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GAME IDEA NO. 1 PROTOTYPE

Thursday, November 21st

In order to start creating the backgrounds, I decided to make some moodboards. As a team, we decided we want to have a low poly art style, as it keeps the aesthetic of the game minimalist, but you can also convey depth and texture. I am not sure, however, if this art style would manage to include all kinds of details (e.g. plastic bottles and bags in the ocean) and still be clean and look like a unity. I think we will have to see how it works. this is what the prototype can help us even more, in the end.

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Also, I have never tried to create something in this art style before, so I did some research and it turns out you can generate low poly art (Moraes, 2018) from an image that already exists. Of course, you can also draw by hand (Douard, 2015), but it would probably take a very long time, which we don't have for the prototype, or for the final product to develop if we choose to take this game forward.. Hence, I decided to draw the backgrounds in a normal, stylised way, and then take it to these generators and see how things work out. This is the easy way, but I think it's good for a prototype.

ArtStyleGame1.png
Game Idea no. 1 Prototype: Bio

To start, I made a moodboard for each environment. Since we decided we will have a toucan as the animal for this environment, the first one was the Rainforest moodboard, then Ocean, and then, the ibex/mountain goat with the Steep. The moodboards contain colour schemes, textures, flora, light effects, etc, and also human activity pollution, such as deforestation, marine pollution, plastic pollution.

Game Idea no. 1 Prototype: Welcome

Friday, November 22nd

After I had the moodboards, I drew the backgrounds on the iPad I borrowed from uni. I wanted to make sure I included the important parts we discussed along the weeks in the environments. For the Rainforest, this would be Deforestation: you can see a machine cutting/collecting cut tree trunks; the back layer is much emptier than the front one, and in the middle, there's only cut tree trunks. For the Ocean, I wanted to show the plastic pollution, everyone talks about it, but now, the players can even see it. Turtles being trapped by nets, plastic bags and plastic bottles are visible.

Game Idea no. 1 Prototype: Welcome

After I had these done, I decided to look for a low poly art generator and see what the backgrounds would be like if we used this method. First, I tried DMesh, but the backgrounds I obtained after uploading the originals were a bit confusing, and they looked like distorted. I couldn't edit the points, to make the edges less detailed, and the generator also didn't generate polygons where there was just a solid colour. I think this could be my mistake, I should have added highlights and shadows for that to work.

Game Idea no. 1 Prototype: Bio

I decided I should look for another app, see if the results would be different, so I chose PolyGen App. This app didn't allow to upload the files as they were due to the canvas' size, so I took a group of trees from the forest and edited them like that. This app is much better in that you can edit (add/delete) points, even inside the solid colours, so it gave the image a much better look than the previous app. However, the bad part is that even if it's a .png with no background, it will add a white background and generate polygons there too. I then tried to erase all that background, but this again took a long time. I am much happier with this result than the previous one, but both apps have their downs which don't help me create a good background. Hence, I decided I will try to do the last background, the Steep, by hand.

Game Idea no. 1 Prototype: Bio
Game Idea no. 1 Prototype: Gallery

Monday, November 25th

Today I started the Steep background. All I can say is: there must be a better way of doing this, because this is taking ages. 

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The first attempt I made was using the Lasso tool in Autodesk Sketchbook. I was drawing a triangle with the lasso, which then I was filling in with colour. As you can guess, this looked very imperfect and shivery.

Hand1.png
Game Idea no. 1 Prototype: Bio

Then, I decided to trace horizontal lines and fill them in with colour. This looked slightly better, but still imperfect. Plus, changing between colours take a considerable amount of time too.

Hand2.png
Game Idea no. 1 Prototype: Bio

To reduce the time used in changing between colours, I decided to make the stone's background a lighter colour than initially, and then use the eraser to erase lines on the background. This was great, as it meant I could change colours only at the end, when I finished erasing lines. This is significantly quicker than using the lasso tool, or drawing different colour lines, and it looks a lot more like computer-made low poly art.

Game Idea no. 1 Prototype: Welcome

Wednesday, November 27th

Today I finally finished the last environment. I ended up with a nice background, but I can't say I'm completely happy with it, as I couldn't add pollution assets, and neither do I know how the animals would be incorporated here. There's a lot more work to be done around this.

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In my opinion, I think we have to reconsider the choice of art style, and do more research on low poly art if we want to stick with it. The process of drawing everything by hand is slow, and I think that the whole world would have to be drawn at a time, rather than asset by asset, to make the environment look like a unity. You can't really add assets in front of the background like you would in other art styles. This would be even harder and we don't particularly have lots of time to do it.

Steep.png
Game Idea no. 1 Prototype: Bio
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