Karvan Swara

THE FINAL PIECE

Drawing buildings and I have a history….. we just don’t get along….period. No matter how many countless hours I give it my undivided attention, the outcome remains to be as interesting as sliced bread, and the perspective can sometimes be a bit off. So I was sitting down and contemplating while nursing a hot chocolate about my current situation. I struck an idea when the penny dropped, at last. The very thought had occurred to me to module the city using Cinema 4D and to simply transfer the file to Adobe Photoshop where I would then digitally paint it. It was a massive load of my chest, I tell you that.

I’m not that great at using Cinema 4D, but I know enough to model a building. Using a cube, I simply added segments and played around with the inner extrude and extrude tool in the menus. Finally I had modelled my first building. It was then simply a case of copying it, changing the scale, adding and taking away bits of it. I tried to make some buildings differ to others to avoid falling in the trap of repitition. With the sketch and toon material, I added a black outline to the buildings because I was aiming for a graphic novel look.

ENDURANCE RACE

SINGLE PLAYER/MULTIPLAYER TRACK

BATTLE ROYAL

THE PRESENTATION AND I

I’m hardly the kind of person to get up on stage and present my ideas/work I have installed. People say that if you pretend to see the audience in their underwear then it helps alleviate the presentation. I find that hard to believe, considering the majority of my colleagues are blokes, but anyway I gave it a shot. We were allowed to use Power Point, iWorks or Director. I took a crack at iWorks and I didn’t feel comfortable using it….that being I didn’t know how to use it at all. So I suck to softwares that I’m already familiar with, which was shockingly Director, because I promised myself I wouldn’t ever use it considering its intricate codes.

During the presentation I felt that talking about games that inspired me to come up with my own was a necessity. I must admit, it wasn’t the best  presentation in the world, but I must say I got the message across. This is something I need to work on more often for future purposes.My presentation had video references to other games as well as a stack image that I illustrated based on my game. I discussed who the target were, what the game is like, the plot, options etc. I felt that I didn’t really compete against some of my colleagues because my talent in digital painting will suffice in ‘assignment 2’ when we are given the opportunity to model/illustrate the level or character….mine being the level. But because I’ll be using Adobe Photoshop and I need to make up the marks, digitally painting 2 landscapes as well as a bird’s eye view a track will be more than sufficient, I believe. I won’t just leave it to three images to decide the result; in the game there is a single mode/campaign, endurance, multiplayer and a battle royal…. I’ll be doing the three illustrations for three of those menus.

THUMBNAIL SKETCHES

CONCEPT DESIGNS

I’ve just finished brainstorming and illustrating the weapons that are available in the game. I’ve profiled the arsenals, explaining the advantage and limitations of which they attain. As well as offensive weaponry, I’ve also focused on its cousin, defence. Equally as powerful, it will hinder, or counter the eventuality of being assaulted.

Each vehicle has its own special weapon when being last in the race, naturally allowing it to catch up with the other racers. So far I’ve only started with the tank out of the other vehicles.

I’m quite excited in doing this assignment, as I have a solid idea of what game I will be illustration. My ideas will reside more towards the concept art, such as the landscapes and the figures rather than modelling them on a 3D package due to the lack of skill. As I am sure this prove to be out of the ordinary in what is usually asked of the students, I can’t help but feel the ‘wow’ effect that I will envision from my fellow colleagues.

RESEARCH

Metal Slug is a series of good old fashion run and gun video game created by SNK. It was portable with many consoles such as Playstation/2, Xbox, Sega Saturn, Game Boy Advance and Nintendo DS. Metal Slug X was then later released on the Wii, PSP and Playstaion 2.

The game is based on series of quests that the character has to go through. Bombarding their way through hordes of enemies, the character then faces the boss in each mission. Throughout the missions, the aim is to save civilians from which they grant to heavy metal arsenals, and fight your way through levels.

The new release of Micro Machines came out on the Nintendo 64 around 2001. It wasn’t as popular for some odd reason. I guess some things are better left on classic machines. In this new version, the camera angle was much like that of Mario Kart 64; it was at the back of the vehicle so that the player would be able to see the racers in front. I assume they choose to do it this way because they had now included weapons.

In 2006, Micro Machines v4 was available on playsation/2, Nintendo DS and a few other consoles. More powerful weapons were introduced. As well as having more available weaponry, the choice of vehicle were too, many.

The graphic was much more intense and more cartoon like. They included more textures than before so there was more feel for the game.

Micro Machines were originally toys made by Galoob, which is now part of Hasbro in the 1980’s. They were simply vehicles of such small scale, approximately the size of a sharpner. There were assortments of vehicles ranging from emergency vehicles, tanks, boas, drag racers helicopters, monster trucks, minis and many more.

What was once a set of collectable toys now became a game on the Sega Megadrive. It already had built-in extension slots for the pads in the cartridge, so up to four people were able to play.

The game had no complex storyline or quests, just simply ‘out race’ the other opponents. It was the perfect game. There wasn’t really a target audience because people of all ages were able to play it.