Colour Concepts

The first decent colour concept art for the environment along with moodboards, as requested at the Semester 2 pitch meeting. Concept art is not my strong point, but after some tutorials and practice, this is fairly presentable and definitely helps get across the ideas for the visuals of the final piece. Included is a moodboard for the Crystal Cave and Riot Street concepts, as well as a digital painting for each and an extra variant for the street, experimenting with lighting from a streetlamp.

Concept Sketches

Here is some of the concept art, sketches used to come up with the original ideas and to develop the final scene.

Dear Esther

This game has shown some parallels with my own project. First of all, the only interactivity is exploring and observing the environment. By this method, along with narrated extracts from letters, the player is drawn into the narrative. Although the letters give the specifics of the story, it is the environment that sets the mood and backs up the details. As my final piece will also be an environment with the purpose of setting the theme and mood, this is a great published example to look at. The second reason Dear Esther is relevant to my project is the content; the somewhat bland and weather beaten island hides beneath it a system of caves rich with crystals, stalactites and vibrantly-lit chambers. My environment will feature a street ravaged by civil unrest, through which an unexpected cave of crystals is exposed underneath.

New Research Approach

Through discussion with tutors at the crit meeting on Thursday, a different approach to the research project will be taken. To me this is now a much more focused, relevant way to go about the project and will free me up to create a more interesting, engaging and effective environment.

My previous idea was exploring the decisions involved in choosing aesthetically different settings for a game. The wording was hard to understand and ambiguous, confusing the word 'themes' with other concepts and trying to remove narrative from consideration.

Though the wording for the refined project has yet to be finalised, the idea is to explore how game environments can be used to construct the theme visually, adding to the narrative of a piece. My final piece will still be very similar, but will now be more directed to giving the observer a sense of the theme of an environment using the visuals alone.

So by exploring the street, the player should pick up civil unrest as the theme and feel the tension and oppression without actually being told by characters, introductions, etc. The environment setting the theme and mood will be reinforced when the player moves into the crystal caves underneath and gets a completely different experience, finding that the natural geological formations will give a sense of discovery, wonder and optimism - in a strong contrast to the street metres away.

Hero Colour Use

In the film Hero, they use the different coloured environments to mark different themes and stories in the narrative. It creates a very bold, original effect.

NatGeo

Desert reclaims buildings in Namibia

I am increasingly finding that National Geographic is one of my favourite sources for real life inspiration. This photo is just incredible, I'm not sure whether to believe this is natural lighting or not, but it makes for a fascinating environment nonetheless.

Amazing Volcano Photo

Lightning Strikes in Volcanic Ash Cloud

An incredible photograph of a night-time volcanic eruption lit up by lightning in Chile (National Geographic).