This unit aims to help you to consider your future career goals and what steps you need to take to achieve them. You will explore the Creative
Industries, investigating careers and roles in which you can aspire to work within. You will reflect on and analyse your current skillset and consider
your development needs. You will investigate and explore ways to present yourself in a professional context to navigate you towards your career
goals.
To enable you to demonstrate achievement against the learning outcomes, the unit will be taught through a range of industry guest talks,
lectures, workshops, seminars and critiques.
You will be expected to actively engage with comments and feedback from your tutors and your peers to develop your skills in self-appraisal.

You will create a Work-Based Learning portfolio presented as a single pdf with embedded links to moving image and other portfolio materials.
This will comprise of:
1. Industry Skills Pack – this is where you will show your research into potential roles, companies and specific areas or practitioners in the
industry that interest you and where you will demonstrate and reflect upon your current skillset and how you would like it to develop.
2. Professional Personal Presentation Pack – this is where you aim to communicate your unique, Industry-facing creative identity through the
development of your online portfolio/showreel, your online presence through social media channels etc, a CV and covering letter.
3. Project Work – You will also choose one or more of the small-scale collaborative Project Brief options to enable you to expand the range and
quality of your core pathway specific portfolio content and help you further develop your team working and communication skills.

Project Brief – Collaborative Game Design

In teams, you are tasked with creating artwork and animations for a 2D game where a character must traverse a world that is supplied by your tutor.
You will design and develop the function and form the character, hazard, obstacle and exit point that populates your game.

When planning the design of your characters visual persona, consider the interaction with the game world and its hazards and obstacles. For example, a ninja, android or wizard would all look and approach the hazard and obstacle in a unique way.
As a Game Arts student, your role, will consist of:

• Character Art
• Environment Art (to fit the exist template)
• Obstacle Art
• Hazzard Art
• Exit Point Art

Initial Ideas

References

Story

Level Breakdown

Mechanics Brainstorm

Asset List

Moodboard

Layout

I am required to work collaboratively to create a range of characters that stem from an existing franchise. The franchises are Skylanders, League of Legends, and World of Warcraft.
Next, within your team, select an Architype for my character.
• Hero • Villain/Shadow • Mentor
• Magician • Outlaw • Explorer
• Jester • Lover • Ruler
• Care Giver
Then as a team, we must use the website Coolers.com, to design our characters using only the colours that we have randomly generated. My final character should seamlessly fit within my collaborative character set, created by the rest of my team.
This project has 2 different goals, depending on my career aspirations. I will be tasked with designing, concepting and modelling a character. Then, depending on my chosen career path, I will then choose 1 of the following.

1. 3D
   Having completed my model, I will now rig, skin and animate my character in 3D, with the option of importing it into Engine.
2. 2D
   Having completed my model, I will now animate my character in any 2D software, whilst creating a character sheet that displays fully rendered artwork of my character in multiple poses.

This project will give me an insight into many different roles within the games industry. Having an understanding and an awareness of the multiple positions can initiate my preparation for my future career aspirations in this industry.

Randomly Generated Colours

I will only use the colours that we have randomly generated for designing my character.

Research on League of Legends

I decided to choose League of Legends over the other two games because of its wide range of character species (yordles, ascended, spirits etc.) and different regions to choose from. I also am interested in fantasy games, so this gives me the perfect opportunity to make my own fantasy character.

League of Legends is one of the world’s most popular video games, developed by Riot Games. It features a team-based competitive game mode based on strategy and outplaying opponents. Players work with their team to break the enemy Nexus before the enemy team breaks theirs.

The games take place in the world of Runeterra, which consists of the supercontinent Valoran made up of the many different in-game nations as well as the continent of Ionia and the archipelago islands of Bilgewater and the Shadow Isles. Runeterra is also known as “Magic Earth” and shares connections with otherworldly plains including the Void. A thousand years prior to the current time period of the game, “World Runes’ began appearing across the world, each containing an immeasurable amount of pure magical energy. Tribes began collecting these runes and abusing their powers, eventually resulting in the “Rune Wars” which ended up almost destroying Valoran and corrupted the world with hidden magical energies.

After watching this video and understanding the lore of League of Legends, it gave me more insight into the story, this will help me fit my character seamlessly into their timeline, making my character seem even more believable that she or he is from the League of Legends franchise.

Teamwork Brainstorming

Below are different regions with a similar colour scheme as our randomly generated colour palette.

BILGEWATER

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IONIA

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IXTAL

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THE FRELJORD

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ZAUN

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Overview of the regions

1. Bilgewater: pirates, thieves, smugglers. A lot of crime, people who steal/ purchase hextech ( kinda like the buyers of the black market)
2. Ionia: Spirit realm, wild forests, mountains, more east Asian looking, East Asian tales ( nine fox tail, Sun wukong 孫悟空)
3. Ixtal: Egyptian but jungle, maybe even look like Mayan people, Amazonian people
4. The Freljord: Viking, Norse
5. Zaun: underground steam punk, “they make black market tech (hextech) ”, illegal inventors, more rougher looking than the Piltover region. (Piltover is the legal inventors on the overground, just above Zaun)

After researching each selected regions, we decided as a group to do Ixtal. As it fits our colour palette the best, and Ixtal does not have a lot of in-depth stories like the other regions, therefore we could build on this region with a lot more room for creativity.

Mindmap on Character Relationships

Brainstorming on character relations will make our group’s characters seamlessly fit within our collaborative character set.

SIBLING PAIRINGS IN LEAGUE OF LEGENDS

1. Anivia, Ornn, Volibear
2. Ashe, Sejuani, Lissandra
3. Shen, Zed
4. Darius, Draven
5. Cassiopeia, Katarina, Talon
6. Nasus, Renekton
7. Garen, Lux
8. Varus, Valeeva
9. Jinx, Vi
10. Kayle, Morgana
11. Yasuo, Yone

We looked at sibling pairings in League of Legends to decide if we would want to do sibling pairings for our characters, or even triplets. But we thought doing a sibling relationship will limit us in choosing which species would our character be, as Brian wanted to do half human half animal for his character, and Min and I wanted to do human characters.

Moodboard

Moodboards are a collage of images that are based on my theme, this provides a strong foundation for my vision of the project, creating a moodboard helps me establish the basics of what the end result could ideally look like. Here is a mixture of pictures of Mayan, Amazonian and tribal women. Heavily inspired by the Ixtal region.

Yucatec Maya/ Aztec Inspirations

Inspiration opens us up to new possibilities and ideas by allowing us to go beyond our ordinary experiences and limitations.

KUKULCAN/ QUETZALCOATL

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Feathered serpent god, what god is Kukulcan? Kukulcan is the feathered serpent god in many Mesoamerican cultures. He was particularly important to the Yucatec Maya. The Aztecs called him Quetzalcoatl.

Silhouette

Silhouette design is a very powerful way of designing characters, props, and environments. It is a great way to make designs have a strong shape, memorable visual appeal and stand out from the rest. Hence, I created 7 different silhouettes. All of the characters above are inspired by Mayan, Amazonian and tribal women, with different clothing and weapons. Some weapons are more modernized and fantasy inspired to fit League or Legends aesthetic.

Rough Drafts

A rough draft is to give me a place to start to formally put together my ideas with evidence. I did some rough drafts on the silhouettes I liked the most, here are 4 drastically different designs, with different poses, clothing, hair and weapons.

Line Art

Having a line art to clearly show the ideas and details I have on my character so that the viewer can see the finer intricacies of the model including the clothes, hair, accessories, and weapon.

Colour Variations

Colour variations are important as the colour grabs the attention of the viewer and colours have different individual associations which can influence the mood

Aztec Tribal Patterns

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Final Design

Orthographic view

ZBrush

ZBrush Block Out

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Contents Page

1. Initial Ideas ……………………………………………………(Page 1)
2. Development ………………………………………………….(Page 2 & 3)
3. Modelling In Maya ………………………………………… (Page 4)
4. ZBrush …………………………………………………………..(Page 5)
5. Final 3D Model in Maya …………………………………..(Page 6)
6. Substance Painter ……………………………………………(Page 7 & 8)
7. Into Unreal Engine 4 ………………………………………..(Page 9)
8. Gym and Creating Landscape ……………………………(Page 10 & 11)
9. Final Outcome and Critical Appraisal ………………..(Page 12)

I was tasked with creating an environment that tells a story through the final image. My environment will simulate a small part of a bigger environment for a game so it is required that I consider the story and how it relates to a game.

I have chosen to make a futuristic discovery treehouse, as I haven’t made a lot of futuristic discovery styled themed art, therefore, I decided it was a good chance to challenge myself instead of picking my go-to magical mystical themed art. I also picked to create a treehouse as I wanted to challenge myself to make more organic looking 3D models to improve my 3D skills.

The style of the environment is entirely at my discretion.
I will get to experience the environment art pipeline from concept to completion. The final image will comprise multiple assets to come together for one cohesive scene that depicts narrative, focusing around my scene. The finished scene will be rendered in Unreal Engine and/or Maya.

This project will comprise multiple workshop projects. They have been designed to help me reach certain benchmarks to help with planning and progression. These workshops are listed below:

• 4 Value Drawing
• Hero Assets
• Foliage
• Create a Gym

Initial Ideas

Mind Map

This mind map helps me to brainstorm what futuristic discovery is as a theme to help me understand what things/ assets make it futuristic. From my research, there is a lot of SciFi elements and modern looking architecture. The mind map also helped me generate ideas on the story behind the treehouse.

Moodboard

Moodboards are a collage of images that are based on my theme, this provides a strong foundation for my vision of the project, creating a moodboard helps me establish the basics of what the end result could ideally look like.

Movie Inspirations

Inspiration opens us up to new possibilities and ideas by allowing us to go beyond our ordinary experiences and limitations. These movies will allow me to explore other futuristic themed worlds to help me understand the theme better.

Star Wars

The Star Wars franchise depicts the adventures of characters “A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away”, in which humans and many species of aliens (often humanoid) co-exist with robots, or ‘droids’, who may assist them in their daily routines; space travel between planets is common due to lightspeed hyperspace technology.

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I looked into star wars’ architecture as I love the futuristic environments they had in the movies. It had a mixture of space or spaceship-like elements, with a lot of out-there modern contemporary buildings. I want to utilise these elements in making the treehouse, to make the house a modern contemporary building.

The Martian

Mark Watney is stranded on the planet of Mars after his crew leaves him behind, presuming him to be dead due to a storm. With minimum supplies, Mark struggles to keep himself alive.

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In the Martian, it had a lot of space elements, as the movie is about Mars and surviving in a dangerous habitat, I want to take the advanced technology they had in the movie into my treehouse, to make my treehouse a hideout for the dangerous climate and environments.

Avatar

A paraplegic Marine dispatched to the moon Pandora on a unique mission becomes torn between following his orders and protecting the world he feels is his home. When his brother is killed in a robbery, paraplegic Marine Jake Sully decides to take his place in a mission on the distant world of Pandora.

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Avatar gave me lots of inspiration on my tree design, alienated plants and trees, with weird powers and technology, it got me thinking would the future have different trees or plants that evolved into living in a more harsh toxic environment, or would humans make fake trees to simulate what trees once were, give us oxygen, store carbon, stabilise the soil and give life to the world’s wildlife, provide us with the materials for tools and shelter.

Landmarks Inspirations

Gardens by the Bay

The Gardens by the Bay is a nature park spanning 101 hectares in the Central Region of Singapore, adjacent to the Marina Reservoir. The park consists of three waterfront gardens: Bay South Garden, Bay East Garden and Bay Central Garden.

Gardens by the Bay was part of the nation’s plans to transform its “Garden City” to a “City in a Garden”, with the aim of raising the quality of life by enhancing greenery and flora in the city.

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Gardens by the Bay’s tall man-made tree look-alike structures gave me the inspiration to make my tree in different types of material than wood. I like how the tree looks like a tower, in a way looks futuristic, because of how similar it looks like a tree but it uses modern-day materials, I also like the pattern it created with the fake branches.

Angkor Wat

The trees at Cambodian temples are nicknamed the strangler trees of Angkor, as their growth results in the death of host trees. Two other varieties of trees too took firm root here, the Silk Cotton tree (Ceiba pentandra) and Thitpok tree (Tetrameles nudiflora). They are common in tropical forests throughout the world.

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Different from Gardens by the Bay, I wanted to explore different looking trees that kind of look alienated and out of this world inspired by Avatar. Strangler trees of Angkor interact with nearby objects by having their roots intertwine with them and the tree trunk sits on top of the building itself, making it look alive. I want to incorporate these elements of the tree in my treehouse.