Presentation two: Conclusion

Reference:

Keighley G, 2013, The final hours of Tomb Raider.

McCaig, I. 2005, THE SKILLFULLHUNTMAN, Visual Development Of Grimm Tale At Art Center College Of Design. Hong Kong, Design Studio Press.

Ian Dean, Initials., Issue 89., December 2012. ImagineFX  Create dynamic game art.. 30 Monmouth Street, Bath, BA1 2BW, UK: Future Publishing accessed: http://www.imaginefx.com/02287754332397685045/imaginefx-89.html

Howard, T.  First edition 2011, Bethesda, The art of Skyrim. Maryland, United States, publishing: Bethesda.

Keighley, G. 2013, The final hours of Tomb Raider (Limited edition accessible by Steam)

NGamer Staff, How did Mario become so famous?  17th Oct 2010, [Online ] avaialbe at : http://www.computerandvideogames.com/269909/features/how-did-mario-become-so-famous/ [accessed 19^th November 2014]

Keith Stuart , Super Mario Bros: 25 Mario facts for the 25th anniversary, [Online ] available at http://www.theguardian.com/technology/gamesblog/2010/sep/13/games-gameculture [accessed 19^th November 2014]

 

Nico Crisafulli Bringing Art History to Concept Art – the Delicate Universes of Feng Zhu 2012 [online] available at: http://www.tentimesone.com/bringing-art-history-to-concept-art-the-delicate-universes-of-feng-zhu/ [accessed 18^th November 2014]

Feng Zhu, 2014, Feng Zhu Design [Online] available at http://fengzhudesign.com/ [accessed 18^th November 2014]

 

Tom Bramwell Crystal Dynamics: "Lara's never really had a personality" 5^th of June 2012, available at: http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2012-06-05-crystal-dynamics-laras-never-really-had-a-personality [accessed 24th November 2014]

Mitch Dyer, Far Cry 3 The Vaas That Never Was, 10 Jan 2013,[ online ] available at :http://www.ign.com/articles/2013/01/10/far-cry-3-the-vaas-that-never-was  [accessed 25^th November 2014] 

Essay Part one: Intro

The concept art behind the creation of successful game character personalities in video games

Introduction:

The development of creating a video game character personality is a difficult task. A large amount of time is spent in the pre-production stage; a crucial stage in pre-production is concept art. This essay focuses on background information of the character; the origin, clothing styles, particular situations the character is placed in, era, society and how the character reflects in life threatening situations.

The player reacts to characters differently there is either love or dislike expressed to the character. The characters could be good or evil and people respond to them accordingly. The player at times prefers the evil protagonist, who is known to be a killer; more than the protagonist heroine character.

Information and explanations from concept artists and other professionals in the industry, will be helping to support the information in this essay. 

These individuals will be providing interesting perspectives from experiences and studies in the video game industry to help construct these video game personalities.   The essay will be based on the distinguished features of the game characters, what is conspicuous about these characters, what makes these gaming characters stand out from other characters, and why a large amount of the time is spent in the concept development stage to hone these gaming characters. 

extra information on other game personalities

 A more contemporary game involves Ratchet & Clank: it had its 10^th year anniversary in 2012. John Fiorito was an environment art director on the PlayStation 2. The original concept for ratchet and clank series came out from Spyro: Year Of The Dragon and looking and spending a year developing another game called ”I-5 or girl with a stick” and its demise, that left them with a few months, to present a new concept on a game in an alien galaxy which featured lots of gadgets, developing the whole world, animation , sounds characters, Dave Guertin created these early sketches of the heroes. The idea for ratchet was to create a spunky alien with gauntlet. A reptilian body gave him a relation to something earthly, the body eventually changed from reptilian to a cat, to show a diversity of ideas. 

John Fiorito, Ratchet & Clank: 10 Years of Concept Art, 2012 [online] available at: http://www.insomniacgames.com/ratchet-clank-10-years-of-concept-art/ [accessed 19^th November 2014]

Tomb Raider Part 1

When it comes to video game design, a strong female character is one of most loaded phrases. Lara Croft being the most famous woman in gaming, since its beginning in 1996, the character has attracted criticism for her physically appearance, she was in fact disproportionate to her body, in the remake they gave Lara more realistic proportion. They removed the over-sized breasts and removed the tiny waist; this changed the character from a sex object to a survivor admired by all fans. In the Tomb Raider reboot, Lara fades into her grueling, grey surroundings, her primarily focus is to save her friend Samantha another survivor in who was shipwrecked,Lara’s growth throughout the Tomb Raider is from a guilt-ridden girlhood into a lean, mean psychopath. 

Ria Jenkins, From Lara Croft to Bayonetta: what is a strong female character? 2014 [online] available at: http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/aug/05/lara-croft-bayonetta-female-games [accessed 20th November 2014]

The Skillful Huntsman part 7

The concept for the King started with Le stating, ‘I love drawing headpieces. You can definitely go wild with the design since he’s a king, so the more elaborate the better. The four headpieces have their own sense of character. The first is noble; the second is mysterious, while the third and fourth are feminine and spiritual.’ [p.126] . The drawing here shows how little details influence a character’s appearance. ‘Ever since I read the Dune book about the evil baron, I thought it was very cool that he had a personal vehicle to move him about in his palace. I wanted the king in this story to have the same type of mobility. Maybe his legs are too weak for walking much in his large castle, or maybe he’s just lazy.’[P.128] Stated Le. This gives you an idea of a different perspective of how the king is like, he’s too lazy to do anything or to move around, and maybe he’s a bit of a slob. Yoon had a completely different idea for the King; he wanted him to be this really intimidating character an authoritative figure that stands out from the rest. ‘I wanted him to be a very uptight, solemn, and authoritative figure’ states Yoon.  [P.130]

Designing the captain from the story was another difficult task , but Robertson states ‘Aggressive, mean-spirited characters are easier to draw and design because we can easily over exaggerate their personalities; they become stronger icons of evil full of danger, mystery, and excitement.’ This is not always the case. A character like Vlad from Far Cry 3 had a lot of difference characteristics. Yamada states ‘I saw the captain as an imposing figure, but incredibly weak at the same time. We know that his moral fortitude does not match his physical one.’  [p.140]In contrast Yamada gives his own perspective for the evil character; he wanted to give the illusion of the character being strong, because of all the burden of his amrour, but weak because underneath that armour he’s really just a slender figure. Yoon ‘I kept in mind that the captain would be a wicked, greedy character.’ [P 141]  Yoon expresses this in his sketches in page 141, one could see the wide smile in some of his characters and the character looks incredibly witty. He also gave the Captain a religious look to his robes. This was to contrast the captain as he is an indication of evil. Yoon states ‘This image of good contrasts well with his evil motives.’ This is a tactic used by plenty of game companies; one could clearly be seen in Final Fantasy or Devil May Cry. Robertson adds a very interesting point following his students work. ‘Generally speaking, people view round shapes as friendly and angular shapes as mean or aggressive.’[P.142] Sharp heads are generally are seen as more dangerous and less friendly characters. In comparison round are more seen as genuine friendly characters, take Super Mario for example, and compare this with a character Waluigi. Normally a person won’t touch something that is pointy, or has a sharp edge, because this kind of reminds the person of a knife, while a round thing brings back memories like a ball. A clear experimentation of different media, armour designs, it all goes throughout an artist’s mind when creating these characters. 

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Reference:

McCaig, I. 2005, THE SKILLFULLHUNTMAN, Visual Development Of Grimm Tale At Art Center College Of Design. Hong Kong, Design Studio Press.

The skillful huntsmen part 6

Developing the guard dog, specifically a guard dog that scared giants Felix states ‘I had a messed-up, brutal creature in mind. First of all, it needed to be mean enough to have discouraged three giants. And its appearance would give us an idea of even greater potential dangers lying ahead for the huntsman.’ States Yoon in contrast Le wanted to make the character a family pet ‘it would be funny to see that three giants were afraid and deterred by a cute little pup.’ [P. 108]

 For The Princess the students gave a similar exploration, alike the huntsman.  Yamada states ‘I was attempting to accomplish this difficult balance between graceful/feminine and awkward/immobile.’ [P.112] Le finds new exploration through his silhouettes in order to create the dresses. Robertson states ‘We are so conditioned to reading subtle body language that we cannot help but assign feeling to the pose of the figure and a like or dislike for the design.’ Yamada sates ‘he was inspired by sketches by Iain McCaig and Dermot Power in the Art of Star Wars:Episode II: Attack of the Clones and tried to give the princess a similar feel. I played with contrasting large areas of flowing fabric with bound areas. I wanted her to be noble and proud, but also to give slight hints of contradiction. As we know, she eventually renounces her royal lifestyle to go live alone in the forest.’ [P.112] Contrasting personalities is the most difficult thing to make out of a character and then creating a visual analysis of the character. Robertson states ‘Most young designers don’t realize that graphic design is a huge part of entertainment design. Last on the list of development is the surfacing.’ [p.118] this is an important statement, because this is where graphic design enters conceptual drawing, it’s a mix of art and design which releases these characters a perfect mixture of both drawing and design. Yoon went a complete opposite style from the hunter, ‘since the hunter that I drew had an old, ancient style to him, I wanted the princess to be very clean, sleek, and elegant.’ He adds in ‘I tried to incorporate bold yet simple graphic designs into her costumes.’ [P.122] He takes the next step into giving the princess expression, by giving her facial features, her pose, it all comes together, people can see that she is not a fragile princess, but adventurous she wants out of the castle, and she needs to find a mean to get there.

Reference:

McCaig, I. 2005, THE SKILLFULLHUNTMAN, Visual Development Of Grimm Tale At Art Center College Of Design. Hong Kong, Design Studio Press.

The skillful huntsman Part 5

Le finds inspiration from Legos, and making origami from when his childhood, he states ‘those fond childhood memories have a lot to do with why I’m so obsessed with visual construction.’[p.94] in his sketches, one could see the blocky, feeling, and the roundish textures in these visual constructions.  Yoon creates interesting bird’s-eye view, a view seen from above, to show his composition of the different rooms, in this case the princesses bedroom, the reason for this as Yoon states ‘This lets us observe the scene without being in it, and makes the moment between the huntsman and the sleeping princess more intimate.’ Yoon was inspired by Art Nouveau. ‘Art Nouveau quality which is why I stuck the curving shapes’ states Yoon [P.96] after this step, he changes the mood of the bedroom, by giving a dramatic lighting effect, this helps create a mood. Yoon drew these colossal interiors, and it conveys this immense scale of space inside the castle. Yoon adds in another area the castle stairway this is the area where the huntsman picks up the sword. ‘I wanted to give a solemn, Gothic feel while keeping the fairy-tale-like dreamy quality. The heaviness of the staircase evokes the power of the king, the marble communicates his wealth’. This is a powerful trait in concept art. How the world immerses renders itself into the audience. Just in case the area was locked, Yamada wanted to create a secret side entrance. ‘I was trying to explore this idea about a secretive side entrance into the castle something almost like a sewer tunnel or an aqueduct. It needed to be very simple, abstract, and moderately organic, yet not. It becomes a nice transitional space between a more formal environment (forest) and a more chaotic one (castle). I drew on an organic approach to classical architecture with a bit of the French comic artist Moebius thrown into the mix.’ [p.100] Yamada looks at other perspective into the field; he also finds influences from other artists. Meobius is the nickname for Jean Giraud a French comic artist.  

In the development of the castle, Yoon states ‘The birds in the background give some movement to the image, and are light and ephemeral while the castle is solid and staid. The birds are free to stay or go and do as they please; the princess who resides here is not.’ [P. 105] this gave me a new perspective to the story, I didn’t realize a small detail like adding birds or something miniscule to the background could help ideally, create movement. Scott states ‘Felix took a more historical approach to the design of the castle. When designing a period piece, it can be very difficult because everyone already knows what the thing should look like. If you stray too far from familiarity, the piece will not feel correct to your audience.’ The historical elements are difficult to portray because there has to be a balance between, familiarity and a new construction. [P.105] 

Reference:

McCaig, I. 2005, THE SKILLFULLHUNTMAN, Visual Development Of Grimm Tale At Art Center College Of Design. Hong Kong, Design Studio Press.