I’ve been waiting on the concepts from the rest of the group but apparently they’re still under construction and after 2 more days of waiting on the group to pull their ideas together I just couldn’t wait any longer, I had to continue in one way or another. So I played it safe and did some concepts of the aesthetics of the room, concepts that I knew the group would be on board with and could tie in with all the ideas and IF NOT, they could be changed anyways, I just wanted to do some drawing.
I came across this on https://blog.sketchup.com/sketchupdate/art-and-design-uncharted-2
It runs through the development of Uncharted 2: Among Thieves. My favourite game of all time. FUCK it’s good! Give it a go if you haven’t already. Anyway they talk about the process of design, where they find their inspiration etc. In this interview, he discusses how he used SketchUp to help conceptualise and design the video game’s look and feel. For those of you who aren’t gamers, Uncharted 2 was big—really big. Think Avatar.
Robh Ruppel talks about, as the leader of the team “the architect” he makes sure that everyone is sort of moving in the same direction. He talks about the challenges of keeping the bar raised, rather than just regurgitating the same game he aims to create a match, something better even.
Concept art is the first front “First of all we sketch out rough ideas, ya know? Shapes, colour tone. And then as soon as we can we go into the 3d process, which for me the concept art is completely useful, things are so vast.”
Most interestingly, he talks about “instances”, repeatable geometry (duplicating models) to coincide with the render times.
“So we came up with a modular system, that you could have half a dozen pieces but if you arrange them in the right way you wouldn’t notice that it’s so few pieces, you just think ‘wow, look at this amazing city’ The real design comes from working out the design 3 dimensionally.
Just some wise words from a creative man whom has worked on some of the best, and that is fact, some of the best games ever created.
I had a sudden flash of inspiration, like the environment just popped into my head clear as day. I immediately needed to get it down on paper, so I loosely and very quickly sketched out my idea on paper. After it was on paper I snapped out of my unconscious and outlined it on photoshop! Its still technically unfinished I guess, no furniture, and obviously no colour palette, but we had a jumping off point and the guys loved it. I’m waiting on their concepts, just to see how the rest of the group envision the room, then we’re ready to go.
I tried including doors that mirrored the type in the research we conducted, the huge double enforced space doors that open with a thumb pad, you get the jist. The alarms and emergency buttons, the walls that are coming apart, the blood, the broken glass, the dead body, the messages on the wall, the children! WON’T SOMEBODY PLEASE THINK OF THE CHILDREN!
We’re still in the early stages so I’ll elaborate more later on my concept designs as I eagerly await my groups contributions to the concept ideas.
Another couple of games that inspired my concepts etc was the Alien and Res Evil series. For the same reasons as the others but just depicted in different ways, unique ways. Games that fall into the same genre of horror-survival-shooter games but are all different and awesome in there own way. As well as, that I haven’t mentioned yet, having environments, settings and scenes in the game that would heavily impress anyone not in the industry, a lover of video-games. Heres some artwork, enjoy.
A collection of fan art from Artstation
So we got into our comfortable group of four today and basically just swapped some ideas around, going through each of us 1 by 1 just relaying our projections, ideas and concepts for the project back to the group. However quite coincidentally and awesomely mind you, after the ideas from everyone were given, they all had a very similar theme. The theme of a lab, a spaceship, a room in an futuristic aircraft that would set the scene of an experiment, an analysis, a test gone wrong! what have you? The point being, some awesome futuristic designs, some blood, some science, some experiment in a test capsule gone awry. We essentially wanted to make a crime scene on a spacecraft, like an empty room in an Alien game after the Alien has gone berserk on the crew and there’s “Blood everywhere” to quote Niamh… “there’s got to be blood..”
Will we be able to do it the way I imagine it “perfectly” in my head? God I hope so. All week I had been jotting down ideas, names and scenes in games that I remember. HOWEVER, I lost my ffffft- bloody notebook. So I had to buy a new one to jot down in one day how much of the stuff over the week I had written down. And I’m certain I only remembered about 55% of what I had written.
I began with looking for some sweet sweet inspiration, scrolling through pages of Bioshock “environmental concepts”, game walkthroughs, and even dipping in to some games to live in their worlds for a while, hoping to soak in all the knowledge and inspiration of the gaming industry.
Replaying a bit of Batman Arkham City, Bioshock 2 and some Alien Isolation, as well just to see if I could notice any tips or tricks to filling out a room with random “fixtures” that look important but are rather just “random spheres and polygons” stuck to the wall.
Ima take it a game at a time here, starting with the multiple award winning Bioshock, a masterpiece of gaming! And a game that stuck with me so hard it’s strongly what I wished to build my 2nd year environment project on. BioShock is set in 1960 in the underwater city of Rapture; Rapture was planned and constructed in the 1940s by a man whom wanted to create a utopia for society’s elite to flourish outside of government control.
Concept pieces from artists;
ERIC HUANG
Notice the blood, the bodies, the besmirched environment, the shadows, the artificial light that only shines threw the windows, the steampunky, future technology with the 19th century aesthetic inspired designs. THIS… is what we wanted to go for.
We also took a look Dead Space, dead space came to mind after Niamh implied that we could perhaps have a monster, a creature, “an experiment gone awry” that could have went on some sort of rampage after being artificially created and experimented on in a lab. This was the basis of our narrative for the environment. We don’t want to create a room, a bedroom say, and be like “this is our bedroom, its a bedroom, it looks like a bedroom… we have modelled the bedroom to perfection”. No thank you. BORINGGG. We wanted someone to look at the environment we created and think to themselves “…something just went down here” To take the mouse into there hand and take a wee gander around what we made to inspect our room. We want to prompt our audience into imagining what they think might have happened. A surge of flashing images that fill in the gaps of our “suggested narrative” if you will.
Deadspace (2008) is a third-person survial horror game. The player takes on the role of an engineer named Isaac Clarke, who battles the polymorphic undead species called the “Necromorphs” on board a stricken interstellar mining ship. A perfect reference to inspire some gruesome bloody and chilling environments that make you feel uneasy, alone and never alone at the same time!
Above are some concepts from freelance artist and illustrator Jason Courtney as well as some stills from the game.
By just looking at the images you can already sense the “chilling, dangerous, lonely environment” feels. Great inspiration for what we are trying to create. Again most of the light is just non consistent white artificial lights that barely line the corridors. The blood spills out from the door ways to provoke a sense of endangerment and reluctancy to enter the room. Alerting the classical question of “What the hells in there?”
The absurdly giant generators that you assume powers the entire ship, the ominous red and white glows of light that consume the entire corridor, so much so that you can’t see what’s at the end, even as you stare directly into the scary abyss. The ambient smoke and steam that the spacecraft emits, the blood writing on the walls that warn the next unfortunate victim. Again, all things that we wanted to include in our environment.
Our first big project this year and it is to “Build and environment! A room, to fill an empty space, to take inspiration from all those movie you watched, games you played and shows you binge watch on Netflix. It is our time, in our groups… to build an environment, whatever we want.
I wasn’t too fussed on whom I was paired with in my group, Alec very kindly let everyone choose their own groups and while everyone was clinging to their best buds, I was hunched over in front of my computer trying to perfect my goddamn walk-cycles and body mechanics.
I picked my group in the last semester of 1st year and it wasn’t particularly an unstoppable dynamic duo, everyone in this class knows their stuff and I was more than happy to be paired up with anyone. So by the end of the week when Alec had asked the class who wasn’t in a group he put together the 4 hands that were warily raised in the air. The four hands raised where:
Myself
Sinéad McCormack
Nimah Lynn
& Hollie MacKay
A dream team, a team of hard workers and talented people. I was definitely lucky and happy with team I ended up in, considering as well I was playing with the hands of fate! It could have been a lot worse, granted I didn’t even think that the people left would be the people that weren’t in, that had no idea that groups were even being chosen! and whom never work.
Alright so… “build an environment”
Lets do this shizz!
duckinthesobriety 