not understand, is it for pleasure or because their crazy in the head. I don't know but this sort of thing has to stop.

This leads me to my next link. The most outrageous and unnerving of the links I will provide. This is a blog on stopping animal abuse and as such has distressing pictures and videos of animals being tortured for fun. I repeat, FOR FUN. I only watched a few of the latest videos put up but I couldn't even stand the sound on. For those that don't want to click on the link I will describe some of the things that are shown. In one example a group of men have a dog on a leach in which they torture it and pour gasoline on the poor animal, they then set it alight and follow it as it screams in pain. I couldn't keep the sound on while watching this one, the cries of the dog were just too much for me to listen to. How can people even hold a camera with the intent to post it online? What type of dick swinging is this? Oh look at me I can kill a small helpless dog. What the fuck does that prove except that you are a ignorant sick murderous vile scum of the earth that should be given the same treatment that poor animal received.

In another example kids throw a puppy to the floor and light its whiskers on fire and continue to hit it with large sticks like its some sort of play thing. Kids, of all things, what the hell is happening to this world. I was totally shocked and appalled at the videos I seen on this website but it educated me on the sick being that exist. I also found out that so called “crush” videos have been circulating around the web for a couple of years now in which people crush animals. In one of the videos it showed a woman crushing a rabbit between a table and a plank. There are a ton of other examples but I'm going to wrap this up before I’m sick.

http://stopanimalabuse.blogspot.com/

"The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated." - Mahatma Gandhi

Omg Gandhi I love you, I totally agree, people who torture animals for fun, they have no morality, they have no soul and therefore shouldn't be allowed to live. It makes me sad to be a part of a race that continue to make me sick. But to look at the world from this perceptive would only leave to bad consequences for example me going Dexter on peoples asses, but that would make me as low as they are. Fortunately we have people in this world that do good, unfortunately animal cruelty is something that seems to be increasing every year and there no way to stop it unless more people are convicted like the true criminals they are, justice is needed to protect the innocence, human and animal alike.

New Law Protects Christians Who Bully Gay Kids - Discuss i.e. Rage about

I don't normally post blogs on politics and all that balls because it usually doesn’t interest me. I don't know what’s happening in the political world because its all pointless and just petty. But I was on youtube today and a video peaked my interest. The title of the video is;

“New Law Protects Christians Who Bully Gay Kids”

So what the fuck? This video is from Democrat senator Gretchen Whitmer who is outraged at the sheer stupidness of the law. A quote from the video states "As passed today, bullying kids is OK if a student, parent, teacher or school employee can come up with a moral or religious reason for doing it."

What the hell is America doing? They are pushing themselves into a society that accepts no-one. Who the fuck said christians where right? Doesn't everybody have a right to believe in what they want, whether it be god, shiva or zeus? There is no justification for bullying. It's as the senator said they are providing an excuse for people to bully. I've been the result of bullying, it is degrading you feel shit and if you stand up for yourself you'll get bullied worse, I was bullied for being gay. It doesn't matter what you say, what they see is someone vulnerable enough to pick on and get away with it. The law is named after a kid who killed himself because of bullying, a law to allow bullying, how insensitive is that. His parents spoke and were ashamed to have such a law in his name, it goes against everything they believe in.

So lets go back to that comment that if you have a moral or religious reason for doing it, its fine, your a saint. Did you know in south africa there was an epidemic of child rape because they believed virgins would prevent them from getting aids. This meant they went around raping children as young as you don't want to know. Now I know that it wasn’t religion and they knew it wasn't moral but imagine a culture that did this because it was part of their religion would this be an acceptable law to enforce the protection of these people? A better example is in the Vodun faith people can state themselves as being “ridden” this refers to a god has taking over their body. The ritual in which to cure it they use rum and tobacco. That is part of someone’s religion, should they bring in a law to state that if an african child or teenager states “ridden” they are allowed to drink alcohol and smoke?

What I'm doing is beating around the bush saying that they wouldn't do it for any other culture, its just to satisfy the racist, homophobic society America is.

There was a study done on religious groups and racial bias. A quote from it states;

“Religious groups distinguish between believers and non-believers and moral people and immoral ones, So perhaps it’s no surprise that the strongly religious people in our research, who were mostly white Christians, discriminated against others who were different from them — blacks and minorities.”
This also means that the law could probably be used to bully black kids because hey we all know that famous passage in the bible “Love Thy neighbour”. They don't even follow the words their suppose to.

Example;

Parent;

Oh hey I'm Paul's dad and I'm a Christian, we believe it is morally wrong to be black and so that’s why my son punched this nigger in the face.

Police Officer;

Totally fine sir, have a nice black free day.

When will people grow the fuck up. We live in a multi cultural society, people don’t want to hide what they are whether that be gay, transsexual, Muslim, short, ginger...whatever, I purposely put Muslim short and ginger in there because there is discrimination against everything. What isn't normal is wrong. Normal does not exist I’m afraid, we are all different, all unique its a pity we have people in this world that just want to fight. Religion, money, power/greed and politics, all the things that start wars.

People have the right to believe in what they want but they shouldn't enforce their beliefs onto others. We have minds we don't need people preaching to us everyday to make a choice. There is no correct choice, most people need something to believe in and that’s fine. Albeit am I to tell them not to; but don't try and put in a system in which to “protect” kids from bulling by allowing it, no matter the reasoning.

FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU, okay I can't get my words out properly anymore so I’m going to stop, my hearts a thumping. Need to listen to some mozart and calm down. If your interested in the link;

TADA, like magic;

7 Changes

So I passed the first year, hurrah. Do I have any regrets...I would be lying if I said no. What did I do? I did the all the work, I interacted with students and tutors and presented myself in a positive hard working way. Or did I? My thoughts on first year, yes I did the work but that's all. I never went over the top or exerted myself to do more work and improve, I did all the coursework qualifying me for another year but I don’t believe I did any personal work. To be honest the only thing I did extra for was the blogs because I like to vent my frustration to the unaware public or M. Night Shaymalan. Reflecting on it now I am not ashamed but disappointed is probably the best way to describe it. I pay all this money to come over here to a new country, new course and a new life but what am it seems like I'm wasting that money. 

1, Do personal work

oh god no

I finished the course last year with confidence that I had went where my brothers and sisters haven't. Being the youngest from a large family is daunting but I'm the first one to go to university and I'm praised for it. God get my dad a whiskey or three and he's nantering on about how he's proud. So this leads to expectations. I have so much to live up to that it's hard to take in sometimes and I feel claustrophobic and weighted down from the pressure. But hey I'm already on a pedestal in my family’s eyes but the higher the pedestal climbs the more unstable and more likely it is I will fail. But what can I do...first stop nagging and get better is what I say.

2, Reduce negativity and increase productivity

Personally I don't even think I got to know my classmates. I'm a loner I guess always have been and in that sense I sometimes find it hard to connect to people. But that doesn’t explain how I can talk for four hours in front of interviewee and tell them about the course. I think the difference is I have to talk about myself in order to connect to someone and with the interviews I just have to talk about the course and how I got here. The thing is when I first started dating Sai she was curious about things about me, you know the usual what food do you like? What's your favourite band?...etc. But I couldn't answer her, I just said I dunno. Why didn't I know, well because I was never asked those things before. Friendship to me was sitting and listening to others problems, it was never about me or what I liked so I never had to think about it. Once faced with the question I found it a struggle to formulate an answer. I have gotten better over the years I've spent with Sai. My favourite food is pancakes, my favourite band changes but at the minute it's 009 sound system.

3, Be more open and make more of an effort to befriend my peers

I also remember getting assessed by you mike and in which you want me to reflect more on my blogs, you want to get to know me. Faced with the problem above I will try to let you into my life and views as a Irish country boy. Anyway I am getting of track from reflecting on the previous year. Facebook, good component to use to critique each other but I neglected to do so. Why? Because I feel as if I don't deserve to crit people who are better than me. Who am I to say that the perspective is wrong in an art piece when I can't get it right? It's all about I understand that it's wrong, I am training my eye to see these mistakes and so;

4, Reflect and crit more

“One thing I will promise myself for the summer and the second year is to draw everyday” pffff did I ever, I did try but I got distracted. It's weird to see all the things I said I would do in my reflection blog. Shows how delusional I was, so in saying about these seven changes, are they also delusional? Probably but I will try my best to uphold a good work ethic and keep improving and also ask for help when I need it. I keep to myself and don't like to ask for help because that would hinder someone else, but again stuck in old ways won't help me improve.

5, Ask for help when help is needed

So my aspirations for this year, really it is to focus on 3D because its a high probability that I will get into the industry as a modeller and not a 2D artist and as I've said before I want to get better at art more for my own benefit, if I get a job out of it great but I don't expect to at my current level. So lots of 3D practice this year, I've even set up evenings in which to practice and research texturing because it's something I struggle with.

6, Get better at all aspects of 3D even Zbrush

I only wish I was this good

So six down one to go, I feel like I'm a long winded movie that makes no sense till the end. So what will the last thing be? I am more work driven at the moment so I hope I continue this work ethic throughout the year.

7, Past the second year, simple...right?