3D Computer Graphics I: Week 1

Theory

Screenshot 1: The Evil Within 

There are a lot of diagonal lines in this picture that don’t relate to each other to create an organic, cluttered look. It’s applied both to the foliage as well as the human structures. There is little negative space in the picture as the trees cover up a majority of the sky, reaching over the path like an arch. The high contrast in value on the sky and the silhouette from the trees puts the hanging corpses as the main subject of the picture. The cool, blue hue from the sky is complimented by the warm orange hues from the torches. The man with the torch is headed toward the same direction as the viewer which communicates a sense of unity, which lets the viewer quickly understand that this is most likely the player controlled character of the game.

The lack of negative space and the low key, cold lighting conveys a sense of seclusion and a hostile environment. It creates a dark and serious mood and the distinct silhouettes of hanging human corpses strongly that the game is horror themed.

Screenshot 2: Far Cry 3

There is a combination of different types of lines in this screenshot. The smooth, horizontal ocean looks soothing and the vertical cliffs make the mountains look majestic. This makes the player avatar pop out of the background in comparison due to all the avatar lines being diagonal, conveying a sense of movement. The tropical environment in this picture is high key and colorful and there are a lot of organic, inconsistent shapes. This makes the geometric and dark car contrast strongly from the nature to catch the viewers attention. The way the avatar covers the right side of the screen and leaves space on the left side open, it puts the car and the burning building even further into focus. 

The environment looks aesthetically pleasing with its bright colors which makes the low key, less colorful human elements feel like the hostile entity that threatens the calm, pure nature.

Screenshot 3: Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor

The human is given a large portion of the picture with a lot of negative space open in front of him. His hand is very high key compared to the rest of the picture, pushing down an orc much shorter than him. The orc has been given rough textures on both skin and armor as well as the armor being asymmetrically constructed to hint to it’s primitive nature. The more refined textures of the human boosts his sophistication in comparison to the orc beside him. The camera is tilted, giving a lot of diagonal lines from the environment to convey the feeling of action. The blueish color of the magic both contrasts and complements the reddish brown lighting of the background environment. The combination of these elements convey a mood of melancholy, seriousness and fantasy.

Space empathizes the power of the human character as he covers up half of the screen and looks down upon the orc. The hand has been given the highest contrast in value to become the focal point of the image and it enhances the attention to his power even further. The orc looks very helpless due to the space distribution and with the cold light and the calm expression of the human, one might question the motifs of the man. Might it be an anti-hero?

Screenshot 4: Watch Dogs

Diagonal lines in the environment which shows action and movement. The characters arm is horizontal in contrast as he shoots, to hint that he’s very much in control despite the chaotic environment. He has much space in front of him to show that he does not feel trapped by anything. The picture is low key with specs of bright lights that bloom out to emphasize the nocturnal look and the suspense of the action. The large, old building with the American flag, the banner clad lamp posts and the cab car communicates that the game most likely takes place in New York City.

Even though the man sliding over a car and fires a gun in what appears to be NYC, one gets the impression that he might be a good guy. I found this interesting and did some research. Unsurprisingly I found a tv-trope called Coat, Hat and Mask. It’s basically a trope for cool, masked heroes which much resemble the hardened detective that is often portrayed in movies and television. The trope is common enough for people to quickly get the impression that it is the hero of the game and that he is good-willed.

Application

When we got to use the elements of art in our own work to portray a specific game and one key word, me and my partner picked Journey as the game and Solitude as the key word. This is what our temp level looks like:

As Journey already has a very unique, stylized art style and the key word falls very naturally into the game itself, we simply had to catch the mood that already exists in the game. To do this, we used large geometric structures that have been tilted and spaciously spread out on a rounded and flowing landscape of sand dunes. The scale and wide space of the objects give off a sense of being small and lonely, but not necessarily in danger. A small pool of water was added to stand out from all the dry, warm colors of the desert and catch the players’ interest.

We saw another pairs’ work that was based on the words as ours and it was interesting to compare them two. Both our levels were spacious with large pillars, but they had a very narrow and high valley in the far edge of the level. The vertical lines made the nature of the level feel more massive in itself, not just the geometric structures. If one would look at it from a level design perspective, it is the kind of bottle-neck technique that a lot of games – Journey included – use to lead on the player to the next area.