As I mentioned in my previous post, I thought that taking classes in the Game Art and Design pathway would mean I'd never have to draw on paper again. I was wrong. As I learned recently, preproduction is key to making a good game, and that means making preproduction documents, including orthographic character sketches and storyboards. So, how does one do that? An orthographic sketch features a character standing in the T or A pose, with a front view, back view, and side view. This is later used to help model the character as it will appear in the game. The final sketch needs to be have everything aligned between the three different views and include all the necessary details, as well as information about the character. The first thing I did was make a tiny front-view sketch in the corner, to get an idea of what I was going for. I then moved on to larger, more detailed sketches. I changed several things from the small sketch, so they weren't exactly the same, but it still helped to get a basic idea down. After I held a ruler up to it, I noticed that my rough drafts were not at all lined up. Turns out, it's a good idea to use a ruler from the very beginning, at very least to check yourself. In addition, compasses are great for making circles. Another thing I noticed was that reference pictures are useful. This was especially true for me, since my character was wearing a spacesuit, and I very quickly realized that I wasn't exactly sure how to proportion everything. Depending on what you're trying to draw, it might be a good idea to look at the picture, then close it before you start drawing. You want your work to be original, after all. The other key piece was the storyboard. This is sort of a comic strip planning out everything the player will see, along with sound and camera directions under each panel. I learned a couple of things in making this. First of all, it's a good idea to plan ahead what you want to happen, and maybe even write it out, as if it's stage directions. Second of all, it's useful to plan ahead where everything will go on the page. After drawing my first draft, I realized that maybe I should have drawn all the boxes beforehand, rather than adding more as I went. This is especially true for the final draft, since you don't want a paper covered in half-erased boxes. So, to summarize:
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When I started the Game Art and Design course, I thought I'd finally get what I wanted: making art without ever having to touch pencil and paper again. Turns out I was wrong, but that's a story for another post. In the meantime, I'm going to talk about how I make Photoshop artwork without a lot of drawing skill. People say magicians never reveal how they do their tricks, but I'm not a magician, am I? Customized Brushes One of my favorite things in Photoshop is the Brush menu. Using said menu, it's possible to modify the brush-tip shape, what the edges look like, and much more. It's a fair bet to say that in most of my Photoshop drawings, at least half the things you see are made with a customized brush. I highly recommend saving presets, since it can take a lot of tweaking to get it perfect. In addition, this doesn't just apply to the brush tool. It can also be used on tools like the eraser. Dodge and Burn They're possibly my favorite tools in the program, aside from the brush tool. I regularly make use of the different settings. Most of my shading is done with these two tools. Of course, adding more or less saturated accents of the base doesn't hurt. Selection Tools The Magic Wand isn't the only select tool. Learning this made my life much, much easier. While the Wand only selects one color, the Quick Selection Tool can select areas with multiple colors. It selects mostly based on outlines, though this isn't always guaranteed. It's useful to use both tools, depending on what you're trying to select. There's also the shaped and lasso selection tools, which I use less often, but they still have their purposes. In addition, the selection tools have more than one setting, which I only realized recently. As is the usual with Photoshop, it pays to look through the menus and see what you can customize. I have more strategies than this, of course, but I won't go into those here. After all, I can't give away all my secrets. So, to summarize:
In the past month or so we’ve learned about the flow channel. This means that there is enough challenge in a game that the player is neither bored nor anxious. However, it’s occurred to me that perhaps a game can make the player both bored and anxious, without being in the flow channel. I began to think about this when I was playing Evoland. During one series of puzzles, I got stuck on a battle towards the end. Long story short, two Fire Wizard enemies kept killing my character, meaning I had to go through all the puzzles again, since there wasn’t a save point before the battle. I had to take care not to lose any health, so I’d still have a chance at winning the battle. The repetition of the puzzles was incredibly boring, since I knew what was going to happen and how to get through them. However, it was also anxiety-inducing, since I had to be very careful not to make any mistakes. It was also anxiety-inducing because I was worried I might lose the battle and have to do everything again, meaning I was, in a way, anxious over the possibility of boredom. The battle itself also caused both boredom and anxiety. I couldn’t just dive into the action, since I couldn’t afford to make a mistake, so it got boring fairly quickly. However, the required caution was also scary. The result was a feeling of frustration. Another experience I’ve had involving this was a game I played when I was younger, based on the How to Train Your Dragon franchise. More than once, I found myself in a situation where I couldn’t progress past a certain battle. The main problem was that I couldn’t go back, so the game essentially turned into a repeating a single battle that I couldn’t win, with nothing to do. I was fairly certain that I had to just keep trying, and eventually my dragon would gain enough experience points to start beating higher level enemies, since I usually managed to win eventually without changing my strategy. However, there was no obvious indication that I was actually gaining experience points, so I could never be sure it wasn’t just luck. I grew very bored with the repeated battles, since there was nothing else I could do in the game, and there was nothing new to see. However, I was always anxious that maybe I could win if I used my attacks well enough. Eventually the game became so stressful and repetitive that I just stopped playing. Like in Evoland, I was frustrated. These two examples have something important in common: repetition. Being unable to do anything but lose over and over was both boring, because there was nothing new, and anxiety-inducing, because I was so desperate to win. Based on personal experience, I think it's important for a game to be challenging enough, but to make sure the challenge isn't too repetitive. So, to summarize:
In class, we've recently been talking about game theory and zero-sum games. When playing the Prisoner's Dilemma, I wondered what the best strategy was, so I'm going to solve it with expected values. First, some explanations: zero-sum games are games in which there is one winner. The Prisoner's Dilemma is one such game. In this game, there are two players, who are the prisoners. Each must decide whether to keep quiet or confess (that the other player is guilty). If both keep quiet, each gets a year of jail time. If both confess, both get five years. If one confesses and the other keeps quiet, the quiet one gets ten years and the confessor gets off free. The goal is to have the least amount of time. While the true odds of the opponent's choice depend on the individual opponent, it's fairly safe to say none of us are mind readers, so we can't truly tell what they'll do. So, for simplicity's sake, I'll say there's an equal chance of the other player confessing or keeping quiet. Now, to calculate the expected value, I'll multiply the probability of each possible result by the number of years it will result in, then add those values together. The expected value of keeping quiet is 5.5, because: If the other player keeps quiet: 0.5 (chance) x 1 (years) = 0.5 If they confess: 0.5x 10= 5 5+0.5=5.5 The expected value of confessing is 2.5, because: If they keep quiet: 0.5x0=0 If they confess: 0.5x5=2.5 2.5+0=2.5 Based on expected value, the player is much better off confessing. As I said before, the chances of what the other player will do depend on who the other player is, and must be estimated. However, it's still better to confess, and here's why. The goal of the game is to have the least jail time. If both players keep quiet every round, they'll tie every time. In order for one to get ahead, someone has to confess. Whoever doesn't confess will lose unless the other player decides to keep quiet in a later round, and the losing player confesses. Since there's no good reason to risk keeping quiet, the winning player probably won't do it. So, in the end, the best strategy is to throw the other player under the bus–and hope they don't do the same to you! So, to summarize:
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AuthorI'm moving on to my 4th (and final) year as a Game Art & Design student at Durham School of the Arts. I'd like to call myself an artist, but I'm a programmer at heart. Archives
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