Quick Idea Sketches 1

Some sketches from my phone today for general idea generation. For the planes I wanted to see how far I can push the designs and them still being recognisable as planes.

A possible character design?

Vehicle Design Approaches Part 2 - Museum Primary Research

A bunch of picture research taken as Cosford RAF Museum. Chose my personal favorites to show but here's a download link for anyone interested in having the lot (Sorry for the few blurry ones, old camera wasn't the best) http://www.mediafire.com/file/2m74867zq3kyxkd/Hanger-Planes-Tanks.zip

Vehicle Design Approaches Part 1 - Fundamental Aspects

To give me a decent set of functional assets i'm going to begin by creating the rough version of the character's vehicle and a few enemy crafts. These assets are going to serve as high polys if I decide i'm happy with the designs. 

For the overall style of my game I want to have a lot of character and some exaggeration to really help everything stand out. My idea for the main vehicle is to have it tell a story about how the characters use it and have it reflect some of their personality, but my initial research is looking into finding the key aspects that make up certain types of vehicles to make them relatable to their real world counterparts.

The first point of research is looking at Scott Robertson's methods for creating his vehicle designs. In his book ''How to draw - Drawing and sketching objects and environments from your imagination'' he talks about how researching into how the type of vehicle functions is an important part of the process and this can help ground the designs in reality. An example for this would be looking into what makes an aircraft fly and finding what key visual aspects are required for the thing to actually fly. [Scott Robertson 2013] Page 123-125

Fig 1

I've created a quick example of how adding key visual details can help with the design.

In Fig 1 it's very obvious which of the 2 crafts is the faster. Even though the models are very basic the addition of the air intakes and change in body shape suggest that the right-hand craft is faster.

Fig 2 - Paul Townsend (Camaro)

This idea can also be taken further and key aspects of the design can be exaggerated beyond their normal size or shape to further influence how people perceive the design. This gives the vehicle a 'cartoon-ish and exaggerated look.' [Elite Streets Magazine. 2008] 

The use of exaggeration on Fig 2 makes the Camero look incredibly powerful because of the how much of the car is engine. This also makes a great focal point for distinguishing this car from others.

References

Janicek, J.R. "Paul B. Townsend - Concept Auto Art - Elite Streets Magazine Feature Artist".Elitestreetsmagazine.com. N.p., 2016. Web. 30 Sept. 2016.

Robertson, Scott. How To Draw - Drawing And Sketching Objects And Environments From Your Imagination. Culver City: Design Studio Press, 2013. Print.

Introduction

Previous Skills:

Before the masters course I studied at Staffordshire Uni on a BSc Games Concept Design course and completed that with a 1st. During my time there I learnt about how to create concept art for games mostly but in the 3rd and 4th year I expanded my interests to learning how to create game ready assets through the standard pipeline and the ability to program in unreal 4 using blueprints.

During my final year at uni I decided to focus on mostly expanding my 3D knowledge to prepare for creating my own fully 3D games.

My Website:

http://www.paulscottdesign.com/

My FYP flythrough:

My 2016 portfolio video:

Interests:

During my spare time I am always either creating or playing games. A lot of my games are real time or turn based strategies on my pc but I also love playing fast paced games like Doom and team based games like heroes of the storm or Overwatch with friends. I do also own a few consoles for easier access to games that can be played couch when friends come around but I like to stick more to my pc mostly.

Recently I've been working on 2 game projects, one is still in the programming stages and the other I have gotten to a point where it is can be played easily with tight controls and a good amount of visual assets. The more complete game is called Duel Jumpers and currently viewable on my portfolio under my game projects tab.  I also have a few other projects that were used to learn how to go about programming and developing my own games but I decided to move past these prototypes once I had a better understanding of the limits of what I can create. In my projects I strive to have everything created by myself so I have learnt everything required to create games as a solo developer.

Here is the current Duel Jumpers trailer: 

Project Idea:

My initial idea is to create a 3D sidescroller game in Unreal 4 which uses aspects of 3D which I would like to expand my knowledge on (Mostly hard surface and environment). The current idea revolves around a heavy use of vehicles and fun looking environments. A similar game to it would be Heavy Weapon but I feel that game lacks a lot of character in how it looks and feels and I want to expand on the features and ideas present in that type of game.

If it all goes well I want to split the gameplay into 2 different modes (vehicle and character modes) and each mode will play a little differently to give the player some variety. The vehicle one will be as described above, but the character mode will give off a metal slug vibe as I love those games and would like to explore how to create something similar.

Initial Research Ideas:

Design:

One of the 1st things I plan to look into is how to give the movement of the players vehicle a nice amount of character but still be functional. Generally I feel games from this genre have very static or boring animations for vehicles and I think experimenting with the character of the players movement could improve how it looks and feels substantially.

After getting a good feel for the characters I will then look at how to create fun level design using ideas from classic games and real life situations. For example looking at how the design of supermarkets lead people around and have all the snack foods near the end to reward impulse buyers after a long shop. Getting a nice pace for the games rewards will be useful for keeping players wanting to continue playing the game.

For the final design aspect at the moment, I want to look at why people enjoy customisation in games and what a good way of approaching this would be. I believe this will be useful for getting the players connected to the characters on a more personal level because they chose what they look like.

Art:

For art I'll mainly be looking at how to create assets that are full of character and are easily distinguishable from each other. This is a key part of the art in my opinion because a good character design can add a lot to the feel of the game and helps keep players interested in seeing what other cool designs the game has to offer. Making the characters easily distinguishable from each other at a glance will be useful for improving how quickly players can process and react to what they do.

Misc:

A look at how to create a UI that is implemented into the environment is something I think would be interesting. I think it could really improve the immersion in the world of a game when a lot of the UI is either visual changes or blending to the world itself.