Progress

So far I have looked into possible roles within the industry and what is needed to do them. My area of specialism is 2D character and concept art which is quite a specific role, I have learned that you need to be the best at what you do and stand out from others in order to get where you want. Although you will start at the bottom and might not be doing exactly what you want at first, if you work your way up you might have more of a chance to do something you really enjoy. It was a harsh realisation but in order to get what you want out of life you have to work for it.

I have also been looking at card games, comics and graphic novels for inspiration and have considered them as alternative roles I might like to take up in the future. I was particularly impressed by the artwork on the Magic the Gathering cards and artwork in Tabletop role-play game books. I follow the artwork of some people who produce artwork for Fantasy Flight Games, a company that produces tabletop games and board games, the company hire freelance artist to draw illustrations for their guidebooks.

For project one I have decided to work with Jak Moore again as the setup seemed to work well last time and I was happy with the outcome we produced. This partnership worked well for each of us as we both got the opportunity to focus on our strengths. Our idea is a third person action-strategy-RPG for the home console where the player takes control of one of the commanding officers of one of three different races in a three way war for control of a planet due to an ominous presence threatening their home worlds. It is my job to design the three different races, which we decided would be based off of different cultures so they stood out against each other and were easily distinguishable.

We wanted one of the races to be human with western influences; one of the main inspirations was the, 2002 Science Fiction, TV series Firefly created by Joss Whedon. The show is based far into the future when humans have migrated to a new star system because numbers on earth were too large for the planet to support. They have spread to a series of planets and moons that have been “terra formed” to enable human population, so a lot of the planets have very little technology available to them so they live quite simply making do with what they have, on the other hand other planets have quite advanced technology. The program is a mix of Science Fiction and an old western, a strange combination but works very well. I decided I wanted them to be quite advanced but not all polished and shiny like in the movies, I want them to more realistic, a bit grungy and bashed around. I thought they have just laded on this planet with nothing but what was on their ships and they would have had to make do with what they had, so I want my designs to reflect that.

The other race we wanted to be based off of Edo period Japan, but not humans like the others. We wanted to base them off of the Japanese Oni (demons) some of which are quite monstrous in appearance, as inspiration I also looked at Kabuki theatre particularly the costume and masks they wear. In Kabuki Theatre the actors play out stories about demons and folktales, they wear scary mask, elaborate clothes and brightly coloured makeup. There will be two different sub species in this race, one will be quite feral like the monsters in Japanese mythology while the other will be more refined and elegant as some others are portrayed.

For the third faction in the game we were a bit stuck, neither of us new what we wanted it to be, so Jak set me on the task. During my brainstorming I came up with the idea of having a shamanistic, Native American like race, which are very in tune with nature. I have been looking at creating a race with animal like qualities and abilities, the strongest and most experienced of which can access a beast form changing their bodies to become more powerful. There will be warrior types, rangers, and shaman within this race. The Rangers will act as the armies long-range attackers, using bows and arrows, the Shaman will be the magic users and the warriors will be the hard hitters using melee weapons as their form of attack. All of the races will have a similar layout; there will be different roles to choose from.