Initial Research

Here I had a look at all sorts of concept art. And these are the ones I liked the most! : D

When I considered doing my other planet idea I was going to do like a similar, floating island thing... So this is why I looked at these sort of things. What most of them have and I really love, are those waterfalls! I love the effect of it falling for so long that it spreads into nothing... Also The fact that they have to be so huge, and very detailed for it to look amazing. You can obviously tell that my favourite is the middle one. This architecture, those bridges and tons of little house islands floating around and the shadows and highlights of the awesome sky! Not even one wrong thing I could say about this piece. Just, pure awesomeness. 

Even though the top one isn't as detailed and there isn't as much going on, I still love the overall effect of the silhouettes and the moonlight shining through the little windows.

I just wanted to comment on this one because I love the simplicity of the image. It must be one of the greatest ways to knock out some basic concept art. I always fear that I won't be able to present what my idea is but obviously, it's possible. 

 I love the colours and the overall feel of this concept art. I looked at those sort of pieces because I think I will put a sort of forest scenery outside of my environment. So you will be able to see it when looking out of the window. And I believe I want it to be similar to this, very creepy trees, maybe even darker than this piece though. I think I will place my event in the middle of the night, so you can see the awesome moon light casting shadows on my environment, through the windows. So something like the image below... but darker :')

 I have been staring at this piece for ages when I found it. It is truly amazing! I love the sunrise effect of the Sun shining just on the top of the buildings at this moment in time. It makes it that bit more interesting than normal light etc. The birds flying sort of, away from the building gives me an impression that this 'city' is just waking up and coming to life. And because the sun rays hit the tops of the mountains first the birds were the first to awake. 

I also had to rant about this beautiful concept art just because I love the whole in space ideas. And also I believe it's a bit relevant since I was planning on doing something like this. I really like the colour pallet used here. It creates a cool contrast and makes the ruined city, really stand out. And obviously my favourite, the big planet in the sky : D 

So that'll be enough of my ranting for this post c: 

Amnesia - Game Research

I wanted to play amnesia for ages, and lately my friend informed me, that it's actually on sale on steam for £3... so I thought it's a sin not to buy it for that price. And so here it began! 

I was sat here in the dark with all possible speakers up and running to make it the greatest gaming experience ever! It wasn't the greatest experience but it's still near the top!

Since I'm in the process of doing this brief and creating an environment that people will FEAR in I started paying attention to what makes this game so scary. 

I have noticed that the first thing they do is that placebo effect, they tell you that you will see things, very scary things... and when you do RUN!!!!! They let you know that you stand no chance against them and the only way to survive is to run into the darkness ( which makes it worse) and crouch and hope they can't see you. But they can see you, always, well me anyway I never seem to successfully hide no matter what I try, wardrobes behind stuff or just keep running forever. I must say that if you pick up a chair for example and hit the monster that is chasing you with it, he seems to kill you slower : D 

Back to the subject though.. The other thing that makes it a really scary game is the sounds and music, that pretty much makes it because you can hear your own heartbeat getting faster and faster, and so does the breathing. It raises your heartbeat in real life! 

Every now and then you will hear that awfully awful evil creepy laugh in the background too, that automatically makes me think they're behind me and i start running!

What I thought it a smart thing... there is a lot of mirrors throughout the game, but they're all broken so you don't actually have to worry about creating the character for the game. 

The game also echoes a bit, every now and then I will hear steps behind me and because I'm scared I will believe it's not actually my own steps echoing. Also you can hear the wooden floor cracking sometimes above you and sometimes right next to you, so that's another thing that really makes you jump. 

When you come around to visiting lab's and other rooms, you see tables with torture tool scattered around and body parts and bones so that's alright. 

I also loved the monster you meet in the flooded part, not sure what his name is. You cannot actually see him, is the thing so you just let your imagination go but you can see him moving around by water splashes and all, and you can see that he's following you everywhere! Obviously the first time I landed in this place i died within like 5 seconds because I just tried hiding instead of trying to stay out of the water. I didn't really know what's happening till I saw my own blood spreading in the water...

But out of all the scary things, the worst has to be the baby crying in the background! 

Apart from that, graphics wise... the game is old so it's not that good but you really don't care cause it's just so amazing. Also you don't see it most of the time anyway cause you run out of oil really fast... so it doesn't really matter! So don't even attempt to complain about the graphics, ever. I am one of those people that won't care about the looks of the game as long as the gameplay and the storyline is good. And amnesia is veeery veeery goooood.

Concept Art Research - Tomb Raider

I was always a fan of Tomb Raider, I believe it was one of the first ever games I played to be honest... on the pc, awful graphics, very square boobs etc. Nope sorry not square, they were just pointy... very pointy.

But yeah back to the subject. I looked at some concept art they did on Tomb Raider aaaaand these are my favourite pieces. 

I think what makes this work is the size, size matters. Big tombs and creepy places are very scary, after playing amnesia I'm scared of empty spaces, I fear that things are just waiting to jump out of nowhere and kill me D: But I'll save that rant for another post.

Also what is very common throughout those is rays of sun and maybe moon which gives you those awesome shadows that make things even more scary!

Also a cobweb here and there never fails.

I think those vines and roots and big trees give it awesome character, those scary looking silhouettes are always common throughout games and movies. It's because even though it's nothing your brain will make it look like something! That's why limited light is also very important for this process to take place!

Even though Tomb Raider isn't actually in any way, a scary game I decided to talk about it just because of the points I mentioned. I believe it doesn't need to be a scary game to use such techniques. 

Initial Ideas

When I started thinking about what I'm going to do. 

I actually thought of getting one of my favourite stories from a book and creating an environment for that but I put this idea to the side for a bit... just while i considered my own ideas. 

So things that came in mind is stuff like crazy things/people in some cabin in the woods. Airplane crash. Swamps and old old castle dungeons... And lots more. But the idea that really stood out from the crowd was the one of a different planet, sort of similar to ours but completely abandoned. Where you would walk down the once busy streets in between these tall buildings with no signs of any human in sight, dead or alive. I believe it's scarier to not know what is actually going on rather than seeing lots of blood everywhere. It makes you think more about how could tons of people suddenly disappear with no clues left behind. I would want there to be seen a huge other planet, in the sky. Just like you do in halo when you look up : D 

The reason why I didn't go with this idea, even though I really like it is because it would have to be a huge environment, and I'm not sure if I'd be able to do it up to my own standards. I thought it's be better for me to do a smaller environment so I can understand how it all works and do a project like this one in my spare time, when I'm a little more experienced.

And so here I am, made my mind up to create a scary lab. 

I'm gonna leave clues around the environment but the player will not be completely sure what's actually going on. Like the overall basic story is that he created something and it went wroooong. I have it all planned out in my head already. But I'll let you know how and exactly what I'm going to do a little later on. 

: D

New Brief! Environment design!

So lately we got a new brief and I've waited a long time for this one! GAME DESIGN! Hell yeah, we are to design a full playable game level! 

We are to pick and portrait one of the themes: 

Fear, Disgust, Joy, Calm, Awe

Obviously I won't make it easy for myself and actually go for more scary environment. This will require me to make a lot of little clues and props helping to send that message. But I'm not complaining... I love this brief already!

We are to produce a level no bigger than 100m by 100m but it's quality over quantity! We are to use Unity, Maya and Photoshop.
There is much more consideration and stuff required when going through this brief so it's important to start at least thinking about it in the next couple of days. Which I will anyway :') So far I've already considered lots of different scenarios, but none of them seemed good enough. But back to the subject!
Apart from just designing the environment we need a story behind it.
When within the story, we need to consider where on the timeline we come across this environment. Is it an aftermath of some event?
Another thing I really like about this brief is that 80% of it is actually the progress and stuff and NOT RESEARCH! YES FINALLY!! Because I have doing tons of research cause after all it's supposed to be my work, not work ripped from someone else.

Since it's such a complicated big brief we were advised to break it down into sections so we don't get lost in all of it. 

But the best of all, WE NEED TO PLAY GAMES AS A PART OF OUR RESEARCH! Who wouldn't love that : D
Well I believe I have covered the most important things... So yeah we'll see how it goes!