Posts

08.28.17 | Proposition 4 - Game Development

This is sort of what I was working on with Greg last year. The fourth thing I could show you here and there (but way less often) would be working on programming the game itself, which is being done in a pre-existing game engine that's free to use. Back when I was working with Greg, it was in more of a proof-of-concept state, but here are some examples  of what I was working on, which combine elements of practically every other form of design I work on - the music or sound design, functional implementation of it, getting the user interface itself to go along with it, etc. Because of the leg (and because I sort of burned myself out by the end of Greg's course), I stopped working in the engine itself for about 5 months, but I just recently got back into it within the last week or two. I'm trying to move out of the proof-of-concept stage and get into developing actual assets, which is where things like the art and music come in. Here's a video of what I did in the last ...

08.28.18 | Proposition 3 - Music

This could really go anywhere, but relating to the video game stuff I was talking about in proposition 2, the game has a very heavy focus on musical themes, leitmotifs, etc. It would also slot in nicely with the established four-count convention of the art, because the current musical direction I had in mind would more or less assign one track of music to each. Every character would have a short (roughly 1 to 2 minutes) theme for both their standard and heavy-duty variants, and then both of those themes would have a more drawn-out "battle theme" extended into a longer track outright. I have prototypical versions of the Syx character's themes done: character theme | extended "battle theme" I don't have music for Drei established at the moment. Again, Drei and Syx kind of break the convention as they represent flip sides of the same coin, but normally each character would have four counts. Instrumentation, arrangement, etc. would tie into their characte...

08.28.17 | Proposition 2 - Character Concepts

Image
So, the whole "incorporating art and music" thing may actually be easier than you think! As-is I've been working on a few fronts for a video game that I've been dabbling in developing as a hobby. Relative to the course, the main thing I was working on (and probably the easiest to complete on a semester-wide scale at the moment) would be working on some character concept art. I've nailed down a style I'm happy with and that I think can be used for some of the character concepts without having to continue radically revising past concepts. There are 8 (technically 9) characters I was planning on doing art for, all of which would include the following: - Polished-up concept art with four different variants (I'll explain later) - Some less-polished sketches - Possibly a storyboard-type concept or two Here's an old style I was working with back when I was still on loads of painkillers in the spring that illustrates basic character designs: Here ar...

08.28.17 | Proposition 1 - Font Family

Image
There are a few things I've started working on that I think would be pretty easy to further myself in for the sake of this course. Depending on how linear you want everything to be, I can establish some hard guidelines and work on one thing at a time, or if I end up multitasking I can still set up some deadlines for basic milestones. Font Family Around July or August, I started working on a font (family) I've been calling Sarabande because of the emphasis on 3:4 ratios in the proportions . I did "finish" a preliminary version consisting of the characters above, but that was mainly a test run. Right now I'm using Fontself for it, which is a relatively cheap extension for both Photoshop and Illustrator that allows you to convert graphics into characters. I'm only using the Illustrator variant. As-is, it can export actual fonts (or even produce families for things like bold, oblique, condensed variants, etc.), with the main limitation being th...