Wednesday, 5 April 2017

Tribe city - Presentation Pitch

In the industry around us it is increasingly important for companys to mock up potential ideas for the purposes of pitches and presentations.The most common way games make it into development and into the market place is through a sales pitch to a company publisher. 

Publishers are often the only way to fund a games project when going into the market which places a great importance on first impressions in the sale pitch. As an aspiring animator and illustrator it is important for myself that i develop a good understanding into presentation and social skills in order to meet the requirements of future opportunity.

The following presentation was created to pitch my designed game tribe city. It was important that I take great consideration into learning a rough speech in order to explain my games design concept fully.


 
 
 

When I entered the room i Immediately went and shook both individuals hands that I would be pitching too and introduced myself. This was important because it is a great social foundation for the pitch breaking the ice and giving a relaxed environment. Although I was nervous before the event, by putting myself out there and introducing myself I ensured my confidence was leading me and not my fear.  

Upon setting up my presentation I made sure to maintain attention towards the people I was pitching too and not read from the slides. I ensured that I read my audience taking the time to iterate on a points where confusion came across there faces. Initially there was much confusion but once my design illustrations came upon the screen there was satisfaction and expression over what they liked about the designs.

Feed back 
Unit 68 is designed to develop my understanding and skills when developing an idea for a pitch. By having the opportunity to present my work in front of games design lecturers, I was able to receive feed back to reflect upon. 

Both individuals agreed that i had social approached the topic well, they felt I had talked to them and not at them. This was engaging for them and they did not feel disconnected at any point. They both were in agreement that there was too much words at the beginning, they suggested that I space out my pictures and explanations together giving the audience assistance in understanding my idea. 

Each individual enjoyed and liked the styles I was approaching suggesting that it was appealing and engaging. There was concern however that my environment and characters lacked consistency and suggested that I made effort and took the time to adjust this to make better continuity in the game. 

Overall I am satisfied with this opportunity and I feel I have developed skills and feedback that will assist me in future projects as well as opportunity in the industry. This development has assisted me in my constant progress in becoming and industry standard animator and illustrator. 

Would you buy this game? Do you like the mock up? Comment below!  
Have a question? Want to get in contact? Email me at: Sickjujuu@gmail.com 

Friday, 31 March 2017

Tribe city - Marketing

In the industry around us it is increasingly important for companys to mock up potential ideas for the purposes of pitches and presentations. Every game requires a form of exposure otherwise no one will know anything about the game or enough to even find it. 

App logo design and app store mock ups is the perfect way to conceptulise the first insight into how the product will be viewed from the customers perspective. This kind of conceptulisation is important when presenting a pitch as it allows publishers to really get an impression if their interested in paying out or not.

App Icon initial design

App store - Mock up

Would you buy this game? Do you like the mock up? Comment below!  
Have a question? Want to get in contact? Email me at: Sickjujuu@gmail.com 






 

Monday, 27 March 2017

Tribe City - Logo design

The first thing every player see's with every game is the logo. Logos are a critical aspect of business marketing. As the a company's major graphical representation, a logo anchors a company's brand and becomes the single most visible manifestation of the game within the target market.

Therefore it goes without saying that there is much importance placed upon not only creating a noticeable, memorable and appealing logo, but creating an accurate one that represents the games elements in one graphic.

When exploring the potential possibilities for tribe city's logo things I took into consideration where, texture, colour and form. These are the elements that stick in your mine when recalling or viewing a brand logo. 


Tribe city is a brawler game. When asked what image game to mind when considering a brawler most suggested a graphic that is dirty, intense and full of 'rush'. Great examples of this kind of logo is games such as 'Street fighter'. This fact in mind I began by creating and utilising harsh and rough brushes within illustrator. The brushes I used were created to imitate the texture of a paint brush.

Again in reflection to the rush and 'kick ass' nature of brawler games I decided to use a colour palette that reflection upon the passion and danger games off this stereotype had by using yellows, oranges and red. This choice not only creates a bold and eye-catching design but really pushes the idea of intimidation and intensity.

Overall in reflection to my logo research and knowledge in brawler stereotypes I am satisfied that tribe cities logo design fully captures and represents the nature of the game. 

Do you like tribe citys logo? what do you think of the colours? Comment below!  
Have a question? Want to get in contact? Email me at: Sickjujuu@gmail.com 

Tuesday, 21 March 2017

Tribe city - Brawl Mock up

''Tribe city attempts to push the boundaries of a brawler style game by adding strategy elements, but lets not forget the intense adrenaline a brawl can bring!''

The core aspect to each tribe city match is the brawl. Due to this there is an importance placed upon the experience of the brawl, if your core gameplay isn't fun the game isn't fun. 

It was my desire when designing the brawl screen to imitate the genuine expression that is given to hand drawn characters throughout early 1920s animation. This was my intention because i wanted to create a fight that felt good to play, each moment had to feel impactful.



The environment design had originated as a flat coloured 3d render. In order to create continuity between my hand drawn assets and my 3d rendered I utilised textures that invoked a handprinted expression ( similar to that of a 1920s cartoon ).

I wanted the health bar to be basic in design, this was intentionally chosen to ensure no focus was taken away from the main brawl at hand whilst maintaining the functionality of a health bar.

What do you think of my brawl mock up? Would you play tribe city? Comment below!  
Have a question? Want to get in contact? Email me at: Sickjujuu@gmail.com 

Friday, 17 March 2017

Tribe City - Inital overworld map design

''When you ask the generic gamer what they think a brawler is, the common answer is a competitive series of maneuvers by memorizing patterns. (Mostly instinctive) 
Tribe city take this a step further, and gives the player with an analytical brain an edge.'' 
When designing the over world map for tribe city I wanted to create balance, no team would have an advantage with positioning. I wanted the visual style of the map to invoke the impression that you are playing on a game board. In order to relay this expression i made sure to give the map thickness and depth. I also added pipes that ran underneath the roads and pipes to give the board that little extra charm. 


Because of the that 3d creates when designing a style in this way, I attempted to texture each panel to have a gentle painted feeling. This was so that when the map came into contact with the characters, the map would not contrast with the hand drawn style of the characters. 
This map mock up features 2 base camps both right and left of the board, with the hospital at the top, supermarket central & the gym featured at the bottom. 
  
Do you like the design of my map mock up? Which building would you capture first:? Comment below!  
Have a question? Want to get in contact? Email me at: Sickjujuu@gmail.com 
  

Friday, 10 March 2017

Tribe city - Goons

Continuing with my development of my game ''tribe city'', I have devised and finalized my basic concept for controllable units. Each unit shall be refereed to as ''Goons''.

Each tribe within tribe city features a platoon of ''Goons'' ruled by a ''Chief'' Goons are the basic foot solider of the strategy brawler, and have the most basic statistics throughout the game. Chiefs only come out when the all the ''Goons'' are currently out of action.

All Goons:

The style i wanted to bring to Tribe city was a slightly goofy but visually appealing expression that is common for most App style game play. I Hand draw each character as separate limbs and body parts. This was so that i could create a mock up character creation screen within Adobe Photoshop. By toggling the layers on and off I could adjust and create characters to my liking, reminiscent to a character creation screen.

Example ''Goons'' Closeup:

''Goons are the foot soldiers of every tribe'' 

From the very beginning of tribe city's development I wanted to create a style that was reminiscent of ancient civilizations culture in a modern contemporary fashion. 
The versions of my characters I currently have designed is based upon ancient Mayan culture. Tribe 'Leopard' is the name I have given to my example tribe. The name was devised because of the importance and strength that the Mayan culture placed upon the image leopards had. 

Tribe Chief:

''You want something done, you have to do it yourself!''

When the strength of a tribe becomes brittle, The chief is the one that fights to unite us!
As a mechanic in the game play, I had taken consideration into a fail safe if all goons become out of action. If such an event should occur, A chief appears with enhanced statisitcs to give the loosing team a chance to fight back. The chief remains on the field until either:
  • He is defeated
  • The full team is revived
  • 2 full turns pass
''A chief is given his mask as a trophy of strength, He never takes it off''

I hope you are all having a great march so far! I shall continue to keep you all upto date with my Animation and Illustrations! Keep posted for more content! :)

Do yo like my character design? What other tribes should I design? Comment below! 
Have a question? Want to get in contact? Email me at: Sickjujuu@gmail.com

Sunday, 5 March 2017

Character design - Tribe city 'Leopard'

Currently at newcastle college as part of my studies, I am designing the visuals and assets as a proposial for a potential app game. The game I am designing is called 'Tribe city'. The game features two 'gang like' tribes that are competiting for dominance in a city. 

One of the tribes I am designing is called 'Tribe Leopard'. This tribe is based upon ancient 'Mayan' culture combined with contemporay fashion. Below is the results of my first concept for the gang style:



After much iteration and experimentation with styles, I am satisfied with this design moving forward. The style I was aiming for, was a style that was playful and engaging in nature with a defined personality. I wanted the clothing to represent ancient mayan culture but push the personality of contemporary fashion. 

I shall keep you all posted with further iterations! Thank you all for the support! 

Do yo like my character design? What other tribes should I design? Comment below! 
Have a question? Want to get in contact? Email me at: Sickjujuu@gmail.com

Tuesday, 28 February 2017

Cinema 4d experiment - Shape cloner

As an Animator and iIllustrator there is an increasing benefit to experiment with new techniques and softwares. In reflection to a digital session designed to create analytical skills in reinterpretating designers illustrations. I discovered and developed an insight into an interesting technique within the 3d software cinema 4d. This technique takes shapes clones them into specific patterns in reference to the initial object. 

Adjusting these's settings results in interesting 'elegent' shapes that can be utilised in prints. This is my resulting render in C4D.
Exporting this object as a high resolution PNG file and importing it into Adobe Photoshop takes the potential of this experiment to the next step. By grey scaling and dublicating the the orgial PNG image I can begin to discover and interesting perspective from the original design. 

Adding textures, gradients and colours in variation creates interesting results with much potential.

  Which print do you like? Have you used the cloner tool before, what did you make? Comment below!
Have a question? Want to get in contact? Email me at: Sickjujuu@gmail.com

Wednesday, 22 February 2017

Festival on the wall - Team production

'Festival on the wall' is a festival which shall take place close to hadrians wall, this festival shall be the first of its kind in the north east. Contracted by the festivals orginisers Paul smyth and David hails led a team to create the advertisment for the event. The planned advertisment was a video that would be projection mapped at various locations. As part of this team I played a role in creating and producing the final advertisment for the event.

This process would explore skills in animation and VFX. Covering techniques such as frame animation and motion tracking. This experience provided rich knowledge into how many different techniques can come togeather in a team environment to create a unique and interesting result for advertisment. 

The production began by setting up a camera and shooting dance sequences off models against a green screen. The dances needed be no longer than 4 seconds long as they needed to be looped further down the production line.  
 

Each member of the team (Including myself) was tasked with designing a looped animation that covered specific parameters. The design requirements included:, 
  • The character changing between 3 expressions.
  • The animation must only include 12 frames.
  • The animation must loop. 
Above is my resulting animation loop in its raw hand drawn form. I decided upon hand drawing my animation due to the textured effect the lines have in future stages of production.

 
Due to the fact that my animation had been hand drawn, I made the decision to colour each frame in adobe photoshop. This allowed the most efficent and effective workflow for the production. 

Once my looped animation had been finalisation I co-ordinated the collection of the remaining animations along with team leader paul to set up the final comp. Each recorded dance was cut up, and looped acordingly before I used Mocha AE to motion track the animted heads onto the bodies. Adding a gradient overlay resulted in my final dance loop.


With guidence from team leader paul, I led the development of the final animated comp by tracking and looping each memeber of my teams dance and comping into the final production.



Overall this live brief has allowed me to develop and learn alot about been a freelance animatior & illustrator. It has given me important experience when working on a project as a team. And has allowed me development into new skills, techniques and approaches to production.

Are you going to festival on the wall? Have you seen this projection around? Comment below!
Have a question? Want to get in contact? Email me at: Sickjujuu@gmail.com

Thursday, 16 February 2017

Landscape Revamp - Despair, Euphoria & Twilight

Throughout each project I am constantly developing new techniques, for portfolio developing purposes I approached some older illustrations I had created and decided to revamp them for fun. This is my result:

/ Despair /
This design was inspired by despair in a physical form. I want to create a setting off absolute dread.



/ Euphoria /
 This design was inspired by Joy in its physical form, This was my interpretation of nirvana.



/ Twilight /
 This design was inspired by the early hours of the morning and the late hours at night. When you start to question weather your awake? or in a dream...

 
What do you think of my revamped illustrations? Which colour scheme do you prefer? Comment below!
Have a question? Want to get in contact? Email me at: Sickjujuu@gmail.com