More art styles and inspirations

Another game which i really enjoy the art style of and which also follows the same sort of theme that i want to go with in my small town game enviroment is the My Sims game series.

i have been a big fan of this gaming franchise even though it is seen as a pretty bad game. what i love about it is its cute and chunky art style and bright colours and use of simple textures which can be seen constantly throughout every game in the franchise.

I also like that the buildings and objects them selfs are quite cartoony and abstract looking which adds to the whole quriky and cutieness of the game which i find appealing and adds to the simple game play of the whole game.

here are some screen shots from 2 of the main games from “My Sims” and “My Sims- Kingdom” which show off what i mean by chunky bright environmental art style.

as you can see more or less every object in the game and even the characters are made from simple shapes but have been smoothed out and there are very few sharp edges which i also like in this game.

Main Idea Art style

For my chosen idea of a suburban/town  area I want to go with a cartoony art style to match more with a video game look.

a few games I want to take inspiration from because of there bright chunky, colourful and simple block colours are…

OctoDad

what I love about this style is the bright colours used and with  mixture of half realistic textures for things like the grass which go together really well. another thing I really like this game is that if you look closely at the objects in the scene such as the see saw and the slide you can see it has been made quite chunky looking and that is something I want to do with the objects and buildings in my scene.

 

SimCity

I also really like the sims city art style. the building shapes them selves are much more realistic and in proportion but the textures are mainly just basic colours with a few more detailed ones mixed in for tiles and grass textures.

Simpsons Hit and Run

what I love most about this style is the simple shapes used to create each building and block and it works so well with the simple yet effective texturing. I know its ment to follow the cartoony look of the actual Simpsons series its self which it does very well and it is another reason I like this style so much as its bright and colourful and really shows off its video game look.

 

As you can see I want to go with a cartoony bright and kinda abstract look to my suburban/town  area. I feel this will work well to bring across the idea that it is meant to be from a video game and i think it will be more enjoyable to create with a quirky look about it.

 

 

Main Idea for Final project

After some initial ideas and more research I have decided to go with the suburban/town  area theme.

The reason I decided to go with this idea as I feel over all it is more likely to fit the idea of it being used in a game level and also I feel I will be more successful at creating it in the 3D software. I feel like the suburban/town  area theme will also allow me to create lots of different object in my scene to show off different modelling techniques and allows me to create lots of interesting looking shapes too. also with the scene being out side it means I can use the MR sun and Sky lighting tool to create photo realistic skys and lighting in my scene.

Inspiration

I have taken inspiration from many different games to come up with the layout and look of my suburban/town  area that I want to create. I have taken inspiration from games such as Sim City, The Sims, Simpsons hit and run (lots of sims) , cityville, Gta 5 and many more. mainly games which have large suburban areas are what have inspired me to create this kind of area.

below are some screen shots of games which have this kind of area in them.

as you can see my idea is to create a small town with lots of buildings mainly housing and small buildings with maybe some larger ones like a traditional wee town. I want to include some greenery too such as trees and bushes to add some realism. I will also include roads and pavements and street lamps. finally I could add some smaller objects to really bring across the idea that it is an area that has been lived in like trash cans and things in peoples gardens.

overall I think I have a good idea of what I want to create and what I want to achieve out of this project I also feel like doing a suburban/town  area theme will be good I feel I can make a good job out of this and its not to simple while not being to much work so I can overall make it look nice.

Initial ideas for final projects

for our final piece or part B of our class we had to pick from a range of topics which one we wanted to created I chose to do topic 1 which was-

Topic 1 – Playable game environment

Create a Pre-Visualisation of a game environment; focus on the core elements of the genre you have chosen. Research classic and contemporary games, identifying the elements, forms and shapes you feel are core to visual experience. Create some smaller test videos along the journey which lead to your final piece video.

The reason I have chosen to do this as I find it would be really nice to create a scene in a 3D package which will look as though it will be used in a game and I think it will be fun to create and allow me to create a really nice looking piece of work.  I currently have some experience in 3D softwares such as Maya and 3Ds Max but I am more confortable using Max as this is what we mainly used in college last year and I also prefer the layout and the way you can use modifers on max to create complex meshes much more easier and I find texturing on max to be a lot easier too. I am hoping to use Maya or possibly a mixture of both so I can further my knowledge in Maya as I find this is a more preffered software and it is mainly used at uni just now.

I have thought of a few different environment ideas that I would like to create.

1. Suburban area/ small city

I think this will be a great idea as I think it will be able to create lots of buildings and duplicate them to create a large area which I am taking inspiration from games such as sim city ,goat simulator and Simpsons hit and run which have large suburban areas. I want the art style to be more in comparison to sim city and simpsons hit and run so less realistic as it will be easier to create and I find more appealing in a game. Also with going with a more cartoony look it means I can create more abstract looking building as they will fit in better and can make things look more chunkier as they may have appeared in older games.

below are some examples from different games which are similar to what I want my area to possibly look like.

2. Tropical Beach/ Deserted island

I think this idea will look really nice and I want to create it as realistic as possible if I went with this idea. my idea for this would be to have a small sand covered island surrounded by water with blue skys and have various objects of the beach from rocks to palm trees and I could maybe also have some more man made things to turn it into a tropical holiday beach and include a tiki bar, umbrella and sun beds. I have taken inspiration from games which have really nice realistic looking beaches on them such as Grand Theft Auto 5.

some examples-

3. play park

my final idea is to create a play park which will have things like swings and see-saws in them and also including green grass with pinic benches and trees. I chose to do this as this could be interesting to create all the different objects and it will look good with the realistic sun and sky lighting.

I have taken inspiration from games such as the sims and cartoony games when It comes to the art style but I haven’t taken inspiration from games when it comes to what’s in the park as I don’t know any games which have a play park in them.

examples-

these are my ideas for my chosen topic. later I will decide finally which one I want to create but right now all these ideas I think will look great and I think I will be able to create them successfully while still looking appealing and nice. I feel I may be leaning toward to suburban idea as I feel there is a lot more objects and ideas I can create in this one scene which will make it more interesting and look nice in the cartoon style I would like to go with if I chose this idea.

lighting tutorial -Maya

In class we were asked to create a scene which contained a table and a few different objects.

I created the table and the vases by using simple shapes such as the square and the cylinder shape and manipulating them in different ways using tools such as extrude to make them more complex. I then duplicated the vase and used the scale tool to add variation so that it looked like they were different kinds of vases.

I then added 3 point lights into the scene to bring depth to the objects and I played about with the intensity of each light and the positioning. finally I added the camera.

here is what my scene looked like before I rendered it…

I then took a render of what the scene looked like through the camera.

finally I added some different textures onto the vases and the table to see how they would be effected in the light I used car paint, blinns and phongs.

 

overall I found this lesson to be okay it was a good reminder of how to get the extrude tool and where the texturing part was as I couldn’t remember before. overall I’m pretty pleased how it looks once it texture 🙂

Flash Rocket

Today in class we were asked to create a movable rocket using the keys on the keyboard with a scrolling background in flash. We used coding to do this

Here is a screen shot of my work with some of my coding-

I got my rocket to work perfectly after a few small mistakes in my coding but after further checks i realized i had spelled a few words incorrectly after fixing this it worked in the end.

Overall i found today’s class quite challenging as im very new to flash and dont have much experience with coding but it turned out okay in the end.

Maya first try

Today in class we had our first proper try at maya. we were shown how to create simple polygon shapes, adding a camera and changing the measurement units and grid colour.

our first task was to create a bedroom using simple square/rectangular polygon shapes. i made a simple bed and chest of drawers.

Next we were then shown how to manipulate shapes even further by scaling the edges and vertexes to create more unique shapes. we were tasked to create a temple of some sort here is the ones i made. here is a screen shot of it with just the grey shades.

here is a screen shot which includes the wireframe of it to show all the different shapes i used.

i found todays lesson to be very insightful and a wee refresher for me as i have some experience with maya but haven’t used it in a long time.