Game Logo Graphic

Following last week's meeting each of us had to recreate a logo for the game. Logos are important as can be rememberable. Famous franchises have famous logos or text fonts. Halo's logo is unique due to it's font type, example below.

Other games use simple font types and sell their products though the name, Elders Scrolls would be an obvious one.

I was influenced by Bethesda's take with their Elders Scrolls franchise. The name is more important than the logo, detail wasn't require, just old font types. After selecting font types I added more effects to the logo like a lens flare, red clouding and a light source within the cloud omitting from the bottom right. My logo developed away then from an initial logo to a test splash screen. I added social network logos, distribution services and our team logo.

The team gathered together once our individual logos were complete. We discussed which logos looked good and moved on to combining the positive elements to the final logo design. Individual game logos are below.

Starting with the top right is Alex Forbes-Wake's design, he used the icons from my design for his logo with an added PEGI game rating. His design was received positively since it had a decent feel to it. The fonts, effects had relevance to the story which was decided in the previous team meeting. The bottom left logo was design by Adam Thompson. His logo wasn't quite finished at this point, so his logo wasn't considered unfortunately. Although late his Greek text style and textures were impressive and hopefully this will show in his production work. Both the central and right bottom logos were designed by Lewis Corcoran and Ivo Anusic. The main positives here were the connections with the lions, they have a major relevance to the story and were a cool touch.

The team developed the positives into a final design, Alex's game logo was connected with the icons I gathered and red direction in the smoke. The lion idea that both Ivo and Lewis used was included with our tutor advising us to include Titus to the logo since it had relevance also. The main reason these ideas were chosen was due to the relevance they had to the team and the story. Alex was chosen to develop the final design for two reasons, his Photoshop skills and the main component was his design.

Final Logo Design

Alex added nice touches to the design with the ghostly style Titus and lion. Additionally the red bleeding from the text is rather good as well.

Individual Back Story Ideas

This post is to plot my vision on how Red Hawk Studio should present and develop its first game trailer. I'll be detailing key sections of the trailer and certain aspects I like to see in the trailer.

Information regarding team members.

Required Aspects;
Game name - The Awoken: Guardians of Titus.
Logos - Team logo, platform hosts (I.e. Steam, Android and App Store), BBFC and PEGI ratings.
Text Disclaimers - Copyright and licensing information.
Credits - Team members, roles on the production, additional credits regarding music used and applications.

Agreed Aspects;
Setting - Modern / Futuristic Horror.
Genre - Action / Adventure Horror; this is the focus point with an added sub-genre of puzzling.
Locations - Roberts Park, Tomb / Crypt, Streets of Saltaire. 
Sound Direction - Lewis Radio, working name (Natural Narrative).

Environment Development;
My ideas regarding location development for the project, what I think will make our work stand out.

Roberts Park
- Modern Architecture; Structures and Crafted Art.
- Modern Park Facilities; Futuristic Bins, Lighting, Pathways, etc.
- Minor Environmental Destruction.
- Old Famous Structures; i.e. Titus Statue.

Colour Scheme
- Whites, Metallic, Blues, Creams, Greens.

I'd like the architecture to be similar to middle-eastern / Valencian architecture. Although this type of architecture has already been constructed, it feels to me timeless and will probably be relevant in the future as well. The colour schemes will link with the architecture planned for the environment. These colours will compliment the structures and add a more human aspect to a horror / destroyed world.

Tomb / Crypt
- Statues
- Artifacts; Basic Treasures, Coins, etc.

Colour Scheme
- Metallic, Creams, browns, Grays.

This direction seems obvious but most treasure rooms share these qualities, the tomb / crypt would have been constructed in Titus' time so keeping this known theme seems the best option. The colours here will stick to the natural / obvious theme used for tomb and treasure rooms.

Streets of Saltaire
- Recreated Village; Streets, Buildings, etc.
- Famous Structures in View; Salts Mill, Church, Victoria Hall, College Buildings.
- Minor Environmental Destruction

Colour Scheme
- A vast array of colours will be used for this environment; reds, blues, creams, browns and so on.

I believe it's important to develop these structures in our production, using simple 3D techniques we could recreate the village and the famous structures without compromising time. The housing can be duplicated for several streets, we know that Victoria road is the focal point and the other streets will be used for viewing purposes only so detail won't have to be massive. Colours for this location will be vast, each house having a different colour to the next. Creams will be heavily used as the structures are made of sandstone.

Destruction of this environment should also be kept to a minimum. I idea is that although the world has been destroyed and almost consumed by death, Saltaire was abandoned years before the breakout. The village was kept as a historical marker of time, unused but visited. The only area that was redeveloped was the park, modernised and fit for use. This is my vision, a contrast between the two. Modern / futuristic park sitting side by side with the old clapped out village.

Character Development;
My ideas for the environment are greater than my ideas for the characters. I'd express small details / touches which I'd like the characters to have.

Main Protagonist
- A treasure hunter survivor.
- A lone wolf who operates on his own.
- Although he works on his own, he does help other survivors in need.
- He's recongised as a saviour by these he's helped.

Attire
- Worn cloths; dirty through fighting and scavenging.
- Clothing covering his lower face and goggles covering his eyes for protection.

Sir Titus Salt
- Static character, appearing vocally through his statues in the park and his crypt.
- Offering riddles and advice to the main protagonist through his adventure.

Attire
- Statue attire, bronze sculpted suit.

Lions
- All four lions; war, peace, vigilance and determination will harbour powers that will be unlocked by the main protagonist through his adventure. Such powers will help save humanity from the clutches of death.
- All four lions will be in statue form, they'll break out of the stone to be seen in a mechanical form. The guardians of Titus, suiting red eyes.

Red Hawk
- I believe the trailer should open with the red hawk flying and then landing on one of the known buildings, maybe Victoria Hall at night. The hawk would seem like a silhouette until it landed on the building and its powerful red eyes glowing towards the camera. The red eyes would symbol the studio name but will also have relevance to the story, linking with the lions.

Additional Cast
- Zombies; Hostile enemies.
- Animals; Passive creatures.

Sound Direction;
- Trailer Music; Slow paced emotional music that leads to a more dramatic piece, the music develops along side the images in the trailer.
- Narration; Narration to be developed in the trailer through radio broadcast, hence Lewis Radio. The idea is to have the radio as a natural use of narrative. A potential monologue that discusses humanities survival.
- Sound Effects; wind, howls, footsteps, door creaks, lion roars, animal noises and zombie groans.

Other Aspects;
- Transitions; Transitions in the trailer should be a strong point of consideration. I believe text expressions should be visible in the environment and not in transitional screens. Telling the story in the environment, similar to the opening credits of Superman Returns.
- Fade to black; This should also be considered greatly, lets limit the number. Once at the beginning for the Red Hawk Studio introduction, a few times in the actual trailer and two times at the end for the splash-screen and credits.

Inspiration
The inspiration of ideas comes from popular games and films regarding treasure hunting and apocalyptic survival. On the architectural side it comes from architecture from Valencia and the Middle-East.

- Indiana Jones
- Uncharted
- Zombieland
- Fallout
- Middle-Eastern Architecture
- Valencian Architecture

3D Environmental Design - Test

Today we looked at modeling buildings using basic primitives. From the basic primitives we had built some what decent buildings using shapes like box and planes. For the boxes we used modifiers, for the arch we used bend. I bent the box a 180 degrees then I extruded the ends of the box to create the window frame. I extruded the ends together and extended the front and back for ledges.


Additional ledges were added between the windows for additional effect. The door was created via the window frame but was scaled down by width but scaled up by height. The face of the building was made using a plane and I used F12 shortcut to spin the plane around.


Other tasks should of been explored like adding a more comprehensive texture, ledges, extruded overhangs, sky box, lighting and a roof. I tend to play with modifiers and loss time on them like playing with tessellation. Tessellation will naturally slow machines down as it generates a high number of polygons and this was the case.


The intention of this test was just to play around with the settings and to see what we could produce in as little time as possible. These houses can be duplicated as the streets of Saltaire have the same architecture.

This is my test building during this exercise.

26/1/2012 Update

In the latest 3D session I was playing around with box modeling and interior environments. A simple corridor was created with the end polygons deleted, orifices on either side to resemble doorways. Normals were flipped and a floor texture was added. Using the editable mesh tool I extruded a section of the corridor that lead to another box, I deleted polygons from the second box and recorded the measurements. Getting the extruded corridor and the second box to fit together perfectly. Using the attach tool connected both sections together. A simple wooden floor texture was used throughout the interior. I added a skylight to add atmosphere and a spotlight for further effect.

Environment image below.

Planning An Environment

For my planning of the environment I looked at images that were taken by the team. I wanted to have the bridge in Roberts Park on my planning drawing. This was the image taken which I worked upon.

I wanted an image with a two point perspective but I also wanted an image with specific feature of the park, the bridge. Unfortunately the most suitable image didn't have distinct features for a two point perspective. The first drawing didn't require high detail and I had drawn key areas with basic shapes. The next step was adding more detailed shapes and shading methods to the pencil drawing. I used a fine liner to cover the original shapes and added more shapes with it. I used cross hatching, shading and swirls to add more depth to the drawing. This is how it can out;

I modified specific sections to match the development direction of a futuristic/modern horror environment. The trees had gone, the bridge has been modernised with the guard rails in the environment and the bins have been upgraded with a modern twist. The swirls were for the green hills and cross hatching for concrete and the bin. Water and Glass had simple strokes to define the material.

I needed to recreate the drawing a second time to add colour to the drawing. Four equal sections using different techniques; Fine liner, Pencil crayon, pastels and felt tip pens. This was done on A3 cartridge paper (as the previous drawing) so the colours didn't leak through to the other side. The depth of the colours indicated more detail in the drawing. The crayons and felt tips were less than useful and not desirable to look at. The pastels however (although incredibly messy) made the drawing look darker and relevant to the art direction the team is going for with our game trailer.

As you can see from the image, both bottom sections of the drawing have been some what effected in a negative way by the use of the felt tips and crayons. The top right has modified by fine liner and the top left by pastels. The pastels bring out the feel and idea of how we want are trailer to look like. Dark, gloomy, atmospheric and scary.