Essay

How Video Games are inspired by art

In this essay im going look at how art movements can inspire games being made.
Art can inspire Games in a ways. To using a form of art as a style for a game (limbo, german expressionism) to understanding a time period (Assassins creed series).
But saying this i dont think games are hugely inspired by art but just implements it into there games in certain aspects.

Im going to look at the Game Assassins Creed as it is a good choice of game when looking at art. The games are based around a variety of time periods and the storys are fixed around huge events in history like The Third Crusade, Renaissance, golden age of piracy, the American revolution and a bit of present as well as the future.
The time periods and the events what happened around them inspired allot of art and Ubisoft loves using it within there games in many ways. I dont think that they inspired the game itself but more the setting of the games and understanding what it was like in that time period.

They do allot of research into the countries and the cities, looking into artwork from the areas to see the point of view of the artist of how everything looked back then and interpret it into there games to create an atmosphere of being in the period of time.
They also look int the original blueprints and maps of the cities itself and the layout of where the buildings are. This was done in assassins creed 2 for Venice and Florence, Brotherhoods Rome, 3 for New York and Boston.


5 minutes in they start talking about the maps from the time period.

They then have to create there own map and figure out where everything goes and how it will work like shops, guarded areas and how a player will use parkour to get around.
Also they go look at the cities now and look at the buildings and the architecture to figure out not only the look but how they can use the building to climb in the game without making much change to the structure.   

Another way they use the Art and time a period to inspire them is with there costume designs.
Im going to use assassins creed 2 to show this.

Assassins creed 2 is based around the renaissance time period in Italy. In the game when you are in venice there are allot of crowds wearing venetian masks at the festivals, so they had to design many different mask shape and styles.

On the left you can see the festival crowd and some of the characters wearing masks from full face masks to just covering up the eyes.
all of them in different styles inspired by real masks they saw in venice.
Also below is some concept art for a mask which Ezio would wear in a mission.

In Ezios assassin outfit there are also bits what are inspired by the time period like the cloak but with there own spin of it only going over one shoulder and the bonus it gave of hiding the hidden blade.

In Ezios assassin outfit there are also bits what are inspired by the time period like the cloak but with there own spin of it only going over one shoulder and the bonus it gave of hiding the hidden blade.


I would say video games itself is art. In a way its a 3D piece of art what you can interact with, like looking at a a Van Gogh painting and walking into it and looking at it from all angles digitally.
In a way like people read a book and are inspired to draw a character or setting of how they imagined it to be, games can work in the same way look at art, movie, books etc and wonder what would it be like to have that sort of world but be able to explore and be part of it.

Saying that i thing games themselves are art, i can say that assassins creed was inspired by the Prince of Persai series.
It wasn't just inspired though, it was originally going to be a Prince of persia game that became more and twisted into its own franchise.

Philippe Bergeron - "We were working on Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones, And as we worked on it, it just became something bigger than Prince of Persia. We felt it wasn't the same thing, and that's when we started thinking about it as Assassin's Creed. At the same time, Désilets was super into the Third Crusade and that time period - making a Third Crusade game was a lifelong dream of his. Eventually, as we worked through it, we realised that we wanted to make it into a brand."

http://www.totalxbox.com/50961/features/assassins-creed-how-a-prince-of-persia-spin-off-became-ubisofts-flagship-ip/

The Game was called Prince of Persai Assassins and was supposed to come out in 2004 and even had a trailer shown below. and if you played the assassins creed games you can see the elements from the game in this like the hidden blades ant templars.

This image on the left was one of the original concepts of the Prince for the game by Khai Nguyen.
This then inspired the character Altaïr Ibn-La'Ahad in the first assassins creed games.

So this game over time evolved from one game and idea into a completely new franchise which is now huge.
I can see the links between the 2 games as i liked the PoP franchise before assassins creed and there is a lot of similar   traits like the freerunning, which was a big part of the PoP games.

KWL method

i thought this was a good method to use in working out what i know and need to find out about something.
i think it will be useful to finding out information to put into an essay on a certain topic and extra bits i could of missed out.

Everything is a remix

I found this very interesting video that dives deep into the creative world and shows us that ORIGINALITY is just a word.
The video shows us that allot of the biggest creations throughout history started off as an idea and just remoulded to become better by someone else over and over, from evolution to modern day technology.

The main thing I found interesting is when he goes on about the laws of copyright. There are allot of companies who sue others for using there idea in there way when the did the same thing themselves to get that idea.
This does make you wonder how far this will go and if it will even be possible for innovations in the future if every company who has a slightest similarity will sue.

Unit 1 - 3 The art of the game

Task 4

Concept Art

Character

Name-                           Colt Tanner

Super Hero Name-      UNKNOWN

Age-                              17

It lives in Pill

Research of area

Pill

Other places

clifton suspension bridge

RESEARCH
Gilles Beloeil

I like this concept art and the way its been done. it looks like it been done in allot of detail but when you look closer the colours are so simple and not shaded into detail.

tri nguyen

The same thing with this one except on the detail. He used simple colours and didn't do much with them to put it into detail.

I like both of these concept artworks for the simplicity in the colours.

I have always like the sketchy, rough looking art and its the way I like to draw. I also like to draw like that on the computer. I like to keep the hand drawn look than it all be smoothed out and perfected.

Jamie hewlett

I like his sketches he does of the Gorillaz. the way he hasn't made it smooth but kept it rough.

Also I like this Jamie Hewlett inspired drawing by a deviant artist called ArCatiel.



its sketchy ,rough, simple colours with shading. but it looks detailed.it also is how I would of done it on the computer if I were using illustrator and I could easily mistake this as my own if I knew I didn't do it.
http://www.deviantart.com/morelikethis/274650580?view_mode=2

I would like to keep my concept drawing in that sort of style and colouring.
I want to keep the sketchy and simple colours as they have done. i wouldn't so much call these people inspiration as this has always been how i draw but they have been artists who i have looked at and seen similarity in my own but much better making me want to progress into there standard.


MY CONCEPT

warning that the picture quality isn't great.

I like the outcome so far on my concept art and i think i have done well in using my inspiration of artists in my own piece of work. i kept it the sketchy look i liked and used simple colours without going into huge detail and i think it look good  when the image quality isn't altered by the internet.

At first i drew the outlines of the bridge on paper and then put it to the computer, This then became a challenge at first as i used a drawing tablet to go over it and add in the detail and colour. Until that point i had never used a tablet before and it was strange to get  used to but i got the hang of it quickly.

This has helped me learn to use a tablet which will help me hugely in future projects if i am drawing.

Unit 4 - Communication of Art and Design (illustrator)

Messing with text

HAIKU poems

illustrator logos 

pear logo

honey bee logo

Illustrator drawing

Visual recipes

Research

Development

Final piece

Music Festival

Poster Research

Fonts

These are some of the fonts I found and liked. I already have an idea of what genre of music festival I want to do and I think these fonts will suit it.

idea

I’m going to do a festival poster based around Dubstep music.

I want it to look very techy and futuristic, with a club light sort of background, dark and bright lights.

I want to use big blocky faded type of text for the heading and the main writing to look electro. ( similar to fonts on mood board )

I will search up similar posters to see the type of style other festivals use and find cd covers and videos of bands who specialize in that music.

I am going to call the festival, “BRISDUB 14”
I will draw a few different ideas i have, find out what i like and what goes think well. i will mix and match the ideas  to make the final version on the computer.

dubstep moodboard

The style of dubstep based artwork, as shown above consists of dark colours mixed with a few bright, glowing colours ( like club lights ).
It can have a techy look to it, which suits the genre as most dubstep is made on computers.


sketched ideas for poster

Development of ideas on computer

With this poster i added 2 ideas into one and added a few extra ideas into it, like the arms of the crowd from the lettering.

Design Report - Damon Ginters

Designing these posters was fun to make and I learnt a few new techniques when making them that became very useful.

One of the things I learnt to do was how to make the backgrounds fade into two different colours, which I used in both of my final designs.

I have learnt that its best to use as little fonts as possible which I did with my second poster, only using two type fonts.

When I was researching posters I noticed that the ones that used more bright colours caught my eye more than others, so I used more bright and noticeable colours when designing my final posters.

I sadly enough didn’t get to do as much research as I would have liked to do as I wasn’t able to do any over the holidays because I had no Wi-Fi for a month, but I did do my best when coming back to college to catch up.

When a was able to do research however I searched up some posters. I chose music festivals so that’s what kind of posters I searched. I tried to keep it in the Bristol area and found a few what I altogether liked and some which I liked certain aspects.

I wanted to base my festival posters around Dubstep and researched into two things, type fonts that went with the genre and dubstep inspired images which were put into a moodboard.

I used the research I did to help me within the designing, using a few of the fonts and using the images I acquired to inspire me.

I drew a few ideas I had mixing up a few of the images around dubstep I found and converted them into a poster look, putting my own spin to it.

I chose two for my final posters and started developing. The first poster came out how I originally wanted , with few minor changes from comments, making the 14 into a 2014 so viewers could understand it meant a year, i also changed the background shade colour and direction.

The second idea I ended up merging another to it and putting an extra idea I had to it. I think it came out better than they would do alone. With the extra idea to make letters into a crowd looked good and added to the feeling of being in a club raving with the base.

I would of liked to develop my techniques more. So if I was able to do it again I could make it look more detailed. I would of liked to make a logo for the festival to put on to make it look more real.

I would like to find out how to make text and images to fade, as one of my ideas I was unable to do and had to be changed because of it.
i would like to learn how to make the background into a cloudy look instead of the fading.

I think  the posters went well and I have had some good comments. I have had some bad comments which I would liked to of worked on, but sadly enough there wasn’t enough time.

I have made a few changes to both of te posters, mainly my first and final design.

My first one I rearranged everything at first and changed some of the text.

After I changed the background colour and added music bars into the design.

I like the last one the most and made it my final design.

My second poster I didn't change hugely, mainly a rearangement of everything and then after I added in sound bars and changed the fade of the background .

I like my final poster and I think from last week I have improved on it and made it better from my mistakes.