New Year, New Project, New Game

The year ended, and with it some projects were left behind, others moved on. I was put on a new project, The Crisis of the Super-Verse, a fighting game where super heroes take the center stage and battle it out in different stages corresponding to each one of their stories. The game has solid game mechanics, but the art needs a revamping which is where i come in.
I am a huge comics fan so this is a huge opportunity for me to take the lead artist position and make some awesome art for my portfolio as well as helping make the art be as successful part of the game.
The first changes we talked about was how to turn a fighting game, into a fighting game that takes place inside a comic book. Right off the bat we knew that the backgrounds needed to be changed, as of now they are rendered in 3D space, what we want to do is make the backgrounds 2D so relay the feeling of being inside the comic book.

My first assignment as lead artist was to update the two preexisting characters, Major Marvelous, and Light-Speed Lass.
I want the characters to have a modern look, old school comics have more of a simple design and both Tristan and I agreed that we want to give our characters some visual interest, this would open some creative doors and make the characters more interesting to concept and to model. We turned to the DC New 52 comics in which all of the new super heroes got their costumes revamped. For the major marvelous concepts i looked at characters such as Superman, Batman, Shazzam, the Sentry, and Captain America.

 I really liked how their costumes stayed simple yet the artists used simple shapes to make them look more armor plated. This is an idea that me and Tristan really liked so we adopted it into our Major Marvelous costume.

Out of this four iterations we decided to go with the fourth option. We liked the way the suit was broken up and it looked not only like a super suit but also like a suit of armor. Since the battle will be among super heroes they need the right kind of protection. Once we had decided that we wanted the 4th suit we wanted to go with for Major Marvelous i made a concept art piece out of it so that Tristan could start modelling him and we could get the animations on the way.

I also did some concepts for Light-Speed Lass. She still needs some work but the concepts are based on the Flash, her bio says that her suit also acts as a space suit that is why i made a heavier version. We are thinking about keeping the color scheme of the first suit but again giving it a more segmented and armor plated look.

When the team showed my work to professor Nadel he really liked the idea of going with the New 52 style he said it would work as a satire because he doesn't think that DC's new comics makes sense. I personally don't have a problem with the direction DC has taken but i do like the idea of poking fun at this controversial situation that is taking place in the comic book world.

Narrative architecture and Transmedia Storytelling

Last Wednesday us seniors had another Capstone workshop this time it was about narrative architecture and transmedia storytelling.
There was a big duscussion about these two trends so i am going to start with narrative architecture. We discussed two types of narrative: linear vs. spatial exploration.

Linear narrative is where the player travels through the world with a pre conceived story line, tis is the more traditional approach to narrative. Player starts at point A and goes through the game until he reaches point B at the end of the game.

spatial exploration refers to the fact that even though there might be a pre conceived story line player stills has a choice and can create their own story by navigating through the environment . A great example of this is Bethesda's Elder scrolls saga, i will use their latest iteration Skyrim as an example. In skyrim the player gets to start out by making their character in any way they want, they also get to choose what their play style will be. To this end the player may choose to stray away from the main storyline and explore caves, join guilds, and collect items thus creating their own narrative through "spatial exploration"

I believe that games nowadays are straying away from the more linear paths and they are giving the player more choices than ever before. Games such as Deus Ex were revolutionary for the amount of player choice involved, with each different choice leading down different paths that for better or for worse ended up defining the main character by the end of the game.
The thing is that this is not a new definition of narrative at all, a narrative is essentially the construction of a world to be explored and just like in real life no one has a pre conceived path that they must follow. This idea is great to be experienced in a game because it allows the player to be anything and everyone, the player  can make both moral and immoral choices which they would never make in real life. The key is in the amount of options, nobody likes to feel constrained to follow one path and this is where games are shining in this later generations.

The next topic we talked about was transmedia storytelling. This refers to an expansive multi-platform, narrative experience- a story world. We have seen examples of this in the Halo, Mass Effect, and Star Wars universes. Where they start out as a game or movie and get expanded in the form of books, comic books, other games, movies, or events.
This is all part of a cultural shift in the way people use media, they call it "media convergence".
I took some notes from the presentation, one passage that stuck to me in particular was this "Cross media storytelling doesn't provide an expansion of the created realm but an adaptation of the same story across several different kinds of media." A good example of this was the walking dead series. If anybody has seen the show or read the comments they will instantly recognize most of the characters however the show and the comic don't transpire at the same rate or in the same path thus not "providing an expansion" but using the story as a base and providing an adaptation of it for the masses. This is genius because people that are not into comics can still experience the world of the walking dead through TV albeit not the same story the world is still very much the same and both types of media do a great job of immersing the viewer into it.

In conclusion transmedia storytelling is " a process where integral elements of a fiction get dispersed systematically across multiple delivery channels for the purpose of creating a unified and coordinated entertainment experience." Even tough the games end the worlds live on in the form of different media which adds credibility and richness to this world which hold so much and can be explored in so many different ways.

Nearing the end

The semester is coming to an end and even though Full Metal Tactics didn't make it through to next semester i am very proud of the progress that we made this semester. We started out with a bunch of ideas and learned a lot about our game, the way we work together as a group and ultimately about the kind of people we are as individuals and team members.  

So i realized that i have been bumming a little since we found out that FMT wasn't going forward which is why i haven't really looked at my blog, for those of you who follow it (if anyone does at all lol) that i have neglected you but here i am once again and i wanted to show off the final progress that i made the weeks before FMT got cut.

Lets start with the main character because i finally came up with it. I wanted the Mechs to feel like mechs in terms of  scope and grandeur but also the challenge was to make these mechs look organic. I started out looking at plants and animals for reference, i was going to go in the direction of plants however i wasn't convinced and i don't think the rest of the team was convinced with the direction that professor Crispel and Pile were proposing. Instead i went back and looked at the human body, i wanted to give the mechs a fleshlike feeling but keep it mechanical at the same time. First thing that came to mind were the Geth from the Mass Effect universe. In the lore the Geth are biomechanical robots created by an alien race that eventually evolved their AI into a consciousness. Art wise they have mechanical parts but the arms and legs are much more organic. This got me thinking and i ended up looking at the anatomy of the human muscles, i thought to myself "why not make this mechs have musculature encased in metallic parts?" So i got to work i looked at references from games such as Crysis, Mass Effect, and Deus Ex human revolution because they all dealt with organic looking suits, robots, and augmentations.

What i came up with was this: 

The idea was to make the shoulder pieces part of the shoulder weapon. Each the shoulder weapon would be connected to different armor pieces thus emphasizing customization more and give the player a more distinctive mech.

I also re designed the first batch of weapons i had made to make them look more dangerous and out of control here is a picture of the final weapons, sadly i never got to unveil them to the team or the class as we found out that FMT wasn't going to make it through right after i finished them.

It would have been awesome to see the mechs and different weapons in action and to see what the players would have chosen for their mechs in terms of looks and abilities. Perhaps we will take another look at FMT in the near future...... we can only hope.  Regardless it is time to turn the page to Crisis of the Super Verse the new project i got assigned to, this is going to be a great experience we are now a 10 person group and Ryan Hill got assigned to it to this is going to be a blast. More to come on that so keep reading later installments of the Cuadra Blog!!!!

More assets and some weapons!

Well, it has been a long process but our game is finally coming together. This week we had a great mock presentation of a stage 2 challenge we showed off our process and where we were in terms of art design and programming. the reason why we couldn't do a formal challenge was because we don't have a working digital prototype of the game yet. however the customization menus are up and running ad ryan and Jake are working diligently to create the map so we can show off our mechanics, we are hoping that by the time wednesday comes around we will have a working prototype to finally be able to show off our gameplay and potentially pass stage 2. Art wise the game is coming together quite nicely, this week i concentrated on some more art for the environment, as well as some weapons.


For the environment pieces i created ammo crates to put around the map. I designed this crates to look modular, and the contents are all modular as well so that we can change them around for variety. The ammo crates also have a top which i made for aesthetic purposes more than anything. For the ammo crates i looked at examples of how Deus Ex Human Revolution did their crates and the futuristic look they have to them. I also created a floor pannel that opens and closes, this will be the spawn tile.

I also created some weapons to show off for the demo i made a ballistic assault rifle as well as a revolver. I also made an energy rifle and an energy hand cannon. These weapons can be used to customize the mechs and they each have different in game abilities. I am still missing shoulder weapons both ballistic and energy but they will be implemented before class on wednesday.

Environments inspirations and art assets

This week marked the beginning of production of assets for the game. I decided to start out with the environment because i believe that the setting is just as important as the characters.

I constructed different pieces in a modular way that would stay true to my designs and the art style i had envisioned for the game. I looked at games like portal to see how the artists had handled a Research and Development lab setting as well as the color palette they used, i saw that they had muted colors and the pieces were pretty simple but put together everything worked well to create a nice lab atmosphere. Since our mechs are essentially prototypes being tested in labs by the government i figured portal's art would be helpful. So i had my setting and color palette but i still had to figure out the 2D art style i wanted to go with for this i turned to one of my favorite game series, Metroid.  Metroid Fusion to be exact is a gameboy advanced game but the art style is so well done i was really inspired by the way they use values to show volume as well as surface detail so i used it as a reference to make my panels and other assets for the environment.

During my disciplinary review with Joan Patel i was told that the art was one of the most consistent that she has seen so far out of the people that have come to her. 

Thats always good to hear. I have a couple more pieces to make for the environment and then i will move on to the weapons and the mech. I am really excited that things are taking shape!

Mechs And Presentations

This week i concentrated on researching organics in order to draw inspiration for the mechs. I looked at different plants as well as animals and organic materials that would help me reach a decision on what the mech might look like. I personally and i think the rest of the team agrees with me on this, would like to stick to the idea of mechs that we had started with because. This whole project started since way back in the MOBA game where we decided that mechs would successful protagonists because it would be easy to explain and show how the different weapons could be tailored to fit each mech thus allowing the player to customize their own. In this sense i want to keep the idea of the mechs that i have sketched even before, however id id find some ver interesting things that will help me make these mechs look more organic without losing the style that i am going for.

On another note this week we had to present our game in 15. We only had one speaker and we didn't have that much to show in terms of gameplay because we had just barely passed stage 1 and we have been working with a paper prototype for the Q&A. The presentation was alright sadly it failed to convey our intentions to the people that hadn't heard our presentation challenge for stage 1, namely professor Manley and the other teachers from the other section that were present. For our next presentation we will strongly consider having more than one speaker so that they can take turns relaying information and have time to get their  thoughts and ideas together before they speak so that all the facets of the game can be properly described. another important thing we need ASAP is a digital prototype so we can demonstrate our game properly as well as our customization options.

As an artist I have to not only define the main characters but also keep the art direction for the environment and the GUI in order to challenge stage 2. Next week i will probably put the mech designs to the side and work on the environment which represents a big part of what the game's look and feel is going to be.  

Full Metal Tactics

After looking over our previous ideas and iterating on the paper prototype success we decided to go forth to the class and present our idea of a new turn based strategy party game with customization options for the mechs. In the game each player gets to roll a dice and the dice dictates who goes first each player then gets to move and perform an action. The actions may include defending or attacking depending on how much range is supported by their weapons. The objectives of the games can include capture the flag, conquest, or just plain team death match up to 5 lives. Every time a player dies he has to sit out for 2 turns so players have to work together in teams in order to survive together or stay alive as 2 turns of 2 on 1 could drastically change the flow of battle. We decided that this battles would take place in a lab as these mechs are weapons being tested by the government and piloted by death row inmates which are seen as expendable.

We went ahead and challenged stage 1 with Full Metal as the game we wish to go forward with. We had a successful presentation, except we almost forgot to talk about the gameplay, the most important part of the whole thing. Luckily Amanda brought it to our attention and we were able to go into the gameplay further.

I think we had a successful presentation because we presented the information concisely and as a team, we all spoke and we were confident with our material. We had plenty of concept art and terrain ideas. From an art perspective i got some interesting criticism, it was pointed out that mech games have been done almost as much as zombie games at this point and that i would have to somehow think outside of the game world and come up with something fresh, something new that would set our game apart. People also mentioned the idea of organic, or fresh mechs. I cant think of anyone that has done anything like that so i have been doing some research and i think ive found some good directions n which to take the art, more research is still necessary but plants and organic material are fascinating and if they could somehow be incorporated into the mech theme then that would be a killer duo. I would also need to make the environment fit the same art style which would be challenging.

MOre to come as we move on to challenge stage 2 in the upcoming weeks .