3D-I Week 1: Screenshot analysis and temp-level creation

Starting a new year here at Gotland, the focus has now switched from 2D to 3D. ”Finally” if you ask me. Given that this is where I’ve been focused for the bigger part of my life, and being entirely self-taught, it’s nice to finally get some professional guidance for a change.

Given that this is the first course in 3D (Aptly named 3D-I), the initial focus is on really basic stuff, since there is no requirement of prior knowledge. This I, at first, felt would be irrelevant to me. However, even if my general modeling skills are higher than the course requirements themselves, a big part of being a professional modeler/asset creator is to be able to make objects in a varying and, more importantly, artistically ”correct” way! THIS is something one can and shall always practice! So, this week we had two assignments:

1. Take four screenshots from various games, and analyse these with basic elements of art.
2. Pick one of three games; Uncharted, Mass Effect or Journey, as well as one of a few key emotions; Aggression, Suspense, Fear, Solitude and Magic. From these we were to create a temp level, a very basic level which would serve no purpose other than to represent key elements of the level (basic shapes) and the feeling we wanted to express.

1. SCREENSHOT ANALYSIS

A very dark image, clearly connected to death in some way. The trees leaning in from the sides together with the darkness of the sides gives a claustrophobic feeling. The bright opening in the center gives an indication that this is where the player should go. However, the hanging, dark corpses ahead of it gives an impression that it’s still not void of danger. The torches seem to work like breadcrumbs for the player, connecting with the torch in the characters hand. This also makes the character a center of life and warmth and contrasts him from the environment.

Here too, there is an interesting contrast. On one hand, the car, the people on the beach and the smoke pulls the attention of the player and guides her towards it. On the other hand,  the darkness of these objects also indicates danger when compared to the bright, lush and green environment; The player is drawn towards the danger!

Here, slanting the background together with putting the human higher up than the goblin, gives an overpowering feeling. Adding the ordered and geometric look of the human’s clothes and the rugged look of the goblin indicates that the goblin is to almost  be considered some kind of vermin. Normally this would make it seem like the human is the oppressor and ”bad guy”, but given the many triangles and sharp edges of the goblin’s clothes (and the goblin itself, see the teeth and pointy ears for example) turns this around!

A very action filled shot. Again, the background is slanted, creating diagonals and giving the image a sense of movement and action. Generally a very warm image, with a few exceptions (headlights on the cars, and raindrops). A warm, smooth and organic character; gives a positive impression. This too contrasts against the hard and sharp background/environment.

Conclusion

The biggest concept in work on all of these images is that of contrast. Not only in terms of color and value, but other elements as well such as texture (smooth vs rough) and shape (round vs sharp/triangular).  It is used to pull the attention of the viewer, even if it is something negative for the player. Had for example the car and people in the second image followed a similar theme as the environment, the player would probably have missed them!

2. TEMP-LEVEL CREATION

Given the choices we had, Journey (although brilliant) felt a bit uninspiring, lots of sand and a few blocks here and there. Not having played Mass Effect I also felt that I wouldn’t know it well enough to capture it. This left Uncharted, an IP a had both played and enjoyed massively and spent a lot of ”unnecessary ” time studying the levels.

Given that all Uncharted games focus around old, legendary places such as Shangri La, and having the final level play out there, I figured that Atlantis would be a good candidate!

Looking at already existing imagery and depictions of this place, we see that the general idea seems to be a circular city, with rivers and islands and some form of peak in the middle.

This is interestingly the initial image I had as well, even before I looked it up, probably an effect of general media and having seen such depictions at some point and forgotten about it. The legend says that the city of Atlantis sank to the bottom of the sea, along with the ground it stood on. We decided that the city should’ve loosened from the rest of the sunken continent and would as such be floating, due to the air bubble surrounding the city. Even though curses do exist in the Uncharted series, it doesn’t really meddle with direct magic elements. As a result, we didn’t want there to be an unexplained way for the air to stay put, so we decided upon using dome of some sort of glass (old societies in the Uncharted games are often further ahead than expected and use some forms of forgotten technology).

Another important element of both the Uncharted games in general, but also the existing concepts, is that the city should be in ruins. Some depict Atlantis as a still working, forgotten society, but in accordance with the theme of ”Suspence” we were going for as well as Uncharted’s fetish for curses, we chose to break some of the structures; bridges, pillars and stairs. We also wanted to make sure that the underwater theme was obvious, so we chose to add some (giant) seaweed.

Showing this of to the other classmates yielded some interesting results. Generally the guess when asked which game and keyword it was inspired by, was that it was for Mass Effect, and focused on Magic; two kind of clashing opinions.  When asked why, they said that the Mass Effect feel that they got was mostly due to the dome, which to them felt like a sci-fi element. The magic came mostly from the giant seaweed. Now, looking at both of these opinions, they are both rather wrong and was not what we were striving towards. However, we were going for a form of special technology to create the dome, (although ancient) and we were in fact going for a slightly mystical feel for the seaweed. As such, I feel like we actually did an alright job, given that it was only a temp-level!

Ultimately, the feel and look that would’ve fit for this place and game is captured very well in this image (adding a bit of cracking glass and overgrowth here and there for an ancient look! >uO ):