WEEK 2: Motion Studies DESN1136: Environments and Composition

Sidescroller "Beast Hunter" from local Industrial Brothers

Hope you brought your drawing chops today because we're going to be digging into the next part of your first assignment - the environment!

Sidescroller "They Bleed Pixels" from local Spooky Squid

3D multi-level shooter "Damnation"

We'll be looking at some typical game environment designs to get an idea of the planning process for your virtual game. It's a good plan to think about the action style of your game and build a world to accommodate it than to build a world and try to fit your character's actions into it.

In the planning stages artists thumbnail ideas to collaborate and sketch out the big picture for the game or project. This process requires great skill in distilling information to simple shapes while communicating the main idea of the story. This must be more than just who/what/where nitty gritty detail. It also must add emotional information. This requires a basic knowledge of cinematographic language - subjective and objective camera angles, and what various angles and shapes communicate to the viewer. We'll have a look at several sources that can teach us about the major elements of composition:
1- Focal Point
2- Framing
3- Lines
4- Space / Position
5- Perspective / Depth
6- Balance / Hierarchy
7- Scale / Volume
8- Pattern / Rhythm
9- Value / Contrast
10- Color 

All 4 are trees but from completely different movies!

It's not enough to just read about it, practice is essential. And you can start anywhere - freeze-framing movies and searching through photos that illustrate the elements described. Two great books to invest time reading are, "Film Directing Shot By Shot" and "The 5 C's of Cinematography".

A lot of great information we'll be covering in class is available here:
http://www.floobynooby.com/IPUB/comp1.html

I'll show you some successful assignments from past classes so you know what to aim for.

Character design by GBC grad Maya M

I'll also have a look at your work in progress from last week. By now you should be about 1/4 of the way through this 4-part assignment.

Next week we'll get into drawing some more formal story boards for our action sequences.