3D: Evocative Biome: More Work!

Now begins the real meat and bones of the process! I've done quite a bit of iteration on certain things, and had way too much fun with the textures. Marty told me to work starting in black and white, so that's what I'm doing! 

(A slightly better look at them in UE4:)

The bark has faint tessellation on it, and a second UV map to add that shadowy gradient. I need to work on making the leaves look, well, more leafy, but there's time for that still! You can also get a pretty good look at the firefly particle I've fiddled around with (it makes sense, I promise! Fireflies are usually found in wet, marshy environments, often in a temperate climate. It also adds to the tranquility of the scene!)

The bark was made in zBrush (it's a shame you can't see it that well in the environment, but it's there!)

... which i turned into a tiling texture in Photoshop...

If I have time, I'll certainly sculpt something else; maybe a mountain in the distance, or rocks. But for now, that's all I've done in zBrush!

I also have a water shader, but it needs some work.

I like the faint blue reflection that's going on in conjunction with the transparency, but I'd really like to get some sparkles on top that reflect the moon. Messing around with roughness has only given me really gross-looking shaders.

A middle ground between this one and the other one would be perfect... could such a thing exist??? I sure hope so!

Here's what the whole thing looks like at the moment:

UPDATE: Made a middle ground shader yeeeees!!

GD: Platformer Game Concepting

Now that I've done research on a platformer, it's time to make one myself! I've had a little experience before with concepting out a sidescrolling game (see: Para Eidolon) but now I'm working by myself I should have more room to try out my own thing.

Here's the level breakdown:

As our little player avatar will be Jumpin' Jim, a caricature of the head of the Animation Department, I thought I'd make this relevant to his job: i.e., critiquing Pre-Pro Pitches. In this game, you start off at the beginning (marked by a dark blue door) waiting for the elevator to come to the third floor. Once the doors open, you're greeted by a barrage of pitches in the form of levels, each level designed in a very psychedelic, stream-of-consciousness way. You fight off Weak Ideas, Bad Ideas, and Poor Reactions to Critique to find Hidden Gems and a final Golden Thesis before escaping via the elevators to another level. It's set around the late afternoon, so each level is suffused in a dreamy, hazy golden glow and the architecture of the level itself is kind of warped and brightly coloured.

3D: Evocative Biome: Step Two!

So the salt marsh won out in the end, for better or for worse. I'm taking a lot of cues from the Viru Bog in Laheema National Park in Estonia, which is a temperate northern marsh.Here's a more finalised concept art for the level:

The reactions should be: calm, mysterious, kinda lonely. I want to make a place that inspires a kind of chill in the viewer...

And here's the block-in in Unreal! I'm going to add some cards in the background for trees in the distance, and I'll mess around with the moutains a bit more. I obviously need a skybox (like my block-in moon?) and to start painting the cards on the grass. I'm going to tone down the fog a bit, just because it gets in the way of the contrast and the colours coming through. Soon, though, I'll get to work on the textures! Yaaaay!

GD: The Beginning of The End: Analysing Tutorial Levels in Platformers

As with any genre of video game, introducing gameplay is a vital part of platformer games. However, platformers in particular are notorious for either revealing too much or too little through their tutorial levels: either you are thrown in with no idea what's happening, or your hand is held for too long. A particular favourite platformer of mine, The End, might fall under the second category a bit more.

It starts off fairly incongruously: you're given basic directions to walk, and so you walk.

This part essentially acts as opening credits: sponsors are announced, the game title is dropped, when suddenly:

You're frozen in place as a meteor comes plummeting down to earth! Your actions are limited, you cannot use your new walking powers! What will you do??

Embrace the inevitable, it turns out.

Welcome to the afterlife.

The muted colour scheme and suspended gravity make it obvious you're in a pretty dark situation, in an alien environment very unlike the suburbia presented before. You're also suddenly acting like a source of light-- what's up with that? (Establishing a new power to be explained later, that's what.) Your walking powers are renewed, and so that's what you do.

One of the first mechanics introduced is that of the slide-- it speeds up your downward progress, but...

You can't go back up again. No backwards movement in this game. At the bottom of this hill, you meet your first shadowy figure.

These guys serve to set up the expectations of the game: Get To The End. They're rather intimidating creatures, especially when viewed in the light of day, but as they're serving as points of exposition their level of intimidation drops. They're here to help as much as hinder you. As much as their adversary is highlighted, they're also useful sources of information. (They're also technically 'part of you.')

Here we see the Guardian of Body being an adversary,

And the Guardian of Spirit being a guide. It's a pretty hamfisted way to set up explanations to play the game, but it also establishes the main themes: you versus yourself, mind versus spirit versus body, and personal exploration.

The Guardian of Spirit also shows through forced feedback the details of your Light Power: once you enter the beam of light, your shadow self disintegrates and you become your corporeal self again.

And once again you get your little hints on how to interact with the environment. They're not exactly diegetic, but they're useful.

 Once you enter the door, you're in the lobby of the game. Each area corresponds with a Guardian, and each clearly has 'collectibles' that you need to obtain. It doesn't really matter where you start off, as every area has its own individual starting area that introduces its own individual gameplay assets.

 We're going with the Mind World (it's the prettiest).

And again, we have the little hints hanging around. I'm not sure why they need to remind you how to walk, but maybe it's to set up the idea of these tutorial !!!s, as they show up a lot around the place.

Like here (establishing jump length),

Here (introduction of interactibles like levers and vines),

And here (reminder of Light Power ability.)

Now, the game could easily be played through trial and error to figure out how these work (the gap in the Light puzzle is too big to jump, the lever stands out from the organic nature of the environment, clearly there must be a jump part of a platformer game) but this game is what some people may consider to be 'casual,' so the developers made it as easy to navigate as possible for the assumed 'lowest common denominator' of players. Each mechanic is introduced as integrated parts of the environment, and within very short distance of each other (it's a pretty short level anyway) so it's enough to keep the player interested without necessarily being challenged too much. The difficulty will ramp up with each level, and you can choose to challenge yourself by collecting all the stars or completing the level in the time given to you.

There is, however, one particular part of this level I'm rather miffed about.

Here you can see there are three levers to pull. The first one drops a spiked ball on your head, killing you, the second one drops you into a pit of spikes, also killing you, and the final one opens a door to let you continue to the end. This is perhaps the first instance of trial and error in the game. Why make both levers traps without making such treachery anticipated? Is it to establish the lantern as a checkpoint (when you die, that's where you resurrect)? Why did both levers have to kill you? It'd make me wary of the third one, to be honest. This isn't really the difficulty ramping up, this is just cruel.

Here's the final part of the level, with our friend the !!! again. The door mechanic has already been explained, but we haven't encountered these kinds of doors yet so the location of the tutorial reminder kind of makes sense. You pick up a key earlier on in the level and you open one of the doors to complete the level. Part of The End is that it's kind of a personality test: each level ends with a question like this, and once you complete all of the questions it will give you a Personality Profile based on your choices. Essentially, what you were when you were alive. Spooky, huh?

Here's a clip of me playing these parts, in case you wanted to see what it was like. Sorry about the video quality: you can only play The End in windowed mode, so I had to cut it down a bit.

3D: Evocative Biome: Pre-Pro!

So it begins! First off, I'm just going to check and see if my Pinterest widget works. That'll be where I'll store all my inspirational images and references!
Follow Justine's board Biomes Inspiration on Pinterest.

My current assignment in 3D class is to create a 3D biome that evokes a particular emotion. But what biome should I choose? I've currently narrowed it down to two places: a salt marsh and a tide pool. I've picked these two environments in particular because they involve the marrying of terrestrial and aquatic organisms, which expands my options for visual vocabulary (reflections, things partially hidden beneath the surface) and because making water shaders are hella fun.

The salt marsh would be an environment that relies heavily on the layering of foliage and water to create an interesting visual pattern. I've done some thumbnails and research into what this biome would involve.

The tidepool biome would rely more on rock shapes and silhouettes to create an exciting composition, as well as bringing in more aquatic organisms to the balance. Here are some thumbnails and explorations on that topic!

Now to choose between these two biomes and focus on the visual identity of the biome! I want to focus especially on colour and stylization, as those are two things I want to get better at. And with these two things, I can much more easily evoke an emotional response!

DA: Summer Work Part Two (Animation- Gif Heavy)

And here's some of my work I did over the summer for my internship! This year I was commissioned by a hedge fund advisory to create a small instructional video about a new service they're going to unveil in the fall. I made it about robots! This was a really good way to learn about timing and design in effects, which I'd love to learn how to apply in my 3D particle effects.

 And this one was just a fun way for me to do some animating on my own time!

DA: Summer Work Part One (Speedpaints)

Just a few speedpaints I've done over the summer break. Part two will feature some of the things I've been doing for work, which might be more fun!

 A portrait I did of Roger Federer in celebration of him getting into the Wimbledon finals!

 Some material studies based off photos of Venice.

 Cloud studies.
Here are a few of my best Spitpaints, which were all done in under an hour. Each comes with their own theme.

 "Sunken city/Bedtime Story"

 "Disintegration Spell"

 "Red hot weapon"

 "Clifftop Home"

 "Lonely House/Marsh predator"

"Strange frozen columns"

"Lock picker"

These were fun! It's also great to see how much I can progress over a summer if I just consistently keep working. I'd greatly advise taking this up as a hobby!