Having to limit how much work I am doing
Recently I have been thinking about the amount of work I am planning to do over the course of this project and I started to realise that I think I have set myself far too much to do. Originally I wanted to focus my attention of three future situations which were Climate Change, Advancement in technology and Natural Pandemics but I have decided to limit my designs to just two of these two of these topics instead. This because I think working on three separate design topics and creating separate work for each one is just going to over stress me and end up being too much for me to do and will end up with me not being able to finish a large amount of it so I would rather limit my work load and create good quality work instead of piling on another theme for me to focus on and possibly worrying myself over it.
So I have decided that the two areas I still want to focus on are Climate Change and Advancements in technology because they are both very different areas of the future that mankind could face. Humans really want to technology to keep improving so we can all new types of gadgets and pieces of equipment where as global warming is something that humans would really like not to happen so it's like focusing on two polar opposites of what the human race want their future to be like.
Whilst thinking this over I was also able to sort out in my head what I would like to be able to produce for BA6 overall as I was a little bit muddled with ideas to begin with. I am going to be keeping in mind what my tutor mentioned to me that character concept art is rough drawings, not completely polished pieces so the work I will be producing will consist of mainly sketch work. I have made a little of the design I want to do for each future situation below. I feel a little more settled sorting out in my head what I want to be creating for this project and now that I have sorted it all out I will be able to keep pressing on up until deadline.
1. A collections of character sketches for each design topic.
2. Picking out one design from the sketches that I like.
3. Design variations of that one specific character.
4. A final sketch.
Saturday, 2 May 2015
Friday, 1 May 2015
Design ideas based on climate change
How the rising sea levels will affect mankind
So after I had completed my research into the effect of climate change and decided on a area I would like to focus my character ideas on, I started thinking about what designs or story could I make revolving around the rise in sea levels. There was a lot of different areas in this topic alone that I could aim my design focus towards which means there is a lot from me to choose from. But there was a piece of information I had found whilst researching Climate Change and The Greenhouse Effect that really stood out for me and actually helped spark a lot of ideas in my head once I read it over. I have pasted the information I am referring to below.
When large storms hit land, higher sea levels mean bigger, more powerful storm surges that can strip away everything in their path. In addition, hundreds of millions of people live in areas that will become increasingly vulnerable to flooding. Higher sea levels would force them to abandon their homes and relocate. Low-lying islands could be submerged completely. Most predictions say the warming of the planet will continue and likely will accelerate. Oceans will likely continue to rise as well, but predicting the amount is an inexact science. A recent study says we can expect the oceans to rise between 2.5 and 6.5 feet (0.8 and 2 meters) by 2100, enough to swamp many of the cities along the U.S. East Coast. More dire estimates, including a complete meltdown of the Greenland ice sheet, push sea level rise to 23 feet (7 meters), enough to submerge London.
Reading about the predicted situation of what the rising sea levels could do to affect the Earth, especially the time frame in which large cities like London could be submerged under sea level helped to spark an creative story idea in my head that could lead to a series of different designs revolving around the idea of flooded towns and cities.
My design idea
Basically I want to focus on my idea of a future around 100 or so years from now that has been horribly effected by the Earth's drastic climate change. It all starts with the people of Earth in the 21st century just continually believing that Global Warming is some sort of myth and that it really doesn't need to be worried about. So there are no pre cautions taken to try and keep it at bay or even stop it from happening for years and years after the initial warnings. So as years have passed and the polar ice caps have melted due to The Green House Effect the sea level has risen by a dangerous amount, causing towns and cities along the coastlines have become completely submerged and areas further inland to be flooded.
Due to this being a gradual event for many years, people who knew they were going to lose their homes travelled in land to find a new place to live but with so many different towns and cities becoming submerged and many people entering new countries to seek refuge it starting to take a strain on inland cities due to the fact that over population is already an issue in most places and this is just tipping the problem over the edge. As the sea levels rise year by year, the risk of tsunami's and storms become more and more probable which only helps to increases the amount of damage and land lost.
After a particularly bad storm hits the Earth the rate that the sea level rises increased dramatically and speeds up the flooding process leaving a large amount of people unable to escape their homes in time and becoming stuck in their flooded towns. It is after this event that the government decided that they cannot risk any more people coming to live inland where it is safe from flooding. This is due to the fact that it will de pleat food stocks, which are already at all time low due to the Earth heating up and killing a large amount of crops and animals and the fact that it will become to massively over populated to cope. So the government decides to make a sacrifice by using pure force to keep the homeless travellers from coming into the dry land and by building 100 foot walls in order to keep anything from the wetlands, the water and the people, from entering.
I will be drawing character designs of the people who have been shut out of the dry land and now have to try find ways to survive in their flooded towns, I think I will be able to get some really interesting designs using this in my concepts and I already have a few ideas in mind of what kind of thing I want to draw going off of this idea.
So after I had completed my research into the effect of climate change and decided on a area I would like to focus my character ideas on, I started thinking about what designs or story could I make revolving around the rise in sea levels. There was a lot of different areas in this topic alone that I could aim my design focus towards which means there is a lot from me to choose from. But there was a piece of information I had found whilst researching Climate Change and The Greenhouse Effect that really stood out for me and actually helped spark a lot of ideas in my head once I read it over. I have pasted the information I am referring to below.
When large storms hit land, higher sea levels mean bigger, more powerful storm surges that can strip away everything in their path. In addition, hundreds of millions of people live in areas that will become increasingly vulnerable to flooding. Higher sea levels would force them to abandon their homes and relocate. Low-lying islands could be submerged completely. Most predictions say the warming of the planet will continue and likely will accelerate. Oceans will likely continue to rise as well, but predicting the amount is an inexact science. A recent study says we can expect the oceans to rise between 2.5 and 6.5 feet (0.8 and 2 meters) by 2100, enough to swamp many of the cities along the U.S. East Coast. More dire estimates, including a complete meltdown of the Greenland ice sheet, push sea level rise to 23 feet (7 meters), enough to submerge London.
Reading about the predicted situation of what the rising sea levels could do to affect the Earth, especially the time frame in which large cities like London could be submerged under sea level helped to spark an creative story idea in my head that could lead to a series of different designs revolving around the idea of flooded towns and cities.
My design idea
Basically I want to focus on my idea of a future around 100 or so years from now that has been horribly effected by the Earth's drastic climate change. It all starts with the people of Earth in the 21st century just continually believing that Global Warming is some sort of myth and that it really doesn't need to be worried about. So there are no pre cautions taken to try and keep it at bay or even stop it from happening for years and years after the initial warnings. So as years have passed and the polar ice caps have melted due to The Green House Effect the sea level has risen by a dangerous amount, causing towns and cities along the coastlines have become completely submerged and areas further inland to be flooded.
Due to this being a gradual event for many years, people who knew they were going to lose their homes travelled in land to find a new place to live but with so many different towns and cities becoming submerged and many people entering new countries to seek refuge it starting to take a strain on inland cities due to the fact that over population is already an issue in most places and this is just tipping the problem over the edge. As the sea levels rise year by year, the risk of tsunami's and storms become more and more probable which only helps to increases the amount of damage and land lost.
After a particularly bad storm hits the Earth the rate that the sea level rises increased dramatically and speeds up the flooding process leaving a large amount of people unable to escape their homes in time and becoming stuck in their flooded towns. It is after this event that the government decided that they cannot risk any more people coming to live inland where it is safe from flooding. This is due to the fact that it will de pleat food stocks, which are already at all time low due to the Earth heating up and killing a large amount of crops and animals and the fact that it will become to massively over populated to cope. So the government decides to make a sacrifice by using pure force to keep the homeless travellers from coming into the dry land and by building 100 foot walls in order to keep anything from the wetlands, the water and the people, from entering.
I will be drawing character designs of the people who have been shut out of the dry land and now have to try find ways to survive in their flooded towns, I think I will be able to get some really interesting designs using this in my concepts and I already have a few ideas in mind of what kind of thing I want to draw going off of this idea.
Wednesday, 29 April 2015
Focusing on the first future situation
Climate Change
Once that I had completed a some broad research into a large amount of different situations earth could face in the future and narrowed down my choices to just three of these situations to focus on and create designs for, it knew it was time for me to begin some deeper research into each of these three topics. Although I already have some basic knowledge of climate change, artificial Intelligence and natural pandemics I believe that it is important for me to look into each of these subjects so that I can make sure my understanding is a little more firm because this way I will be able to achieve far better design concepts than if just went off what I already know. I would like my designs not to be too far fetched so learning about each of this possible futures for mankind will make my ideas far more believable and less made up of guess work.
So the first subject I wanted to focus on is climate change. This is the area that I know the most about out of the three topics I have chosen to look at due to the fact that I learnt about it throughout my whole time at secondary school and it is something that is always being brought to the public attention. What I do know is that climate change, or 'Global Warming' as it is also referred to is a theory of how the worlds weather is slowly shifting and changing as time goes on either due to natural events or the effect of the rapid progression of mankind. It something that could effect the world in a large variety of ways in the future which makes the final result and even build up rather difficult to predict. This means there could be a large amount of different design routes I could go down for this particular topic which is wonderful and frustrating. There being a lot of different effects on the future means that I will get a lot of creative freedom but at the same time I was really trying to limit how much I give myself to do so that I don't go off on a tangent or get flooded with too much research. Hopefully with a little bit more research into the topic including what I learnt from the 'End of the world night' documentary I will be able to come up with a solid design route to follow down.
The beginning of my further research
So to start off my further research I decided to do the very basic thing and look at what the Wikipedia result was for climate change so that I would be able to get a brief little summary of the topic and hopefully some interesting facts and figures thrown in as well. Below is their description of what climate change is and this really helps to just sum it up as a whole.
Wikipedia description found from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_change
"Climate change is a change in the statistical distribution of weather patterns when that change lasts for an extended period of time (i.e., decades to millions of years). Climate change may refer to a change in average weather conditions, or in the time variation of weather around longer-term average conditions (i.e., more or fewer extreme weather events). Climate change is caused by factors such as biotic processes, variations in solar radiation received by Earth, plate tectonics, and volcanic eruptions. Certain human activities have also been identified as significant causes of recent climate change, often referred to as global warming. Scientists actively work to understand past and future climate by using observations and theoretical models. A climate record — extending deep into the Earth's past — has been assembled, and continues to be built up, based on geological evidence from borehole temperature profiles, cores removed from deep accumulations of ice, floral nd faunal records, glacial and periglacial processes, stable-isotope and other analyses of sediment layers, and records of past sea levels."
Although this is a little wordy it certainly helps to summarise what this effect is as a whole and what are a few of its many causes. This much I pretty much already knew but just reading it over helped to solidify the concept in my head, I proceeded to read through the Wikipedia page on this topic to see what other information it had to give. A large amount of it revolved around the many different causes for climate change and the physical effects it has had to the Earth's environment over the years. A easily summary of a large chunk the information that was in this article can be found in the visual image below that is one that I am pretty sure I have seen in a text book before and just simply shows the different effects climate change could have to earth.
From reading over the climate change wikipedia page and the global warming one as well (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming) grouped with the knowledge I already possessed I notcied that the rising of the sea levels seems to be the most focused on topic as it one of the effects of climate change that could seriously effect not just earth, but mankind as well. This instantly made me think of about a scientific theory which I had learnt previously in secondary school and had nearly completely forgotten. It is called the 'The Greenhouse Effect'. This is a theory that explains the reason for earth's constant temperature increase and why the polar ice caps are beginning to melt and causing the sea level to rise. I decided that this would be a good area of climate change to focus my attention on and create designs for due to the fact that it is one of the most well known outcomes as it will have one of the worst effects on earth and it's inhabitants so my work would be able to send a powerful message via this topic. Plus I have learnt about it previously so my knowledge is fat greater tuned to the information on The Greenhouse Effect over many other effects of global warming.
The Green House Effect
I had to keep my research on this effect short and sweet due to the fact that it all gets a little too technical and scientific for me when I only really need to the basics in order to create a good and realistic design narrative. After having a skim through the Wikipedia page talking about this topic (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_effect) in order to refresh my memory of what it is made up of I remembered there were some very simple but useful diagrams of The Greenhouse effect that was able to sum it up in one image in some of my old geography textbooks so I had a little look at Google Images and found a few which were simple and easy to understand. Below are the couple that I picked out that help to explain the theory in very simple terms.
These images show the basic breakdown of how the solar radiation from the Sun is getting caught in the Earth's CO2 clogged atmosphere and ricocheting around inside which is what is causing Earth's temperature to rise so dramatically. But what is cause all of this Carbon Dioxide build up? Us. Humans beings. We over the course of our evolution and progression have managed produce and cause this unnatural amount of CO2 to become trapped in Earth's atmosphere. In this article about global warming (http://www.climatehotmap.org/about/global-warming-causes.html) it states that;
"As we burn fossil fuels like coal, oil and natural gas for energy or cut down and burn forests to create pastures and plantations, carbon accumulates and overloads our atmosphere. Certain waste management and agricultural practices aggravate the problem by releasing other potent global warming gases, such as methane and nitrous oxide." Below I have also posted a pie chart of the breakdown of how much Carbon Dioxide along with other gases that mankind have created in the atmosphere.
Unfortunately many different messages and campaigns have been sent out even since the 1950s to try and get people to under stand the danger of this situation that we are getting our selves in and we need to reduce our own personal carbon footprints as well as the worlds to reduce the risk that climate change could produce but a large amount of mankind still believe that global warming is some sort of myth and doesn't need to be taken seriously which is a huge mistake as it will get us into a hell of a lot of trouble later down the line.
So with a constantly growing increase of Carbon Dioxide in Earth's atmosphere due to people not listening to the risk and warnings, there has been a huge issue of more and more solar radiation getting caught and heating up the Earth's temperature. One of the main issues we are facing currently with the temperature of our planet constantly getting hotter is the fact that the growing heat is melting the polar ice caps of the North and South Pole, destroy large ammounts of lands that are home to a wide array of different creatures. With each piece of ice that is melting into the ocean it has increased the water level quite drastically causing the sea to slowly rise and this means that huge areas of land are going to become below sea level and will become essentially completed flooded and inhabitable. This is going to reek havoc due to the fact that Earth is already over populated and with us losing whole cities under water all the people are going to have to evacuate to other areas of the countries.
There was a brilliant piece of text in a article I was reading from this website (http://ocean.nationalgeographic.com/ocean/critical-issues-sea-level-rise/) which talks about just how badly the world will become submerged under the water in the future if the sea levels do rise to far. It states that;
"When sea levels rise rapidly, as they have been doing, even a small increase can have devastating effects on coastal habitats. As seawater reaches farther inland, it can cause destructive erosion, flooding of wetlands, contamination of aquifers and agricultural soils, and lost habitat for fish, birds, and plants.When large storms hit land, higher sea levels mean bigger, more powerful storm surges that can strip away everything in their path. In addition, hundreds of millions of people live in areas that will become increasingly vulnerable to flooding. Higher sea levels would force them to abandon their homes and relocate. Low-lying islands could be submerged completely. Most predictions say the warming of the planet will continue and likely will accelerate. Oceans will likely continue to rise as well, but predicting the amount is an inexact science. A recent study says we can expect the oceans to rise between 2.5 and 6.5 feet (0.8 and 2 meters) by 2100, enough to swamp many of the cities along the U.S. East Coast. More dire estimates, including a complete meltdown of the Greenland ice sheet, push sea level rise to 23 feet (7 meters), enough to submerge London."
Also below there is a video that shows a simulation of exactly which parts of the Earth are going to become submerged if the water does rise dramatically which I found really interesting to watch.
Once that I had completed a some broad research into a large amount of different situations earth could face in the future and narrowed down my choices to just three of these situations to focus on and create designs for, it knew it was time for me to begin some deeper research into each of these three topics. Although I already have some basic knowledge of climate change, artificial Intelligence and natural pandemics I believe that it is important for me to look into each of these subjects so that I can make sure my understanding is a little more firm because this way I will be able to achieve far better design concepts than if just went off what I already know. I would like my designs not to be too far fetched so learning about each of this possible futures for mankind will make my ideas far more believable and less made up of guess work.
So the first subject I wanted to focus on is climate change. This is the area that I know the most about out of the three topics I have chosen to look at due to the fact that I learnt about it throughout my whole time at secondary school and it is something that is always being brought to the public attention. What I do know is that climate change, or 'Global Warming' as it is also referred to is a theory of how the worlds weather is slowly shifting and changing as time goes on either due to natural events or the effect of the rapid progression of mankind. It something that could effect the world in a large variety of ways in the future which makes the final result and even build up rather difficult to predict. This means there could be a large amount of different design routes I could go down for this particular topic which is wonderful and frustrating. There being a lot of different effects on the future means that I will get a lot of creative freedom but at the same time I was really trying to limit how much I give myself to do so that I don't go off on a tangent or get flooded with too much research. Hopefully with a little bit more research into the topic including what I learnt from the 'End of the world night' documentary I will be able to come up with a solid design route to follow down.
The beginning of my further research
So to start off my further research I decided to do the very basic thing and look at what the Wikipedia result was for climate change so that I would be able to get a brief little summary of the topic and hopefully some interesting facts and figures thrown in as well. Below is their description of what climate change is and this really helps to just sum it up as a whole.
Wikipedia description found from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_change
"Climate change is a change in the statistical distribution of weather patterns when that change lasts for an extended period of time (i.e., decades to millions of years). Climate change may refer to a change in average weather conditions, or in the time variation of weather around longer-term average conditions (i.e., more or fewer extreme weather events). Climate change is caused by factors such as biotic processes, variations in solar radiation received by Earth, plate tectonics, and volcanic eruptions. Certain human activities have also been identified as significant causes of recent climate change, often referred to as global warming. Scientists actively work to understand past and future climate by using observations and theoretical models. A climate record — extending deep into the Earth's past — has been assembled, and continues to be built up, based on geological evidence from borehole temperature profiles, cores removed from deep accumulations of ice, floral nd faunal records, glacial and periglacial processes, stable-isotope and other analyses of sediment layers, and records of past sea levels."
Although this is a little wordy it certainly helps to summarise what this effect is as a whole and what are a few of its many causes. This much I pretty much already knew but just reading it over helped to solidify the concept in my head, I proceeded to read through the Wikipedia page on this topic to see what other information it had to give. A large amount of it revolved around the many different causes for climate change and the physical effects it has had to the Earth's environment over the years. A easily summary of a large chunk the information that was in this article can be found in the visual image below that is one that I am pretty sure I have seen in a text book before and just simply shows the different effects climate change could have to earth.
The Green House Effect
I had to keep my research on this effect short and sweet due to the fact that it all gets a little too technical and scientific for me when I only really need to the basics in order to create a good and realistic design narrative. After having a skim through the Wikipedia page talking about this topic (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_effect) in order to refresh my memory of what it is made up of I remembered there were some very simple but useful diagrams of The Greenhouse effect that was able to sum it up in one image in some of my old geography textbooks so I had a little look at Google Images and found a few which were simple and easy to understand. Below are the couple that I picked out that help to explain the theory in very simple terms.
These images show the basic breakdown of how the solar radiation from the Sun is getting caught in the Earth's CO2 clogged atmosphere and ricocheting around inside which is what is causing Earth's temperature to rise so dramatically. But what is cause all of this Carbon Dioxide build up? Us. Humans beings. We over the course of our evolution and progression have managed produce and cause this unnatural amount of CO2 to become trapped in Earth's atmosphere. In this article about global warming (http://www.climatehotmap.org/about/global-warming-causes.html) it states that;
"As we burn fossil fuels like coal, oil and natural gas for energy or cut down and burn forests to create pastures and plantations, carbon accumulates and overloads our atmosphere. Certain waste management and agricultural practices aggravate the problem by releasing other potent global warming gases, such as methane and nitrous oxide." Below I have also posted a pie chart of the breakdown of how much Carbon Dioxide along with other gases that mankind have created in the atmosphere.
So with a constantly growing increase of Carbon Dioxide in Earth's atmosphere due to people not listening to the risk and warnings, there has been a huge issue of more and more solar radiation getting caught and heating up the Earth's temperature. One of the main issues we are facing currently with the temperature of our planet constantly getting hotter is the fact that the growing heat is melting the polar ice caps of the North and South Pole, destroy large ammounts of lands that are home to a wide array of different creatures. With each piece of ice that is melting into the ocean it has increased the water level quite drastically causing the sea to slowly rise and this means that huge areas of land are going to become below sea level and will become essentially completed flooded and inhabitable. This is going to reek havoc due to the fact that Earth is already over populated and with us losing whole cities under water all the people are going to have to evacuate to other areas of the countries.
"When sea levels rise rapidly, as they have been doing, even a small increase can have devastating effects on coastal habitats. As seawater reaches farther inland, it can cause destructive erosion, flooding of wetlands, contamination of aquifers and agricultural soils, and lost habitat for fish, birds, and plants.When large storms hit land, higher sea levels mean bigger, more powerful storm surges that can strip away everything in their path. In addition, hundreds of millions of people live in areas that will become increasingly vulnerable to flooding. Higher sea levels would force them to abandon their homes and relocate. Low-lying islands could be submerged completely. Most predictions say the warming of the planet will continue and likely will accelerate. Oceans will likely continue to rise as well, but predicting the amount is an inexact science. A recent study says we can expect the oceans to rise between 2.5 and 6.5 feet (0.8 and 2 meters) by 2100, enough to swamp many of the cities along the U.S. East Coast. More dire estimates, including a complete meltdown of the Greenland ice sheet, push sea level rise to 23 feet (7 meters), enough to submerge London."
Also below there is a video that shows a simulation of exactly which parts of the Earth are going to become submerged if the water does rise dramatically which I found really interesting to watch.
I feel like after doing this large bit of research into the first of the three future situations I want to focus on for BA6 I know now exactly which effect of global warming I want to focus on which is Earth's rising sea levels. It think it is important that I only stick with one looking at one effect of climate change because if I delve into any more areas I will end up over whelming myself with work and I need to limit how much I actually do otherwise I might get a bit lost with it all. But now that I do know my area of focus and I feel like I have done plenty of research for it I am now able to move on and start thinking about what designs I want to produce from this theme. I will also have to move on and look at the two other further situations I am creating character concepts for to so that I can keep my work and ideas flowing.
Tuesday, 28 April 2015
Focusing on my art style
Experimenting with photoshop
For this project I will be creating a fair amount of design work for my character concept art pieces which means that I will have to use a lot of mixed media technique in order to produce good quality work. Usually I have a very specific art style with consist of cartoony unrealistic drawings which I first complete in pencil and then scan into my computer in order to outline and colour it using software called Manga Studio. Now although I am comfortable with using this programme I have recently become more aware that If I want to think about being in he industry I will have to drop using Manga Studio and focus my attention of a art programme which all the big and small games companies use with is Photoshop. Unfortunately I am not very experienced with this programme and haven't used it that much in the past so I knew that as a goal for this project I must use Photoshop to complete all my pieces of art so that I am able to get use to the software and hopefully continue to use and improve from it.
So I knew that I wanted to use a more realistic art style for BA6 so I thought I'd better just quickly sketch down something similar to how I want my characters to look and then I could have a starting point to work from. The drawing below is my final pencil drawn result of a semi realistic female face which I completed in class and, as I liked how it looked, I decided to take it into Photoshop and colour it as a little big of a warm up practice. I am going to start by saying that digital painting is very bizarre and difficult for me as I am always so used to drawing with a thick outline to my designs so, after many attempts of trying to colour in the face with no lines what so ever I quickly went back to what I was comfortable with and ended up with the second image below. Although I am fairly pleased with how it turned out I know that I still have a very very long way to go when it comes to Photoshop and hopefully, as I am using it throughout this whole project, I will be able to improve by the end of it.
Sunday, 26 April 2015
A game that I have become addicted to
Love Live School Idol Project
At the beginning of our return back to university after the Easter break I was quickly found myself with a lack of games to play due to the fact that I was now parted with my games console and only had my Nintendo 3Ds with a small selection of pre played games which was pretty disappointing as I usually like having a game on the go which I can play when taking breaks from work to help me unwind. This was my dilemma until one my friends introduced me to a new game which she had become addicted to over the course of a week, I was a little bit put off with to begin with as it was an App based game and usually I don't ever get very far with those type of games and have never seemed to be able to take them seriously but I quickly learnt this was a whole other case with this game. It really did not take my long to become completely enamoured and drawn in by this game and it's characters. Below is a video example of what the game is actually like.
'Love Live School Idol Project' is an app based social rhythm game that is part of the ever expanding 'Love Live!' franchise that has just recently produced a new Anime series. It was created for a variety of mobile devices and tablets by the Japanese game producers 'KLabGames' and 'bushiroad' and was released on April 16th 2013 in Japan and then after popular demand an English version was released on May 11th 2014. This multimedia franchise has taken Japan by storm as is now slowly beginning to seep into the western anime fan base.
Both the Anime series and the app based game both follow the same story line which is about how the high school student Honoka Kōsaka is faced with a dilemma when the school she attends and adores, Otonokizaka Academy, is planned to be closed down due. Wanting to prevent the closer from taking place Honoka is determined to find anyway possible to keep her beloved school up and running and. After accidentally discovering the soaring popularity of school idols in Japan Honoka manages to convince her groups of friends into starting up a idol group of her own called μ's (pronounced muse) in order to attract new students.
So the essentially 'Love Live' as a game is split into two different sections which the player can take part in throughout the game. The first section is a story mode in which the player meet and follows the antics of the 9 members of μ's but in order to unlock new chapters in the story to progress through the game the player must collect enough experience points and the only way they can do that is by completing the second section of the game. The second section is the rhythm based part of the game in which the player must 'perform' live concerts using a selection of members μ's in order to help the team improve and gain more members. A example of the live show interface found within the game can be seen in the two images below. In order to perform a live show the player must hit each approaching circular note when it aligns with the icon of one of the characters in the semi circle. This will essentially have the player tapping to the beat of the song that is being played and using their sense of rhythm to try and tap each circle at the correct moment. If the player continues to tap at the perfect moment the combo boost will keep on climbing and will allow you to collect more points at the end of the level depending on how much of a combo you get.
You will also receive more points if you get a high ranking on each performance which is indicated by the long bar at the top of the screen that continues to fill up the further you get through the song. Completing a performance will give you different prizes depending on what level or song you picked, easy, difficult or hard. This keep the player aiming to improve with the incentive of knowing there are better prizes to be one if they make their way to the hard levels. Each song that the player can use to perform too is sung by the members of the school idol group and you will be able to unlock more songs preformed by them as you move your way through the game, allowing their to be variety in you playing choices.
Although there are a large variety of songs to perform you wont be able to do more than a few in a row due to each time you complete a song your LP or life points (seen in the top right hand side of the image above) will be used up and you will have a wait a good hour and bit to get a full bar again. But luckily as you wait there are plenty of other things the player can do to keep themselves occupied in game. After you have completed each performance
you will gain a collection of items depending on how well you progressed
through the song. One of these items you will receive is
something called 'friend points' which, when you have enough of, will
allow you to go scouting for new brand new team members which come in the form
of virtual cards and will help to expand your collection of idols. Although
when you complete a song you will be given three basic members, if you go
scouting with your points you may be able to pick up some rare sort after
characters. These virtual cards come in hundreds of varieties and can
range from worth which begin at normal and end at ultra rare. You are also able to use some of the low ranking members you have collected which you no longer want to level up any rarer members to make them into a stronger idols and improve your team.
One of the nice things about how so much
variety when it comes to the characters and skill set is that you are able to
chop and change your 9 set idol team to whichever character your prefer. All
the members are coloured coded to either green, blue or pink which means that
each of these categories has a particular skill set and will be better suited
to perform to a certain type of song, so for example you would really want a
team of green/pure characters to perform a green/pure labelled song as it will
allow you to pick up more points and receive a better score. Example of the member layout and a super rare character card can be seen in the images below.
Due to this game being one that has new updates and events posted every single day there is always something for the player to discover and strive for which is a very clever way of keeping them interested and curious to keep playing. I know this has certainly been the case for me as I have found every hour or so I will be checking back on the app so that I am able to use my newly restored LP to perform μ's songs in order to collect enough points so that I can get more rare members for my team. It almost seems like a never ending cycle of gameplay which honestly does not bother me as this game has managed to worm it's way into my life and I have no become fairly addicted with it.
Wednesday, 22 April 2015
Thinking about what i will be working on
Picking out 3 possible futures of mankind
After having a long discussion about what I planned to do for my BA6 project with my tutor Nigel I started to think about narrowing down my ideas of what I wanted to do for a final outcome. There one thing that he really pushed in our talk together and that was that I shouldn't do as much research as I had been planing to otherwise it would turn out like BA5 where I didn't have enough time to complete the design side of my work as I had been too busy doing my research earlier on in the project. I was orignally planning to look into each of the 10 future situations that were covered in the 'End of the world night' programme but I was warned by Nigel that that was far too much and I should limit myself to how much I do.
So baring this idea in mind I starting to think about my work load and what I was planning to produce at the end of the project. I came to the conclusion that the best thing for me to do was to pick 3 out of the 10 future situations to create character designs and a back story for. This way I will have a variety of work which will be manageable to produce and will cut back and the amount of further research I would of been doing. Out of the ten different future situations that were spoken about in the televison programme I have chose to pick three that were nearer the top of the probability scale due to the fact that I will be able to produce some less far fetched ideas and each topic will have a lot more meaning as they are far more likely to happen to mankind in the future. The three I am choosing to do are:
There were a few situations that were further up and higher on the list of probability that I choose not to focus on which were 'Zombies' and 'Nuclear war'. I didn't want to pick Zombies as it is such a popular and predictable one to choose and I feel like a lot more designs would just become average and unimaginative. As for Nuclear war, even though it is the highest rated probability for the future, which the impact if created there is a high possibility that there would be no human life left at all so that doesn't leave me with a lot design options. Overall I think the three that I have chosen will give me lots of different character design ideas and will be able to write a good back story if I need to about each event and how the people of earth have been surviving through it.
The plan now is for me to do a few rough idea sketches along side bits of research so I am able to build each of them up bit by bit and to make sure that I start my design work early on instead if leaving it as the last thing to do.
After having a long discussion about what I planned to do for my BA6 project with my tutor Nigel I started to think about narrowing down my ideas of what I wanted to do for a final outcome. There one thing that he really pushed in our talk together and that was that I shouldn't do as much research as I had been planing to otherwise it would turn out like BA5 where I didn't have enough time to complete the design side of my work as I had been too busy doing my research earlier on in the project. I was orignally planning to look into each of the 10 future situations that were covered in the 'End of the world night' programme but I was warned by Nigel that that was far too much and I should limit myself to how much I do.
So baring this idea in mind I starting to think about my work load and what I was planning to produce at the end of the project. I came to the conclusion that the best thing for me to do was to pick 3 out of the 10 future situations to create character designs and a back story for. This way I will have a variety of work which will be manageable to produce and will cut back and the amount of further research I would of been doing. Out of the ten different future situations that were spoken about in the televison programme I have chose to pick three that were nearer the top of the probability scale due to the fact that I will be able to produce some less far fetched ideas and each topic will have a lot more meaning as they are far more likely to happen to mankind in the future. The three I am choosing to do are:
Climate change, Natural pandemics and Artificial Intelligence.
There were a few situations that were further up and higher on the list of probability that I choose not to focus on which were 'Zombies' and 'Nuclear war'. I didn't want to pick Zombies as it is such a popular and predictable one to choose and I feel like a lot more designs would just become average and unimaginative. As for Nuclear war, even though it is the highest rated probability for the future, which the impact if created there is a high possibility that there would be no human life left at all so that doesn't leave me with a lot design options. Overall I think the three that I have chosen will give me lots of different character design ideas and will be able to write a good back story if I need to about each event and how the people of earth have been surviving through it.
The plan now is for me to do a few rough idea sketches along side bits of research so I am able to build each of them up bit by bit and to make sure that I start my design work early on instead if leaving it as the last thing to do.
Saturday, 18 April 2015
Getting feedback on BA5
Meeting with Rosie and Fin from Chucklefish games
Recently I was sent a email by our course tutor asking if I would be able to take part in a special session that the university was providing to a only a select few people on our course who completed the Chucklefish promo art project previously for BA5. It told us that we would be meeting two of the people who work at the games company and helped to produce the game 'Starbound', Rosie and Fin. This was session would allow us to meet them personally, ask them any questions we had about the industry and to receive both of their feedback on the work we had produced so it was a fantastic opportunity for everyone who was asked to attend. Although I didn't exactly have a very positive experience with my previous project and was particularly pleased with the work I had produced, I was really excited to have been asked to come to this meeting and be able to get some professional feedback from people who are actually in the industry currently.
The session was absolutely fantastic! It took place yesterday in the afternoon and there were a good bunch of us who were asked to join, all of nervous as each other having to professional game creators commenting on our art work but we were all worried for nothing, Rosie and Fin were both really lovely people, very relaxed and easy to talk to which instantly made me feel more relaxed about confident about presenting my work to them. The session started with them introducing themselves to class, explaining who they are and what role they played within their company as well as briefly discussing previous work they have completed in the past. They both had a lot of experience and obviously worked incredibly hard to be where they are right now which was very impressive to see. Rosie especially interested me as she had previously worked for Disney and she spoke about the difference between working at the corporation, what the work load was like and what was expected of you compared to what it is like working at a small indie company like Chucklefish. Obviously Disney is a company I would love to work at so finding out about what is was like for her working there was really interesting, a little daunting and scary, but that still hasn't put me off.
After their introductions they went round the room and spent a good 10-15 minutes each speaking to each student about the work they had produced for BA5 which was brilliant as we were all able to get a large amount of feedback from them and be able to talk to them on a more personal level which was lovely. When It came round to my turn admittedly I was still a little nervous about having to show them my work as I wasn't too pleased with how little I was able to produce but I really had nothing to worry about. The work I showed them pair of them is shown in the image below.
Recently I was sent a email by our course tutor asking if I would be able to take part in a special session that the university was providing to a only a select few people on our course who completed the Chucklefish promo art project previously for BA5. It told us that we would be meeting two of the people who work at the games company and helped to produce the game 'Starbound', Rosie and Fin. This was session would allow us to meet them personally, ask them any questions we had about the industry and to receive both of their feedback on the work we had produced so it was a fantastic opportunity for everyone who was asked to attend. Although I didn't exactly have a very positive experience with my previous project and was particularly pleased with the work I had produced, I was really excited to have been asked to come to this meeting and be able to get some professional feedback from people who are actually in the industry currently.
The session was absolutely fantastic! It took place yesterday in the afternoon and there were a good bunch of us who were asked to join, all of nervous as each other having to professional game creators commenting on our art work but we were all worried for nothing, Rosie and Fin were both really lovely people, very relaxed and easy to talk to which instantly made me feel more relaxed about confident about presenting my work to them. The session started with them introducing themselves to class, explaining who they are and what role they played within their company as well as briefly discussing previous work they have completed in the past. They both had a lot of experience and obviously worked incredibly hard to be where they are right now which was very impressive to see. Rosie especially interested me as she had previously worked for Disney and she spoke about the difference between working at the corporation, what the work load was like and what was expected of you compared to what it is like working at a small indie company like Chucklefish. Obviously Disney is a company I would love to work at so finding out about what is was like for her working there was really interesting, a little daunting and scary, but that still hasn't put me off.
After their introductions they went round the room and spent a good 10-15 minutes each speaking to each student about the work they had produced for BA5 which was brilliant as we were all able to get a large amount of feedback from them and be able to talk to them on a more personal level which was lovely. When It came round to my turn admittedly I was still a little nervous about having to show them my work as I wasn't too pleased with how little I was able to produce but I really had nothing to worry about. The work I showed them pair of them is shown in the image below.
Both Rosie and Fin were very positive about the work I had produced for BA5 and didn't point out a single negative thing which was really nice to hear. They explained which parts of my final designs that they liked, things such as how neat my line art was and my use of colours. They mentioned that I had captured each of the races likeness to how they had envisioned them really well via their body language, expression and clothing which they seemed pretty pleased with. Rosie also mentioned that they way I did my characters, so that they were full bodied with a plain background, was the sort of thing that Disney asked their artists to do so that they can re use a design again and again in different pieces of production like putting it on a variety of different posters or packing of merchandise, ect.
So overall I received some really good feedback about the work I had produced and learnt some important tips and facts about the industry so, when the session was over, I left feeling a new burst of confidence and pride in my artwork and it made me just want to just go home and keep on working on BA6. It gave me a huge motivation boost just speaking to Rosie and Fin so I really thank them for that.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)