My design ideas

   This year Ming and I joined in a team working with game students. They had a clear division of work before we joined in, but most of them were programmer so I though our design might give them some help. I had showed my works which has done on summer holiday to them before joined in, then they asked me to design weapons for the game because most of my works were weapons.


   These weapons are not my design. I was learning a new way to modeling and making weapons would not take so much time, so I selected some picture on the internet and used the weapons on the picture as references to make these weapons.
   

   Because this hatchet was made on the computer which on my Chinese home and I forgot to save the texture files into my removable drive, so I could only put the white model into video.

   This hammer has no UV and I cannot render it, but its details are done by Zbrush.

   I was crazy about using Zbrush to draw details on models after making those weapons and I still has about a month to make other things . My friends told me I should make an ordinary person to understand skeletal and muscle of human first if I want to make richest characters. Then, I choose to make a Chinese old farmer. The reason why i choose him is his scars on his waist, I wanted to carve all kinds of details on Zbrush.I just referenced his shape and expression, the post was regulated by me. I though the time is not enough to make his whole body, so I just made his body without the four limbs like gypsum model of Venus. But it was not still finished until I back to school that there is not enough time to draw texture. Then I just made it like a plaster.

   However, I began to think I might be a bad idea and I can’t finish it with good efficacy after read the story line of the game. It is a game which uses future world as a background, then most of weapons in it are guns. To be honest, I has no knowledge of guns, I does not know how guns work and how to make a capital gun. But I though it might be a opportunity to let me learn something about guns then I continued. It was really a headache to me at the beginning. I collected a lot of pictures about guns even downloaded an app named “iGunPro” and see how others do. I found a course which is teaching how to draw a gun on http://www.yiihuu.com/v_3841.html and I tried to design my guns, but I couldn’t draw out the pictures in my thoughts. Then I just drew the shapes of them and make details by Maya. 

   This is a small game and it is not a first person shooting game, then it does not need gadgets. So, there are just shape of gadgets in these guns. In other words, they does not like gadgets if the guns were separated, such as nuts of these guns just were that cylindrical through the gun properly and then looked like a nut. Our team member told me that I don’t need to render these guns and they will render them after putting them into game system, so I just render two guns to show how they look like in my thoughts. These two are what I prefer.  I was considering there are also lots of  female players, then i choose two scenarios to render these guns. One was more masculine and the other was feminized. It is generally know that pink and red is womanly, but it will look like plastic material  if simple pink is used on weapon, so i choose dark red to texture. 

   I had understood how to render models by a plugin for Maya in last summer holiday, it was Vray. i found a n interesting thing when i was rendering this one. There is a option in the setting of Vray, it can put some HDRI pictures as an environment. I just wanted to change the colors of texture for this guns at first, but i found that it was too dark after render.  I begun to have my doubts, why it was darker than the other under the same light intensity? I tried to change the intensity of the lights, although it had indeed lighted up, it was not the result i want. Then, I tried to change the HDRI picture for environment under the same light intensity and it was change! It was lighted up even looked like it was made of other materials! It is amazing that learning new things during working.

After finish doing those guns and looking at Ming's monsters, i though maybe i should make my monster. According to the story of the game, monsters are animal hybrids and human hybrids. At first, i wanted to make a hybrid, a gorilla mix with a moth like this:

However, I found there would be some trouble when i was thinking about how it fly. If it had two bodies( body of gorilla and moth) that would be very strange when it was flying. And, it was obviously not appropriate that the head of gorilla is a head of moth. So, I changed my idea after some serious thought. I was going to make a hybrid, a gorilla mix with a sea lion, because the teeth of lions were horrible like a monster. For convenient, I used the human model in Zbrush to carve the body of gorilla, it wasn't still with head of gorilla. I was thinking something during doing its head. Will it look like when it has no low lip? Gorilla had such a huge belly, why don't i make something on its belly? Then, I decided to make a big mouth on its body and its upper lip like a hat with it, that would be look like a monster more. If there was just a huge mouth on its body, it would be also strange. So, I copied and pasted lots of teeth and put them onto its mouth. Naturally, for aesthetic, shape of those teeth were not the same, and there were several teeth were broken. Although coping and pasting sounded very easy, it was really complicated to make UV for about 100 teeth.

   I didn't make eyes for this monster, because the eyes of sea lions were very cute and they didn't accord with the image of monster. However, it existed in a future world with high technology. I would make some equipment for it, then it could see world by thermal vision, sensing out its enemies through infrared detection of the heat generated by them. I had done lots of research for it, such as how its mouth looked like, how its skin looked like, but i still didn't finish it. I was just make a shape and UV of it, I didn't draw skin texture, scratches and equipment. There were still lots of things i should do if i want to finish it.

 I'm such a guy who always like eating a bowl, watching the pot, thinking the ground it. I began to make another model. It's almost Halloween, pumpkins could be seen at the supermarket. Suddenly, I wanted to make a model using Halloween as the theme. I'm really interesting in magic world in the West, so I chose the witch as my character. There were two kinds of witches in my thoughts, black evil witch and kind witch. This time i wanted to make a kind witch. In fairy-tales, witches always wear black hats and black cloaks, and they ride on broomsticks. My witch was most same as them, but her hat and cloak were not black. I also used the human model in Zbrush and used body of an old woman as reference to carve her body, then I selected some witches as reference to make her clothes. As the theme was  Halloween, I make some pumpkins as accessories. After finish doing the details of character, I should export it to make UV for it. Because the models which is made by Zbrush had no valid faces, so i needed to retopology it. I should recommend a software at this time, 3D coat. 3D coat is really useful for 3D modeling. It can retopology models and modify texture after drawing texture by photoshop. After making UV, I exported UV maps by Zbrush, then i could used a low poly rendering out high-quality pictures.

Bradford Animation Festival

This was my first time to attend a animation festival which was not a Chinese animation festival, and I realized that it’s really unlike Chinese. Chinese animation festivals look like exhibition, there will some animation models and game models and some people dress as characters from animations or games. More of people who attend are interested and visitors, there are a few designer want to learn from those animation festivals. However, there are almost lectures in Bradford Animation Festival. It is a bit boring for me because my English is not very well and I can’t understand the details what they say, but I also learn some things.

I had to say I was especially impressed with a animation which i didn't remember its name.It talked about a relationship between a women and her son.I am barely tearing up because watching animations or any movie, however, i was tearing up and the audience who teared up was not just me, it was most of audiences. I realized the importance of strong feeling in an animation after calm down. Chinese animation lacks of strong feeling and most of them is just imitation, so there is hardly a successful animation in China, nevertheless, the animations from America and Europe is famous on their story lines. I think i can focus on imagining my story lines in the future.

A good story is a good story, no matter the medium. When you move to a visual and auditory medium such as animation, you have a much wider field to play with, allowing you to show things you could only normally describe without limiting yourself because of character point of view or other boundaries of the medium. Too, there are drawbacks, such as lacking much room for inner monologue in an animated scene, and the need tho show visually a character's thought process without narrating all of it.

We shouldn't need to be told how someone feels in a visual/auditory storytelling medium.We know someone is in pain by how they clutch the affected area, and their agonized cry; we even know the intensity of the pain by how loud the cry is, and how extreme their reaction. An agonized scream tells us to be worried, while an "ouch!" tells us something is a minor inconvenience. A flinch says papercut; collapsing to the knees says mortal wound. You don't even have to show the wound; it's all about the character actions and using them appropriately to convey emotion. A character can say "I love you" with a look without needing to say the words out loud. Though in animations, you also have the advantage of cartoon effects - fluttering hearts in the background, throbbing hearts bulging from the eyes or chest, etc. Motion, too, has its place; instead of saying "I'm dizzy" a character can reel back and forth with a slack, cross-eyed expression. Take every chance you can to show us how characters feel, whether through normal or extreme portrayals, rather than telling us.

One advantage you don't have in verbal storytelling is the use of color palettes to set the tone. Using color in deliberate ways can go a long way to convey the mood; a washed-out palette can convey a drab, gloomy scene, while dark, stark contrasts tell us we're in a hard-hitting noir setting or a horror. Pastels convey a lighter tone, while consistent use of warm tones can tell us we're in a romance. Think about how color affects your mood and what colors you associate with particular emotions, and choose the color palettes and contrasts for your scenes and settings appropriately. Understand, too, how lighting can affect the mood and the setting, whether soft or dramatic. A scene painted with soft gold or red-gold overtones of light can tell us it's sunrise or sunset; blues tell us it's night; deep shadows with the occasional stark edge of a shape can tell us it's night, or in the middle of a thunderstorm, or just...well, really creepy.

 

Creative futures

It was very helpful for me to this brief for creative futures, I heard wonderful talks and saw a lot of brilliant works from students and professionals. I saw a lot at the Creative Futures Week and I did learn a lot from it although I couldn’t understand all the details of those talks because English is not my first language.

I’ll begin with “Motivating yourself to get what you really want” from Denise Chilton as that is the most impressive for me, although she didn’t teach me any skill of game design. An effective persuasive speech includes a summary of the evidence presented. She gave us lots of data from her research, at the same time, she gave each of us a questionnaire. Everyone there thought of how satisfy of their lives, what they really need and what they need most at the time. Also she ask some questions and some of the answers she got were quite fun. I should say the atmosphere there was celebratory and I felt happy when I heard it. 

Although everyone could answer the questions as what motivates you, but I realized it was a problem when she want to get personal goals from audiences and there were few answers. A clear goal could help people works twice as fast and with half the fatigue, but there were few people have personal goal.

Back when I was a kid I wanted to be a animator and I drew on a wall of neighbour, then I wanted to be praised and signed my name, but what I got was just scold. After that I was barred to want to be a animator. Although I am doing this, I still believe drawing can motivate me more if my wish was been supported. I realized the importance of goals through this talk. Ensuring a clear goal is not enough, there will be varied things can stop you. Denise Chilton also told us methods to continue our efforts for our goals. The thing what I learned from this talk may be quite simple but it is really important for my work in the future, it is the most basic thing.

The talk “Design studio overview and insight(Fashion)” was awesome, it didn’t really serve me much applicable knowledge about my subject, however, I feel a lot of the most knowledge to my dissertation next year was from there. She has her own unique insights at fashion and her careers can show us her success. I think I can combine with her overview and insight and collect some game role costume design works to find out some information which I need.

Background information on speaker designer with own label trading for 20 years, Jane Davies is the Welsh designer using the national flag in her outfits. The dragon collection was developed in 1999 where at that time Wales was having its own assembly and holding the Rugby World cup. The concept was created from a Welsh dragon dress made for her niece and the collection developed into a 10 pieces aimed at adults and children. Overnight orders rolled in and sold through websites, independents and department stores globally. The visual idea caught the attention of the world media and the collection was produced in national flags of the world. Many private orders came from celebrities, ambassadors, media and governments. The collection was produced all in Wales which in turn helped the economy and small business.

Jane was not just done this. The inspiration came from the colors of the peacock feather itself and the collection was created to showcase at the British Embassy Dubai. From there the collection was taken as part of best of British in Kuwait a great achievement for a small company based in Wales. Pieces of the collection were commissioned by the Chrysler Building New York and awarded “Top 10” at Showcase Ireland. Talk about peacock feather, in the traditional Chinese culture is the embodiment of beauty, a symbol of the kind, beautiful, elegant, good luck and love. Chinese senior officials of the Qing Dynasty(1636-1912) use the peacock feathers as hat ornaments, called HuaLing, with one eye, two eyes, three eyes, So-called ”eye”, refers to the peacock’s tail tip color stripes.

Chris woodworlds talk from TT games was also awesome, i’ve learnt some real interesting aspects that will help me in the future to achieve all that i can in regards to hunt a job and motivation. Chris was quite a humor speaker, he show us how he got a job and how long it took him even the photographs where he had gone. He showed us some videos what he did from the LEGO games and some of the procedure. I never knew a 2D painting expression can move on a 3D software, I should say I got a lot of valuable information from his talk.

Design&Energy saving

The non-renewable resources in the earth is very limited.However,most of the human production activities are inseparable from them.We can do as long as possible to the discharge of pollutants to nature.Energy saving and emission reduction,cost reduction and can be used to reduce resource which is very good control of pollutant emissions.

Today,20% of the population in the world will consume 80% of the available resources.This is such a terrible data.We think 20% of the population could almost all the energy consumption.The remaining 80% of the population only shows that they consume resources or only accept those pollution emission yet.This is a how terrible things.

Now the earth suffer by all kinds of serious pollution.Ozone hole, rising seas, lakes, green plant is decreasing gradually reduce. Animal species are also gradually reduce, and some have been endangered. This has greatly affected our human survival environment. For we absolutely is adverse. How to reduce pollution, how to saving energy, has become the mainstream of the topic. I think, energy saving, starting from the source. All kinds of pollution emissions without polluting the parent, and the parent is by our human design invented. So, I definitely want to energy saving, we should design began to grabbed from substances first link design began to make energy saving concept fusion in, is very important. Is the first part  the energy saving ?

On the point of my view,energy saving and design have a closed relation.As a designer,I realize our responsibilities --Tell others more things via our design.

Futurism

Futurism is one of trend of thought in literature and art.It begins with "The establishment of the socialist future and declaration"wrote by Marinetti in 1909.Marinetti,inventor and leader of the Futurist movement,had already given the worl Futurist art,literature,music and architecture.According to his establishment,obviously,he is passionate and fearless.He completely negate the past and idolize the future,and then his bravery is paid much attention in that age.

Personally,I like that Marinetti said that the inspiration and intuition is like the bacterium which is indispensable for vitality of art.I also like that he liken the museum to the fight between colour and line.

Futurism sings the praises of modern machine,science and technology even war and violence.They are crazy about movement and speed and require create new art without history.Futurism painting shows the endless movement and the change process.

With many scantily clad futuristic females on display,one might assume the future was either wilder or warmer--maybe both!

Personally,I think logic is natural and it always comes from our experience.In addition,I think imagination is basis on logic.It will be a little turbid if designers just design with intuition.For example,a picture with a stove will make people feel warm.Otherwise,it is hardly express this feeling that designing just with intuition.Of course,we can use colour to express emotion.Red means warmth,blue means melancholy.This is not only intuition of colour bujt also logic of life.Because red fire can make people feel warm so red also can do that.This is logic.I think Marinetti mainly wants us to know that don't be fettered by originator.He just wants people to break the chain for free,rather than abandon this kind of thing completely.

Futurism brings me not just their spirit,more of what I got is trend of art and design in the future and a different design philosophy.In addition,only the work with emotion will be a good work and will be liked.The work without soul is monotonous .People always like the work which is endowed with warming,happy or any other emotion.Negative emotions also will be accepted.Factually,arts itself does not have any boundary or definition.

The Bauhaus style

People generally know that although the school of Bauhaus just existed for about fourteen years ,its theory has a extensive and far-reaching affect on the whole world.Drafted by the Gropius, "Bauhaus Declaration" is an important document of modern design, the highest of modern design education program.“Let us collectively desire, conceive and create the new building of the future,” wrote in his Bauhaus call to arms in 1919.

The schoolhouses are designed by Gropius.He designed them on the basis of practicality of construction and used atactic layout to create a refreshing visual effects.They are the ancestry of Bauhaus construction style.Bauhaus buildings are often modern, simple.Bauhaus was the preamble of functionalism and modernism.

Bauhaus furniture are also focused on simpleness.They always have fluent lines and peculiar shape.Frequently used wood,glass,steel etc.

Yet whereas Bauhaus has become synonymous with a certain modern style --streamlined,geometric,abstract,minimalist --this does not tell the whole story.The Bauhaus isn't just a art school,it shows a way for young people who still place their hope on the era of Bauhaus.The school's legacy can still be felt in the world of design and architecture.We can see lots of things with Bauhaus design element when we move around.

The essence of Bauhaus is building houses that simple and economic.However,the Bauhaus building becomes luxury property with it is more and more famous in the world.

My aim of my 3D scene design is having more decorative patterns before learning Bauhaus.Now I know that "less is more"--simple is also beautiful.Design depends on what the theme of whole story.The houses with some patterns will be narrative in a game which has a background in Middle Age.Of course,although intricate motifs can make constructions palatial,it's too resource-wasting and contrary recent purpose--energy conservation.

Patterns&style of game

Before beginning to think about my story , I should say I’m a person who is addicted to the world of magic . For me, the world of magic is a world which I can do everything I can’t do in real life . In addition , there are more all sorts of strange adventures in it ,likes Harry Potter . Also, I’m crazy about intricate patterns .Details are important in a scene . Sometimes details can may stories become more dramatic . In ancient times of a lot of countries , most objects are full of intricate patterns such as in Middle Ages of Europe, in ancient China etc.
Then there will be magic in my story , but I’m unable to add some intricate patterns in it now because I’m a freshman of software. I’ll collect some patterns with practice for my future works.

Decorative patterns make objects beautiful,magnificence and distinctive.There are many kinks of patterns.Different patterns can give the same person different feeling ,and the same pattern may be give different people different feeling.Although the patterns are not always unique,but they are constantly changing.In construction,they often on behalf of a special history or a belief.Decorations with some patterns will be more refined.

The style of patterns in representative buildings of different country are various because their believes are different.Here we should talk about the style of game. As with patterns,the styles of game from different country are different. Generally,the style of game can be divided into two categories.One is games in the Asian,it is more effected by Japanese animation,among them with Japanese and Korea as a  representative.Another one is American and the European,they are similar because their cultural backgrounds are alike.
The games in America and the European always pay attention on connotation and culture .They always have a whole back stories,you will enjoy them even if you just read those stories.Then the construction,scene and character always fit in with the back stories and always is realistic.On the other hand,from the point of programs,currently the grasp of the programming language of programmer in the west is the best.Most of games in America and the European are shooting game.Of course,MMORPG World of Warcraft is so much popular in the world.

Japan-Korea games always pay attention to the aestheticism,but there are something different between them.We can say the Japanese games are just game,there are only a small part of them have complete back stories.They are more focused on game-play.I admire Japanese that they always come up with all sorts of ideas to use in their games.Their handheld games are very popular.Korea mainstream games are basically ACG.