Evaluation

Kinga Makowka

OUDF503

Evaluation

This brief was different to any others I have done in the past. I liked the freedom of being able to find something I would enjoy doing. It was hard because most competitions are animation or film based. But there is a way out of every situation. What really helped me is social networking sites. After attending the recent Bradford Game/Animation Festival I got in touch with one of the environment artists from FuturLab. I was lucky enough for him to set me a a brief and give me tons of tips and advice to start with.

Even though he set the brief he told me what he wants to see there was still this sense of freedom because I could choose what I want it to look like, feel like, choose my own target audience.

I enjoyed every part of the project, even the research purely because I love reading about space, mythology, crazy theories and that’s mostly what I did.

The only negative about not having that many restraints is the indecisiveness one minute I was sure I am creating a whole planet, the next I was convinced it would be more interesting to do floating islands. This is just an example but it took some time for all the ideas to settle and for me to make up my mind.

I tried my best at sketching as much as I could during this project, purely because my drawing skills are not the greatest and I want to improve them. I feel like I did not do too bad of a job and I will carry on with this practise during future projects.

What I am not so good at, and it became quite a problem lately is scripting and things. I had all the scripts because I found them on forums and things, but applying them where they need to be applied was a different story. The more I tried reading into it the more people confused me, so in the end my environment doesn’t have a respawn set up. It’s quite difficult because it is quite tricky not to fall off… So this is another thing I really need to start digging into, I am planning on getting some books to try and get at least some basic understanding of this so it’s easier to figure stuff out afterwards.

The other problem I’ve been having was with my textures. The structures were quite big. And my textures seemed to stretch quite a bit, I am not sure why because I tried my best for it not to happen.

Another thing I wanted to talk about is my terrain. I did not use the tool in Unity for that because it was floating islands so I tried to model a floating island, but then again came across the texture problem, and it was really frustrating… Because it either looked so unnatural because it was too perfect or it looked too square and… In the end I just improvised, I am not really happy with the result but again that’s just another thing I’ll spend some time looking into when I have some time to spare.

I completed my environment for a while before the brief deadline because he wanted to give me some useful feedback and ways to improve before I hand it in.

I receiver some really useful tips which will definitely come in useful in the future.

He told me to make sure there is a bigger contrast between the foreground, rocks and temples, and the sky/space. He said that while the grays and browns might be more realistic, it doesn’t make for much of an interesting piece and told me to NOT BE AFRAID TO PUSH COLOUR. Which is something that does not come easy to me, I usually try to make things dark and scary which usually makes it a 50 shades of gray/black thing... so I will have to play around with that.

He commented on the cloud in the sky, I thought it’d make it seem a little more like Earth just to make it seem more, livable but he says that it makes him think less of space and more of just our sky so it’d look a lot better if I swapped it for something like a nebula in the background, and with that have rocks more of a yellow/red tone and it would help the space become more interesting.

He told me to play around with a diffuse detail shader and it should sort out my problem.

He said all this along tons of others and I am so grateful for all of his help, and I see all the mistakes I’ve made and I will be fixing all of it very soon.

I wanted to improve this environment before the deadline but other deadlines which happened to be in one week didn’t let me do that. I do not blame bad planning for once, because I think my planning was quite good this time. I worked on everything bit by bit and I am pretty proud of myself it is just before the deadline you want to spend this extra time on it just to polish it up, but if there are a lot at once it makes it kind of impossible.

Overall I think it was a really good experience, you start seeing things from a different perspective, I always thought it’s best to make things as realistic as possible but really you want to blow things out of proportion and make it crazy awesome. Also receiving feedback from someone else than your teachers and friends is very good, because it seems to be a completely different kind of feedback. This positive helpful experience will definitely push me to do it more often!

Final Environment

It's a little too bright for my liking. It looks a lot brighter than it actually is on the screen shots, but it's not letting me printscreen while I play the standalone... stupid thing. 

What makes it bright is the moon I think.... and there is lack of shadows because I don't have unity pro. I wish they did that Autodesk do and give licences free for students for 3 years! D: 

It would make life so much easier.

Anyways... there's still work to be done. I will make this one of my summer projects ^^

Transmedia essay

‘Transmedia is a way of telling a story over a variety of media.’ It is happening all around us. We watch movies based on books, those are mostly then transferred into games, xbox games, playstation games mobile games. They print shirts, posters hell, we can even get cups with our favourite characters on them! Most of the time before they even release the movie/game etc. It is to get the public excited for the release. There are people within the companies hired purely to excite their customers, they are in charge of social networking, they run competitions, give hints to what is going to happen and most importantly interact with consumers.

A really good example of this is the Harry Potter series. After a huge success of the first book everyone turned their attention to Harry Potter. EA seemed to get it right and as the movies were coming out they were releasing a new Harry Potter game alongside, each one with better graphic and more complex gameplay. Millions of toys were produced, your everyday figures of characters as well as Lego’s etc. I even have a chess board with ‘magic’ pieces that you can move with a wand exactly the same like the chess from Harry Potter And The Chamber Of Secrets. ( no magic, they are just magnetic.) They did produce little things like costumes, cups, pillows, posters. But they did not leave it at that I think the most impressive thing they have done is give you the ultimate Harry Potter experience by organizing weeks nights in castles, with weird potion classes, uniform and witchcraft activities like just like in the books themselves. What they did differently, they did not just hire people to take care of social media but they created a website called pottermore where the writer herself! Was interacting with her fans which was a huge deal.

As a part of this brief we are to consider how we would expand on our project, where would we take it?

I got a life simulated brief which was to create a game environment. I have created an ancient Mayan city, in space. I have looked into tons of theories and stories about Mayans. One of them was about this cult, where they believe that these huge open mouth creatures were teleports to another world. I really liked that concept so I decided to go with it and everything went from there. Because my environment is based on a tale like this one there are many ways I could expand it. But in my opinion the best path to take would be the animation route. When making this decision I also considered my own skillset, I have animated in the past and I know I am able to do it. I could do a short film, it would be something similar to my vfx project because it would have to be full of special effects to make it really exciting. But I think, I would not be so confident about film or even a comic book, they aren’t my strongest skills. I could create an animation explaining the story, maybe how the civilisation happened to be out of space, I could make up a further story explaining why they left the Earth to start off with. I could make it into a huge chase where I create enemies that would hunt them through the galaxies. Considering what kind of animation I would want to do… I did think a about a stop motion animation because it would be a challenge, I have not done that kind of animation before but it is one of my favourites! Or I could make it using photographed textures to make it seem realistic. Now I think about it, it could easily become a collaboration with a music student. I always said that music makes or breaks the project. And I read an article about music storytelling and how popular it is becoming... I think this could make a great piece! I did not mean a song but more along the lines of an interesting instrumental soundtrack. But I could also consider my target audience, I could easily change it and maybe aim the animation at a younger audience and make this piece into an educational cartoon. I was always fascinated with ancient civilisations and I remember watching such things on tv and dvd’s. I think it would be quite interesting to recreate something like this.

If I was to do an animation of any kind it would mean developing the story a little further. I would have to spend a good couple of days on further research, to make sure that the story I create makes sense, it is always more believable if based on historical events, theories etc. I think it would be an exciting process because it would be me developing the whole thing on my own, I would not have to follow someone else’s theme or guidelines and I think it would be really exciting to do! Now I think about it I think it is something I might do during summer, we have quite a few weeks off uni and it is always good to keep busy, that was you don’t come back after 3 months off and forget how to use every possible software you have been using. Most importantly it would be a great thing to add to my portfolio.

Asset Modeling

After I made my mind up about what I wanted to do. There was nothing left to do but to start with the asset modeling. So I started with the big main things, the pyramids, and went from there! 

 c: 

I have encountered one issue when modeling the big structures, the textures were a little stretched, and I can't seem to fix that. They're at 1024 but still don't seem big enough. 

I used my own textures for all of the models. All I did is change the saturation and a few colour of them. 

Since I've been having a few problems with my textures on big objects, I've decided to do a mountain in my own way, I actually created a few planes and small parts which I textured using a photograph I have of a stone. And I tweaked and played around with those till it resembled a floating mountain. Afterwards I made little floating islands to sit around it, and be used as a way to get from one island to another. 

Betty's Concept Art!!

One of my friends wanted in on this project.

Her concept art is heavenly so obviously I agreed.
You can find tons of her awesome work at betty-art.blogspot.com 

I asked her to read through my brief, get a feel to what I'm doing and I told her what I wanted to see.

Her problem is that she tends to make things really funny, or really cute. 

And I needed scary and creepy. So with these key words in mind she came up with quite a few concepts for me and I've gotta say I am so proud!

These are my two favourite ones. And out of those two I am a huge fan of the one on the right. I strongly believe that is it going to and up being my 'teleport to a different world'. I requested a few more drawings on this guy, from the side etc. and I can't wait to start modelling ^^ 

Mood Boards, Polishing My Idea, A few sketches

So after a little think about it, I still want to go ahead with Mayan civilization.

I want it to take all the traditional Mayan buildings. And take them to this rocky icy planet. I want it to be dark, lots of shadows, creepy. Which shouldn't be hard considering the weird statues and sculptures they had. 

I wanted to use this idea of a sculpture of a weird creature with it's mouth open, it being the teleport to another world. 

I don't want any plants or anything green there. Just rock and ice, maybe a bit of snow. 

Here's just a couple of Mayan structures etc.

Heres a few photographs of mountains. A few screenshots of Skyrim ruins and mountains which seems to be a huge influence at the moment.

Here's just some interesting stairs. Doesn't have to be a boring usual angled at 90degrees step.

I want it to be breathtaking, look cold, maybe a little darker than most of those but very similar. 

From here I started doodling and here are a couple of images from my sketchbook.

Research Into Other Planets

When looking at planets I didn't wanna look into our Solar System. 

I searched for something that is uncommon. Just to make it that bit more interesting, and a little more believable maybe? 

Here's what I thought were the most interesting facts and planets etc c:

During my research I came across the habitable zone. It's simply a region around a star with conditions good enough to support life, within this space an Earth- like planet can possess liquid on it's surface.

PSR B1620-26 b

The Methuselah.

(discovered: May30, 1993, confirmed: July 10, 2003)

It's been given a nickname: Methuselah for biblical reasons. 

Methuselah is assumed to be the oldest man to ever live. It is believed that he died at the age of 969.

It has not been named this by accident, The Methuselah is the oldest planet found to date.

12.7 Billion years old.

It was found deep inside of a globular cluster of stars formed from the very first stars formed after the Big Bang.

It's at least as big as Jupiter, most likely even bigger, and almost surely gaseous.

The initial eons were spent around Sun- like star, it's possible it had an Earth-like neighbour.

"If there were gas giants around at 12.7 billion years ago, I would think that there could be a few terrestrial- like planets too" Said Alan Boss. 

Life might have had a chance.


Gliese 581 d
Something truly amazing this. It's a planet 7-14 times the mass of Earth. Considered to be a Super-Earth. It has not yet been confirmed if it's a terrestrial planet. But it being in he habitable zone and considering the outcome of the climate simulations it is possible that there is some intelligent life out there, that has developed similarly to us.

And many others like:

Kepler 10 b
The first confirmed terrestrial planet to be discovered outside of our Solar System. Rocky suuuuuurface. I think it could be a really good look actually. I imagine really sharp rocks, mountains dark space. Just, awesome.
"The planet is so warm that astronomers believe it is absorbing almost all of the heat from it's star, and reflecting very little to no light," says NASA.

So these are my favourites c:
But now I have a problem of, I don't know what look to go for.
Snow and Ice.
Rock and oh more rock.
Dark, or on fire.
The Kepler 10 b for example, I think it'd look amazing really dark and sharp, but then again it's a really hot planet. So I think I'd want to show that. But I suppose I'll just wait and see how it goes. Make my mind up

Initial Ideas

The ancient ruins theme is really up my street.
So I started thinking a little outside of the box.
I thought of some sort of teleport that could spit you out near an Earth like planet, where you'd see no people just ruins. I wanted to make it creepy, and really mysterious. I didn't want to leave any clues to how the civilization of this planet disappeared.
Then I thought of Mayans, Egyptians, Romans, Celts, Persians, Vikings, Aztecs and Chinese.
With all those I could do ruined cities with really clear clues to what civilization it is.

I thought of the pyramids in unusual places like embedded in some rock, inside a huge mountain... some silly things like these.
Then came an idea of the Atlantis.

I really strongly believe that there are other forms of intelligent life out there. And I do believe that they have visited us in the past, this shows through all sorts of carvings and paintings all over the world, in Egyptian pyramids etc.
I mean even the pyramids -__- there is... no way that we built them. And also, I think there's a reason why such similar structures were built all over the world, it can't be that different civilizations that had no communication with each other built the same things.
But enough of my crazy.
I watched an interesting documentary about the Atlantis, and how it's aliens... I can't really remember how it went. But I wanted to do like a huge, floating island. It'd be the ruins of Atlantis on that island. I got really excited about this but it quickly went away as I thought of more ideas, ideas which in my mind would work out a little better.

In the end I decided to do an environment based around the Mayan civilization.
I looked at tons of theories and stories of Mayans.
In Tres Zapotes, La Venta and San Lorenzo.
I read that in the above cities began their sort of, cult or religion. But what I found interesting is that they presented a gate to different worlds in a form of huge open mouth coming out of the earth etc. I found it really cool and it gave me an awesome idea.
I wanted to place my Mayan civilization on a different planet!
So here is where the research into other planets began.

My Brief ^^

I was lucky enough to get a superawesome brief from Callum Roberts, from FuturLab.

He clearly satd what he wants to see, but at the same time gave me a lot of freedom, if it makes sense :')

He said he's a big fan of fantastical cities and ancient ruins (win WIN!) For this reason he wanted me to create an environment based around that concept. 

But he didn't want to see anything he's seen before, he wanted me to 'turn it on it's head' and create the ruins in a place that isn't usually associated with the type of ruins. Eg. Egyptian structures underwater, New York in decay on the Moon, or Mayan ruins on top of a snowy mountain. 

He wanted it to be presented in a game engine of my choice. 

I am to reaaally consider what type of art style I want to present it in. He thinks that photorealism has been overdone by now and some of the best pieces he's seen had handpainted textures. 

He was very helpful, gave me tons of useful links and advice, and for all this I am very grateful.

On top of all he's done he also offered any hep and advice if I get stuck along the way. 

To sum up, I am in love with this brief, and I can't wait to get it started! 

Searching For a Brief

I started searching for a brief. 

Since I am more into games than anything else I tried really hard to find something game related. 

There are lots of conceptart and character design competitions, but again... it's not my thing. I am more into environment design and 3D. But I failed to find anything like this.

There are tons of animation and film competitions. 

I said to myself that if I fail to find anything that I'd like to do I'd enter an animation competition. 

Don't get me wrong I love animating, but it's just my second favourite thing to do and since I got the freedom to do what I really like I wanted to take this opportunity.

During this time I attended BAF Game, during which I got a few emails etc. 

I e-mailed an environment designer of one of the companies that attended the BAF Game too. 

And this turned out to be the right thing to do!!! 

Transmedia storytelling

After our presentation I went out and thought about it.
I had a little read here and there too and some people even say that transmedia is a new way of marketing. It's about the engagement now, people aren't satisfied with a few posters and advertisements. Through all our social media, live chats, forums, and tons of others companies try to get a conversation going, get their fan's opinions about their products, run tons of competitions, and interact with their customers as much as possible. (Which is another way of advertising, usually you win shirts gadgets etc which people will wear, carry around, and further advertise your product.) 

People also discuss hidden messages within the story with each other, search for easter eggs and try and figure out how and why things are happening, it's like one big teamwork. And it doesn't happen by accident, it's a well thought through process to get as much interaction, as much conversations out of people as possible. Think about watching a tv show, now you get messages popping up during them etc asking you to join the conversation on facebook, twitter etc. There are people hired specifically for creating social networking company accounts and keeping those up and running.

But it's not about publishing the same content on all the devices, let's face it we've got out tv's our tablets, phones, pc's and sometimes we use more than 1 device at a time. That means that if we were to see the same content on each of the devices we wouldn't be interested, humans tend to get bored very easily. 

It's about coming up with all sorts of apps, stories, blogs, competitions, conversations on each of the devices to keep us entertained and wanting more! 

I did some research and I came across this article:

http://www.rethinkeverythingblog.com/2013/12/26/is-transmedia-storytelling-the-new-digital-marketing/

And there is the greatest way to explain how it works:

So what does a Transmedia Story look like from a marketing perspective? Let’s take a hypothetical example: a new shoe. First, the story that the marketer is going to tell is around the product, not around the company. Digital marketing enables us to tell (and change) new stories quickly. The first part of the story is about someone using the shoe. Imagine a vertically-flowing microsite focusing on a “day-in-the-life-of” (DILO) the shoe (check out  http://pestproject.orkin.com as an example of what an engaging, vertically-flowing microsite might look like, just the shoe instead of bugs). This is published to the web but with a responsive design for delivery to tablets and smartphones. The second part of the story are the sounds of the shoe running through mud, dirt, concrete, water, etc. These are delivered as sound bites that are linked to QR codes found on print images of the shoe. The third part is an interactive application for mobile phones that enables people to build and customize their own shoe, drawing in some of the same content from the microsite. The fourth part is a video featuring the shoe worn in different conditions by a bunch of different people. It’s published on YouTube and is shot like a documentary. The final part is a print campaign that includes the smell of the new shoe with different elements that can be captured from a camera phone and lead to different parts of the microsite story.

In this example, each part of the story has its own narrative. But together, they link to create a consistent, multi-sensory story on all aspects of the shoe that crosses channels with a elements designed to engage on multiple fronts and specific to devices. And there are ways to extend that Transmedia story about the shoe to user-generated content. For example, maybe there is technology in the shoe that links it to the phone (or an app on the phone) so that a person’s use of the shoe can influence the story of the shoe as a whole (with data).

I wouldn't be able to think of a better way to describe this if I tried! 

But it sums up the Transmedia Storytelling.

We are supposed to keep this in mind during the development of our careers, we're supposed to be aware of how and why we should be able to adapt our work to all possible consoles, devices c:

Responsive

The aim of the game is to research and find a live brief or a competition to enter. 

It's to develop our own skills and be able to transfer them to other media.

We can work with others for this brief if we need to. 

We are to explore how everything can be turned into a new exciting opportunity, research into transmedia. Once we complete our brief we are to make a presentation on how it can be turned into a transmedia piece.

Deadline 27th March. But we are to either enter a competition or a live brief so we should find one that either ends around this time. If it ends later than that or earlier than that it doesn't affect the deadline, the finished work should still be handed in on that date.

I think I lke this brief because of the freedom we have. We can choose to enter whichever competition we want to. We're supposed to choose something we're interested in doing to develop our skills.