Jake Brooks: Games Art 2024-25

 Building Alliances Discussion of the Director role As the director of my group for this project, it was important for me to look at the different responsibilities of my role. The first thing that was important to understand was the director role isn't about telling people what to do and not contributing beyond that. The art director role involves making creative decisions along with the rest of the team that make the most sense for whatever we are doing, basically acting as a "tiebreaker". As the director, I also am in charge of choosing which paths we pursue and discussing it with the team, offering them options as a group and working alongside them with whatever I set them. For example, there are some cases where I will set thumbnail work since we need to thumbnail more for specific parts of the project, but I will also contribute this work too. Another role of the director is Roadmapping, which is where we will all will have input as a studio, but I will effectively p...

 Building Alliances - Concept Art As the director, I gave my team the instructions to create two different pieces of concept art after our discussion about style and the story brief. I believe this would give us a great starting point for the pitch in terms of our 2D assets. For my two pieces, I chose to do an environment and a character. First up was the environment. I made this using a two point perspective grid, and using the top of the Victoria Centre in Nottingham as reference. I tried to construct the lines that would give me the best guide when it came to actually drawing it. I also took some creative liberty and added a platform at the front for a character to stand on. Using the guides I had created, I made this concept piece. This probably isn't something that will make it into the final pitch as a piece of finalised concept art since I don't think it has the unique aesthetic we are going for, but this is definitely something I will iterate on - Which serves its purpo...

 Reflection and SMART Target Reflection Reflecting on the project so far, the presentation and my role: I have felt confident in some areas I didn’t expect. For example, when giving the pitch, I was much more well-spoken than I thought I would be. I attribute this to the fact that I knew what I was doing throughout the pitch presentation, especially when talking about market analysis and the character I designed. We also went through our team roles as a part of the pitch, and I think I showed what I do and how that links in with the project to the full extent. In terms of my team, I think I work with them really well – We offer each other feedback on designs and choices we make within the project so that we all have a similar vision with clarity on what our next move as a group will be. I think this part of the project alone has drastically changed my outlook on the games industry, as now I know how to take feedback in as a part of a workflow, without incorporating after the fa...

  2D Toolkit - Anatomy Wireframe In this session, we looked at how anatomy works within a posed wireframe. For this, we started by drawing the basic wireframe shapes of a posed character. I drew the front and back here, and to make it more accurate I drew lines across so it matched up. I also had to remember there was one foot forward, and focused on that for the backside to make it more accurate. After this, I switched to a different colour pen and tried to draw the muscles over the wireframe. Some of these were mostly accurate, but some were too far apart or not accurate enough to where they actually should be. One area I mostly struggle with is the legs, since I find it hard to place the knee and how all the muscles work around the thigh area. This is easily visible below by removing the wireframe. I drew a loose diagram of the basic muscle anatomy of the torso and thigh to look at how the muscles properly connect from the front. I am going to be drawing poses from the front and...

 Toolkit 3D - Insert Multi Mesh (IMM), ZSpheres, & Base Mesh Creation In this session, we first looked at the IMM brushes.  We access the insert brushes by pressing B and I to open this menu. In this menu, we can see the IMM tools listed as such. Using these, we can effectively use objects as brushes. This is great for creating things such as skulls or something else that requires repetitive shapes to be used, and can cut down on time in a workflow. We can also use Dynamesh (a tool I have previously shown) to meld all meshes into one. We can additionally use reverse Dynamesh to subtract from a mesh by using CTRL + ALT + dragging empty space with an insert brush and holding ALT at the same time. Next we looked at Zspheres. To use Zspheres on a pre-existing mesh, we go to the side bar (where it says simple brush) and select Zsphere where it says Sphere3D. Now using this, we can use the tool to block out shapes of whatever we want to create. Its also a great way to do other t...

 Industry Practice- Powerpoint and Thumbnails For this session, We settled on a game name: A Monster Problem. We also started creating our pitch PowerPoint. Below are the notes the director (Sam) took this session relating to what we had to do after we had a group discussion about it. Describe our roles PC platform Each person describes their own character/struggles + Concepts Synopsis for game Moodboards Genre - Casual Horror/Mystery/Psychological (Little Miss Fortune, Fran Bow) Mechanics Everyone had to create a slide of their choice, as well as a slide about their character relating to our game. We also did the slides in lesson that required input from us all. Now with these done, I moved onto my section. My first slide was were I looked into different games and the correlations between the games that do the best on Itch.io (where we plan to release the games). This was my first slide - I looked into different games on Itch.io relating to our game's potential tags, and did rese...

Building Alliances - Research and Gameplay Ideas In this weekly session, we spent our time going through different parts of our game pitch, finally settling on gameplay elements, as well as looking into different research paths to go down. As the director, I decided to do this early, and right after establishing our stylistic choices. This is so we can be sure of everything before developing our ideas more, and therefore make everything consistent to the theme and genre we are going for. Firstly we decided on the name of the game. We wanted to go for something in line with what the game is about. After researching it, we found the word Solastalgia, which is the feeling of distress one may feel when their sense of place is disrupted by environmental changes. After discussing with the group, we all thought this would be a great fit for the name, so we went with it.  Name of the game: Solastalgia For the research, we wanted to have most of these done by the first pitch presentation, s...

 Toolkit 3D - Deformation and Polygroups This session, we started by looking at the deformation palette, which can be found in the Tool menu on the side. This provides ways to sculpt 3D objects using the unique effects found within the menu - To see these changes happen, we have to make sure our canvas is in transform or edit mode. Each deformation effect can be constrained to any of the axis by pressing the corresponding letter. Deformation also respects masking and polygroups made too. the deformation palette can be seen on the right, within the tool menus. Before using them, it is important to go over what polygroups are. Polygroups allow us to organize the mesh into groups. Another way to do this is through sub-tools. The difference is that sub-tools are different pieces of geometry, whereas polygroups are simply separate selection areas. In the image above, we already have polyframe activated, which needs to be turned on to assign a polygroup. Then, we mask out an area. For th...

  2D Toolkit - Digital Perspective Grids In this session, we went through the process of creating perspective grids, in an industry standard software - Adobe Photoshop.  For this, we start by creating a new file. After we select the template, we then extend the canvas, and change the extensions colour (This is so we can easily see our vanishing points.) We also add margins using the rulers, to create the lines our vanishing points will sit on. After this, we then create our measurements on the grid by selecting the polygon tool, and changing the settings. We change the number of faces (the more faces the more measurements) to something high, and then we change the star ratio to 1%, and turn on the from centre option. After this, we change the fill colour (For the sake of seeing what line comes from where I made them different) and removed the outline. Using this, we now have two vanishing points and the measurements required for a two-point perspective grid. If we want to chan...

   Building Alliances - Group Discussion: Style As mentioned in the previous blog post, I organised a group meeting, where we discussed the style of  the game we are designing. Everyone brought their own ideas to the table and explained why they think we should go that direction, and since it was a discussion, I constantly asked others what they thought of certain suggestions. As the director, I feel it is very important to establish a clear loop of feedback early on between group members so that we design the best assets possible. Below are the terms and talking points of the meeting, and below that are the notes I took from the discussion. The notes are in red, as well as my mood board I referenced for my own style. Rosie: Jujutsu Kaisen Manga  (Gege Akutami 2018-2024)   art style as the main inspiration for style. Emphasis on heavy line art. Rugged and sharp lines. Lines are messy but with a purpose - that being making the characters look more battleworn and ...

   Building Alliances - Style Moodboard This week in session we had less time than we usually do. Therefore as the director I made the decision to use this session to instead plan out what to do next. We want to be at a stage where we can spend next weeks session making thumbnails and developing ideas as a group. For this reason I wanted everyone to make a style mood board, so I set this as a task. This could be any style they want, but I wanted to make sure they do it before Saturday so that we can discuss it with each other and move forward to create concept art with our chosen style in mind.  I also wanted to pick up speed and partly because we are mimicking an actual studio, I told my team that if they did not have a mood board by Saturday, that we would be continuing the discussion without their input. As the director it is up to me to choose when me move between stages, and I did this because I want us to be at the asset-designing stage next week no matter what. Her...