Nathan Dobson: Games art 2024-25

 Weapon design sheets I started with designing the look of the Asterian weapon set. I had originally intended on giving them some sort of sub-machine gun or light rifle but after delving further into their character I decided a hand cannon was more fitting - 1 as a show of strength and 2 as a sign of skill as to wield one of these takes both, (in my mind the strength of will of the pilot increases the actual strength of the frame).  As you can see from these two images i leaned heavily into the hand cannon direction. Using the guns the miniatures already had as a reference I tried to mix my own style and the scytales aesthetic with it to create a weapon that fit into the pre-established world and was something that I enjoyed drawing - I usually stay away from rounded guns but I could justify a few sharp edges by way of my characters general disposition and aesthetic. I end up taking the middle one further, creating an orthographic sheet for it. Next up is the Stalker. This ide...

Midpoint Reflection To reflect so far I think my designs came out quite well and I hit the majority of my goals throughout this half of the project. Using the Miro board to keep track of my progress and set new goals using a to do list was a massive help, its far simpler than a Gantt chart and allows for more flexibility - this is something I am going to continue to use for the next part of my project.  I believe I have had a good deal of success in this portion of the project however I think that my compositions are still lacking. A lot of my personal pieces suffer from this as well, I intend to create something more cinematic when it comes to the composition of my environment pieces in 3d. I intend to do that by researching into some photography and film techniques to improve how I plan a shot and a scene.  Post Formative Feedback I went back to my research dossier and updated the strength and weakness section with a bit more info on how I'll help my strengths to overcome ce...

Key art Stalker This is the first sketch of my Plague Stalker unit. I thought of this pose just to show off what this character can do and to show how creepy it is acting as if you have just spotted it and it has spotted you. The eyes in the back are an abstraction of how it uses its vision and hones in on a target. This was a "failed" iteration of the Stalker Key art -  after meeting with Dave and Matt they said that having the focal piece of the image trying to be hidden was a good idea but difficult to execute I did have the idea to put a secondary character in the background in the same way they did but i ended up choosing my first sketch and they seemed to gravitate toward that one as well. With a little direction from Sam to exaggerate the pose I came out with the video below. I also to the scythe hand from this iteration and transplanted it onto the new piece. As you can see the pose changed slightly throughout the video most notably the position of the head - it now o...

 Shot analysis The shot I am choosing comes from Star Wars Visions episode 7 - The Elder This shot interested me as it's really simple but just based on the character acting and blocking of the scene you can actually gather a decent bit. The character is offset to the right hand side of the frame with his blades pointed toward the left implying he is facing another character in a battle we know this because you are highly unlikely to be in a poised  battle ready stance facing an opponent that has already fallen.  The smile the old man has on his face also says that he is excited with anticipation to an almost off-putting degree, potentially because he has confidence in his abilities, dual wielding blades of any kind and being giddy for battle at an advanced age also suggests immense skill, wisdom and battle experience.  Lighting doesn't have much of an impact in this still image - it's more focused on the pose and expression.

 Research into Anxiety There are many types of anxiety disorders we could attribute to our character. After discussing with my team we have come to the conclusion that our character has Generalised anxiety disorder and Social anxiety.  Generalised anxiety disorder or GAD is a disorder that causes feelings constant feelings of stress that can inhibit the daily tasks of life and these feelings are generally difficult to control. Other common symptoms include "Difficulty sleeping, feeling tense, stomach problems, low mood" - NHS List 2024. GAD is relatively common with about 1 in 25 people being affected by it in the UK as of 2022, there isn't a singular thing that causes GAD because; your environment, your own thought processes, your genetic traits may all predispose you to anxiety disorders of almost all kinds.  It seems that stressful situations in everyday life that are more likely to happen again can lead to developing any form of anxiety but more commonly GAD.  So...

UI Layers   From what I have been told by Kenny our games environment artist and programmer I have 3 layers to work with. The background, so the backdrop images, the midground which contains the characters however in my case the text boxes and lastly the UI layer which will contain the choice options.  This is the choice screen for whether you finish unpacking the things on your desk or unpack the clothes to go in the wardrobe. I created this by combining two images corresponding to the choice you have to make, erase half of one of the images and then merge those layers. Once they are merged I took away the colour using the HSV sliders decreasing the saturation turning it greyscale, I then added a more prominent divider, that completes the background layer. Next came the text box at the bottom, since the text is going to be unique for each choice I left the boxes empty. The triangles on either side of the screen are the choice buttons  This layer set up corresponds to how...

 Meeting Log 23/10/24 Meeting goals - Distribute roles within our group as well as preparation for the presentation. We looked over al the work had had so far for the game as well as discussing any issues we had during this phase. 1/11/24 This week we discussed the storyboards we might include for this project on top of that we considered the mechanics we could put into our game to make it more interactive. On top of that we looked into what is and isn't feasible to do in Ren'py. 13/11/24 We did some consolidation of the plot to shorten the total run time of the game and to reduce the amount of assets we would have to create. 22/11/24 During our lesson this week we had a talk about the rough outline of the story and developed anchor points for us to latch onto in terms of writing the script.  I was given Monday which consisted of the main character unpacking and introducing themselves to their flatmate. Seb chose Tuesday which is the Lunch scene and the induction day. Kenny go...

 Tommy Gun  This blog post will cover the creation of the tommy gun model for my character. This is the side on drawing I did for the tommy gun I didn't bother creating full orthographic drawings as the proportions are relatively simple and I can work out most of it while taking my own artistic license. This is the final geometry for the tommy gun I chose to omit the trigger as I wasn't aiming for accuracy nor do I intend to show this model in a close up shot.  Once i had this geometry finalised I created my UVs, the reason I didn't create them as I went is because I wasn't sure if I was going to make any more changes to my design which I did. I didn't want to have to remake UV'd sections that i had already done so I saved it for last.

 Post art review feedback This page will contain all of the major changes I made from the original designs to the polished versions My feedback from Matt and Dave was straight forward. All I need to do is sure up some proportions on my Cypher Scytale variant - specifically the width of the shoulders, the length of the waist proportionally and to narrow the upper legs quicker towards the knee. they said all i'd need to do is bring in the chest and shoulders slightly and maybe lengthen the waist /  shorten the chest to make the waist appear longer. To continue they also gave me some shape design tips. They told me to add a spike to the elbows and sharpen up some aspects to better convey the aggressive and brutal nature/ personality of the character I am designing as well as to fit with the pattern of spiked/ pointed elements on the legs and the helmet creating a three tiers of spikes. As for the Plague Stalker they didn't really give me much at all really - they seemed happy wit...