Future Progression (Task 3)

The Games Industry is made of developers and publishers –

Developers are responsible for the actual creation of the videogames, an example of video game developers are DICE who’s publisher is EA.

Publishers are responsible for all marketing of the videogame. An example of a video game publisher is EA who publish games created by developers such as DICE.

My Career Goals – 

Out of the 3 main subjects I have tried the one that stands out to me the most is definitely 3D Modelling as I can be as creative as I want and create totally unique assets for my video games which will stand out from anything else you see on the market, I would love to get a job for a major developer such as DICE and work on games such as battlefield where I could get the change to model assets for their maps or weapons. If this doesn’t work out then I will try 2D graphics as it’s still a more creative and free career where I can express myself in my art.

To get this career I will need to work hard on my models and pay very close attention in class and to the detail of my work as these large video game developers have super detailed 3D models in their video games.

The main things I need will be Video games development and Computer Graphics which I feel I can achieve if i work hard and show dedication.

 

Task 2 – Games In Media

There are many types of media including –

Print Media which are books,magazines, newspapers

Then theres digital media (television, movies, video games, music, cell phones, various kinds of software, and the Internet)

Each type of media will have different effects on the target, for example –

TV and film is visual, so it is open to a wide variety and engages the target by using sounds and images to convey a point or sell a product.

Radio uses audio to convey a point across to listeners.

Newspapers are a physical type of media where you must read and interact with the pages in order to extract information from it.

Video games are an interactive type of media as it allows the user to play the game instead of just watch or listen.

How the different types of media tie in with each over and contribute to the effectiveness of one another –

Books and movies are a good example of this as they idea will generally start off as a book and when it gathers a following it can get picked up by different licencors to make a movie or TV show about it, an example of this is the immensely popular Game Of Thrones series which is based off of the song of ice and fire book written by George RR Martin who also now assists in the writing of the TV show as well as writing the final book of the series.

This benefits both sides as they both generate fans to the books and the series through people reading the books for the first time and wanting to watch the show and vice versa.

The same thing also happens with video-games, an example of this being the Resident Evil games into films, the videogames developed such a following that when the film came out it had all of the brand recognition as many people had heard of the videogames, this also worked the other way around though as the release of the films created bonus advertisement for the upcoming resident evil videogames.

Games in media generally work to promote hype and advertisement but in return we expect them to be atleast fun to play but it seems that they are only used as promotional material, an example of this is the Harry Potter series which went from book, to film and then to videogames which were just awful.

How do video games effect culture?

The release of video games based on films and vice versa will encourage people to try the other, an example of this could be if someone goes to watch a film such as star wars in the cinema and plays the brand new star wars game or plays resident evil and decides to watch the movies as they enjoyed their experience.

“An NPD poll conducted in 2007 found that 72 percent of the U.S. population had played a video game that year . The increasing number of people playing video games means that video games are having an undeniable effect on culture. This effect is clearly visible in the increasing mainstream acceptance of aspects of gaming culture. Video games have also changed the way that many other forms of media, from music to film, are produced and consumed”

I got this information from –

10.4 The Impact of Video Games on Culture

This proves that video games are influencing modern day society as they are inspiring movies and music are produced and different themes, it also shows the amount of people playing videogames, 72% of the USA’s population is 232.632 million, this shows the clear influence media on videogames and videogames on media.

Task 1 – An Introduction To Games Development.

3D Modelling – 

In 3D modelling we use a program called Auto desk Maya which before-hand I had absolutely zero experience in using and since then we have created many different objects and even some assets for some miniature games, these include a standalone spaceship as an introduction to things such as coke cans, for my small horror game I created a flashlight and a battery and even experimented with ways to texture in it, below are a few examples of my 3D modelling work.

To create 3D models to you start off with a very basic shape such as a square and you resize and rotate it and add many different other shapes to get your final design, an example of this is my switch on my flashlight being resized and rotated to look pressed in.

Programming –

Programming has been one of my favorite parts of game development, this is because it shows you the science between how many things that we deem normal in a video game work, whether it be a door or a health bar. So far in programming we have made a working battery for a flashlight which has a timer and when it reaches 0 the flashlight will run out of battery. We have also made different types of doors including an intractable, a motion detector one and one that requires a key card. For programming we use a video game engine called Unreal Engine 4, Before this course I had played many Unreal Engine 4 games so I had expectations of what the engine was capable of, this is where we made our small games, mine being a horror castle map which is fully modular as it is the easiest way of creating the levels in the game engine, below are some screenshots of my work in the engine.

 

My biggest strength in programming is my modular level designs, I have no updated screenshots but since my first level I have made many more in my own time as practice and am very happy with where I am with regards to my experience.

2D Graphics – 

Our introduction to 2D graphics was basic shading using the brush tools, from here we have gone on to do many other things including pixel graphics, using many different tools, and using gradients to texture. I had a lot of photoshop experience prior to this course and so I knew many things in photoshop which made this part a lot easier and more enjoyable for me as I knew what I was doing, although I did have experience I have learned a lot of tricks from it such as using tools that I wouldn’t ever use before as I was unsure of what I could use them for.

Here is my first piece of shading we had to do – 

To create the shading on the ball I used the brush tool and darkened the color and messed around with the opacity, I repeated this until I got the color fade to a level that I wanted. The rectangle was much easier as all i had to do was create boxes shaded in different tones using the paint bucket tool.

We Also used the patch tool to demonstrate how it could be used to cover things such as acne, here is my attempt at doing this.

As you can see it went rather well, to do this I selected the patch tool and used the tone of skin from his neck to cover his acne on his face, this was a very fun task for me.

 

Here is some of my Pixel Art –

This was my first attempt at pixel art, to do this I created a 16×16 pixels canvas and then used the brush tool to select the colors and simply drew my design, a key tip we were told is to make sure black blocks don’t overlap as it would make the shape appear darker from a distance.

Pixel Art was used primarily in the earlier stages of videogames and is a very popular form of graphics, if you had played games such as Golden Axe, it also remains a popular form as graphics, Terraria being an example of this.

My biggest strength in 2D art is definitely shading as it allows me to go into detail with my art that I create to give them depth and just generally makes them look more polished and complete.