Project Demon Fort
(Working title)
Team: Cameron Small, Daniel Hoang, David Downes, Del Walker
Aim
The aim of this project is to produce a British School Environment and Characters for a game. The British theme will shine strong throughout the project to make it unique and memorable; something that will stand out among the infinite number of cyborgs and derelict buildings being produced by Game Artists around the world. Visual storytelling is key and will be the backbone of this project.
Environment
The main focus of the environment will be to capture the essence of a prestigious private British School. All architecture will be purely British based with a realistic art style.
Characters
The characters will be students of the school designed to belong in the environment. Each character will have a ‘Transformed State’ which will be initiated when entering battle.
Transformed State
The Transformed State will be an amplification of each character’s unique and fundamental characteristics unrestricted by reality while sustaining believability.
These are the star characters we have decided on at this stage:
Rugby Player – Male
Cricket Player – Male
Science Student / Evil Genius - Male
Violinist – Female
Football player – Female (Tomboy)
Fencer – Female
“It’s all about the final product at the end of the day.”
This will be used as the selling point for our product that will bring us closer to meeting our target audience. Looking at today’s most successful entertainment we have found a very popular formula being used over and over:
Place your audience in a realistic setting which they can relate to, then take them away on a journey beyond reality into a world of imagination!
With imagination we can take the audience somewhere they could never go, be someone they could never be and do things they could never do.
Batman Dark Knight,Superman,Pirates of the Carribean,Heroes, Harry Potter, Power Rangers, Spiderman, Pans Labyrinth, Silent Hill, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, the list is endless!
All of these things have used that very same formula in some shape or form and have been hugely successful in the world of entertainment, and ultimately once we enter the industry as game artists we will be working on a game for entertainment purposes AKA the final product.
It will also prove as a showcase of our talent, to demonstrate that we are capable of producing realistic Game Art as well as convincing Fantastical Game Art that is based on realism.
And above all else, we all love and feel very passionate about this idea! It’s no easy task finding the golden idea in a group project but this is THE ONE for us.
I know this because I haven’t even had dinner yet because I’ve been researching and writing this proposal, and there are very few things I feel so excited about in this world that take priority over food! Being a part of this group is beginning to make me feel like I’m in my element.
Research
“Perfect Preparation Prevents P*** Poor Performance”
Environment
To research our environment it only makes sense to get ourselves out there (outside of Google image search) and visit locations such as London, Cambridge and Cheltenham’s Ladies College to absorb the history of British architecture and build up our own library of references and textures.
Characters
There is quite a history behind British school uniforms that we will research to ensure the characters really sit at home with the environment. We also intend to find people to base our character’s appearances on and carry out photo shoots to use as reference.
Potential uniform concept
Transformed State
Designing characters is an art within itself; there are mountains of knowledge for us to learn in this field and luckily most of the best character artists in the world share their knowledge through books, articles, video tutorials, interviews etc. for us to soak up! But as with this entire project we will keep our eyes open to the real world as you never know when something might inspire you!
Visual Storytelling
From the stories told in cave paintings to today’s cinema we’ll research this subject with all the resources we can get our hands on!
Design and Technical Specifications
We are designing for the PS3/XBOX360/PC Platforms and will make maximum use of the technical specifications in order for our final product to be as rich in quality as possible.
Software: 3DS Max, ZBrush, Photoshop, Unreal Engine 3, XNormal, Crazybump.
Roles
The project will be a collaborative effort where we will all take part in the overall production process and specialise in the areas we are most skilled.
Cameron Small – Characters and Assets
Daniel Hoang – Environments
David Downes – Unreal and Environments
Del Walker – Characters and Environments
A traditional British school classroom often had high window-sills—to prevent the seated pupils from being distracted by more exciting events outside, or indeed staring out of the window.
Stole this from HERE
I think by doing research like this it'll make every part of our project meaningful, we've got plenty of time so let's take advantage of it, I think even before we finalise our concepts there's a TON of stuff out there for us to learn that we don't know about that will aid us in pushing this project to the next level!
And when it comes to presenting our project, mentioning all these little details will be proof that we done our research and didn't just fart ideas out of our heads...
I know all our farts are great but hey! :)
