The Importance of Concept art

Concept art and its importance to the Games industry.

What is concept art?: Concept art is and drawing or visual creation created to plan a product. Concept art is not just used in games design. Concept art can be used in a range of product development from planning a new phone to a new building. However it's in film ,animation and games design concept art has its widest range of applications.

Concept art is used to show ideas and plans before creating polished versions of them. Generally concept art is heavily important in the development process.
Bellow is a selection of concept art used in game including bio shock. The concept art dark and has a almost late Victorian style to it. Its also quite gory meaning it would probably be used in horror games.

Concept art helps an idea take the next step in becoming reality. Writers and game planners will give artists a brief about the game ideas for location and things the game will and could contain.

Game artists will then be let loose to draw and create anything from environments to characters even the look of the UI on screen. They will generate hundreds of ideas that will be looked at be the lead developers.There are many concept art generalists, but there are also many specialised concept artists. The various specialisations are: Character Design, Creature Design, Environment Design, and Industrial Design. Many concept artists have more than one specialisation or are specialised in one thing and know the basics of the others. Specialisation is regarded as better for freelancers than concept artists who want to work In-House since they are usually required to know how to do everything. For freelance concept artists specialisation can lead you to being hired based on your specialisation. Knowing the foundations of art such as anatomy, perspective, colour theory, design, and lighting should never be disregarded since they are the bread and butter of a concept artist.

This allows creators to pick all their favourite part of drawings from the eyes of a player two the colour of a planet. Artists can put these ideas together  and create new and better drawings and when eventually agreed upon can be turned into reality inside the game.

The creation of good concept art is a very natural process of trial and error. Creators will do hundreds  of rough sketches which some small and some massive variations.

Smaller game team and studios will have less artists or even have artists which have other jobs in the games creation. Big studios like EA will have hundreds of concept artists producing for them with team leaders helping them collaborate between themselves.

As i'm working by myself the amount of concept art will be a lot lower. This means the ideas going into the game will be expanded on a lot less and I will end up sticking quite close to my original idea. I will choose between my drawings and eventually scan my favourite into Maya. I can the use this model to plan and create a 3D model which will be exported into Unreal.
stages for concept art

1. Quick concept art and sketches:

This stage is where the most of the creations will be made . Artists will sketch lots low detail sketches to choose between.

2. Adding Mass mood and a colour palate: The sketchers will the exclude and poor and unsalable sketches and move to adding basic colour and mood to the sketch to get a better ideas of how these would feel in games.

3. Refining and shading:

This stage artists will choose a handful of sketches they like. They then take them one step further,  by adding shading and refining the parts of the sketch that they don't like.

4. Choosing One: The artist will then choose one sketch to put forward they may even redraw the sketch before hand. If the image is approved  it's sent to a modelling team to begin creation

https://www.unseen64.net/2014/12/01/mankind-the-last-of-us-beta-ps3/

This drawing is of concept art created for a game. It contains borderlands character which have multiple different interchangeable parts. This Gives developers choices on how they want their final character to look. It also contains a colour pallet and a description of their characters design. The Concept art of this character gives them a basic front facing version and also multiple angles to help modding teams get an idea of the characters 3D shape.

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/a3/52/72/a3527245b7c2eb1adbf6423400e79968.jpg
The concept art show above is character concept art it lakes backgrounds or a environment instead it is being used to choose the looks and design of a character in a game this concept art is more specif and often will have lots of very similar looking ideas. The moods staying very similar and slight variations on the colour pallet.

This is a piece of concept art in its final stages. It Contains multiple characters and a environment. The setting the concept art portrays is very futuristic and dark. The artist has used mainly greys and browns for his colour palette. These are important point for other creators of the titles as they will help keep the game to a similar theme. This concept art could also be used for backgrounds and posters This concept art is not so much used for 3D character modelling as it is to show off a setting a design to a game. This art would be used to show developers what they are aiming for a final product to look like.

Overall Concept art is one of many important steps in games design. With out concept art new game ideas may never be given the time to be explored. Concept art is not only away to create the first steps towards in game assets but away to express modes feeling and ideas for games.

http://www.creativebloq.com/creativity/4-steps-creating-concept-art-extra-depth-101413175

http://atomhawk.com/concept-art

Waynes Work year 2

What is a game engine?

A game engine is foundations which a game is built on. Game engines most often include the Graphics, physics, sounds, scripting, AI, collision detection networking and handle the difference between different platforms. Most Games are created using a game engine and many games share the same engines. This means the engine is often reused between different titles and lead to the developers looking for different ways to use the engine to make new and interesting way to create and enjoy games.

Parts of a game engine

The operating system of the engine: This controls how the different parts of the engine interact with each other and the main underling code holding the engine together.

Graphics: The graphics of a game is what the user sees on screen. The graphics are rendered on screen using a chosen technique from the engine developer. While most engines allow for some level of graphics, certain engines like Unreal 4 and the cry engine are known for allowing the more cutting edge look to a game.

Physics: the physics engine in a game is what determines how objects collide and interact with each other within the world. This can be from the most basic things to if and how much gravity is felt within the game to the impact of a punch on an object or another player. The physic engine in a game can be specific to an engine of shared through multiple engines

Sound: The sound of the engine is processed and created through small engines packaged within the title just like the physics of an engine the sound engine can be shared.

AI: Is how the computers perceived intelligence reacts within a game. This can be bots a player must fight or challenge within a title, the pathing of a bird or change in difficulty of a chess opponent. The AI is how the engine “thinks” and approaches the user.

Access to game engines

As game engines are far harder to create than games this makes the ownership of and engine very important. If a company has create or owns and engine developers need permission from the company to create and sell games made on the engine. For a game developer looking for and engine to make his or her game on this leads to three different approaches.

One. To use a free engine like unreal or unity to develop on and once developed pay the owner large amounts of royalties fees on the sale of their title if successful.

Two. To pay for an engine from a company to use. This may be a onetime payment but often can include royalties from the company once the game is released.

Three. Either create or pay someone to create them a new game engine which their company will own. This may be the most time consuming and cost the most money but this will give the developer the most creative freedom as it will allow them to make the engine fit the needs of their games. It will also allow them to sell their engine to other companies.

Middle-ware:

Middle-ware is components of an engine which have been sourced for outside of the code written by the developer. Middle-ware is bought by companies to add to their engine. The most common of these is the physics engines of games as they are often some of the most complicated parts of and engine to code. This can save a company time trying to create the perfect physics engine for their game by buying one from another company. The downside to this is apart from the obvious cost to the developer is the fact the engine won’t be as tailored to the game the developers is creating as may by desired.

Different game engines

 The unreal engine the unreal engine is arguably the biggest game engine at the moment tied with unity. The unreal engine has the monopoly on first person shooters. The unreal engine is an open engine mean people are free to download the engine at will. However a game developed on the engine will need to pay royalty fees to epic games the company which owns the unreal engine.

The unreal engine was developed for epic games first shooter unreal in 1998 however is now in its fourth instalment. Unreal 4 was originally shown off in 2012 and was sold on its cutting edge Volex cone tracing however changes have be made to the original engine after worries of performance on the next generation of consoles. The main selling point is now the “blue prints” section of the software which allows for coding and editing of the engine with C++ while developing this allows for easier interaction and collaboration between programmers artists and level designer while in development

The unreal engine has come a long way in the past 18 years as has just released its most current patch 4.13 which has branched out to the latest VR technology .The unreal engine is free to use, with access to source code however epic games must be paid 5% of gross revenue after the first US $3,000 per product per quarter. https://developer.nvidia.com/unrealengine

Unity

The unity engine is the other largest engine on the market. While the unreal engine is used to create more first person shooter and action game unity is the engine used by the more indie and alternative games. Unity is easier for budding developers and often hosts smaller projects. Unity hosts the monopoly on phone games and almost all smartphone titles are created with a version of unity. This is because unity physic engine is easy to work with and does not require such a deep level of understanding to manipulate. While unity has been used to create some beautiful titles such as fire watch, Ori and the blind forest and Verdun. None of these game brag the most cutting edge graphics however they do look good.

 Unity however is great for cross platform development and is very well optimised for all types of systems. The other reason unity is heavily used is that developers are not required to pay royalties per say but are expected to pay a subscription fee per month on the software once and game has earnt $100000 in one year the game will be expected to upgrade to the pro version of unity costing $1,500 or $75 per month on a 12 month contract. This is a tiny amount compared to unreal 4 which takes a flat 5% off the top of a game.

Unity released unity 5 last year its easy access and quick to grasp systems have been accused of leading to an influx of underdeveloped titles made by inexperienced developers, also known as “cash grabs”.  https://unity3d.com/learn/tutorials/topics/physics 

Unity is one of the few big engines including unreal engine which uses the PhysX physics engine. This means both companies while have access to the code for their physics engine don’t own the engine its self. A problem with using middle-ware like Phys X is reduces developer’s ability to make big changes within their own engine. However using middle-ware can save money and time and allows companies to not spend resources updating their own physic engine.

Rage

The Rage engine or (Rockstar advanced game engine) is a closed engine owned by the company Rockstar and was released in 2006. The Rage engine has hosted a range of Rockstar titles but the most notable is the latest instalment in the GTA franchise GTA V which runs on the latest version of the Rockstar engine. 

https://support.rockstargames.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/200739603-Where-can-I-get-

the-RAGE-engine-

https://www.quora.com/How-are-large-open-world-games-like-GTA-V-made

The Rockstar engine is heavily made up of third party middle-ware components such as the physics engine Bullet and Euphoria the character animation engine. The engine is focused heavily on allowing large amounts of assets and is well optimised or the computer and next generation consoles. Because the Rockstar engine is closed this mean Rockstar doesn’t allow people to download or use the engine. Rockstar also doesn’t sell the engine to any other companies like some closed engine owners. This a screen shot from red dead redemption a Rockstar title which runs on the rage engine

CryEngine

The cry engine is an engine owned by 
Crytek.
a German game developer. The cry engine is the biggest contender to unreal in terms of the most cutting edge graphics as an open development engine. The cry engine is currently in its 4^th instalment however a fifth was announced on March 22nd 2016. The software was originally as a tech demo for NVidia. However was then used to create the first Farcry game. The Third version of the engine is when it made its biggest break through. It was announced in 2009 and was set for the next generation of consoles. The engine and games sold with it often game with editors available in the game this allowed players to make and create their own levels and use the WYSIWYP, "What You See Is What You Play" feature which allows players to hop into what they have just created.

The Software Development kit or SDK allows payers to make huge landscapes this means where other game would hide the edges of their maps with 2d backdrops. The Cry engine offers the potential to make huge 3D back drops and environments. The cry engine is currently being used for the biggest crowed funded title ever star citizen razing 124 million pounds. The release of this title will be a huge boost to the engines owners’ Crytek which have currently been in the shadows after the unreal engine recent success.  The cry engine uses its own physics engine this gives each game created on it a certain feel.

The biggest difference between the Cryegine and its competitor unreal is the approach to managing the engine. While unreal are taking a more open approach allowing user more and more ability to make changes to the engine, Crytek are looking to hold more control over how their engine is used "At the core, Crytek is building advances in that engine and controlling where that engine goes -- that's where we think we get the best results from," (Crytek Jones)

The cry engine was recently leased to amazon $50-70 million. This was to create Amazons most recent game engine lumber yard and more user friendly version of the cry engine and is currently in alpha.

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/218947/What_separates_CryEngine_from_its_competition.php

Gamemaker

Game maker studio is a game engine owned by YoYo games game maker is a 2D game engine and doesn’t support 3D graphics this leaves game maker to being fairly limited and therefore not really used to create anything but low budget indie titles. The positive of game maker is there’s an easy access and usable version of it open to the public. Game maker is a good for new game developers looking to learn and pick up some basic skills to use later in their careers or companies looking to make low budget 2D titles. Game maker is designed to be as easy as possible to code its uses code similar to C++ called GML

Game maker was created in Delphi programming language by a man called Mark Overmars and has produced some quite big steam indie titles

·         Spelunky

·         Hyper Light Drifter

·         Gunpoint

·         Nuclear Throne

·         Undertale

·         Super Crate Box

·         Hotline Miami

·         Nidhogg

Id tech

Id Tech is a game engine designed and developed by id Software. Id tech is currently in its sixth instalment Prior to the presentation of the id Tech 5-based game Rage, the engines lacked official designation and as such were simply referred to as the Doom and Quake engines, from the name of the main game series the engines have been developed for. Id tech 2 to 4 have been released for free, along with the source code to titles such as Doom and Wolfenstein. The game engine is well used is Bethesda titles, the sister company to Id tech.

http://www.idsoftware.com/?/age_gate

Id tech is well known for being one of the very first game engines ever created and was one of the big companies to make creating a game engine popular. However Id Tech 4 had far fewer licences than the Unreal from Epic Games, and Id planned to regain the momentum with id Tech 5 by releasing it as an open engine , until they were bought out by ZeniMax Media which intends to keep the id Tech engines exclusively for Bethesda’s studios.

Source engine

Source is a 3d game engine made by valve.  It was first used in counter-strike: source. Then one of valves biggest titles half-life 2.  Valve have since released source 2 the first game to get transferred over to the new engine is Dota 2. The biggest and most notable thing about the source engine is how it was designed to have no problems with backwards compatibility. The source engine is set to be modular.This Makes it easy for valve to upgrade between titles and have no problems changing the engine for different titles .This helps valve keep moving assets between titles without issues from changing versions of the engine.

The source engine is well known for its good physics engine. This engine is a middle-ware component called Havok. The Havok engine is the biggest Middle-ware physic engine on the market at the moments and many game engine use it as the Physics engine for their Game engine.  HDR and colour correction was added to the source engine in 2005 for the title day of defeat. The release of the orange box came with many things such as the source filmmaker which allowed users to create source film videos. It also removed inbuilt effects in the engine replacing them allowing codes to modify and edit to their choice.

https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/SDK_Docs





There are many different engines on the market and held by companies. While the best one is subjective to the people using and playing games within it. Arguably the "best engines" at the moment are the most popular engines. Obviously this gives closed engines a disadvantage. However I still feel both theses titles deserve there place over any closed engine at this point in time . Both engines I have picked hold something in common as they give the community the most creative freedom and hold the most opportunity for freedom while creating which is what game engine should aim to do. Id say for 3D development of game the Unreal engine is the best on the market at the moment just to the shear openness of the engine. Its highly impressive that an engine this advanced is so user friendly. The unreal engine has way more accessibility than its competitors the cry engine or Id tech.
The other most successful or "best engine at the moment is probably unity as it has the monopoly on phone games with nearly 90% of smartphone games being developed on unity and a large portion of indies games for PC being made with it to. Unity strong point is its cross compatibly between platforms and its quick to create systems.
This is why I think Unreal 4 and Unity 5 are the biggest and best engines out there at the moment.

James work

Unit 1: pre-production and planning for the creative media industries

Tutor: James Tedder

Student: Robin Carreras-Gough

Requirements of Game Development

Types of production: The type of production is thinking about what product you are creating. In my case a video game for game maker on pc.

Finance:  There are three main different types of finance to consider the first is publishing finance and how your game will be paid for. The second is material finance, how much will the tools and space you need to develop will cost and finally Work finance, paying your and other developers wages.  

Publish finance: It’s important to know how your game development will be paid for. Full time Developers will either have to look to a publisher to fund and publish for them or look at getting community to back the game. Publishing houses are companies responsible for the listing of created games this means they are generally more focused on the production, media and marketing of titles and usually taken in successful studios adding a big name to their release helping create drive and hype for a game.

 Getting a publishing house to fund you may be great for financial security however these companies have been known to value profit of a quality product. Meaning you have lesson control over your product

https://www.ubisoft.com/en-GB/

Take ubisoft a massive gaming giant. Being backed by them can be a blessing and a curse. The bigger the corporation get the more it relies on its name to sell titles.

Material finance: The developer must look at how much equipment and space to produce will cost. Buying cheap equipment may lead to a subpar game however buying to unnecessary equipment may cause a financial failures in the company.

Work finance: Whether developing independently or in a company for any full time developer you need a salary. This salary will come from your budget. This means the salary can't be too much however must be sustainable to live on while the game is still being made.

I’m my case the game will be created with software i bought for 8 pounds and I’m in full time education so a salary is not relevant. This also means my budget will be small and the game will take longer to make as there is only one developer.

Time constraints: Funding for games will eventually run out meaning the developers will have a time limit till the game needs to be released. The game will also have to keep players interests and game that taking too long to come out may have a smaller fan base on release meaningless copies sold. A game which takes too long to be made may be outdated on release as the game will be developed for current hardware if a game is released 6 years later the game may be outdated.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Development_of_Duke_Nukem_Forever

In the case of Dukenukem the game took fifth teen years to come out this meant the developers where constantly trying to update the games engine it also meant fans lost interest and the game was uninspiring as it fell behind the latest technology.

How long a game takes to release may also change how a developer feels about their product. The longer one works on project may change how passion they feels towards their game. Whether this is more or less depends on the individual.

My time constraints are quite small and however taking too long to release or create will mean my game will be outdated.

Personal: It is important to be in a personally stable life and work environment if a developer's life is not stable it may take time away from his development. It’s also important to make sure a developer get time and space away from development if too much time is spent in front of the screen a developer many start to loathe their work and their for the project. It’s also important to remember personal lives can change quick employees will need down time and finding the right balance between time off and an employee’s slacking can be a hard balance. When working in such a creative environment it’s important to work with people you get on with a share the same passions. This does not mean however the work place shouldn’t be diverse, just that colleagues should be sociable at ready to express their ideas. There are many jobs in the gaming industry and the amount skill and supply of work will change how much each are payed.

Animators are responsible for the portrayal of movement and behaviour within a game, making best use of the game engine’s technology, within the platform’s limitations.

Game Designers Devise what a game consists of and how it plays, defining all the core elements Communicating this to the rest of the development team who create the art assets and computer code

Artist Create the visual elements of a game, such as characters, scenery, objects, vehicles, surface textures, clothing. Creating concept art and storyboards which help communicate the proposed visual elements during pre-production

Audio Engineers Create the soundtrack for a game, including music, sound effects, character voices, spoken instructions and ambient effects

Level Designers Define and create interactive architecture for a segment of a game, including the landscape, buildings and objects

Programmers Design and write the computer code that runs and controls a game

Managers normally are not focused building the game but focus the management of the people making it. Managers have to be strong personalities which keep the creators and marketing unified and functional

  Not every person who works in the games industry is set to these specific roles and guidelines many will work independently this could be in the form of their own little company. These creators will often cross roles as they are able to be skilled ant multiple areas. This these smalls studio will have to allocate their own roles and pay for them self. People may also freelance being played by a company to produce and items of set of assets. Not payed a salary but for their piece of work.

Independents who start or do work for themselves may get recognised by big companies and payed to join or asked to help on another project.

Companies may Hotseat recognised creative by giving room to work or brainstorm while to forcing the standard office / work job.

These more Independent jobs so might find more for filling however are a lot less

My family life is stable and i have spare time to work but need to make sure it doesn't interfere with my school work.

Facilities: Facilities are important to look at where the game will be made and whether the developers have a studio to use and come together in. This may help creation as the developers can more easily interact. However this will cost money and may short the time which the development budget will last. A place of development can also increase productivity as developers will be more focused with the task at hand. Finally a place of development must be accessible to the workforce and easy to travel to this will also a social place of interaction which can help the morale of the development team. Development Teams may also do something called hot seating. This is where you do not have an office per say but areas for people to meet talk and work together a good example of a company who does this is google. Watch how google employee’s work hear.

https://www.google.co.uk/about/company/facts/culture/

I will be creating the game at school and my home computers which i will not have to pay to access however both environments are easy to get distracted in.

Materials: Materials for game development are key. Materials considers anything from hard ware to assets. Some assets can be taken from other for free. Take a sprite form google images for instance. However some creator will want you to reference them in your work. It’s a good way to save money however it’s important to remember some work maybe copyrighted. They are also lots of free alternatives to different forms of software. Eg WinRAR a file opening software has a free equivalent called extract frog.

http://download.cnet.com/Free-RAR-Extract-Frog/3000-2250_4-10804840.html

 Materials used must be to a certain standard as this will show in the final product. When it comes to hardware it's worth considering whether the hardware is need and whether it help development or if it just adds complications.

It's important to look at how hard ware will affect how a product is sold and how accessible to others it is. It’s also important to think about how this hardware will run on other people's computer and how big or small this will make your target market. Materials may also be limited such as development kits for consoles this means you will have to talk to other and convince them that the giving of these materials is in their best interests.

I have already purchased the materials i need and i will create all assets myself.

I already have licences publish on the android store as this came with my purchase of the humble bundle

You man also need certain license to distribute products on certain markets e.g. (android app store) This mean you have to way up how many platforms the product will be sold on and whether the cash return for a certain market is worthwhile.

Contributors: All games need contributors these contributors are anyone that has helped or been a part of making the game. Their names will be put into the credits for a game. This is to recognize their work and effort towards the development of the title. Being and contributor can range anywhere from having programed code to voice acting or research. Listing contributors can help generate business for employees as say a company like the sound design in a game they could look for the sound engineer and ask him to work on their title. The skill and experience of a contributor may change how much work they are willing to do for a certain amount of pay. Take Hideo Kojima, he probably be not willing to help write the story for my game maker platform unless he was offered a lot of money. Developers may also get contributors my making a increasing there stats. People may want to help with the next game if they enjoyed or loved the last one.

Codes of practice: The Codes of practice in game development ranges from the ethical to the abiding of laws. When making a game it's important not break laws like copyright , health and safety , public liability and  completion insurance its. However it's important to look at the ethics of game creation like worker treatment and pay and cost and pricing of the game. The game should also not be falsely advertised or seem to have promise things the game does not have. It’s also important to think about dlc and bug whether you continue to support and update the game after release is a morale decision so developers many choose to give free content after a games release to thank the customer for buying it. However most companies cannot afford to pay their staff nothing so they will create pay for content after the game. This can be liked buy the consumers however too much payed for content can make the players feel like they are being milked for cash. Pre-planned or pre order bonuses can make players excited for the game, however if done wrong players may feel key aspects of the game are being cut away to create more profit.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MC1Y2pFP2ls

Take this link for instance. A link to the new Total war game. This video has received a shocking amount of dislike because the company announced they will be selling one of the core factions in the Warhammer universe as a pre order bonus. This means they are cutting content from the game to sell. They have the right to do it but other may consider this unethical.