WoW visual upgrade

I dont play WoW but this is so damn interesting.

Art Direction - Bioshock

 In early 2013 many popular games were very... grey. The colour palette was subdued with browns and grey's with the ideal to make the games seem real, gritty and dark. While this may have worked, after some time the gaming audience started to get tired of it.

  So it is March 2013 and you've just started playing Bioshock Infinite by Irrational Games. It seems pretty standard as you play through the first view minutes of the game, very dark and very subdued. Then you open a door and you're presented with this : 

Behold! Colours! I remember very definitely when this game came out the gaming reddit's coming alive with talk of how colourful and bright this game is. And this is not a child's game it just uses colour far more effectively than most games at the time. 

Not only does this view hold colour but it also shows you alot about the game.

The design of the level draws your eye towards the left which is the direction you need to go, with the skyline and the statues pointing sword. This is all subtle as well, no big flashing arrows telling you where you need to be. This image also gives you an idea of the size of Columbia, the flying city, with the buildings in the background.

As you can see the colours use mostly oranges and blues on creams and whites. Orange and blue being obviously complimentary colours making the whole scene pop.

When it comes to lighting the entire scene is very bright. Theres little contrast although there is some. Over all I believe Irrational was trying to create the bright mood. Overall this whole thing does create a very happy and cheerful mood. But I feel it alittle uncanny. It's too bright, too clean. Suspiciously so.

And all of this works together AMAZINGLY! It's important to note that all of this is moving. It's not a static scene. The buildings swaying ever so slightly, cargo travelling down the sky-line, the clouds moving in the back. It all creates a very living real place.

But that is something I would do differently, and this applies to all of Bioshock Infinite. It feels very empty. There's only two or three people hanging around. I'd like to see more people, more activity. Also I'd perhaps move the sky-line up slightly, as it imposes the statue of Comstock center stage.

This whole scene is brilliant however, despite small gripes. I loved this moment, and I know reddit was ablaze with screenshots of this moment. It's awesome just like the game it came from. If you haven't played Bioshock Infinite yet play it already!

History 4 B - Indie Blog 2, the Sequel.

 One of the huge things with Indie games in the modern gaming climate is promotion. Many indie game developers now have become public personas able to talk with their fanbase and reviewers in person. With the social media boom this is very easy now and with things like Kickstarter fans can get their voices heard with fabulous ease.

Take for example Markus Persson, also known as Notch, creator of Minecraft. He’s an extremely public personality using Twitter to talk to his fans with this fedora wearing public persona. He self promotes to great success, being able to tell his fans of new projects and keep people interested in his work. Many devs like this get fans themselves as well as fans of their games. At the business side of things this lets them advertise new games and projects, as well as being able to find out their fanbases opinions easily.

Of course sometimes this can backfire. Youtube is central to the indie game community. It gives reviews and publicity to games. Usually this is an amazing thing.

Day One: Garry’s Incident made by Wild Games studio was released in September of 2013 and soon became one of the biggest things in indie games for the time. Not for good reasons. It was immediately hit with terrible reviews. Youtube Critic Totalbiscuit created a review for this game, using a pre-release version he was given by the developers as done with many indie games.

The issue is that he gave the game a terrible review. He was incrediably critical of it. Wild Games Studio instead of dealing with this instead made a false copyright claim against the video to get it removed, and succeeded for a brief time. In Totalbiscuits words on Twitter, "Long story short. Dev sends code, code used to make critique, dev dislikes critique, dev abuses system to censor critique.".

Not only this, but it was also revealed that the studio was giving fake reviews to try and boost its score on the review site Metacritic. When all of these things came to light gamers acted harshly, and now the game has been struck with terrible reviews given a rating of 0.4. This is a huge display of how social networking and youtube can completely ruin a game, instead of giving it fame and attracting fans. This will most likely effect the company for the rest of their career.

As you can see social media effects the indie gaming scene for both the good and the bad. Some developers can and do use the more open connectivity of the industry now to their advantage, and some others need to be careful that EVERYTHING is recorded, even the bad things.  

Reference

http://indiegames.com/2014/01/how_todays_game_developers_com.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Day_One:_Garry's_Incident

https://twitter.com/Totalbiscuit/status/391815704048959488

Research Jobs

So we're supposed to be looking at our dream jobs in the industry. Mine would be at Riot Games, working on League of Legends. Doing what? I dont even really mind.

http://www.riotgames.com/careers/senior-concept-artist

This is a link to their demands for a senior concept artist. Of course I wouldn't be looking for that straight away but lets say it's a nice dream. Right now I'm not even sure if I want to go into concept art, maybe into character modelling or animation however many of these jobs have similar demands for Riot.

Now to look at what we need. Of course I need to build up a portfolio of 2d and 3d work. To do that I need more skill in both areas, which hopefully I'll gain via the course and hard work through the next few years. Part of this is getting far more skill in anatomy and with that posing and dynamics. This I'm trying to improve in my free time but obviously I need more work especially if I want to work in the field. I need I also need to show that I can work in a team, which hopefully things such as the 2nd year group project will show gloriously. Personally I think the desire they have for someone creative and mutli-genre I have but of course that will grow and I need to make that show through my portfolio. That means I need a very varied portfolio.

Luckily the step about being a League of Legends gamer is ticked nicely.

As I said I'm not sure if I want to go into concept art. It is a passion of mine, but its also a very hard place to get into. Either way, I'm going to need all manner of skills to even get close to this job.