Interview with Jonathan - Primary Research.

At life after college i met a new friend who introduced me to Johnathan on facebook he is 3D Modeller for Environment/ character design, we arranged to meet as he knew i needed help with my dissertation for primary research, before going to meet him i wrote out a series of questions i wanted to ask him just so i'd be prepared for the interview and so that i could get the most out of his answers as they were obviously going to go in my dissertation.
Here's the evidence of the facebook conversation and afew of the questions asked on paper.

Heres the questions i prepared and the answers given-

Talk more about this and what you learned from it and how it helped you in your practical.

Scale Testing and Testing

From previous experience in the other module I know that a lot of time is wasted in scaling and rescaling game levels and props so this time i decided to avoid all that and be prepared. Before i started modelling anything i used my floor plans to model up a quick 3D mock up of the environment and used it to see how big i needed my game level in maya to be.

I used squares at first changing the size of the first person controller and the squares until i got a resonable fit i liked that wasn't too huge for the maya or unity scene. 

The tests worked well as i was way off base to begin with

I found the perfect size to work with as you can see above ^^^^ the middle cube was about the height of a victorian room and i worked around that using extruded shapes and the merge to centre tool to create a scene that flowed architectural wise.

I had been researching a lot of Victorian environments and how they are built, i didn't have time to put everything in i would have liked too such as floor boards and skirting boards, however i did get to put some stairs in and nice tall ceilings, i have included some images below showing my influences and thought process - 

Tall Ceilings

Winding Stairs

I feel that my stairs fit very well into the scene and were actually quite simple to make i'm quite partial to winding stair cases not sure why however i have noticed in Horror films they always have shots of the stair cases or scenes on the stairs such as running away or running up them such as Hitchcock's Vertigo in 1958 -

My Winding Stairs

See above and below two screenshots showing me measuring the size of the first person controller against the height, width and length of the 3D mock up scene. 

As you can see from the screenshot below that by testing scale before modelling worked out and everything fit when i was putting it into the scene

talk about how Anna said its better to work the other way round maya and unity. 

Transferring to Unity -

Transferring to Unity was much easier than last module as i had much more organization in this one with Scale testing and testing files. I did learn however that I should model props in Maya and then Position them in Unity next time this is much more efficient and faster Annabeth says, it makes sense too and i will be taking this knowledge and using it on my FMP next project. 

If i were to start this project again i think it would have run even smoother had i made the pros first then positioned this way it would have saved time and flowed better. 

Overall testing was a huge success and very good practise i will always make sure i do this first before starting to model my game levels. 

MCM comic con - Manchester

So last year I attended Manchester Comic Con for the first time it was such a good day out. The only thing i recommend though is by your ticket online first, we did this and waiting in the queue for 3 hours only to get close to the door and see that we could have just walked on in with this pre-bought ticket. We were a bit annoyed to say the least :p I know this for next year now. 

This event was different to what I'm usually used to, i normally go to events that have a lot of games there to play wether it be retro on new, however comic con is mostly about buying things, there was a lot of stalls selling gaming merchandise/ games and comics. 

There was also a few artists there distributing there work and it was really interesting to look at and exchange some contact cards, one regret i have is that i found a Darth |Maul print that a guy there had drawn, it was so good and only £10 too but for some reason i decided against it, i really wish i would have bought it. 

These types of events are a great social and networking place for like minded people to attend, i find visiting these events makes me happy and also gives me more contacts via concept artists etc. 

I will be attending next years events hands down as it was all very well organised and a really good day out. Jason Brody was also there the actor that plays the voice of Vaas from Far Cry 3, we missed out of seeing him because the queue was closed when we were about to step in line, its good that these events hold the chances to meet these people. 

Here are some pictures from the day :)

Modelling of Practical - Game Level and Props

I was much more confident this time around modelling as i had done a lot of environment research and read a few books on architecture and scenography such as W. Yins Impeccable Scene Design for game, animation and film 2011 reading this it talked a lot about how space is used and how less is more in environments sometimes, i used this in my practical and utilised the space i made with correctly sized objects, i also positioned them in a way that would seem natural and real for example having a photo frame by the bed side cabinet for the in game worlds charter to look at before they went to sleep. I also used it to create more narrative in the level and to link it to the child's singing in the room (see blog post on texturing for explanation further on this).

Here are some screenshots of my process of modelling- 

I really like using special duplicate it is a very handy and time saving tool.

Props

I wanted to create more realism to the scene so i gave the rooms a little background and narrative to them by creating personal objects such as little toy cars for the girl to play with and also again the lamp and photo frame, i feel that this effect worked and the player feels like they can interact with these objects.

Image plane used-

At first i created the cars using blinns but then when Anna reminded me of keeping style and tone i changed them into wooden cars as this was the norm for the victorian period of toy car, i think it worked out really well.

Old car colour -

New car colour- 

More props i made below-

Synthesis crit - Presentation and my thoughts on it.

My Synthesis crit was focused on Video Games and Horror and looking mostly at research i had done into what we fear and trying to understand why we fear it. At this point in the module i thought i was going to be focusing on environments in horror film and games however the crit made me realise that this specific topic would be hard to write about as i would keep loosing the subject matter for example fear is not just about the environment its about everything from Sound, lighting, suspense etc. So i may as well have used a much better title which kept focus to the essay and explored more topics within the subject matter this also meant that i could expand my ideas on the practical -

I included in my presentation mood boards i had compiled looking at fear as a whole and environments,
I researched games that i was going to play and included these in the presentation to show my research process, i also talked about what I liked in the games and what i noticed was effective to create a horror level -

I also looked into practitioners of film and the techniques they used to get the desire effect of horror in them, the techniques they used, i found that Hitchcock in Psycho focused on suspense the most but he did this by utilising sound and long pauses, it was interesting to watch and i learned a lot, i also talked about looking into fear as I've discovered you can't really create a horror game or film with out first experiencing horror and gaining a level of understanding on it.

- The crit helped me to sum up what i needed to do which was focus on a topic and pick a title (as i kept changing my idea all the time which isn't good!)

Concept Art

I asked Andy Bailey to draw up some concept art for me as this is his speciality and he's really good at it. I tend to be more on the virtual side of things enjoying to create 3D objects rather than draw, plus i really aren't that good at drawing however i will be working on this on my FMP as its something i must get better at. I messaged Andy through Facebook about the Concept Art as we had talked in class about it previously, I send him screenshots of a mock up I made to guide his Concept Art and also the type of style i would like, we then discussed it further in class the next day and he got down to drawing a final piece of Concept Art, I'm very grateful for it and i think it depicts my scene of the Victorian child's room well.

Here's the screenshots i sent him via Facebook - At first i was going to go for a cartoony style as i was self conscious about texturing and thought it might look rubbish however when i started texturing and picked it up again i felt confident enough to go for a none cartoony style. 

Thank you Andy! :)

Sound Designer - Andy - Primary research

For another piece of primary research I was able to talk online with a friend and sound designer who I met at a networking event in Leeds we kept in touch and he is currently releasing an indie game called Hyphen if you want to check it out here is the link - www.indiedb.com/games/hyphen 

On the topic of sound and horror and I asked him whether he had made horror sounds for games before and what he thinks makes a scary sound this was his reply,

 ‘I have made horror sounds for games before the best thing you can do is make them subtle in the background low in the mix so like a low rustling against silence this is pretty powerful or something like frequencies between like 27-500hz you can use these to scare a player or on the opposite end of the scale for instance like the movie Psycho in the shower scene they use really high frequencies in the shower death scene. Reverb, Repetition and multiple layers of sound really works well builds this kind of weird atmosphere out of sound.’

Heres the screen shot as evidence also- 

I found his help very useful and it goes to show that primary reseach is a very insential source of information, i learned a lot from looking into what Andy suggested and it helped me whilst designing my own sound in my game level. 

http://freesound.org/ was a good send. 

Thank you!

Floor plans of Practical

Here are my floor plans i find the best way for me to work before designing my environment is to sketch out a floor plan and then use it to sometimes colour code where things go and also where scripting etc will be. I find this is good practise to plan out where everything will go in your level as you will end up wasting time trying to decide as your doing it, also sitting down and thinking about it for a while helps you to think of new ideas and improve on the ones you have already on paper-