Jake Brooks: Games Art 2024-25

 Building Alliances: Final Overview Personal Reflection What went well? Over the course of this project, I have been in the role of the director of my group. This role consisted of a lot of things, many of these responsibilities unexpected to me. I was in charge of steering my group in the right direction, and helping out with all the various parts of the project. One thing I didn't expect was how large and varied the workload would be, with every task I was tackling with my group being different than the last. This is great for working within the creative pipeline with a group, as it leads to a varied skillset, even if it can be very demanding at times. One of the responsibilities I took on as the director was also fulfilling our need of research, and shifting the schedule around to accommodate myself and my team to do so. I think I handled the role very well. From the start I knew I would have to handle my work in a timely manner to not only set an example for my group, but also ...

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 Building Alliances: Final Presentation Work With all my work on this project now finished, the only thing left to do was add my work to the presentation. It is one of my key responsibilities to shorten everything to a reasonable level when going into it to make it reasonable, with enough substance to keep interest. Next, I made a section for the harpoon gun, showing how I put the style we chose into practice, as well as about how we remain committed to the art style we have chosen, which I say on behalf of my team as the director. Next I did a slide on the Newton Building I modelled, talking about the variety in approach to style for our models. For the next few slides, I just added the assets I have created with no text, since the sections already had writing that pertained to the assets. Next I spoke about the UI ideas I had, whilst justifying it with the context of the game in mind. Next I elaborated on the ideas I had to implement the effects of flooding into our game. Finally...

 Building Alliances: Final Target Audience One of the pieces of feedback that specifically applied to what I did for the first presentation pitch was regarding how I approached target audience. I mentioned what age group would possibly be most interested in the environmental issues showcased in game. Another factor I forgot to mention was the monetary side. For this blog, I will be justifying the target audience chosen in these slides below in the financial sense too: In this, I reference the PEGI age rating system. the ratings we aimed for were 16+ or 18+. This was because of some of the content within SOLASTALGIA being dark and not suitable for children, but also because as previously stated, this age group cares most about the environment.  In terms of which age groups spend the most time on video games, J. Clement (Statista, 2024) showed that it tends to be those in their 20s and 30s. These age groups are most likely to be playing games that target them, so that is why it...

 Building Alliances: Flooding Effects and Gameplay ideas For the upcoming presentation pitch, I have decided to work on different pieces of research regarding the game we are designing. This helps us through the creative pipeline, as research can be used to make parts of the game more accurate and immersive. According to wavin, "Urban flooding caused by heavy rainfall can quickly escalate into a full-scale urban crisis. Power outages, road gridlock, business disruption and unclean water are just a few of the problems that can wreak havoc in an urban community." This could not only give a reason for the amount of flooding in the game, but the effects of such a catastrophic flood too. We could adapt some of these into gameplay mechanics, such as unclean water being a danger to the player, and power being a valued resource that is hard to get to. As the director, it is worth it to bring these ideas to my team, suggesting them as potential gameplay ideas, as it is a part of the c...

 Building Alliances: UI Ideas Before the pitch presentation, I wanted to draw an idea each for an inventory system, and a HUD (Heads up display) for the player. I will explain each element and why it is placed where. To begin, as usual with the creative pipeline, I needed a mood board, but I used the previous one I made for environments. This makes my workflow a lot quicker with a reusable mood board. For this, I tried to go for a more minimalist approach, with only showing the health bar, stamina bar, ammo count and active quest/goal. This is so immersion for the player is at it's highest it can be, as I didn't want anything beyond the necessary information to be taking up vital space. I also didn't want to have a mini-map, as I want the player to be focusing more on what is in front of them rather than a map with points of interest. For the inventory, I was thinking of something simple like this. The stats are shown on the left side and the inventory slots on the right. T...

 Building Alliances: Final Concept Work For the final concept work I, as the director, will be creating a creature character sheet, a character sheet for my existing character and an environment. It is good to know to be realistic, and with the amount of research work and 3D work I want to do, I won't be as much of a contributing force to 2D for reasons previously mentioned in the Directors Responsibilities post. To start off with, I started drawing the creature character sheet. I wanted to design a creature that is more horrific in its nature, so to do this I started with the idea generation. I wanted this creature not only to be leaning more into horror, but I want it to inhabit dark spaces, perhaps the waters in flooded buildings. This also gives me a reason to play around with negative space, which is what my plan was. My initial design was this: With this design, I think I did a good job using negative space. I also think I made this creature look scary, and I think it's h...

  Building Alliances - Modelling the Newton Building Following on from my last post, I wanted to make a landmark building to fulfil my own requirements for 3D modelling. Since I live in Nottingham, I really only had to think about what stands out to me the most that is within reason to model in time for the final pitch presentation. The Newton Building, a part of Nottingham Trent University stood out to me as an obvious choice, so I went with that. Before any 3D modelling though, I needed to decide on some things, including researching the building itself. Firstly, I decided on not sketching or using my own orthographic drawings for this model. This project has definitely changed my workflow in terms of 3D work, since this is the first time I've attempted modelling a real, existing building. The reason I decided to do this is because overall it takes less time, and I feel it is unneeded if I am modelling a real building, with a real reference that exists. This all links in wit...