Portfolio Submission Two

Commentary For My Six Paintings

First Painting (Traditional) - Virgin of the Rocks

The Virgin of the Rocks is a famous painting by Leonardo da Vinci. The full painting shows Madonna, Christ Child, John the Baptist and an angel. The section I painted was of the angel’s head and neck, which I acquired a colour printout of earlier this year during the painting studio classes. This is an acrylic painting. 

For this painting I started out by painting it upside-down. I found it to be easier to paint the face this way as the whole face didn’t distract me from all the little details; however I believe it also skewed my perception a bit of the overall facial proportions. Noticeable incorrect proportions of my painting are:

·         The nose is a slight bit too long.

·         The eyes are a bit too big.

·         The philtrum length caused by the longer nose

These few incorrections are very noticeable on a portrait, as opposed to the same amount on a still life or landscape.

For the colouring, I started out without covering the face with a base colour, but instead added mid-tones to divided sections of face. I then added a tone to each edge of sections to blend out the colours, creating a gradient. The white has only a very thin coat of white-ish pink, so most of the white is from the white paper itself, and the black colours are just one coat of black with the exception of a few small spots, as it was near impossible to paint over black.

I had the most trouble with painting the neck/clothing folds and her hair curls. I believe I spent more time on the folds than her whole face. The folds were challenging because of how thin the dark and light tones are, and also some had sharp edges while others had gradients. The only way I managed to paint them in the end was with patience and precision. The hair curls proved to be just a challenging, mostly due to how numerous there were and the line-work required to draw each was too time consuming (I did not manage my painting time efficiently), therefore I only painted what I could.

Mixing the colours were my other big challenge, mostly due to my inexperience with traditional paint. This can be seen from the neck section of my painting. There is this one fold of the skin with a slight hint of green in the original painting, and I wasn’t unable to reproduce the colour successfully and turned out more grey than I had hoped. The lighter hint of yellow on her shoulders was troubling to reproduce as well and turned out to be a darker shade of yellow.

Reference

Da Vinci, L. (1483-1486). Virgin of the Rocks. 

Retrieved from:

http://westerncivimages.com/items/show/2931

Second Painting (Digital) – Dark Forest

Final Painting

I chose this painting partially because of the setting I wanted for another summative, but also because of the background lighting where the further the object the lighter it became I found to be very interesting.

I started out with the line-work on the top layer, with the background on the bottom layer. I painted a cyan-green radial gradient in the background to match the photograph, which was the easiest part of the painting. The line-work was with the numerous branches and leaves and the different shade of black and grey each had to represent its distance. I painted each trunk and branch, and used a large paint brush for roughly half the leaves while painted the other half individually.

The most challenging part of the painting was managing the different colour shades as they were the only indication of distance in the picture. I believe I did a good job replicating the background colour and each grey shade of the trees. Only improvement apart from adding more detail to each individual leaf (very tedious work) would to get better proportions of the forest, as the cluttering of the leaves and branches made it difficult to correctly proportion every trunk and branch.

Anthraxdeathrider. (2012). Foggy Dark Forest. Retrieved from:

http://anthraxdeathrider.deviantart.com/art/Foggy-Dark-Forest-337638969

Reference

Third Painting (Traditional) – Chick and Egg

I decided to draw a chick with an egg because it proved a challenge at representing two opposite textures in one painting: a smooth surface of an egg verses the feathering fluff that is the chicken, and also because the photo was so cute. This is an acrylic painting.

Proportion-wise I think it was much less difficult than my other paintings to draw correctly, though the one noticeable mistake is shorter length of a talon on the chick’s further foot.

The colour I think was pretty close, but not exact. The orange tone of the egg was the most difficult to mix, together with the gradient proved to be too difficult to get exact. From looking at the painting and photo right now, I think the egg can be improved with more yellow and white in the colour, but only a slight bit as I think was I have already is a good mid-tone.

The other challenge was painting the chick’s body. The fine details, like the dark spots showing the protrusion of the feathers, were virtually impossible to paint with my common brushes. I borrowed a fan brush from a fellow classmate, and experimented with its effects for the first time. The result turned out alright, but perhaps a too dark and too many darker lines. The little folds in the chick’s legs were difficult to reproduce, and what I did was press my brush tip horizontally to form parallel presses, and the excess paint squeezed out from the edges formed the lighter folds on the legs. I then painted a slightly darker tone on the presses to intensify the lighter lines.

Overall I am happy with the result considering my lack of experience with different types of brushes.

Retrieved from:

http://stephrogers.com/2013/02/24/down-with-eggs-chickens-rule/

Reference

Fourth Painting (Digital) – Peeled Orange

Final Painting

This digital painting I started back in a lab on Photoshop, and decided to finish it off for the summative. It is a monochromatic painting of a peeled orange still life.

I decided to go monochromatic to better focus on the shades than the colour as I find working only with shades is more challenging to successfully represent a still life. I also painted this using the smudging tool for the great majority of the painting. This was only because I found it easier at the start of the painting when I did yet have a graphic tablet.

I think I did a good job on this painting as well, and managed to paint all the detailed features on the orange. The only criticisms I have are the lack of the water droplets on the orange due to a lack of time, the rushed background (though not too important), and a slight proportion difference which is to be expected.

Reference

Gomez, A. (Year Unknown). Retrieved from:
http://lumartingalleries.com/artists-2/alfredo-gomez-still-life-paintings/#2

Fifth Painting (Traditional) – Four Seasons

For this painting I based it on two different photo references, and created it my own. This is an acrylic painting. It is a painting of the same tree in four different seasons, with each season occupying a quarter of the painting.

The painting looks a bit too cartoonish and not realistic enough with realistic lighting effects. The autumn sky looks too red and the clouds aren’t realistically shaped. The spring branches look too rough and too thick, and should’ve been more like the winter branches. I tried creating sun glare on the summer sun, and I think I came close at recreating a realistic looking glare, but not so much when matches with a visible sun. Improvements on this would be for a near white sun with more noticeable and brighter glare lines.

It was my earliest painting I did at school, so I think my painting skills have improved since then.

(Left Photo) Retrieved from:
http://www.edb.utexas.edu/visionawards/petrosino/index.php?usr=katieraegan&id=s:home_katieraegan

(Right Photo) TheAngelsFace. (2013). 4 Seasons Tree. Retrieved from:
http://theangelsface.deviantart.com/art/4-seasons-tree-347511010 

Sixth Painting (Digital) – Sand Dune

My last painting is of the Sahara Desert. I always wanted to paint a desert for its beauty, and also because I could use this backdrop for my game project I am working on.

I approached this painting with similar techniques from my orange still life, as it was (almost?) monochromatic with many gradients of shades. I laid down a base colour for the whole desert, then applied shades and highlights to individual sections and focused on completing each section before moving onto the next. I used the smudge tool in Photoshop to create the gradients, which wasn’t too challenging but was time consuming to get the right shade.

The most challenging part of the painting was the ripples in the sand, and how to show the dark lines. I found it extremely difficult to draw line by line was they were either not on the correct angle or had too many breaks in between creating jagged lines. I settled with a brush in Photoshop that had two parallel lines each, therefore giving a better illusion of uniformed ripples. The biggest improvement I could make to this painting would be giving more time to the ripples and making them more details, as right now they are aren’t very realistic upon closer inspection.

Retrieved from:

http://funcrawler.blogspot.co.nz/2010/11/great-sahara-desert.html

Reference

GA1A02/05 Game Maker - Ten Thousand Coins - Production Log Update

Created other NPCs in Oldlyn. Ran into a problem where the dialog screens of different NPCs just keep overlapping with each other and numerous bugs appeared. Decided to change all NPC interaction to be handled by a controller instead of individual NPC objects.

Prototype presentation

Prototype presented.
Game name will be called Ten Thousand Coins.

GA1A02/05 Game Maker - Update 2

 Game Progress So Far

The current prototype consists of:

• 2 Rooms = Oldlyn and Lynroad (3rd only just started). Oldlyn is the starting town, and Lynroad is the first wilderness.
• Player stats = HP, EXP, Hunger, min and max Attack.
• Other stats = Time.
• Inventory system = Consists of the master inventory list, player's inventory, and each NPC shop keeper's inventory (currently only 1). All inventories are created using 2D Arrays. All items are non-stack-able except coins. This is to give the game a bit more of a survival aspect as the player can't just load up on a massive amount of a single items for health/hunger/other gains.
• Buy and sell system. Items are bought and sold depending on their value.
• Currency = Coins.
• NPC = 1 blacksmith at Oldlyn, sells a few items, buys any the player sells to her. Mousing over an NPC displays a green outline. There is also a simple conversation system by selecting a speech option on the displayed texts.
• Item usage = Depends on item type. Consumables are one use with their effects cast immediately.
• Equipment = Weapons are equip-able, increasing min and max Attack of the player.
• Combat System = The combat works as follows: Click on an enemy to do damage based on your Attack stat, then the enemies do their damage on you based on their Attack stat. The player may equip weapons to increase Attack, but can only equip one weapon at a time. 
• Each weapon also consists of a Cool-down, so after player attacks with an equipped weapon, the weapon cannot be used again until it's Cool-down has expired (calculated in turns). 
• Area of Attack(or Effect) weapons also added into the combat system, which can do damage to all enemies on the screen at once.
• Enemies = Wolves, spawns at Lynroad, between 1 and 3. Click a wolf to apply damage and receive damage. Possible to do area damage to all wolves with certain weapon types. Mousing over an enemy displays a red outline.
• Loot System = when enemies die they can drop loot, which appears at the end of the battle The player can choose whether or not he/she wants to take each loot.

 Some screenshots of the prototype:
(Note: All in-game graphic are simply placeholders for the time being)

The NPC Buy & Sell System + a Simple Conversation System

The Combat System, showing the current weapon equipped and the mouseover target for attack.

 Major bugs/obstacles so far:

• The inventory and equipping system was a nightmare to get working correctly. Multiple scripts were written to give custom functions of adding a certain item from the master item list to the player's inventory as well as equipping an item if it is equip-able. I tried coding an idea I had about increasing and limiting the amount of equipped weapons to 4 and have it displayed at the bottom center of the screen, however writing code to keep track of both 2D arrays simultaneously as well as the mouse clicks and array empty slots proved to have too many bugs and not worth the time. Instead I went for the original idea of just allowing 1 equipped weapon at a time straight from the player's inventory.
• The area of attack weapon abilities proved somewhat difficult to implement. Bugs kept popping up left and right with cooldown not working correctly at one second, to not being able to attack at all the next. By tonight I finally managed to get it all working in order.
• The Cooldown system had a few hitches which was tied in with the area of attack weapon ability.
• Buying and selling and managing the NPC's inventory took quite a few goes with different methods to get right. Selling an idea from your inventory was easy. Buying one from the NPC, it moving to the correct slot in your inventory, the correct amount of coins deducted, and the NPC item stock decreased accordingly was not as easy. When one method might work for one function it screws up the other. Took many tries to find one that worked for all.

GA1A02/05 Game Maker - Update

Prototype so far consists of:

• 2 rooms = Oldlyn and Lynroad
• Enemies = Wolves, spawns at Lynroad, between 1 and 3.
• Click a wolf to apply damage and receive damage.
• Player stats: HP, Hunger, min and max Attack.
• Other stats: Time.

Got the basic battle mechanics in place. You click one of the wolves, and damage them for a value between your min and max (inclusive) and they damage back with their own attack.

Had trouble initially getting the other wolves which you did not target to attack you on the enemies' turn. They either did not attack or attacked continuously without stop. Figured out a solution by using 2 counters on the number of enemies currently on the battlefield, and the number of enemies that has attacked. So whenever an enemy attacks, it decreases the second counter by 1, therefore once it has reach 0, all enemies will have attacked, after which becomes the player's turn again.

I have also drawn up a world map draft of the game:

Green dots = Friendly Settlements (Size of dot represents size of settlement)
Red dots = Hostile/lawless settlements

Realistically I think only 3 or 4 cites/towns maximum will be completed by the due date, including the wilderness in-between each city/town as well. That's fine as the rest of the map's inaccessible locations could give the player a sense of immersion into this fantasy world and can be left up to their imagination.

Game Maker - Ideation

Ideation:

Features to include:

• ·         First person view conversations with NPCs.
• ·         Turn based RPG combat.
• ·         Inventory system, similar to Runescape
• ·         Stat system, including a speech stat that unlocks addition dialog options from NPCs
• ·         Sandbox as much as possible

Game Maker - Research

Research:

Genre: Point and Click Role Playing Game

Games Researched:

1.       The Pride of Taern – Point and click MMORPG, third person active-turn based.

Figure 1 - Turn based combat

The Pride of Taern is a game I played last year, and it got me hooked on turned based RPGs again in a long time.

The gameplay is as follows: you control your player character from an isometric view and walk around the game map. When you mouse over another character, be it NPC, enemy, or another player, a coloured outline appears around the character.  If you click on a NPC, you initiate a conversation with them from a first person view point. Different dialog and quest options then display to the right side of the screen. I grew fond of this mechanic, as well as the character outlining, and have decided to implement some form of this feature into my game.

The combat is active turn based with a set time. Although I would like to also include this feature into my game, I fear the programming needed to implement such as feat would drain up too much development time.

Figure 2 - First Person Conversations 

2.       Runescape

Good old Runescape, the first MMORPG I’ve ever played since I was little. The major feature of this game that stood out for me was the vast amount of activities other than combat that could be done to progress your character, features such as fishing, wood chopping, mining, cooking, smithing etc.

I want to create an RPG that has more than just the usual mob grinding, and more goals than just simply levelling up your hero without adding in too many features that I won’t have the time to complete. For that idea to work, my RPG will need a specific goal that is not “Get to level XX” or “Defeat the final boss”. Perhaps by acquiring certain items, like on a scavenger hunt while encountering enemies along the way, or a race against time to complete a certain objective.

Figure 3 - Runescape gameplay

Figure 4 - Runescape inventory system

Another small feature I like about Runescape is the inventory layout and art style, as it allows easy reference to your inventory, yet still provide adequate information by simply mousing over the item.

3.       Fallout 3

One of my all-time favourite RPGs, Fallout 3’s most stand out features are it’s sandbox gameplay, V.A.T.S, perks, and dialog options. The features I would like to implement in some form are the sandbox nature of the RPG, and the dialog options, notably the “Speech” options in game which allows special conversation options if your Speech level is high enough. The sandbox gameplay gives a big sense of freedom and control to the player, which would be mostly absent in a mostly linear “Point A to point B” RPG. The speech option also encourages a non-combat form of skill increase, adding diversity to the game.

Figure 5 - Fallout 3 dialog options

GA1A02/05 Game Maker Summative Begins!

Initially thought about the idea of making a point and click story-based adventure game, however discarded the idea as I believe there would be far too many dialog and art to create and not enough gameplay/game mechanics.

Now I have started creating a point and click RPG adventure instead, with a more balanced complexity between art and game mechanics.