Planning & Concepting

 This blog is still about elements of game design but I will be talking about the planning and concepting that goes into producing a successful product. The games industry relies heavily on the good solid initial planning, similar to writing a brief before you start modelling on 3ds and basically any design work in general. All artists require a base to work from, ideas need to be visually explored before they are processed and developed. I remember watching the ‘Black Hawk Down in the making’ documentary and thinking how amazing it was that this whole idea and art direction had come from small thumb nail concept art, a lot like a comic book. I found this interesting because it’s easy to assume that films/games are made from just random activities churned together in a sequence to look visually pleasing.

 Concept artists will be given an idea or a brief on the project, the artists will then take this idea and sketch from ten to a hundred thumbnails exploring the possibilities and designs. Then out of all these only a handful will be picked for further development. If this process is not carried out the likelihood of the project being a success is already at a low.

 I have recently taken a great interest in the game soon to be released called ‘the last of us’ unfortunately only on the ps3 platform and i believe to be inspired by the film 'I am Legend'. Visually the game looks stunning with such high intensity detail and game play, very similar to ‘Uncharted’ made by naughty dog. I have found that the artists James Paick from the USA actually contributed towards both of these games, designing brilliant concepts for both environments, below are a few concepts he put together for the last of us.

 

  I know these pictures don’t show the development of the concepts and only the final product, but they just so brilliant and detailed you could actually spend a long time looking at them. You can automatically tell how much work has gone into one of these images, the colour and atmosphere creates such an great image for the audience, and let’s be honest if you can accomplish this people will want to play your game. Concepts art like this makes the games so appealing for example Uncharted was so popular because the environments were so realistic and stunning due to the planning that gamers were quite happy just to walk around the level. I believe the to bring this kind detail into the game the 3d modellers have to work very closely with the 2d team trying to being the concept to life. The concept provided is never an absolute but its more than a guideline, obviously there are technical challenges to overcome so you have to allow change with assets etc. I hope to achieve this level of organisation and one day develop something as stunning as this.