Research into the first Art Test

Looking at the game 'Speedball' and '2K Games' 

Before I settle on which Art Test I want to focus on for the next three weeks I decided to do a little research into each of the given games that the two briefs cover to help me choose between the options available and finalise my decision. I want to make sure I am choosing the right one as I would hate to start working on one and then realising that I had made the wrong choice so hopefully doing the research will help to guide my choice. The fist Art Test I decided to focus my attention on is the Character concept art one as at the moment it is the test that is most suited to my artistic abilities. I started off the research process by looking into the unfamiliar video game 'Speedball' which the whole brief focuses around. I hadn't heard of the game before so I was curious to have a look at it and see what its style, play through and graphics were like.



SPEEDBALL

Speedball is a long running sports/action video game which rewards players for violent play and scoring goals. The games play style is influenced heavily by popular sports such as handball and ice hockey which gives the player a little bit of familiarity to activities that already exist instead of getting the grips with a whole new sport. There have been several games in the series, many of them reusing a replica of the original 2D pixel art game produced in 1988 by 'The Bitmap brothers' and then tweaking the game so it will play on different platforms. The most recent version of the game was released in 2011 and was re done so that it could be played on a android phone or tablet. In between the tweaking of the original game there was also a 3D version of the game released in 2011, Speedball Tournament, in order to try and re vamp the game and introduce it to a new audience.

There isn't really a story in the original game, it simply focuses on the game play of the made up sport. Speedball is a hand ball game that is played by two teams on court with a goal at each end of it. Scattered around the play area are certain things that can effect a teams gameplay for example, power ups and multipliers which are used to improve the teams skill and give them a better chance at scoring a goal and winning the match. Similar the the gameplay found in the popular series called, 'Fifa', a football based video game, the player only has control over one player on a team at any one time and can then switch when the ball has been thrown. The game is available to play against NPC or another player.

Bellow is a collage of collected screenshots from the range of different Speedball games. Also there are three videos below that which show the game play of three of the different games which gives you a good understanding of the graphics and the sport involved.

All of the games style stay very consistent throughout the series, sticking with the cuperpunk sci-fi theme used in the original Speedball. This style covers every aspect of the game, environments, interface and character design.  The players on each of the available teams are made up of either humans in powerful futuristic armour or deadly cyborgs which will make for really interesting character concepts and designs. 

Once I had completed this basic research and got to see the gameplay and art style of all the different Speedball games, I immediately took a disliking to it, especially the moderner re do of it. They all seemed very bland and dull which caused the game to lose a large amount of the 'action' is was supposed to contain for me. I actually preferred the older 2D character designs as they seemed to have far more personality to them compared to their 3D counterparts. Below is an example of the interface and designs used in the second version of Speedball.

This disappointing factor has managed to push me away a little from the idea of completing this Art Test but I do know that in the games industry you will be a given a project that you may absolutely hate and despise having to do but you have to complete it because it is your job as the concept artists. I am keeping this thought in mind so that I don't disregard this test completely just because of the art style. There is one aspect that is keeping my interested in this test and maybe it's saving grace and that is that fact that in the brief it says that the company 2K games has acquired the rights to the game. This means that the style could change rather differently when being produced by this company or barely at all. 

2K GAMES

2K Games is a american based game developer and producer and was founded on January the 25th, 2005. They specialise in 3D computer and video games with a large amount of their most popular production coming later in the companies time line. Two of their most popular separate series of games are 'Borderlands', which was nominated for a BAFTA award, and 'Bio shock'. 

Each of these two games have a rather dark feel to them with is mainly down to their colour palette. plot and the art style used which manages to create a grungy feel to the characters but also gives them a lot of depth. As the Character Concept Art Test brief says, 2K games has taken over the Speedball series which means that they can have their own stylised influenced over the game and push it in a completely new directions if they want to. This leaves open a lot of different design ideas and concepts that could be created keeping this companies style in mind. 

There are key areas of the game that MUST stay the same in order to keep a running theme in the series, so you wouldn't be able to go completely mad and reinvent the game to suit your own style. Areas of the game that must remain the same are the game play and sci-fi cyberpunk theme plus the environments, such as the court, must represent something of the original game other with the sport will be completely ruined and wont function properly. Although that doesn't mean that the art style can't be tweaked a little to make the game look more interesting and stylised compared to how bland it was beforehand. So for example, you could be able to re design the characters in the style of one of 2K Games to give the Speedball the companies flair. Baring this in mind, I decided to do some image research into the two most popular games produced by company to see what sort of designs would be possible to do and if they would fit in with brief. 

Below are images of the front covers of the games 'Borderlands' and 'Bioshock' along with a few bits of their concept art. 

Looking at these different pieces of concept art has given me a good idea of what sort of style I could work with when creating the character designs, especially the pieces that have cybernetic designs in them. I really warmed to the style of  Borderlands the most which was mainly because of its dark outlines, which makes the characters look like a 2D digital drawing and the expressive facial designs. Plus I think I could get some good designs out of using this sort of style for Speedball. It would give it a different creative edge and possibly make it more exciting.  

Now that I have looked into the Character Concept Art Test I can move onto researching into the Concept Pre-Visualisation Test and looking into the suggested game, 'Fable'. This is so that I can make sure I have gone over both tests properly before I pick out the one which I would like to have a go at.