MH : Dying Memories Concept Visualisation

In this project, I am required to come up with 100 silhouettes either of environments or characters, I choose the latter, then develop and finalized it further complete with its model sheet. Coming up with 100 sketches of characters out of a blank page only filled with boxes is difficult, which is why I decided to divide them into groups; main characters (Protagonists and antagonist) Julian, jewel and Seth and also the murder victims to 20 each and the rest for other supporting characters (in that order).

The style of my design are set in a current day and there are really no weapons or armors involved, therefore it was slightly trickier to come up with distinct silhouettes and poses, which is why I decided to work more on what they’re wearing instead of the poses itself. Also to further elaborate, the different death situations are more interesting to work on in this case, some of them are inspired by various Japanese detective comics to movies like SAW.

I have chosen 1 design each from the main characters to be finalized but kept it focused more on the protagonist, Julian.

Here are the visual concepts of Julian from the silhouette process till its fully finalized form.

The Character Julian was meant to be a silent hero type in the beginning but because the isolated plot would mean that he won’t be interacting with much characters apart from dead people and his sister and Seth that he’ll only meet at the very late part of the game, his character is forced to be more vocal, unless I introduce another element which can act as a narrator or chatty side-kick (think GlaDos or Wheatley from Portal or any silent hero Japanese Role Playing Game side characters). Julian is naturally a quiet person but he is presented with this confusing situation where he had to use his new found ability of diving into people’s memories and having to solve a massacre in a strange mansion, therefore he will be throwing comments every now and then and during cutscenes but again not to the point of him sounding whiney due to his confused state; that is more or less overshone by his compassion as a younger brother that’s will put his life on the line to get his sister back safely. Visually, he is really simple and straight forward, scruffy hair not too neat kind of look, I threw in a stripe sweater to capture a more gothic look to suit the setting but covered it up with a dark colored jacket that has a hoodie to make him look slightly more mysterious and emphasize his moody personality. The symbol on his back is an in-game symbol for ‘Divers’ and only appears when he is in a Dying Memory state and at save points. Even when Julian is forced by situation to speak, I still try to keep him more in sync with protagonist such as Wander from Shadow Of The Colossus or Isaac Clarke from Dead Space, that keeps conversations at minimal and let players be in their shoe, like a vessel in many ways.

And lastly the concept for Jewel & Seth Haissem (Antagonist).

Coherent World

Thats J. J Abrams talk on TED about The Mystery Box, this was shown in one of my Contextual Study classes and I completely agree with his take on mystery and how its being applied on movies and narratives. I personally think this idea of less is more or mystery almost like a recipe/ theory even to some of the best, most immersive games I've ever played and hopefully will be making in the future.

So I based my CS presentation based on this idea and how it can be applied to making coherent world in games.

I picked some games out, Shadow Of The Colossus (SOTC), ICO, Red Dead Redemption (RDR, Portal, Grand Theft Auto : San Andreas (GTA:SA) and Assassin's Creed (AC). All of these games shares a very detailed, fully immersive 3D environments, but at the same time, also very vague and mysterious in a sense; many of what you encounter are not explained, sometimes in the narratives and others in the gameplay itself.
Many things are just left there for the players/ audience to bump into/ encounter and then have their own idea and interpretation about it, in most cases this becomes 'viral' due to discussions on forums and word of mouth.

To explain this further, I singled out this brilliantly beautiful game called Shadow Of The Colossus.

The objective of the game is simple; hunt down 16 colossus in this beautifully immersive free-roam landscape, there no enemies along the way, no traps, nothing, just simply find and kill bosses quest, and all you're armed with is with a sword and a horse, it gets no simpler than that, mind you, it sounds boring from this description but it is truly one of the most interesting game ever made as will be explained further.

There are lizards around this 'world' you can explore, that you can kill, acquire its tail and eat it, which boost your stamina (stamina is used to climb, whether the bosses or the path leading to it, so the more stamina you possess, the longer you can climb without falling off). There are also fruits on trees that you can eat to increase your health points, so far none of this is ever explained in the game and is in no way needed for you to finish the game and thats fine. However, this is where it gets interesting, in the beginning, your character, Wander, came from an 'outside world', crossed a bridge and down a shrine into this 'secluded world' of SOTC. When you try going back up across the bridge you'll realized that its blocked and therefore you're stuck in this land for the rest of the game (a way of keeping the players in the area). However, you'll then realize that behind this shrine just below the bridge, there are walls that are climbable, but you haven't got the stamina to do so because it was too tall, this is when you realized, you can boost stamina from killing lizards and also bosses to get you strong enough to climb these walls, and when you did, you're rewarded with the strangest yet most satisfying thing ever.

The climb was intense and annoying every time you fall off and die but when you get to the top, you'll find a Secret Garden that got briefly shown at the ending of the game, again none of this so far was in anyway explained or even mentioned in the game. I could probably go on to talk about the narratives and other brilliant stuff from the game, but I think this garden proved my point. Getting to it leaves you with a sense of achievement, discovery, awe, but at the same time confusion and questions, now this is when players and audience start discussing about this in forums or by other means which made this topic a myth, a legend and most importantly a cult hit.

Similarly to this, all the other games above posses the same sort of mysterious traits as well. Sure, the right cultural reference and settings are really important in creating a believable world such as RDR (sets in the old west) or AC (sets in the Holy Land of Jerusalem and also Europe), but again for example in AC, Ubisoft threw in this Symbolism mystery about Apple of eden (Adam & Eve), politics, historical figures, which are all extremely very controversial and makes the players think and question many things. It doesn't matter whether its intentional or not, the key thing is to get players to start discussing about it (in a good way of course and not because the game/ movie is a so open to discussion because its a blank canvas) and that way, automatically immerse themselves in this story created not just by the developer but by players' imaginations. That is what I think creates a good coherent world.

In conclusion, yes, coherent world is made up of immersive, culturally accurate, detailed and believable visuals, but more importantly, it is open for discussions/ interpretations and memorable, more importantly its in your mind.

Light & Composition.

This blog will revise and re-explore these 2 topics from school's lecture and how they are applicable/ relevant in creating better artworks.

LIGHT

Key notes

- Refraction 

- Reflection

- Absorption

- Shadows

- Subsurface Scattering 

- Franel Effect

- Dynamic Occlusion

- Actuality VS Perception

- Color Relativity

Value - Light-dark

Saturation - Intensity

Hue - Color

Misc Notes

- Rabbit's vision are 180 degrees

- The eyes/ lens sees upside down, but inverted in the brain to orient it back to the rest of body.

3 example of artworks that uses principle's of light

Artwork from Killzone 2. The light from the gun's shows 2 things, subsurface scattering which happens on the muzzle itself and of course bouncing light which happens to the frontal area of the gun. The eyes of Helghast soldier clearly shows a good example of how intensity of the same hue results in the glowing eyes effect.

Artwork by Chase JC from Deviant Art. This picture is made up of mostly shapes and silhouettes which are similar to shadows, its interesting as they're all simply shadows of different values but are able to create such depth.

Artwork by Yaguete from Deviant Art. Similar to the example above, this picture is simply made of shadows with different values, but in this we clearly know the light source is from behind the colossus. 

COMPOSITION

Key Notes

- Divine Proportions

- Golden Section 1:1.618

- Rule of Thirds

- The L

- The Cross

- Iconic/ Diamond

Misc Notes

- Focal points

- Vary elements

- Odd elements

- Spacing

- No Kissing

- Domination

- Avoid Obvious

- Spice it up

3 examples of works that uses good principle of composition.

A scene from Once Upon A Time in The West. This compositions puts the main character, Harmonica, at the right top point of Rule of Third, it clearer had enough spacings, deliberate point of perspective and size isolation which all points out to his position as the focal point of this scene. Very subtle yet brilliantly pulled off by Sergio Leone, especially in this tense anticipation scene.

An artwork from God Of War. The Cross composition clearly shows in this picture; the opposing color temperature on Zeus (light on dark) to the ones on Kratos (dark on light) almost divides the painting into 2 section of top and bottom, yet, it still works as one great composition. 

This is a painting of Patrick Bateman from American Pyscho that I did recently on Photoshop. Consisting of the Iconic/ Diamond composition that works well with portraits especially the full frontal type such as this.

Mystery House developments and concepts

Part 4: Developing the game further.

Now that the narrative, concept and game-plays are all confirmed, its time to get cracking at the artworks and Game document.

Here are some of the conceptual artwork for MH: Dying Memories.