Summing up Gamefest

After the first week on DFGA i went to the highly anticipated GAMEFEST. It took (only) 4 hours to get there but hey i thought it was worth it... Anyway heres how my experience went. The entire event was placed in one of the halls in the Birmingham NEC arena and it included games like Call of Duty MW3, Gears of War 3, Skyrim, Fifa 2012, Ghost recon: future soldier and Assassins creed Revelations. Some of the bigger companies presenting there were Ubisoft, Activision, Warner, EA, SEGA, Bethesda, XBOX 360, Konami and Nintendo. Bethesda is one i am particularly interested in at the moment because of the rising in popularity free roam game Elder scrolls which when i think about it is sometimes very close to the sort of game i want to make in the future, I qued for an hour and a half to get access to the Bethesda stall only to be shown more of a video i had already seen and then was given a big plastic bag with a Skyrim picture on the side, it wasnt my happiest moment. The rest of the day i tried to avoid the ques as much as possible which limited the entire experience but i did get a go on the new Ghost Recon game that was worth waiting an hour for. Overall the food was overpriced the ques were ridiculously long and the event was way overcrowded but i did get a free bag, a go on a cool game and a free avatar toy so i think it was worth it even if i wouldnt go again based on this experience.

 

These are 2 pics i took of the entire event which capture the size and amount of people there.

Photoshop Background - so easy!

So i had my first go at creating a photoshop background yesterday and found it was easier (way easier) than i expected, simple stuff like layering, understanding destructive working and compiling lots of images into one that i didnt know about have made so many things so much easier. With a little more understanding and quite a lot more effort an image as simple as this one could become something stunning.

Moodboard time

Ok so ive compiled a load of images that i think will help anyone reading this to more clearly understand the world in my imagination of which my character is based. The moodboard includes forests and mountains and an all round general idea of the wilderness which a lot of the world my character is in consists of. Castles and towns are found in this world also but are few and far between and many may be destroyed, abandoned or occupied by hostiles. There are a few dragons on the moodboard too in addition to the small ammount of gathered images earlier in this blog, the armour my character wears is a traditional dragon style armour and what i mean by that is it has spikes and will be a red/orange/yellow mix to immitate fire.

A short insight into the backstory of my character.

******* - not decided on an exact name yet...

My character lived on the continent of ******** in one of the major cities ******** before the war came and destroyed most of civilised life on the continent. The vast majority of the land is wilderness which gives the impression that in this world its every man for himself, this is the case for a lot of Thoracus' life after the war and destruction of his home. He is a man aged around 40 with a 12 year old son who he never lets leave his side. He has learned to survive by not trusting people who have not earned it, being superior in skill of arms and remaining hidden most of the time. There is a hint of magic in the universe my character lives in but evidence would show it has not been harnessed or discovered as much as in other stories and is only in its early stages.

This image was produced to give the character a more striking dynamic
pose and angled picture. It was my first ever go on a graphics tablet and
i really enjoyed it, ill be using them again for sure. Also happy with the
image i produced.

This character was one of my initial ideas and designs done straight on paper with pen, i scanned it in and played around with it in photoshop a little bit and got some results i liked, i had the idea that my character would be the mentor or guardian architype so i then produced the character above these on the graphics tablet and will continue to experiment with the guardian idea from now.

First Character Designs

This is my very first draft of my character sheet and sketches of the character himself. The sketch is inspired but actually drawn before some of the dragon research earlier in my blog, the helmet i designed for my character (The sketch next to the person) was inspired by the horses plate masks on display in the royal armouries. Heres a pic...

I have stuck all my other pics from the royal armouries relating to my character design onto one contact sheet for quick easy access. These other pics include stuff like ideas for the environment, weapons that my character could use, clothing and armour design and finally maybe a mount of some sort.

The Arena and all things Arena-ie

I sketched the theatre room in leeds city museum while i was there and decided i liked the shape and depth of the room as a potential background/environment for my character. I will be researching themes/textures to use in the environment space.

Warcraft Arena Battleground

A scene from Gladiator in the arena

A scene from Spartacus Blood and Sand training for the arena

The Thrashball arena (also a multiplayer map) from Gears 3

Research of Arenas in various medias. I am fairly certain some form of arena for my characters background is what i will be using, i will do some more sketches based on the research i have gathered.

This is an image i gathered from Leeds city museum which i have included because i like the style of building and will try combine it with my Arena research and ideas.

Compilation Dragons

I remembered ive always wanted to do some Runescape artwork at a professional level so ill do some interweb research on dragon armours and think about how my own design might look. I liked these images because they show a range of different stances and angles which better define what dragon armour looks like, also the way the same colours (apart from the black armour) are typically used e.g. red, yellow, orange and the way light is reflected off these colours and armour.

Gears in relation to.. things

While thinking about how pictures i have taken at the leeds city museum e.g. stonework temple model or victorian building side remind me of the gritty dark greys and browns of the gears series i decided to look online for a relevant discussion based on the subject, this is what i found.

Ars Technica: Let me start with an easy question. Gears was the game that kicked off the so called "next-gen" color scheme, with browns and grays and that gritty look. Talk to me about that. Was that a conscious decision? Did you expect it to take off like it did? And how has that changed going into Gears of War 2?

Pete Hayes: Ah, yes. We get that a lot. As far as the comments regarding Gears and the color scheme, a lot of that is relevant for certain parts of the game, but we definitely thought there was diversity of the palette. As with everything in Gears 2, the theme is continuing with more of that. With the environments, we've continued to diversify the color palette, the types of environments, things along those lines. I definitely think it's a much more colorful game.

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2008/09/art-of-gears-of-war-2.ars

Collecting things things and more things

While down at leeds city museum for the millionth time looking at the only thing that ever changes there (the new exhibitions section on the top floor) the one thing that caught my attention only slightly more than the usual and uninteresting was a dragon costume with attached wings.

Reminds me of my Runescape years when i had most of this set.

Getting the cogs turning about Gears

Since im big on Gears 3 since 12.01am this morning (midnight launch) i think it appropriate the first blog i ever create be about the amazing new epic by Epic. I got my home computer back around a week ago and was looking for a 'super cool' new desktop wallpaper that would compliment my 32'' comp screen and thought, only a game as ott as the size of my computer screen would do - Gears! springs instantly to mind and so my google hunt for a worthy wallpaper started. I downloaded and saved a few potentials...

This was the wallpaper i landed on. What i really like about it is how the image seems to capture the attitude of the characters in it, the way they are completely outgunned with barely a chance of survival but me as the viewer can still tell that they mean business and are planning to take the brumak (giant beast thing) on.