Concept Art

Concept art is form of an illustrative goal to convey visual representation of design and/or mood used for the games before it is put to final product. It is referred as visual development.

 

What they do is draw a quick sketching of a few concepts, change them with shading and refining, choose one of the best concepts and put it into 3D modelling and then refine the 3D model and there a character, an item or a location from the concept arts or the concept art will be put into animation if it’s an animated character.

Image is from https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjY4pzlm3ugUuJokGNRTaE-SAE_h06UMpQOk3st1TLNs92zgC_uoy0Y587Oi9JQOjidKb7yi-IQieV7AifjfExJo8_JDaFaLxt6SvFwKDwx6PR-DUa8spAKQHtU4zbUonYC3soQDCmjc_s/s1600/hunter_rough_sketch_process.jpg

Texture Art

Texture art can work on both graphics and background images making them look realistic as possible. They try to make different types of images of ground so that they can tell difference between grassy ground and concrete ground. Texture artist would be spending most of the time working on the floor, wall and the ceiling of the game but they would also create texture for when the when the weather changes or time changes and can make it look like it’s a sunny day or a rainy night.

 

Texture artists also work on 3D images requiring detailed painting if it’s for a character of a game or for an item.

 

For texture art the artist would take a photo or paint a picture of the surface they need and they scan it into the computer and wrap the picture around the object in a process called texture mapping.

Image is from http://i1245.photobucket.com/albums/gg581/jamesmcd85/Brick_texture_notTiled.jpg

 

Background Art

Background art is used to set the idea of the theme or location of the game which sets the environment for the game. For example if you were in a city the background would have tall buildings, streets, cars and people walking in the background. So the background artist would be building a playground for the character.

Background artists or modellers help create video game settings not just decorating a games walls but to make the playground for the game. They begin by sketching the background suggestions for the design document then they draft it more accurately on graph paper with proportion. The scale of the playground has to be accurate or the structure size will be too big or too small for the character. Once the demand has been satisfied the artists will mould the environment using the computer as a virtual movie set create the environment shape by shape.

For an example: the artist is creating a laboratory he might use rectangles to create the walls, ceiling, doors and the floor. Then create shapes to fill in the room such as counters, stools, sinks and large machinery. Finally create images for the player to interact with such as test tubes, calculators, fire extinguishers and experimental laser guns.

Then the artists will add light shadow so that the room will cast a spotlight of brightness and shadow over environment.

There is a background artist called Michael Kirkbride who works for Bethesda Softworks says he have to draw and construct the environment to the designers team specifications for the level designs that will fit the game.

www.incredibleart.org/jobs/video.html

Image of Michael Kirkbride from http://www.uesp.net/wiki/General:Michael_Kirkbride

Pixels & Resolution

 

A picture element is a singular rectangular point in a large graphic image made with many coloured rectangular points. Picture element has a shorter name known as “pixel”. Computer monitors can display images because the screen is divided into millions of pixels

arranged in columns and rows.

 

These pixels help form an image on the computer. Pixels can display different colour depths; the higher the bit numbers the more colours in each pixel and better the display the image.

 

For example: If the image was 1 bit it would contain up to 2 colours (black & white).

 

But if the image was 2 bit it would contain 4 colours (red, green, blue, black).

 

32 bit images can contain up to 16 million colours.

 

When I talk about resolution it doesn’t matter if it’s an image on the computer and you change the resolution of the image it will look the same on the computer screen. I would only see the difference on print.

 

Let’s say I open up and image in Photoshop and I change the resolution to 72 DPI (dots per inch) you would think the pixels would get smaller, the image does look like it’s become smaller but the pixels don’t get smaller, they do the opposite. The pixels would get bigger becoming bulkier trying to fill in most of the image. I would not notice this in Photoshop but if I print this out I would definitely notice the pixels has the picture becomes a bit blurry.

 

So if I change the image’s resolution to 300 DPI the image will blow up the image in Photoshop but the pixels will not grow bigger but they will become smaller. When putting an image in a higher resolution the pixels will become smaller so that all the different coloured pixels will fit together in a single mega-pixel which is like a pixel but with many colours in it.

 

This helps the image to have better details and to cope with the expansion of the image. When I printed this I noticed that the 300 DPI image was bigger than the 72 DPI print out but the images have the same quality so I traced back to the website where I got the image which is from http://freebigpictures.com/butterfly-pictures/colorful-butterfly/ , but my tutor told me I have actually save both pictures in the same way so they both ended up with the same resolution of 72 DPI. So he said I should just save the image and download the other and so I did. When I printed out the two images I can tell the difference of the two that the 72 DPI is more blurry and the 300 dpi is clearer.

 

This is the 72 DPI image I saved.

 

This the 300 DPI image I downloaded.

 

File Compressions Lossy/Lossless

File compression is simply a special formula know as algorithm used to create smaller files. The reason for compressing files is that some graphic files are big and take up a lot of space on computers and if I was downloading a big file it would take a long time for the file to finish. Though compression is good for space, the greater the compression the poorer the quality of the image so I would try the balance the quality of the file size.

 

There are two types of compression, lossy and lossless.

 

Lossy compression offers a greater compression than lossless and some of the pixels of the image will be changed while making the file size smaller. The important thing knowing about lossy compression is when it assumes some of the data that isn’t important it cuts out the unimportant data and that data is permanently lost. JPEG and Bitmap images uses this compression.

 

Lossless compression is different because when compressing none of the data gets lost in fact the data can be used to rebuild the image to its original quality. It uses mathematical functions to eliminate redundant data and if there isn’t enough redundant data then the file size may not be significantly reduced. There are much different graphic software that uses lossless compression such as WinZip and Stuffit. GIF and PNG images use these compressions.

 

Here is a diagram I found at https://wikis.glowscotland.org.uk/@api/deki/files/18430/=LOSSY.GIF that will help explain how lossy and lossless compressions work.

 

It shows that when you do a lossless compression and restore it all the data is still the same as from the original and while using lossy compression and restore, it loses data from the original.

Interface HUD

In the video game the interface is also known as the HUD (Heads-Up-Display) which allows the player to see pieces of information about the character while playing the character simultaneously. It shows the characters information such as:

 

• Health/lives

 

• Items

 

• Time limit

 

• An indication of game progress level/score

 

• Weapons/ammunition

 

• Crosshairs

 

• Mini-map

 

So the interface art is designed to match the theme of the game while still displaying the clear information of the character’s status. Every game has its own unique interface to match the certain style of the game.

The image above is an example of the interface/HUD from World of Warcraft (well an old version of it but it’s still a good example). In the top left corner you can see the player’s character’s status with characters face, name, health bar, secondary bar and current level. Underneath that is the characters pet or sidekick with its own status display and at the right of the characters status bar is another player’s status bar but it only shows health, name and current level.

 

On the top right corner is the mini map which shows the name of the area and the exact location with the mini map that always pointing north. It also has the option to open up a full map of the world and to zoom in or out on the mini map.

 

At the bottom of the image when you see that blue line, that’s the indication of the character’s levelling system, also note that it is in a third person view allowing the player to see the world and his/her character.

 

The second example is a HUD from Battlefield 3 (the image is from http://media.pcgamer.com/files/2013/03/battlefield-3-end-game-4.jpg )

Note that it’s viewed in a first person view so that the player can see the world around him/her but the player cannot see his/her character (except for the hand and gun). On the bottom right corner you can see the status of the player such as the health with a 100% and with heart monitor and under that is the status of the weapon which shows the weapon has 20 bullets in the gun and has 108 bullets left.

On the bottom left corner is the mini map to show the player’s current location with a compass at the bottom indicating North to North/West. Just on top of the mini map is the status of the game that indicates the current status of the teams. I have played this game before from what I can tell that this a game of conquest were two teams must capture the most territory than the other team in order to win. The more territory you capture the other team will lose points. The blue colour represents the player’s team and the orange colour represents the enemy team (and from the looks of the score the blue is winning).

At the bottom centre you can see the player’s scores in the blue writing, it shows the number of points and why he/she have earn these points and under that is the statement of a kill with name of the player (green text), the name of the gun (white text) and the name of the victim (orange text). Also there is the crosshairs that helps the player to aim the gun but it’s hard to see it because the crosshairs is white and the map is a snowy terrain.

Print Media

Print media is actually anything about the game is printed and published whether on paper or the Internet. If you would put an image of the main character on a website you would make the image size small like 72 DPI (dots per inch) or if you put the game’s image on a poster it would have to be a march larger size about 300 DPI.

If I was going to be printing any images of the game it would be published on magazines, banners, newspapers, the game box cover, websites and leaflets.

This is an example of the print media.

On the left is the poster of Diablo 3 which is going to be a big print out so it will have to be 300 DPI so that the quality is not lost on the poster and on the right is the banner for the game from http://fc03.deviantart.net/fs24/f/2009/242/b/8/Diablo3_Banner_small_by_DavionX.gif . Though it looks like it’s a big image but it’s actually small with the resolution 72 DPI so it can be uploaded on the Internet without taking up much space.