Skyrim Part 2

The world of Skyrim has specific towns, like Riften. Riften's name came out because of the beautiful rift inside the city, the home of the thieves guild, so the player needs to be wary of the trade in this city. Solitude is the land of the imperials, the means of the empire, soldiers, a huge fort exterior, hard to get in and out, if the player has done wrong to the people of Skyrim.  

Sovngarde is the equivalent of Valhalla, the Nordic mead hall set in a dramatic northern valley to receive the warriors when they die. 

Whiterun is the complete classic example of the Nordic architecture. 

Windhelm is the oldest city in Skyrim, temples and the earliest of building imaginable stand there.

High Hrothgar, is the monastic order of the greybeards, the developed followers of the way of the voice ‘Dragon born’ the building itself, is reminiscent of a dragon spine and stretches out as a barrier.

Markarth is an ancient dwemer city built into the towering cliffs of the reach’s mountain range.

The skyhaven temples, leads you to obscure locations. 

The main story could be seen in Alduin’s wall. This depicts that in the past Alduin destroying the world, and a group of heroes banding together banishing Alduin and then the prophesied ‘Dovahkiin’ who will stand against him, this piece of art plays a pivotal role in the main quest. 

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

Venturing The World Of The Dragonborn- Skyrim Part 1.

The character ‘Dragon Born’ from The Elder Scrolls game IV, is a linear character made by the player themselves to explore the very flavor of the world of Skyrim. The player takes part as the salvation of the world, because he or she hones the skill of the ‘Dragon Tongue’ the ability to speak the same language as dragons, and is competent with the powers of dragons, being able to learn new abilities, to save the world. The character personality itself depends on the player, how the player wants to play the game is completely up to them, the player can be ‘evil’ or ‘good’ depending of what the players intentions are. The developer Todd Howard states “the world in our games is the main character” in this case I agree with him, a games personality is not just based on the character, but also the world, the areas, the inhabitants of that area, and it’s completely true in Skyrim’s case,but the game was so mesmerizing on its release, that gamers were posting videos, making comics of this game, thousands and thousands of fan art being generated.

In the game items help create a visual story, ‘the items try to tell the story with their placement’ [Anon states in page 173]. In this book there are plenty of fictional elements ‘Orcs’ are seen as primitive, less educated creatures, difficult to reason with in the game. The character at points needs to choose carefully, because certain elements can cause other characters to be hostile to the player. The player is faced with a difficult choice at the very beginning of the game, were he or she has to choose one of the two sides which are in war in Skyrim, which will lead, to half of the world being against the Dragonborn's decision




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

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The Skillful Huntsman Concepts Part 1

The book created was made to focus on the earliest stage of visual development, what typically occurs behind closed doors in art departments of feature films or video games.  


Starting with thumbnails Felix Yoon says he explores different ideas and directions to not limit himself, he wanted to give the hunter an Asian style to his costume. Scott Robertson who tutors the three students, mentions, that Yoon, uses a broad range of shape and design, the sketches present a lost line technique and a strong use of positive and negative shapes, which give an interesting character to the viewer. 

Mike Yamada, says starts character design with different exploration sketches, he starts with patterns and shapes, Yamada adds part of history and culture to give it a certain realism to the character.  He then goes and use a silhouette approach, to give an interesting shape to the character, with little details inside the shape, to give him a broad, slim or different body shape. Yamada later starts to establish a bulky feeling to the huntsman, he starts giving detail to the character, armour, weapons, and a theme, The headpieces designs aesthetics. Khang Le, starts with doodling on pages, giving certain importance to parts, like the face, body , he uses a series of interesting shapes and silhouettes to describe the character.

Le says ‘it is economical for clients and director to see a range of designs before committing time to any specific one,’ I believe this is an important stage in the initial stages. The sketches demonstrate successful variation, Robertson states ‘a designer can come up with a new aesthetic that nevertheless feels familiar and accessible’. 

The costume is important, Yoon focuses on the drapery, and carefully building these silhouettes. This gives an interesting movement, activity and texture to them in the eyes of the viewer. Le says that after the thumbnail phase is done, it all comes in rough sketching, everything that a character carries can help tell a story about them. Story means design and design will lead to  new ideas to the story. An item that can be of a family heirloom. Yamada starts to use different colour sets after deciding on the shape of the character. 

To create something one would need familiarity and having something abstract. Le says ‘Make an alien character too alien and the audience won’t relate to it’ I completely agree with this statement, a person needs something familiar to create such an enticing character. Le continues by saying ‘ This is the reasons why most alien design in movies have human features.’  The designs need to work with each other, when newer designs are made.
Le says, he uses pencils for most of his designs, because when he makes a mistake it can turn into details which he could not have thought otherwise.

Yoon soon gives he costume design different time periods, ancient costuming, he dropped the idea on the drapery because, he’s a traveling hunter, and 'I thought it would be inconvenient for a traveling hunter to wear drapery as part of his costume'. Yoon then comes out finalizing the look of the character. This is interesting because, looking at this procedure for just the protagonists takes weeks and weeks of group work, and different talents.

  

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

Literature review

The concept art in creating impacting game character personalities in the video games

Literature review

Introduction: 

The literature review is accumulated with information obtained from different areas in the study, and professionals in the fields, these themes are based on creating an impacting game character personality, the influences in putting realism in character development and it’s readability to the audience, the crucial procedure in creating a character that fits with the story. The paper shows different explanation of the topic, the primarily focus will rely on character personalities.

   

The Skillful Huntsman is a book edited and constructed with four individual concept artists, who opt to create a universe from scratch. Every individual member explains the process of creating a character which stands out. Three students Felix Yoon, Mike Yamada, Khang Le and their tutor Scott Robertson give an easily to understand, but crucial explanation of character development. From the beginning the hunter was developed to have an Asian appearance to his costume, Yamada starts researching history and culture to add part of realism to the story. Le stated [ p.32, 2005] ‘Make an alien character too alien and the audience won’t relate to it’ this statement is very interesting, a person needs something familiarizing to create an enticing character, Le added [p.32, 2005]   ‘This is the reasons why most alien design in movies have human features’ this quote is informative, however it feels like it constrains the character design. Yoon follows up with the costume design; he’s a traveling hunter, and Yoon States ‘I thought it would be inconvenient for a traveling hunter to wear drapery as part of his costume’ [p.36, 2005].  After establishing the character now it was time to create the world which revolves around the huntsman. Yoon starts with sketches by exploring structures and landscapes in different time periods. [Yamada, P 44, 2005] states ‘the world could become an additional character and give an additional sense of history’. [Le states P. 46, 2005] ‘The huntsman traveled about looked for work’ which opens a lot of different environmental designs. Le creates different types of transports; floating hovercrafts is a fan favorite in sci-fi films. Le states [p.54, 2005] ‘designs need to perform a function’ this is an interesting quote; because every form should perform a function.

This relates to the second literature piece, as director Todd Howard describes it in the Art of Skyrim specifically about the world of Skyrim, the character ‘Dragon Born’ from The Elder Scrolls game IV, is a linear character made by the player, to explore the world of Skyrim. In addition the developer [Howard 2011.p.4]  states “the world in our games is the main character” in this case I agree with him, a games personality is not just based on a person, but also a world, the areas, the inhabitants, and it’s completely true in Skyrim’s case. In the land of Skyrim there are several playable races, Argonians ,Breton, Dark Elf, High Imperial, Khajiit ,Nords, Orcs, Redguard and Wood Elf all of this can be seen in the introduction of the game. ‘With an expansive world for player exploration, environmental scenery is not only a defining aspect of the graphics, but a character itself’ states [Anon.1. P.190] The weather, changes, from calm to rainy, to snow, the game has a life of its own. The main inhabitants of Skyrim are Nords, [Anon.2. 195 states] ‘We depict the player as a male Nord to best illustrate the tone of the game’, which is understandable, however, a player can choose what is best for them, this is strongly based on opinion, the best thing about the story, is that the player gets to play it how they wish.

In contrast to this another professional that works in creating characters, Bruno Gauthier Leblac a concept artist who works inside Ubisoft, was asked to create one of the main antagonist characters for the game Far Cry 3. Vaas is one of the most prominent characters from the Franchise. The antagonist was originally called Bull. Leblac recalls (2012, pp. 64) Bull being ‘a brutish, aggressive, intimidating character with a face to prove it’, however he states that this is ‘a little generic’ and he changed the concept for Bull, he did a great job dealing with this and he managed to create one of the most interesting characters of the decade. Leblac came up with different styles. Leblac then creates the character appearance based on actors, Micheal Mando, a well-known actor that stars in the series Orphan Black. Leblac added that ‘Ubisoft is increasingly using actors to inspire at the concept/development stage of character creation’ alike the film industry, games have started announcing real celebrities to take part in their games. The name Vaas was used to the character, because it is an indirect way of the word meaning Pyro.  ‘Some of Vaas’s insanity is captured in his rough-shaved hair and the bandages on his fingers, covering scabs he incessantly picks at.’ (Leblac,2012, p. 64)added in ‘Few are aware that the three white straps hanging loosely across Vaas’s chest are an allusion to the three white stripes worn by military generals.’ This shows little details such as equipment creates interesting parts of these characters, the character renders very well with his surrounding, keeping that in mind Leblac equipped Vaas with pirate-terrorist clothing, to make him look like one of the locals in the game, which takes place on a deserted island. 

Conclusion:

The books and article provided me with inciting understanding of my topic, further my knowledge in creating impacting game characters and made things clear, in addition to my previous understanding in the field, I have accumulated from relevant research topics, to critically asses the topic and keep amassing further into this field.

The SkillFul Huntsman

Skyrim:

 Bull To Vaas

Reference: 

Dean, I, 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

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

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

A small bit of history of Pac Man & Super Mario

Pac man is one of the oldest games in history to reach the screen,  A huge percentage of gamers recognize this character. Toru Iwatani is the mastermind behind the Pac man title. Iwatani revealed a note book with the original pac-man concepts, mock ups of the game, the screen,and  character design. This Artbook showcases Pacman the simplicity when it comes to concept art.  One of the main influences of Pac-man and many of the games today is pong.

Super Mario another character, a friendly face, put into the gaming industry in 1980. Mario is now celebrating 30 years inside the gaming business, the game altered the look from the very first game, he was stared in which wasn't even called super Mario, the title of this game is Donkey Kong.


Shigeru Miyamoto was hired as a graphic artist by Nintendo in 1977, and he was a well investment in that, he was the starting idea of creating 'Jump Man' the official name for Super Mario, Super Mario uses his jump animation as a weapon to take care of his enemies.  Originally, when someone mentions Mario plenty of people, relate to the Super Mario games. 


Super Mario games globally sold has over 240 million units, and Mario appeared in 200 video games. The gaming industry. Nintendo was clever, it was hard to animate hair and facial expressions at that time, so they gave him a hat and mustache to match. Can one imagine super Mario without them? What one can see as a means of finishing the job, is actually what kept the Mario character so conspicuous from the rest of the game titles. 

The important part of this game is it changed the way how gaming is seen; it kick-started the way for other games, the path was cleared and the industry grew exceedingly.   The music also makes it easy to remember what it comes from, it inspired cartoons and movies, even his  short but sweet audio cue ‘it’s a – me!’ makes Mario so recognizable, Nintendo states that ‘Mario thrived because of his simplicity, which makes him readily adaptable to any environment, from his choice of clothing and the colour of the clothing.

Reference: 

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 19th November 2014] 

Pac man Revealed, Jeremy Swinarton, Febuary, 2012  [online] available at: http://gamerant.com/pacman-concept-art-revealed-js-27555/ [accessed 19^th November 2014] 

Feng Zhu and his Concepts.

To state when the concept art or concept design officially started is difficult, it was highly influenced in the 80’s by arcade games, but concept art  was not as polished as the contemporary concept designs of today. A person with a lot of knowledge in the field of concept art and one of my favorite concept artists of today is Feng Zhu. Feng Zhu has been working as a concept artist, drawing concept art for over then twenty years and has been in the industry for over then 20  years. 

Other than working in individual games, he produces work from history and feed them off to gamers and game companies. Zhu has preached and sold his concept to popular directors James Cameron, George Lucas, Michael Bay to video game producers Ubisof, EA, Microsoft and advertisements. He applies old tradition art movements into his style of art, this involves a combination of styles like Chairoscuro, sfumato and composition.The most impressive personality about his artwork is the ability of relating each artwork with a part of history to a completely new universe, difficult to imagine, and difficult to create. The gamer immerses themselves in this scenery, in a way Feng Zhu is creating a world out of history and imagination, one that people can relate to, for example: historical monuments and a different landscape. Zhu creates different eras from Medieval ages, to a science fictional world. 

Reference: 

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]

The change from Bull To Vaas

This is the standard procedure that Leblac undermines when creating his characters. Here’s a brief analyses, of creating a personality by an artist who’s been in the gaming industry for years, and is still making newer game characters up till this day

In this example, Bruno Gauthier Leblac a concept artist who works with Ubisoft, was asked to create one of the main antagonist characters for the game Far Cry 3, he is one of the most prominent character's from the Franchise. The antagonist was originally called Bull, he was meant to be a brutish, broad and intimidating character. The character’s face along was intimidating, he showed he means business, and would ultimately do it too. 

Leblac gave Bull huge defined muscles, scars, piercings to outline this character’s personality, resulting to creating a brute. Leblac thought this was too generic, and he changed the concept for Bull, he did a great job dealing with this and he managed to create one of the most interesting character's of the decade, even if the character's the definition of 'insanity' as Vaas's character's lines go. Leblac came up with different styles.



Pirate styles to be fit the game, more likely because the protagonist is stranded in a deserted island, with different types of psychopaths. The development of Bull changed to another character completely.  He used referenced work, terrorists influenced by pirates, to create this character.  Lablec started to give the character a more insane look and feel . Something to do with pyromancy, the character is demented and loves explosives.

Leblac then creates the character appearance based on actors such as Micheal mando, the looks are very close to Mando it is a bit uncanny. Ubisoft is using actors to inspire their characters, in more recent productions. The name Vaas was used to the character, as it is an indirect way of the word meaning Pyro.


  They start removing some more subtle clues to the character, for example removing burns, and giving him dark hair rather than red, this again to remove that generic feeling, or removing the cliche of the generic style Pyro. The 'sanity' of the character is captured by his hair, the bandages on his fingers, scratches, bruises, injuries along his body. The three white straps which are hanging loosely across Vaas’s chest are an indirect reference to the three white stripes worn by military generals, this is an interesting concept idea, it was difficult to notice, or even decipher this, because these little details build the characters. This shows little details such as equipment creates the most interesting parts of the characters.  Lablec says, he finishes a character and the more bizarre yet interesting thing is he feels the character is ready, and he did a good job of that character is if he feels the character is staring back at him.

Reference:

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

Game personalities/characters

Gamers understand that a good game character makes the story, but in order to make that game character, there is a lot of thought in the Pre-production involved. One of the main stages of pre-production to games is called concept art or conceptual design, which is fundamentally is visual brainstorming, this essay focuses on what creates character’s personality, but who are these personalities and why does the consumer or gamer remember them for such a long time, why do they keep on making reboots, and more games for these characters, as if these characters have a life of their own. Consumers and artists argue that these characters do “exist”. These game characters sometime relates to the consumer in some way or another. For example: the background information, where the character originates  from, the clothing style, the situation the character is placed in, the characters own emotions, the era, society, how the character acts in circumstances in example: when the character’s life is placed in certain situations, games are becoming realistic in contemporary times, in fact, some games released a permanent death option to these characters, where the game would have to be restarted, Heavy Rain is one example.  The consumer reacts to characters differently, the game characters production is there and there is either love or hatred expressed for that character. The characters could be evil or good, and people respond to them appropriately. The consumer at times prefers and loves the evil protagonist, who is known to be a killer; sometimes people love the antagonist character more than the actual protagonist.  To back up this information the following concept artists, and other professionals in the industries, will be giving the following deliberate indication and explanation of what processes the artists go to in order to create such a character.  The essay will be also based on the eminent features of the game characters, what’s conspicuous about these characters, what makes these gaming characters stand out from the rest, and why a lot of time is spend in the concept development stage to hone these gaming characters out. 

Reference links/sources:

Conceptartworld , 2012, The Secret World Concept Art [online] available at: http://vi.sualize.us/link/?rid=YTdkNGMwMjUzYWZmZWNmOTJmYjRjM2JmZDc5NGM4NzE~&rel=eyJwZXJwYWdlIjoxMiwiZXhjbHVkZSI6WyIzOTU2ODMzIl0sImN1cnJlbnR1c2VyaWQiOm51bGwsIm5zZndpbWFnZXMiOmZhbHNlLCJtb2RlcmF0ZWRpbWFnZXMiOmZhbHNlLCJiTWVkaWEiOiIwIiwidGFncyI6WyJjb25jZXB0YXJ0Il19&url=aHR0cDovL2NvbmNlcHRhcnR3b3JsZC5jb20vP3A9NjA4Mg~~ [accessed 9^thNovember 2014]

Maurice Mitchell , 2013 11 Concept Art Designs That Changed Movie History Forever [online] available at: http://filmsketchr.blogspot.com/2013/05/11-concept-art-designs-that-changed.html [accessed 29th October 2014] 

Aaron Torres, 2013, Resident Evil 6 Art Book, [online] available at:http://tiempocio.com/en/resident-evil-6-art-book/ [accessed 29th October 2014]

A little bit of concept art history

A little bit of history:

Concept artists for games became important in the 1980s.  This is when, games moved away from generic games like pong into science fictional to adventure games and eventually to popular movie titles like alien, star wars and  predator.

Originally, concept art became more trendy in the early 1990s. As a part of gaming, a lot of popularity to concept art started with animation, popular concept designers like Syd Mead main role is to create and provide visual entertainment.

Visual entertainment is a subdivision of concept art in general, the aesthetic look to characters and creature in concept art had advanced in the mid-2000s, popular game titles like that of Tomb Raider, Solid Snake from Metal Gear Solid etc, were transformed immensely after the 1990's. 

Conceptartworld , 2012, The Secret World Concept Art [online] available at: http://vi.sualize.us/link/?rid=YTdkNGMwMjUzYWZmZWNmOTJmYjRjM2JmZDc5NGM4NzE~&rel=eyJwZXJwYWdlIjoxMiwiZXhjbHVkZSI6WyIzOTU2ODMzIl0sImN1cnJlbnR1c2VyaWQiOm51bGwsIm5zZndpbWFnZXMiOmZhbHNlLCJtb2RlcmF0ZWRpbWFnZXMiOmZhbHNlLCJiTWVkaWEiOiIwIiwidGFncyI6WyJjb25jZXB0YXJ0Il19&url=aHR0cDovL2NvbmNlcHRhcnR3b3JsZC5jb20vP3A9NjA4Mg~~ [accessed 9^th November 2014]

Maurice Mitchell , 2013 11 Concept Art Designs That Changed Movie History Forever [online] available at: http://filmsketchr.blogspot.com/2013/05/11-concept-art-designs-that-changed.html [accessed 29th October 2014] 

Aaron Torres, 2013, Resident Evil 6 Art Book, [online] available at: http://tiempocio.com/en/resident-evil-6-art-book/ [accessed 29th October 2014]