Backstory Brief

Introction In the blog, we are going to be planning a 2D game as a group, titled ‘escape from Coleg Gwent’. In our group, we have set each other roles. For this project, I will be responsible for the narrative and gameplay. Initial Ideas Our group discussed different approaches we could take for this project,…

Evaluation

Introduction In this blog, I will be referring to my previous work on visual, audio and interactive workshops and reflect and evaluate them and how I felt about the work. Visual For the visual element of these workshops, the blogs we made consisted of mainly a lot of animation work, researching game styles we liked…

Game Dev – Research and Introduction

Introduction In this blog, we will be planning our development for a 2D game in groups of three, Regan, Aaron and I. For this blog in particular, we need to conduct some research on three separate aspects – visual, audio and interactive units. Visual For this section of the project we need to take into…

Game Dev – Planning/Ideas

Introduction Using the past recent workshops about animation cycles, sprite making, audio terminology and the work we were taught about Unreal Engine, we have to get into groups and begin planning for a 2D game. So for this group work, we had to assign each other roles. Aaron – Animation, Graphics Regan – Programming, Audio…

Special Effects Recording

Introduction In this lesson, we will be looking into audio effects, similar to foley artists and their professions. During this lesson, we discussed the special effects that can be created through sound and audio. For this, we discussed what foley artists were as a group and created a blog about it. (See on my blog…

Sound Effects In Unreal Engine and Audition

Introduction In this workshop, Gareth will be going through how to add audio in Unreal Engine in the blueprints etc. I am referring to a recording for this blog so any work that I’ve not included I was not able to find in the recordings. In Unreal Engine, a trigger box is a selected area…

Rigging a Character – Jump Cycle

iNTRODUCTION This part of the workshop, in my opinion, will involve most work and movement. A jump animation includes movement of the arms and legs, and maybe a bit of the head and body. Character Jump cycle A jump animation needs build up/anticipation before taking a jump. Some video games add a delay to their…

Rigging a Character – Idle Animation

Introduction Next, in this blog we are continuing the after effects animation work on rigging and animating the ninja character. For this blog, we are focusing on animating a simple idle animation – this requires less movement. Character Idle Animation A character idle animation is a subtle movement animation that represents the character is still…

Rigging a Character – Run Cycle

Introduction In this blog we will be animating the run cycle for our ninja character in adobe after effects. Character Run Cycle Next we are going to begin to give our character a run cycle. Before we can start any animating, we need to understand the movement and key poses of a run cycle. For…

Rigging a Character – Walk Cycle

Animating Ninja – ADOBE ILLUSTRATOR/AE Introduction In adobe illustrator and after effects. we are able to rig and animate a ninja character limb-for-limb and learn how the rigging process works. When animating this character, we keep each feature of the character in a separate group so that we can animate everything independently. We have to…

Foley Artist Research

Introuction A foley artist is a person who creates and reproduces everyday common sound effects that are used in films, videos, video games or any other media in post-production to enhance the audio quality. These can be things such as squeaky doors and breaking glass. They use a variety of objects to create different sounds,…

Animating Sprite

Introduction For this workshop, we will be learning how to create our own sprites and animate them, so that we can use them in Unreal Engine. It is possible to use Adobe Illustrator and Adobe After Effects for this workshop, however this is a more straight-forward website we can use called Piskel. This is easier…

Adding Basic Shooting to Unreal Characters

Introduction Creating an animation cycle for shooting in Adobe After Effects into Unreal Engine. (Referencing recorded workshop). The goal of this animation is to make it sudden and highly reactive. The character I initially created is not able to shoot, so I am going to be documenting and showing my understanding of the workshop Lee…

Tilesets and Tilemaps

Introduction In this blog, I will be going over how to create tile sets and tile maps using the demonstration work that we’ve been shown. We need to start in Photoshop, creating a canvas size of 1024 by 1024 pixels. We use a square grid to map out where we want the platforms and assets…

Character States in Unreal Engine

Introduction I will be importing character animation cycles for this blog. I will also need to use character blueprints where I can easily access and add sound effects. I have imported in the ninja cycle animation work to use for this blog. First, after importing my animations into Unreal Engine – highlight the animations and…

Real-Time Main Menu

Introduction In this workshop, we are going to attempt to create a real-time main menu using Unreal Engine and Photoshop. For this, we are going to be in a third-person template. We are going to start by duplicating the main menu blueprints. With this new content we have created, we need to make a new…

Main Menu

Introduction The main menu can range from an animated 2D-3D sequence or a simple still image/low animation 2D-3D scene. The main menu is supposed to be easy and bold to navigate and engage the audience into wanting to play the game. It can be accompanied by music, colours, and sound effects. The purpose of the…

Reflection Presentation

Introduction For this blog, I will be reflecting on my presentation that I created based on my previous projects during my time on the course. Images of the presentation: MY FEEDBACK REFLECTIION Judging by my feedback and my past tendencies, I can tell that I spoke for too long for this presentation. In the future,…

Innovative Visual Styles in Games

Introduction There are many video games that are stylised and created in a certain way. In my opinion, video games that are stylised can actually be a lot more beautiful that ultra-realism video games. Here are a few example of some video games that I like the visual styles of: Abzu Abzu is a console/PC…

Flip Books in Unreal Engine

Introduction Unreal Engine primarily uses 3d meshes for its graphics, However, we can also use it to create 2D Sprite animations and 2D games too. We can use something in Unreal Engine called flip books. Pixel art is a form of digital art where images are created and edited at the pixel level using a…

Audio Technical Terminology

Introduction For our game development project, I will need to create audio for the game and understand it more and how to create it. For this I will be doing a workshop with Lee. cOMPRESSION & Uncompression In terms of audio, uncompressed audio is a higher quality type of audio. This is because it is…

Character Movement Cycles/Rigging a Character

Introduction In this workshop, we are going to be using After Effects and studying how the human body moves to create a realistic walk cycle in After Effects. Aims and Objectives Aim – Produce a walk cycle using keyframe animation Objectives – Identify how the body moves whilst walking. Produce a walk cycle in After…

Animating a Bouncing Ball

Introduction In this workshop, we will be using the fundamentals of after effects to animate a bouncing ball based on the research and insight we got on the 12 principles of animation. To begin, if we double click on the tab on the left, we can open the import file. Next, we have to create…

2D Game Dev – Animation

Inrtoduction In this project, we are planning to create a 2D video game within our chosen groups based from the name “Escape from Coleg Gwent”. We are going to be working as individuals and a team, to discuss our ideas and concepts. We have to design and develop a 2D or 2.5D game demo with…

Evaluation

Introduction In this evaluation, I am going to be reflecting on the major elements of my work and my experience working as a group. I am also going to be reflecting on how I coped with working from home during this pandemic. I plan to give a general summary of all of my work on…

Backstory for Ancient Civilisation

Introduction My group had to create a brief and summarising backstory that would explain our ideas. We needed a story that would lead up to the dystopian deserted world we plan on creating and a reason behind the fall of man-kind and technology. Backstory Thousands of years in the future, the oceans on Earth dried…

Grey Boxing in UE

Introduction This is an introduction to the idea of grey boxing in Unreal Engine. The process of grey boxing is relatively straight forward. The idea is to create a basic scene in Unreal Engine using simple shapes, such as grey boxes. Grey boxing is meant to give the creator an idea of how the scene…

Secondary vs Primary Research

Introduction In this blog I will be going to comparing the differences of secondary research to primary research and explaining what both are. I will also be checking to see if and where I have used them in my work. Secondary Research What is secondary research? Secondary research is a research method that involved using…

Research for Group Ideas

For our asset pack project, our group’s initial ideas were to base our game in a dystopian environment to suit the post-apocalyptic genre we are combining with ancient Japanese. So we decided to use a sand-covered dystopia where people would struggle to get water and food and dangers would hide beneath the sand. Here are…

Neon Workshop

This workshop is for the groups that are going to be using neon lights for their asset packs. However, our group doesn’t need neon lights as our asset pack genre doesn’t require it. However, some things are still useful to know; such as how to make something from Maya glow in Unreal Engine. For this…

Asset Pack Project

Introduction For our project, we are going to be combining Medieval Japan with a post-apocalyptic setting. Our first step for this project is to start thinking of a backstory. To do this, we write down key words and find example images of Medieval Japan or a post-apocalyptic environment that we think would suit our environment….

Idea Generation

Introduction For this task, we used randomly generated word prompts from the class to use as inspiration and ideas for our character and story desgin. We had word prompts that we could use to generate a game idea. Our word prompts were; Mozzarella, Trench coat, Rubber Ducky, Fox, Bosnia. From this we decided to base…

Modelling a Barrel

We are going to be using our existing knowledge of Maya and the tools in it to model and texture a barrel. This is to increase the speed of our work flow and we are going to customise our barrel in Substance Painter. We modeled the barrel shape in Maya, using the front perspective to…

Asset Pack Concept Art

We are going to use Google Maps to find places around the world that suit our genres that we researched. For example, I can use Google Maps to find an old western town. Next, I have to take the image into Photoshop and sketch over it. I decided to pick the Ancient Egyptian genre that…

Modular Bridge/Arch/Pillars

Introduction We are going to be looking at a range of materials and what is needed for a modular setup when creating our own assets. We imported an image into the front POV in Maya and scaled it up more to reference it for our first model, a pillar. We used simple extrusion tools and…

Learning Mudbox/Modelling and Texturing an Archway

Introduction In this workshop, we are going to be using Maya and Mudbox to model and texture an archway. We will be learning a new and alternative way of texturing and sculpting in Mudbox and using new tools that allow us to add curvature to our shapes. We will also be testing how fast we…

Colour/Texture a Concept Design

Add the simple chest sketch into Photoshop Added reference images of wood and gold for the chest colours and textures. Then took three sample colours from both images, (Light, mid-tone, dark). Created a colour palette on the upper left to use as later reference so we can keep using the same colours. Create a layer…

Sci-Fi Corridor

Using Maya, we set the grid to 500 x 100 x 2, this means that each square in the grid is equal to 50cm in real life. Sci-Fi Corridor In this workshop we will be creating a modular sci-fi corridor using asset modelled in Maya and a texture downloaded from the popular texture website textures.com….

Seamless Texture

Introduction This workshop will allow us to source pictures and images that we are going to be able to convert to textures. By default, these images wont be seamless, therefore we need to manipulate the images in Photoshop – creating a tiled seamless texture for our assets. Alt + Ctrl + I (image > image…

Effective Collaboration Techniques

Introduction Our objective today is to demonstrate an understanding of collaboration practices showing consideration and professionalism in working with others. ————————————————————————————————————————— Research task: Find different collaborative ways to share, organise and plan work. COMMUNICATION   Discord can be used for effective communication and sharing conversations and ideas together. Discord is free and easy to use. Discord allows you…

3D Concept Art

A 3D modelled barrel in Maya, applied an ID map to it. In Photoshop, we took the barrel ID map and 3D shape and used the orbit tool to get a full 360 view of the shape, we can do this by making the layer a 3D layer. In photoshop, we have a 3D Menu…

Combining Genres

Introduction For this task I have to combine one of my genres from my asset pack research blog with my ancient civilisation research blog. So I have decided to attempt to combine ancient Greece with a post apocalyptic genre. For this task, I will be producing some traditional sketches of some initial concept ideas I…

Ancient Civilisations

Introduction The ancient civilisation I have decided to study and research more of today is the ancient Greek civilisation. I have touched on the Greeks already in one of my previous blog posts but here I will be going into more detail and looking at different elements that I can use and merge with others….

Learning UE/Environment Art

In this workshop, I will be recording my learning process using Unreal Engine to create a 3D environment. Creating a new project Use the UE4Editor shortcut on the desk top to access Unreal Engine. From here we select games, then third person, then next. When creating the project, we first saved the file location to…

Asset Pack Research

Introduction For this task, we had to research and create mood boards for four different genres that we could use as inspiration for our asset packs. We have to go into depth about why we have chosen the genres we like and explain the reasoning behind the images used on our mood boards. WILD WEST…

Unit 2 Game Influence Research

Introduction The game I have chosen for this research task is ARK: Survival Evolved. I have chosen this task because this is a game I enjoy playing and I like how different it is compared to all of the other video games out there. ARK: Survival Evolved is a dinosaur-survival game with it’s own lore…

Modelling Custom Tank

Introduction For this project, I was tasked to create my own tank model using various types of inspiration and referencing the concept art I have created. I have to model the tank in Maya and UV map it, then add some texturing via Photoshop or Substance Painter. My tank is going to hover, therefore I…

Thinking About Progression (Unit 3)

What could I do after I finish the Games Design course? There are multiple options available for me after I finish the Games Design course. A few examples of these are to go to University, get an apprenticeship, get a job or perhaps go into self-employment as a freelance game designer. Initially I think that…

Custom ID Map

Introduction We are going to draw out an ID map using Photoshop, so that we can customise the material to use in Substance Painter. Relying heavily on faces, we will be drawing out the shape to use as an ID map. I will do this to have more control over the mask than just using…

Concept Art

For this session, I started brainstorming concept ideas for a tank design. Before I am able to produce a model for the end of this project, I need to get multiple perspectives on my idea. I spent an hour trying to visualise and illustrate the best design idea I could, adjusting and editing any elements…