panoramic picture taken the Lake District that mirrors what I want the planes in my game to look like

EVALUATION.

After learning that the main theme for the final major project was ‘Magic’, I managed to brainstorm a variety of ideas and found it to be not too difficult. I decided it was going to be a short game produced on Unreal Engine, and that it would contain original main and side characters and a short story encapsulating the theme of magic and the theme of fantasy I also decided to include.

To help develop my design further, I researched various works that helped inspire me, such as games like Dark Souls, Skyrim and the Witcher. Also I researched other forms containing the fantasy and magic theme, such as movies like Harry Potter. The key elements that I took inspiration from were the aesthetics of the environment and character designs; which were all things that were mentioned prior in my FMP proposal - this also contained other explanations, such as more detail on why I chose the video game format for my FMP.

As for the research part of my assignment, I had to do a lot of in depth research as I needed to find out what makes a fantasy game and various tropes that are commonly used in them.

For part of my primary research, I also looked through other sources of inspiration such as art work, in one case "The Starry Night", a painting done in 1889 by world renowned artist Vincent Williem Van Gogh. With this painting and the New Londo Ruins in the game Dark Souls (from software 2011), it helped inspire the location and aesthetics of my project.

As for my secondary research, I watched a variety of YouTube videos about lore and story telling in various video games to gain further understanding and aid me in development of my design. I particularly looked at the video game Dark Souls as it was the one most based on lore and I found the story telling through the game’s environment and player’s story and character development to be very captivating. I also watched some videos on how the map was created through inspiration of real life locations such as medieval castles in Scotland and big mountainous ranges like the Rocky Mountains in North America.

Lastly, I endeavoured one research for my main protagonist character design. I looked at various mediums such as books like J.K Rowling’s Harry Potter (1997), and mangas such as Kentaro Miura's Berserk (1989). These initial ideas helped me create my own original armour, which I gathered some techniques and style from, the third instalment of the video game mentioned earlier, Dark Souls 3 (from 2016 software). With this research and techniques in mind, I sketched concept art for my character.

To conclude my FMP project, it is meant to be targeted to a mostly teenage and adult male audience as not only is it a video game, which are usually associated with teenage males, it is also a fantasy game with a male character; who they may identify with and see themselves in, causing more attraction to the game. With the various games I researched, it has lead me to aim my game toward the same direction in target audience - I learned this by looking at various games with a similar theme to mine such as the Witcher 3(CD Projekt red 2015) and Prince of Persia (the sands of time Ubisoft 2003). All this is has supporting evidence in various graphs on the internet and some of my own research/evidence done using survey monkey. This is important as every product is doomed to fail with no audience to target to.

Production.

As for the production part of my FMP there was not much I could achieve due to the current situation we are in, so the next best thing was to produce art work which can be seen on my page. This was done by making detailed drawings for my character with colour to give an idea of what the final product would end up looking like. Of course this came with its draw backs, as producing it on paper is a lot more limited than using soft ware such as Photoshop, which I could have made more clean, professional and detailed work with a detailed background that further portrayed what I had in mind - even unreal engine, which would have been even better for conveying a better vision for my idea.

For my project I did everything step by step, I started with brainstorming, then moved on to research and inspiration, then research into ‘target audience’ and establishing my own audience, to the final step of production.

The pre-production section is where I think my project shines as it's where I have done the most work, research and evidence collection. I think it shows pretty clear ideas and an outline for what my final project was supposed to look like.

Due to this project I also experimented more with character development, as it's the first opportunity that I had to develop and completely design a fully original character of which I am very proud, given the lack of resources and situation I am in. By having an original character, designed and created by myself, it has a positive impact on my project as an original character helps more with immersion.

REFLECTION

Personally, I am content with my final project as I think I did the best I could with the resources I had, but if given more time, equipment and software I could have done something even more special and worth playing through.

I initially planned on using Photoshop and Unreal Engine as part of my pre-production section of my project. This was to give a visual representation of the previously written ideas I had of my environment and characters. However, as that didn't go to plan I overcame this obstacle by simply drawing what I had in mind and displayed the images that conveyed the idea and theme I wanted to portray.

Working independently was also really good because I had no one contrasting my ideas or adding things I felt were unnecessary, not to mention I could do thing at my own pace.

Overall, I am pleased with what I have produced as I feel like it was a good project to explore my creativity and creative mind. If I had to improve on something it would be to have done more drawings of environments and different NPC's and enemies and with Adobe Photoshop, finalise these drawings and edit them further on the software.

this is Tharmor and he is the fictional character I created for my project.

the player is introduced to him via a small introduction at the start of the game on which is stated his origin which I am not entirely fixed on, his name and his reason for trespassing the gates of the hostile magic land of irwind.

as for the quest Tharmor being a magic warrior for hire he is tasked with traversing the land and defeating the self proclaimed "king of wizards" who is an evil necromancer who deserted the great war and seeked shelter in those lands.

location concept art

gates of irwind

Initial sketches for my boss design

In summary for my FMP assignment I plan on making a short video game based on various other critically acclaimed games from the same genre, such as the dark souls series, the witcher 3, the fable series, the elder scrolls: skyrim etc. i started this project with a proposal on which I planned on what I'd be doing for my FMP project on which i then decided on the media format id be doing and explained my reasoning behind it, which is because i personally believe my idea of magic is better suited in a game type environment as the world lore and mechanics are modeled to better represent my imagination, i then briefly talked about how my world would be looking aesthetically with a short description of what i had in mind and also mentioned and featured images of existing video games that helped represent what i have in mind for my project, then for the last two points i had to touch on audience research and final piece presentation. i then fortified my ideas by looking at the games that inspired me and then went on to write about what exactly inspired me from each game and how i could implement the different things into my game, ans then moved on to talk about Vincent van gough and his famous "starry night" painting and how it kinda matches what i had in mind fore my painting the next step for my FMP project was to do brainstorms and mind maps around my idea to further expand on it and create a deeper idea, on it where basic premises about some ideas i had, inspiration, characters which k then further expanded on by creating sketches with basic abilities and equipment listed to give an idea of what i have in mind for them. lastly i went over the target audience and the age rating for my game which i did easily by looking at games with similar conventions and looking over requirements for different age ratings on the pegi.info website.  

enemy design sketch and basic abilities

my survey monkey questions based on the concept of magic in video games

RATING

in order to make a game available for consumers it has to go through a rating system which in the UK is taken care by the Pan European Game Information (PEGI) which is a game content rating system created in April 9th 2003 to help consumers buy a game suitable for their or their kids age group.

for my game i feel like a PEGI 12 rating is more than suitable as it suits most of the criteria shown on the https://pegi.info/ website, of which the main ones are “violence shown in a more graphic nature” which is perfect for my game as the enemy characters in my game will be magical creatures such as ogres specters etc.

target audience

my game is targeted at a male teenage to adult audience as not only is it a video game which are usually associated with teenage and adult males it is also a fantasy game with a strong male character who they can see themselves in, with games im inspired by such as dark souls following the same audience. there are various statistics around that support my target audience such as statics regarding age, gender etc.

character concept sketch 

“THE STARRY NIGHT”  (1889)   Vincent Williem Van Gogh.

artist inspiration

In terms of artists that have inspired me there is famous dutch post-impressionist painter Vincent Williem Van Gogh (30 March 1853-29 July 1890) , and one painting in particular from him called "The Starry Night"(1889). I feel like this painting also really represents what I had in mind for the plains of my game as I feel like there is a mysterious vibe coming from this painting. I think I can achieve the same mysterious magical air by recreating mysterious unearthly structures as seen on the painting.

inspiration

in terms of existing products that have inspired me there are various installments that I’ve played through, but for this task there are only two that gave me a clear idea for what id like to do for my game. first and foremost there is the critically acclaimed Witcher franchise from which various forms of media have been released, but in this case i will be talking about the 2015 game of the year Witcher 3 (developed by CD Project and CD Project RED), one of the reasons I found this game to be an inspiration is the magic system in this game, there are various things I want try to at least recreate to a certain extent from that game, but the aesthetics of the magic particles are certainty top of the list for but a close second is the menu from which u have quick access to your magic attacks. For the second game I took inspiration from is 2011 from software hit game dark souls in particular the new Londo ruins area of the game which during my first play through seemed like nothing more than a desolated area, but i quickly learned the deeper i dove the better it got. the reason i chose this area of the game was because it fits the eerie and dark vibe i want to achieve in my game, not to mention with the vast amounts of space all kinds of creatures could be lurking around ranging from friendly fairies to deadly dragons.

inspiration part 2