Little research on how to create a showreel. I know personally I dont really have enough quality assets for a long one but that will come with time. Goal for the end of the year.
Turns out this weekend was Blizzcon and I was lucky enough to tune it when this was broadcast. Really informative discussion from the p.o.v of concept artist Rob Sevilla and art director John Mueller working on Diablo IV. I really liked watching the playback of the design process and seeing how the artist worked, while hearing his thought process as he works on different areas.(Not to mention DiabloIV hype!!)
They have also created an online gallery of concept art https://artgallery.blizzcon.com/ which is great for nostalgia purposes, using the ingame soundtracks as background music is a cool touch. Im not sure if its my computer however but there is definitely a lag issue when moving between images.
https://youtu.be/zrrF0JHENGI Cool wee intro into how Blizzard came to be focusing on the first 3 games they produced, The Lost Vikings, Rock n Roll Racing and Blackthorne.
Concept: A cute alien is visiting Earth to learn about humans. Throughout his travels he encounters a mixture of activities that educate him about his current location in the world.
Product info: This game will be an educational adventure targeted towards 5-15yr olds on PC.
Outline: The little alien must complete all tasks in the town before he can progress to the next town. The world itself is open exploration, with key locations having interactive objects that trigger the game/animation/puzzle to complete. The world itself will be highly cartoonised with a 3D environment, bright colours and based on real life locations in the world. For this project, the aim is to complete the first country, which naturally will be New Zealand. The games themselves will be based around native animals, natural history, basic maths and spelling. This will take the form of word searches, rearrange letters to spell words, tile matching memory game, connect the dots, comic strips, and short 15s 2D animations.
USP’s(Unique Selling Points):
Local NZ theme education
Mixed media (2D, 3D, Visual Art)
Wide target age range(5-15yrs)
Educational fun
Technology is so engrained in our day to day life that it is only natural we use it to educate the next generation. Trying to keep young children interested in learning is an ongoing thing and this creates a market for fun new ways to engage young people.
The concept of an adventure world is not new, however with this game we will be using local NZ knowledge and locations as the theme for the activities and world design. By maintaining bright, cartoon styling in an open exploration 3D world, the video game feel is not lost while the activities teach basic spelling, math, and natural history to supplement the current school curriculum, for an age range of 5-15yrs old.
Our main character is a cutesy styled alien visiting Earth on a research mission, he/she must complete all 5 activities in a region before moving on to the next one. Each completed activity will reward the player with a piece of a painting. Once each region is completed, the player will have a downloadable wallpaper matching that areas theme for their computer. Once the player has completed all of the regions in NZ, a certificate of achievement will be unlocked for them to print out and keep. The activities themselves will include a mixture of word searches, tile matching memory games, connect the dots pages, comic strips to read, and informative 15s 2D animations filled with fun facts about the natural history of NZ. Due to our limited timeframe of one semester, phase one of this project is to complete New Zealand as the first country in this world.
What makes this game unique in the current market is the use of local themes(country specific which is NZ for this first phase), combining 2D animation, 3D animation and visual art. Many games have a narrow primary target audience, while this project aims to accompany the curriculum of all school aged children, up to and including the second year of high school while providing a fun environment and keepsakes as rewards.
World of Jumpstart(https://www.jumpstart.com/world-of-jumpstart/) is an online 3D adventure world filled with educational activities. These activities are designed to help kindergarten and primary school aged children learn basic skills like math, science, grammar and comprehension using fun mini-games and cute characters.
First brain storming session for the group project. Starting very broad then narrowing it down in smaller groups to ideas that struck a chord with us. Homework was to create a pitch for next week of the idea we liked the most.
Initial ideas from each student
After splitting into groups and narrowing down what we liked
Myself and Jason's thought process from the topic discussion
