Industry Practice - Session 2: Game ideas, and the formation of Mask Studios

Industry Practice - Session 2: Game ideas

This week we were assigned to our teams: the team I was with included myself (Character art lead), Sam (Director), Katie (Overall story lead), Damian (UI and backgrounds lead), and Faye (Research lead). The first thing we did was establish the brief we were given.
We were to design a interactive fiction game working as a studio in collaboration with each other that is themed around mental health. We also were going to use a Miro Board to put down our ideas as a group, so we could see what we had all done. Before we actually started to come up with ideas for our game, we began to look at other games for inspiration, whether this be for relations in the theme of the game to our brief, the visual novel/ interactive fiction elements, or simply because we like the style of the game/media.
The list was:

Bad End Theatre 

Don’t Open Your Eyes

Faith

Sally Face

Keep In Mind

We Happy Few

In Sound Mind

Shut In

House 

Omori

Ib

The Witch’s House 

Mad Father 

Soma

Little Misfortune 

Fran Bow 

Darkwood

Neon White

Persona V

Mind Scanners

Inside

Limbo

No Skin

Slay the Princess

That’s not my Neighbour

Have a nice death

Zoochosis


We then started to think about actual ideas for the game. After discussing it as a group, we came to the idea of the premise being about a therapy session, in which the player controls the therapist. This allows the player to take a more 'observational' role in the game, whilst still having an impact on how characters open up, and without it feeling like characters are giving forced exposition. Also we came to the decision of giving each person within our studio their own character to work with. This could give each person a way to show off their artistic skills, as well as being able to focus on their characters problems and possibly ways to overcome them or bring attention to them. We also began to think of a way to add a formula to these characters, as a way to keep them in line with each other.

An element I suggested was the idea of using colour schemes to represent our characters trauma - Every colour has meaning associated with it, so we can use negative traits associated with the colour we pick for our characters. If there is no negative meaning associated with a colour, we can simply invert the positive meaning of the colour to end up with a negative meaning (For example, brown can often mean stability or reliability, but inverted in can mean boring or predictable. We could use this to create a character who has trauma about being lonely and finding it hard to make friends.)


Because each of us wanted to experiment with our characters and their designs, we decided on having two versions for our characters. The first is a monster version - since we like elements of horror, we wanted to have the initial versions of the characters as monsters since we could include more elements of their trauma. The other version is a humanoid version - a less monstrous version, where the character are on the right track to resolve their issues and taking steps to recovery.


Another thing is we were going to have each character wear masks. These were more literal, physical representations of their trauma, which in their humanoid versions could be taken off, as if they are separating from what is tying them to their problems.


With this, it was time to move onto research for my character.


Character ideas:

In class, I researched colour meanings so that I could create a character. I used the website Color Meanings to look into the meanings of colours. I decided on white, grey and black for my colour scheme, since I could use my character as a representation of depression. In terms of what I wanted my character to actually be, I wanted to lean into them being a jester. This is because I was thinking of them using self-deprecating humour throughout the therapy session as a coping mechanism. This is actually a real-life thing, as evidenced in the blog titled "The Relationship between Humour and Depression" (Gil Greengross Ph.D. 2019).


With this done, the last things to do to get my initial ideas down were to create a mood board, and fill everything out on the group Miro board.


Here is my moodboard:


This is the overall Miro board -
And this is my section so far:










Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Toolkit 3D - Character Sculpt Project

Image
 Toolkit 3D - Character Sculpt Project Research and Thumbnails For the 3D side of toolkit, our project was to create a character from one of many briefs. With a specific style and inspiration I am already fond of, I chose brief number one: the Cybernetic Samurai. Looking at the brief I have chosen, it states that the character needs to be " A fusion of traditional samurai armour with futuristic robotic enhancements, glowing energy veins, and a mask that combines human features with mechanical parts." This is a lot of specific details to unpack, so I created a diagram of the different features that I could add to as I research. By treating these different sections as whiteboards, I can research them individually so that I have lots of ideas I could add into the thumbnails.  As usual with 3D modelling, I started with researching specific styles to use as inspiration. Style Research To start with, I began by looking at games before individual artists. I first looked at Bomb Rus...
Read more

Toolkit 3D - In-Engine 3D Character Modelling Process

Image
 Toolkit 3D - In-Engine 3D Character Modelling Process This blog will include the timelapse, and timestamps referring to said timelapse with explanations. I normally take screenshots as I work, and annotate those, but I feel that I want to try a different method of documenting my process since screenshots can be disruptive. Firstly, as a refresher, my final design for my character is below. Normally, I would bring this into the 3D software so I could have the reference there, but I opted not to do this. I find references in ZBrush to be disruptive more than anything towards my workflow, and I prefer working with the reference in another monitor whilst sculpting, rather than it being in the software. Here is the timelapse, which I will reference when giving a timestamp and explaining my process. STEP 1: CREATING THE MESH The Body For this model, I wanted to push myself out of my comfort zone a lot more than last project. Last time, I heavily relied on Blender, only really using ZBru...
Read more