Final week: the end is already here

I went to the university this Tuesday; finalised last paperwork and had some quick advice on how to manage word count in my dissertation so I stay below the 9 or 10K word limit mark. Just want to make sure, I will remove the danger of getting penalised in case the word count does matter.
I have also been working on my practical stuff with an odd interruption now and again to sort either the submission materials or things related to exposition. I have also asked a friend of mine to start proof reading some dissertation material which is a great help.

Tomorrow is 12th of May and my first submission is due by 4pm. So far I have been concentrating on getting my practical stuff ready. I was not a 100% sure on what I should concentrate so chose to improve an overall environment art and then just try and implement everything in to a gameplay video created by Adobe After Effects since  most of the lecturers seem to always stress the interactivy part of the art within games.

In my opinion an updated environment art (see image below) looks better now as I have polished the overall look and introduced a lot of details, like texture, various patterns etc (see images below).

Overall look of the game art (above)

Texture application method using Emboss Layer (image above)

A lot of the basic texture came through the use of digital brushes that replicate traditional media look (image above). 

I have used Texture  brush settings to give canvas look (see image  above)and stayed away from applying texture on top of everything mainly because in previous tests it looked quite unnatural and too overpowering. 

To address the composition seen on a screen during gameplay, a variety of different shapes were introduced in the form of trees and bushes (marked in yellow), a rolling forest and foreground edge (marked in red) to give more variety and guidance for the eye. The forest line has also been intersected by a few curvy cloud lines (marked in green).
The onscreen image had also been broken in to four tone bands which balance an overall view (top and bottom): the lightness of the sky is counterbalanced by the dark middle ground at the bottom of the screen and protruding shadowy foreground elements are offset by the very bright clouds at the top of the screen. (see image below)

I have also finished UI design. Not a 100% happy with it but I am really pressed for time and this is the best I can come up with (see image below).

UI in game with inventory window closed (image above)

At the moment still working on the gameplay video, but I am sure it will not be fully completed by Monday 4pm. I chose to concentrate on showing the art rather than animations (e.g. character walking) and gameplay since the whole idea of my project is the about the look of the art and prove that it can work within a game environment. Animations would be a great thing to have but I do not have time to complete it atm.

That brings me to another point- presentation and an exposition next week. I will try to complete and polish the gameplay video for both of them. That means that I will continue doing my practical work after the dissertation hand in is done. I hope having things completed or nearly completed would help with my presentation as well as exhibition as I will be marked for both of them and I would like to get the best mark I can. I would love to have a chance to have an option of doing Masters later on.

Hardly any Dissertation work had been done this week. I managed to get some parts proofread by my friend for whom I am really grateful and I have already fixed grammar and spelling mistakes he has found. I will go back to dissertation after tomorrows hand in and will work on it until Wednesday morning or noon before sending it to be printed and bound.


I have also moved forward with promotional stuff I need to have for exposition. On Wednesday I have ordered 100 mini business cards with a range of different designs taken from my final project piece and a few postcards (see images below). Both of them should arrive by the 16th of May so it gives plenty time before the exhibition.

 I have also bought a printing credit from photobox for a poster size 30"x20". I will order it on Tuesday or Wednesday next week. That should give me enough time to receive it by Thursday morning. I am planning on having a large poster at the top showing off the game environment (have not made up my mind if I will have UI also displayed or not) and then a few A3 posters explaining a little my process and maybe some zoomed in examples to show off my brushwork etc (as the ones seen in this blogpost) At the moment also considering to dedicate one poster for my aim and objectives so people can have a quick look and read what my honours year project is about. It is a bit confusing what space I will have since I will be exhibiting at HMC and there is no detailed info about the wall space allocated when exhibiting there but this is a rough plan I have made (see image below).

And The Conclusion: how do I feel about my honours year project?...
I feel really happy that I have chosen this topic because it is of interest to me as well as I think it is one of the next steps the 2D videogame art is already taking (Braid by Jonathan Blow, Amanita design games and this month’s new release from Ubisoft 'The Child of Light'). I think the art of 2D video games is still evolving and has a long way to go. I feel it is time to try and give more choice and perhaps more quality for the videogame players. With my project I have only scratched the very surface of the topic and there is so much still left to explore. Feeling passionate about it has definitely made me more determined and more stubborn to try and do my very best, but at this moment in time I feel very tired and need to have a little break to rest and to think what I am going to do next. I still love videogames and certainly want to do something meaningful. Around 7 years ago I have made a conscious choice to change my life and pursue my goal of creating art again and I am not done yet. Hell!!! I  have just started and have a long way to go and I know, I will find things to do: I want to continue improving my art, learn a bit of programming  which would hopefully help me to create my own games and I will look for likeminded people to team up and create things; things that matter.

Dissertation and some more dissertation

So for the last two weeks I have stopped doing any art and just concentrated on writing my dissertation. It is a very slow going process since English is not my first language so I often spend time looking at thesaurus trying to find that 'right' word that would describe better what I am trying to communicate.
I have changed a few bits in the overall layout of the paper.

I have also created an updated my project plan (Old one can be found in this blog post  here)showing the areas that I am looking at and how it all ties together (see image below).

I have added an area where I do traditional art and game art analysis; looking at Emotionalism aesthetic theory and how it ties together with brushstrokes visible on a canvas and how these marks not only connects the viewer and the artist but at the same time can contribute to the overall composition of the image. For example like guide the viewer’s eye around the canvas (see image below).

Van Gogh, V. 1889. Starry night. [online image]. Available from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:VanGogh-starry_night_ballance1.jpg [Accessed 19 April 2014]

Also been looking about composition in games and so far Botanicula (2012) seem to be performing best (see image below).

Amanita Design. 2012. Botanicula. Microsoft Windows. Amanita Design & Daedalic Entertainment

A spore is spawned repeatedly on the top left-hand corner and is used to deliver a golden key (seen in the picture) to a spot in front of the characters on the bottom right-hand corner. Also the big brown mushroom on the top left-hand corner seems to 'balance' the characters standing at the bottom right-hand corner of the screen. There is also a light coloured white mushroom mirroring the big dark one.

Machinarium (2009) also have some composition elements. It seem to use primarily Golden Cut (see image below).

Amanita Design. 2009. Machinarium. Microsoft Windows. Amanita Design & Daedalic Entertainment

There is a lot action happening around the Golden Cut intersection. For example in this scene the main character Josef is in fiddling with the ventilation system/fan. Also tone wise the dark left-hand side is balanced by the light sky area on the right-hand side. The tower seen in the background is also going straight through the middle of screen.

Another area I am investigating is colour and I think there are some interesting examples how colour can make an asset stand out from the background (see image below).

Number None, Inc. 2009. Braid. Microsoft Windows. Number None, Inc

I think in Braid (2008) World 1, the clouds stand out well from the background because of the complementary colour use: yellow-orange (sky, background) is an opposite of blue-green (the interactable cloud platforms).


My supervisor has also suggested that in my dissertation I should talk about the experience of digital painting and how it is different from traditional painting.
I had also had a look at Walter Benjamin book 'The work of art in the age of its technological reproducibility'* as well as Grahame Sullivan book 'Art Practice As Research'**.
B. Walters although talks about printing of artworks and other ways of their mechanical reproduction do related to the Emotionalism aesthetics theory. G. Sullivan’s book was not as useful as I have thought. I did not have too much time to have a really close look at it so perhaps I have missed something. Sadly time is running out fast and I still have many things left to complete before submissions.
I really want to have my dissertation finished by 24th of April because that day I will be going to a library to get help with formatting, referencing and some other things related to dealing with long documents.


On a side note, this Thursday I have went to the Pixel Pushers exhibition at Hannah Maclure Centre and then attended Ian McQue's Masterclass. It was really interesting and I was hoping to get some insights or something really relevant to my project but I feel it was not worth the time as much as I have hoped. I think Jolomo Awards exhibition at HMC earlier this year was more useful.

* Benjamin, W.2008.The work of art in the age of its technological reproducibility and other writings on media.London: The Belknap Press

** Sullivan, G. 2010. Art practice as research : inquiry in visual arts. 2nd ed. London : SAGE