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.

Unit 70 LO1 - Brainstorm

Our group, Red Hawk, looked at how we would develop the results of our survey which was conducted earlier in the year. We considered 3 themes revolving around Sci-fi horror; slow pace horror, fast pace horror or silly horror. Slow horror similar to Amnesia, fast horror like Doom 3 or something silly like Dead Rising. Each team member detailed their ideas and reasons for their ideas.


My ideas;
- Slow paced horror with silly horror elements due to time constraints.
- Dialogue and traditional transition screens dropped with text in the environment or text coming out at the screen.
- Physical presence in the trailer rather than spectrum activity.
- Milner field house (Haunted house)


Key ideas noted were Lewis Radio (Themed radio broadcast), Titus Tomb (under his Statue), Importance of horror content (zombies, ghosts, psychological themes and atmospheric music).


Key must haves in the trailer;
- Team Logo
- Game Logo
- Splash Screens
- Distribution Logos (Steam, App Store, Android Market)
- Age Ratings (BBFC, PEGI)


Team ideas below detailed in the image;

Music and Feelings

Only certain types of musical genres make me feel anything. Most music is passive to me, I either don't care about it or it doesn't do anything for me. My favourite genre is symphony, in my opinion it's the purest form of music. Instruments do more for me rather than lyrics. The English language makes words sound so redundant; Latin, Greek amongst others make words sound more appealing... for me anyway. I like the aggressive, strong or powerful notes in symphony pieces. I love the velocity of tempo, the high frequency as well as the short powerful notes heard with brass instruments.

 

This score features both elements I enjoy in this form of music.



One of my favourite scores ever; the trombone adds to the piece, without it I wouldn't enjoy the music.






This is the case for both God of War III pieces as well, Greek lyrics add to the sounds heard.

Questionnaire & Results

Questionnaire


After gathering data for our individual research papers about Saltaire, we had to construct a questionnaire to ask people visiting or located in Saltaire about their thoughts on making a virtual educational trailer based on Saltaire. Each group member had to create their own template, we talked about relevant questions that would be important to include so people known what it was about. Other details were considered; logos relating to our group were added, Introduction sentences so people had additional information and a thank you note at the end.

The team then considered which one was going to be used for the project, my design was chosen as it looked professional but another members questions replaced mine as it was easier and more understandable than my selection.

We than went around the village of Saltaire asking visitors, shop owners, students and staff to take part in our questionnaire. 30 copies were printed and 30 copies were completed within the hour. The results of the questionnaire will follow in a further update, the questionnaire above is the final design used for our research.

Results

The experience was different from other surveys I've done before, it had to be done quickly as we had little time to collate the results afterwards. I wouldn't say I learned much besides the designing side of questionnaires including design for results document. After finishing the design I converted it to a pdf again so it can be published on here.


The public during the survey period were somewhat cooperative with only 2 people not willing to complete it in the time we needed it done by, luckily we recovered the 2 incomplete questionnaire and handed them to two other people who completed them for us.


Collating the evidence was quite easy as some of my team members had done it before. Tally marks were made for each question and responding answers, I'd say the hardest part was just transferring the information from 1 sheet to 6 members.


In terms of skills I believe every team member produced a decent document, I was satisfied with my results excel document also. A decision wasn't made on who made the best document. 

The layout I chose was a general design with little blue shades over the options to make the document easier to read for people interested in the results of our survey. (Question Keys on the right should state Question 10 Keys instead of 8)

Outcome

Results of the survey showed that females aged 16-18 were are target audience and they indicated for a modern/futuristic setting with the main location centred around Roberts Park. The viewing platform most popular in our survey was YouTube, this makes sense as its the leading platform for viewing videos on the internet. Although females in this age range maybe our target audience, we can and probably will cater for a broader range of audiences.

Professional Example

I like to construct a modern looking park with similar architecture to either Valencian modern buildings or middle eastern architecture. The shapes and styles are completely unique to anything else in the world, the simple colours used also adds to their uniqueness. Here is a visual example of a 3D park that I'd like my team's replicate.

(A Link for the image above.)

Unit 6 - LO1

Unit 6 LO1 RGB

Updates will probably come in the near future.

Red Hawk Studio Members

Team Members - Skills - Weaknesses - Blog


Ivo Anusic - Team Leader / All Rounder - Quiet - http://ivolution93.blogspot.com


Lewis Corcoran - Co-Leader / 3D Skills - Talks too much - http://31corky92.blogspot.com


Robert Briggs - Leadership Skills - 3D and Animation - http://rgbsf.blogspot.com


Joe Connell - Concepts and Ideas - 3D and Arrogance - http://wolfsaiyan.blogspot.com


Alex Forbes-Wake - Photoshop - Quiet, Lack of Motivation and 3D - http://kellinn.blogspot.com


Adam Thompson - 3D Skills and Photoshop - Gets Distracted Easy - http://itzzaddyt01x.blogspot.com

Team Fill Chart

The Return, Changes and Project Groups

After 10 long weeks away from the saddle college finally started again, the first week was just a welcome back with a 3 hour presentation about changes and what will be the next steps for the returning students after this academic year. We was given information about the new changes, introduction to our new learning coach and given UCAS information for students interested in HE. In the afternoon we was given a brief from our course coordinator to do a research paper about the Saltaire village as this would be linked to the final major project. We was advised to do a site visit and to decide with caution on what direction we wanted to take this final project on as the group would be split into smaller groups in the near future.

The very next day me and two other students did a site visit to Saltaire and collected a large amount of evidence for the research paper. The paper was completed and updated on September the 12th, more updates may follow.

Week 2 was more of the same, we had the last ever Aimhigher event take please in Victoria Hall which give pretty much the same information about UCAS and access to HE. We was given our IDs (my second of the week), introduced to recover our gmail accounts (did work before this week and now doesn't) and given small tasks to complete before the 3rd week. 
In addition to this I had a rather interesting Thursday of that week; experiencing the pointless placement of being in the study centre with slow computers when a course like this require high end machines. The slot is usually 3 hours but due to my duties at the college that was reduced to 2 as I was asked to make a stall for the Freshers Fair. The stall was set up to promote the student voice at Shipley, ask opinions of the students, advertise the council & the proposed union and give out information about NUS extra cards. The event went well and I'm extremely pleased about it.

The afternoon wasn't so brilliant though, level 3 students were asked to meet in Victoria Hall to select what qualification they individually wanted to study to get what they need to progress in education or employment after college. The options were GCSE Maths of English, Functional Skills Maths or English or Functional project for the year. I'd submitted my decision last year and in the first week this year. My details wasn't put on the GCSE list and I had to wait an 1 hour to sign you for GCSE Maths. Hopefully this will get sorted in due course.

Week 3; The week started by the dreaded group selection, I say dreaded due to past year groups complaining by the selections made but to be honest I'm satisfied with the selection. I like my group and I'm sure all students in their specific groups our happy with the selection process. Each group member were given reasons for their selection and reasons for positions in their groups. I'm happy and comfortable with the selection, positioning and thought the reasoning behind it was well thought threw.

After the selections we was given our first group task of coming up with our group name for the academic year. We all had to come up with 3 names minimum and then design 5 different and unique logos for the chosen name. My names were; Lazy Gamers, Horsing About, Reckless Makers and What is Physics!

After everyone voted I was asked to design logos for the name Reckless Makers. The vote process was done by tally chart throughout the process. My 5 designs had different meanings to them and I'll list them below.

1st design. Abstract text, it's less design but it can work some times, hence Sucker Punch and Blizzard who both use abstract text for their logos.

2nd design. The initials over lapping each other. the R resting in front of M with the name sitting underneath the initials.

3rd design. Initials again but having the M with pointing ends and having the left end stabbing through the R.

4th design. Same as the 3rd but having something in place representing something reckless. Having the initials breakthrough a wall with bricks sitting on the floor and on the initials as well with the text at the base like graffiti on a wall.

5th design. Train push cart, tag line "correct vehicle, wrong parts". The push cart has 3 train wheels and one car wheel plus instead of the levers to move the push cart it has a seesaw.
Again a vote decided the outcome and after the vote I was asked to develop idea 5 further. I was given advice on how to improve it by adding the initials on the seesaw at either end and keeping the colour selection of the initials (R being red and M being black).

I began to develop the push cart after the vote, printing and sourcing reference images to support my design. After a more detailed hand drawn sketch was made and opened up Photoshop to start work on a digital copy. I set the print size to A6, made it landscape and set the dpi to 300. I used basic shapes and lines to get the cart looking just right then I merged sections of the cart for additional modifications. During the process of adding colour I had some issues due to me adding strokes to the lines, the strokes helped me see the formation of the parts. The fix was simple as I used the magic eraser to deleted the added colour in the strokes. Once all the mistakes were fixed I used the magic wand tool to highlight set individual parts to add gradients, mixing grays to add a metal look to most of the components. I also included drop shadows for additional detail. Slight modifications were made towards the end with nuts added in replacement of standard circles, the nuts connected the wheels with the new industrial style axel.

Original Hand Drawn Image

Final Design

Source Images

The final vote happened once all of our individual logos were complete, the winning design came from team member Joe Connell and we was advised to mix the logo Joe did with my style. 

Joe Connell's Red Hawk Studio Design

I followed the same process as my own logo; A6, landscape and 300dpi. I used a grid this time to get the opposite sides symmetrical, again lines were used with added weight to stop patches appearing between the lines. Then I added a gradient onto the hawk with two tones of red, purest red with a darker red which went across the hawk. The text was done the same way with lines and I added a more metallic gradient with tones of gray. In addition I was shadows on both the hawk and text to give them more definition. I wasn't 100% pleased with the final product so I also added bevel and emboss to both of them which improved the text by no end.

This is the final product.

Other team images.

Music Studio Introduction & Rules

In this academic year we'll be creating a game trailer, game trailers wouldn't work all that well with just the content being shown on screen. Music adds the depth to a silence image and more often than not can define that content forever.

With the game trailer we'll create we will have to create an accompanying music track or theme to give the trailer another dimension. This task could be quite interesting if done with care and quality.

Before we was given the full introduction we was given ground rules on what shouldn't happen or what we shouldn't do in the music studio.


1st. No food or drink is aloud in the music studio.


2nd. Don't abuse your ears, use then with care. Don't listen to something too aloud.


3rd. Use correct carrying techniques when carrying heavy equipment like large speaker.

4th. Use the correct cabling technique when using wires, tape wires to the floor to stop people tripping over and use the "pull and twist" motion to cable up wires properly.

After the rules were given to us we was shown some of the equipment we'll be using in the next 8 months. It wasn't a big tour of the studio but rather a small tour to get us to know the basics. The first task was to learn the "pull and twist" to understand that using the correct cabling technique will make the equipment last longer and less prone to failure.


The next piece of equipment we was shown was the microphones, two models were shown but they were very similar, one used for instruments and the other for vocalists. The vocalist mic had a metal sphere on it whereas the instrumental mic didn't. You can pop off the metal sphere on the vocal mic and it's pretty Identical to the instrumental mic.


The tutor then shown us the mixing desk, with this piece of equipment you can do a load of different things to modify the sound coming out of the speaker. He stated that channel 1 on the mixing desk was no different to the other channels and had nothing special over the other channels. He then told us what each dial did on the mixing desk, I will list the functionally of the dials below;


Gain - The gain dial is simply a volume controller, it controls the volume coming out of the speaker.


Equalizer - This section has 3 dials that can modify high, medium and low sound pitches, you can play with these settings and cancel out specific pitches you may not want when recording something.


Digital Effects - This dial will modify the sound in different and strange ways. It's also links to other dials on the top right of the device that can add additional effects to the sounds coming out.


Pan - This simply gives the user the ability of panning the audio from side to side or keeping it level for balanced sound. For example, one can use the dial to pan completely right and only the right speaker will put out audio or visa versa.


Then we was given the opportunity play with the microphones, group by group we walked forward to connect the mics to the mixing desk. We was allowed to play with the dials and to understand how they worked with the mics. Most if not all tested the functions and spoke to here the sounds change with the modifiers.

This pretty much concluded the first tour of the music studio, we looked at smaller mixing devices that were connected to the computers in the room and a larger desk connected to the recording room. We all did the "pull and twist" to cable up the wires and finished the tour at that point.

Unit 13 LO1 - Types of Jobs (Salaries)

This is an expansion to my previous work on types of jobs in the games industry, please visit my main blog post for more information here regarding LO1 (Slide 15-17).
 
The three jobs I looked at offer different salaries, all three positions are also important rolls in the work force; level design can drive the story when done well, hence Half-life or Zelda. Sound designers in recent years have transformed the way we listen to games, prime example would be Red Dead Redemption. Texture artists can add high detail to pieces of work plus realism to the product that can make the experience more believable and enjoyable.

Several links I'll provide will show how each working job in the games industry has different salary levels and the difference in wages in different countries.

This link is rather old but does show have different jobs have different salary levels, it also includes differences in salaries between the USA and the U.K.

Granted the link is 3 years out of date but when this was posted it shows the U.K. had a much higher wage salary for top developers than the USA but the U.K. has much lower wage salary for new developers in all sectors too. The USA seems to have a more averaged out wage packet for developers although if you was a top earner you'd idea like to be working in the U.K. according to these figures.


Another link provided here shows salaries again from different sectors, the highest paid jobs according to this link are; Directors, Executive Producers, Programmers and Musicians. On average these ain't always the best paid jobs but according to this source the information they collected showed the highest paid developers were in these jobs and they were paid much higher than other developers in different sectors in the games industry.


To finish off this segment I'd like you to look at this link regarding the average paid developers' salary in the U.K. According to this link, U.K. developers are slightly richer than the previous year, this link is 1 year old so salaries could of improved even more so over the last year as well. Figures have improved by £1.500 in the last year, looking in to it further though it has become clear that it isn't £32,000 on average per developer but rounded off by region and job role so some jobs will be paid higher with others paid lower.

Unit 1 - Full Presentation

Unit 3 - Full Presentation

Unit 69 LO5 - Full Presentation