New Term,New Year,New Projects

It Looks like i'm finally in third year,time really seems to move quickly nowadays.Starting this week ,last monday, I arrived at labs to be greeted with a number of Industry standard briefs to choose from in what was called a style matrix in order to self tailor the first term to the needs of my portfolio. Within this style matrix there are three catagories; stylised,realistic,partialy stylised. There are then two more subcatagories ; visual design (concepts) and game production (asset creation in 3d) , each of these have breifs in them the likes of which are charcter,enviroment props etc.

I found this to be an exxcellent idea to bolster the week links in our portfolios. I personally aspire to work in the role of a concept artist .Now While I feel I have an abbundance of character art/designs in my portfolio My enviromental visualisation is really lacking in it.

With this in mind I chose one brief ,for the next three weeks (two actually now) which has me design A 'new noir esque rooftop level based in new york for a third person run and gun action adventure. you can see below what is required of me during this brief:

'A new noir-esque 3 rd person run & gun action game is being planned. One of the levels in the game takes place on the rooftop of a New York City building. The rooftop must look authentic whilst providing an interesting visual with plenty of cover for the action to take place. Consideration of player experience forms part of the process as well as the ability to convincingly combine source images into a new scene layout designed by you. You are required to concept a New York style city rooftop or set of roof tops laid out in a compelling 3 rd Person level. The concepts must look authentic to the collected reference as well as showing good appreciation of the final aesthetic, proportion, colour, silhouette and composition. You must also consider surrounds to create an immersive experience. The important information to convey is not only the mood of the scene but also the technical layout for gameplay. You need to communicate route information to a level modeller in an efficient manner, so make use of not only 3D paintovers and photobashing but also orthographic and line drawings to efficiently communicate route and event ideas. This brief also requires you to suggest and concept in depth at least 3 ‘Hero’ assets in the environment around which to base pivotal junctures in the action. This could be based around a watertower/helicopter landing pad/enormous statue etc. Think of cinematic set pieces in action movies. Good examples of this type of set piece can be observed in games such as the Uncharted 2 trainwreck sequence.'

the requirements for me to furfill this brief are as follows:

ISOMETRIC OVERVIEW SHOT OF LEVEL FROM 2 ANGLES

LIT KEY MOOD ENVIRONMENT SHOTS FROM MULTIPLE GAMEPLAY ANGLES

LINE DRAWINGS DELINEATING KEY ROUTE SCENES

ROUTE INFORMATION

KEY ASSETS AND SUB ASSETS EFFICIENTLY VISUALISED.

ALTERNATIVE IDEAS FOR ROUTES

ACTION EVENT PROPOSALS VISUALISED

PROMOTIONAL SHOTS OF PROPOSED GAMEPLAY SCENARIO FOR USE IN ART BOOK.

So basically....alot of work haha.Which is ok of course , I really was hankering to be really challenged at the 2D side of things and this is just that.