Thursday, April 7, 2016

Production Designer + Environments + Characters + Technical Direction - Updates

PRODUCTION DESIGNER

This week, the team had to reevaluate our storyboards and search for a better way to enhance the story. The Production coordinator and myself spoke to Chris, one of the faculty for this project, on how we can accomplish this. This allowed me to figure out some ways to further elaborate how this cinematic should look like.

Aside from ensuring that the leads of the Character, Environment, and Technical Design understood the initial style guide for this game, we also looked into the game Gigantic for further inspiration and overal look we are shooting for. Simple, clean, and expressive characters will be needed for this project. Their understanding of the style showed even further with their assignments for the week.

THE LIGHTING
Lighting is something that's extremely important for this cinematic. A lot of the tone and mood will be described through lighting and effects, not only with sound. Some of the references for this that was provided to them, alongside the style guide, was a few stills grabbed from animated series. With these examples, they lighting crew understands that there will be multiple uses of lights.
One of the important aspects is to incorporate the sky lights, also known as God Rays, into the scene. Wide variety as seen in picture two, but strong and dynamic as seen in scene one. Sharp shadows that's done as cell shading.
 

THE CHARACTERS
The Character artists had to do a character study. Examining the shape and color language and how that will be incorporated into the 3D environment. Both the centipede and the heroine Vala will have to have be examined fully [ look below ]

THE ENVIRONMENT
The Environment artists have to look into the shape language as well as color usage. More importantly, how the dark and gloomy aspect of the Calcified world would appear on screen and how a Purified one will look. All the while keeping simple shapes and that painted style the LeyLines team are shooting for [ look below].

ENVIRONMENTS

For this week, the Environment team discussed advancements in the storyboard shots with the Layout Artist and developed understanding of game assets and concept art through discussion with Ley Lines Environment Artist. Thought modularly in terms of game assets that would be plotted around sets to exhibit the character and purpose/aura of the temple. Have to consider exhibiting scale with repetition of assets--obscured low poly small scale versus large scale within shrine in relation to Vala.


Considered color scheme transitions from cursed period to purification scene--stark contrast will be everything.


Explored shape language throughout environment elements between Ley Lines and Gigantic. Both carry rounded arcs in terms of shape language. These arches lead the eyes upwards to emphasize the scale of the temple setting. This shape language will tie into the concept of rule of thirds. The camera frame can be mapped by a grid, and we consider the relationship between different elements of the environment. As a result, we will be decisive about which elements will exhibit Ley Line's aesthetic and what those mean for the narrative as it flows.

Considered use of low poly versus high poly details dependent on the relation between the camera and mapping of sets. Details will be obscured for scenes with emphasis on the expanse of the floating temple, and the intricate details in closer frames in relation to camera.

Initially brainstormed a solution for Vala's transitional scene from inside the chamber to the exterior balcony--Steffen and I fully realized the solution of featuring a silhouette figure from the torso up that would seem to move on an incline. As a result the solution was a complete silhouette of half of a torso that ascends a silhouetted staircase, and complete emphasis on the transforming environment--However with changes to the storyboard, our team has come up with more profound ending that will ease the technical route and instead allow more emphasis on the environmental transformation and mystery of Vala’s character.


 

CHARACTERS

First, we identified how many characters we had in the game. We were able to agree upon two; Vala and the Centipede, who is the final boss in the game. 

After identifying our characters, we began our study of characters by deciding on how we wanted our characters to look. We were given two options: Stick with Leyline The Game's art, or create a style of our own. We opted for the latter and decided to create a more stylistic approach to our characters.

The perfect look and feel of our game that we decided on was from a game called Gigantic. 

Gigantic uses simple shapes to create visually appealing stylized characters. 

Let's explore these shapes and apply them to our characters. Let's start with Vala.

Vala is presented as a lithe and agile feminine character. Gigantic has many females, but one seemed to fit more than the rest. 

Tripp.


Tripp is a female assassin who encompasses all the attributes we see in Vala. We broke Tripp apart to her simplest forms as a shape language.


Her shape language was ALMOST perfect! When only looking at shapes on Tripp, it is hard to determine if Tripp is a male or female. We wanted to make this attribute a bit more obvious.

Luckily, Gigantic has another female character: Vadasi.


Vadasi certainly has hips that do not lie. Looking at her silhouette, it is easy to tell Vadasi is a more feminine character.


So lets take her shapes....

And put them on our new Vala.


Ta-da! Perfection.

Now lets apply this shape language to our own design for Vala.



Vala now has her own design created from simple shapes and is easily recognizable as a female.

Now to address our other character... the Centipede.

The Centipede is a bit more difficult to tackle, but once again, Gigantic has another creature for us to reference: Grenn. 


With Grenn being very snake-like, we are easily able to apply these shapes to our Centipede.


Breaking down the shape language, we are able to see that Grenn is made from trapezoids that alter in size with every other angle. This creates fun and odd angles that we can use for our Centipede.

Currently, the Centipede is under design revision on the game, however when he is done getting designed, the bug will get designed again into simple more fluid shapes.

Technical Considerations: Some technical considerations we addressed were rigging Vala's scarf, and how to approach building the Centipede. The length of the Centipede directly correlates with a large crystal in the environment, so we will not be able to directly guess how long the Centipede will be. Because of these, we are considering a modular approach to the Centipede to be able to add segments where we need.

TECHNICAL DIRECTOR

This week, I focused my efforts on a first pass of the glowing crystal shader, seen below. It emphasizes a simple but interesting look and feel, utilizing a normal map and a color picker. As needed this shader will be expanded and improved upon to achieve the desired effect, such as texture maps for the diffuse or more open controls for the glow amount and speed, for example.


I was also approached about Vala, who may have loose fabric throughout her design. I'll be researching the topic more in the coming weeks but the goal is to have quality cloth simulation on the character where ever desired.

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