Western Tale Character Turn: Reynard Malcolm

To explain the art project I’m working on:

I teamed up with an old friend of mine from highschool who is also a 3D artist/animator, Bennett Jobling. Bennett likes to come up with stories and worlds in his spare time, so we decided to start a collaborative art project called A Western Tale. The idea behind the project is to take one of Bennett’s stories that he has been kicking around for a while and create concept art for each of the characters and carry those through to complete 3D models as if we were making a game or a film. Except there is no game or film, just the visual development and 3D assets.

If we recruit enough people we’d like to concept and model everything from important story locations/environments, to wild flora and fauna that might be found in the land. We may also do some rigging and animation for interested animators.

The reason I hit on this idea, first off is because I was inspired by The Skillful Huntsman and the Exodyssey projects, that did the same type of thing – visual development for a world. Secondly, it is SO MUCH EASIER to be a productive character modeler when you’ve got a story and background, context for your characters. Its wonderful portfolio fodder.

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Here’s a (nearly) complete version of the Reynard character posted earlier. Reynard Malcolm is the main character of the story:

Color is a weak point of mine, but I feel that this is more than sufficient to begin modeling. Now I’m going to move into modeling Reynard, and/or possibly helping out team mates with more character designs.

I’ve got a few more 3D pieces in the works, but they’re in the boring texture-less stages. My reel will be complete in 3 months with all of this new work! Excitement! Danger!

Artwork: June 1-7 2009

I realized how little artwork I’ve been doing lately and decided to rectify the situation. Been drawing and sculpting and this and that. I’m going to try and leave behind a few distracting projects and focus on my art through to graduation. Here’s a few I did this week.

My first sketch from a collaborative art project I started up (I’ll be posting more on this as it begins to fill out):

I have revisited my old “Huantalien” creature, and am preparing to finish him up with costume and props:

His staff:

Game Design Review: Pandemic

As my first discussion of game design mechanics, I have chosen a game that I recently purchased called Pandemic, a board game designed by Matt Leacock.

Image by BGG member “basilmichael”

Overview
First I would like to give an overview of how the game works before I dissect it further.

The goal of Pandemic is to work cooperatively with your team of 2-4 players to contain and then cure the world of four diseases before they spread out of control. This is the only win condition – to cure all four of the color-coded diseases before one of the losing conditions occurs. To cure the diseases, a player must collect a set of five Player Cards of the same color and then use them on their turn at a research center location on the board.

At the beginning of the game, each player draws a role card that tells them which of five special powers they can use throughout the game – for instance The Medic can more easily heal disease cubes off the board, and The Researcher can more easily give other players Player Cards from his own hand.

The players take turns moving around the board healing disease cubes before the disease gets out of control and triggers Outbreaks that cause even more disease to cascade into adjacent cities.

Complicating matters are the EPIDEMIC cards, and the Outbreak rules. The Epidemic cards control the difficulty curve of the game – for the “easy” game, four Epidemic cards are placed into the Player Cards deck (they have the same card back graphic as the player cards), one per quarter of the deck. On each player’s turn they draw two new Player Cards, and if an Epidemic card is drawn three things happen: one city gets three disease cubes (the maximum allowable per city), the infection rate rises (number of cities hit with disease each turn), and most crucially – the Infection deck discard pile is reshuffled and placed back on top of the Infection Deck. This rule effectively ratchets up the intensity of the game each time an Epidemic card is drawn because the cities that have already been hit with disease will now be hit again, increasing the chance of Outbreaks. Effectively, disease will be concentrated around 10-14 randomly chosen “hub” cities.

Outbreaks are triggered when a city that already has three disease cubes must take another disease cube. When this happens, each adjacent city connecting to the Outbreak city receives one disease cube. This can cause a domino effect of Outbreaks. Once 8 outbreaks occur, the players lose the game. Because of the Outbreak rule, players are constantly scrambling to keep the disease cubes under control.

Mechanics Discussion
The first thing I noticed when I got to play a few four player games of Pandemic was the amount of communication happening between all of the players. From the first turn players are chattering about the most effective way to combine their special Role skills. This is very important, because Pandemic is a very difficult game to beat, and becomes more difficult with more players. I suspect this is because there is a decrease in card-playing efficiency, as well as an increased need for coordination – trading cards also becomes a necessity, which throws a wrench in the works.

During play, one player said something to the effect of, “I need to go over to Paris to stop the zombies!” There was no mention in the rules of zombies, but it got me thinking of another game in which communication is paramount – Left 4 Dead. In the L4D versus mode especially, the Infected Team must work like a well-oiled machine, combining their special abilities at the right moment in order to take down the Survivors Team.

In Pandemic, the same is true. A lot of the excitement of the game comes from the mounting pressure of the out-breaking diseases. The players are tensely working together and constantly communicating. When a great combo play by several players comes to fruition and a disease is cured, there is a palpable sense of elation. It is this constant elasticity of emotion that keeps the players hooked into the game – each time it seems they are near defeat, the players always seem to beat back the tide of disease and make a fantastic comeback. The game scales well as it is played, with the Infection Rate mechanic automatically increasing the difficulty as the players progress, offsetting the fact that the players have cured some of the diseases by the late game. Because of this mechanic, the pressure and reward is always present up until the end of the game.

In closing I would say that Pandemic is an excellent cooperative game. Every group that I have played with grasped the mechanics quickly and easily, and have had fun playing their role in the group. The game also plays quickly – under one hour for a full game, while allowing a full cooperative experience – I’d like to see you play Arkham Horror that quickly! Because of the Infection Deck’s random nature, no two games are the same, but only well played cooperative strategy by the players will lead to victory!

Web Game of the Day: Scary Girl

Web Game of the Day: Scary Girl
I found Scary Girl to be both beautiful and entertaining. Production values through the roof!

New Year’s Resolution

By the next GDC I want to:

1. Learn enough scripting that I can create my own prototypes by myself. Selling people on my weird ideas is getting harder and harder.
2. Have worked on at least 2 serious indie projects.
3. Have at least one entry of mine get into the IGF.
4. Shape up my environment portfolio.

Post-GDC 2009

GDC is over, it was a blast – I am still exhausted.

I networked much more than last year. I was nearly out of cards by Wednesday – I’ll be sure to buy a hundred or twoo next time.

Played some games, made some contacts, made some friends. Love the CA program, will do it as long as they let me =) I was hoping I’d score a job on the spot, but it looks like it is extremely tough to get in as an artist right now. So I am beginning to think more and more that creating indie games on my own may be the best way into the industry, and so I’ve been trying to line up extra projects with other motivated CA’s and friends.

Preparing to get back to work on the project, we’re going to try to crunch for 3 weeks to get the game in shape in time for Indiecade. Wish us luck !

GDC – Day One

GDC has begun and I have already had an interesting day.

• Played Darkroom Sex Game with Wiimotes – hilarious.
• Played some 5 player games of Pandemic - review of mechanics forthcoming!
  
• Attended the Game Design Improv Workshop, designed some actually cool games. Probably helped that Jane McGonigal – creator of the incredible i love bees ARG – was in our group. Seriously, if you click only one link, make it i love bees.
• Got insulted by Brenda Brathwaite, industry luminary, game design educator. (Me: “Hello, my name is Anders, I was a finalist at the SXSW game design competition.” BB: “Haha — I’m sorry!”)
• Showed off Full Moon Manor a little bit, got some feedback by the ever helpful Tronster Hartley.
• Played some after hours Rock Band with the CA’s.

Turned this fella in for my Advanced Modeling class. My best work yet:

FLOAT and Full Moon Manor at SXSW – Postmortem

I got back from SXSW late Monday night, and my head is still spinning trying to put together the sequence of events of what happened in Austin. I’ve been reading some of the press and trying not to feel too bad about not winning the first annual SXSW Screenburn Game Design Competition.

My thoughts on the event:

• I wish that I could have heard more from the judges, I didn’t like that the event hinged totally on audience reaction. I noticed that the judges participated much more in the following AAA competition.
• I find having that many cameras going off in my general direction pretty nervewracking. My mind still skips a beat when I’m put on the spot with important people. I guess I just need practice !
• I didn’t win, but I did gain some good exposure for my projects and met a lot of good contacts – some of whom preferred my game pitch =)
• All of the press is raving about the two winners, and frankly I’m kind of let down. Its not accurate to just say “They won because they were the best.”
• When I heard Blorst I thought it was going to win, but there were some questions about it that remained unclear.
• I had some Austin BBQ, but it was at the airport. It was pretty good, but I don’t think airport BBQ really counts.
• Harvey Smith snapped my picture. Cool / Weird !
• I got a trophy from the competition. It says “Semi-Finalist.” I’m a finalist =(

Now I’m back in school and my mind is reeling trying to get back into work mode, but people keep coming up to me every fifteen minutes wanting to talk about the event !

BTW – I’ve seen the FMM demo we’re going to be taking to GDC. It is SO EXCITING to see our game actually running and functioning !! I’ll post video on the FMM devblog as soon as possible.

-Anders

Full SXSW Game Design Competition Slides Posted !

Full SXSW Game Design Competition Slides Posted !
Check out the presentations for both Full Moon Manor and FLOAT. Wish me luck – I’ll be in Austin tomorrow evening and then presenting on Sunday !

The Three Cardinal Rules of Game Artists

Link: The Three Cardinal Rules of Games Artists.

I haven”t finished the article yet, but a lot of this is sounding familiar. Whenever I have to work with someone who is breaking some of these rules, I tend to file them away on my mental blacklist.