tylerhinde

The blog that follows my life during the Bachelor of Creative Technologies

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My new website portfolio is up and running!

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This is the design process that Ben and I went through in order to get to the new logo design. It took a number of ideas and a lot of patience to get to the final result. The process took two full days to refine the logo to a point that we were happy with.

There were a lot of factors that we took into consideration when designing the logo. We didn’t want our image to be too formal, but at the same time we didn’t want the logo to be too cartoony as we want other companies to take us seriously.

We needed the logo to be simple and clean so that it will be possible to use on various materials/textures in the future (such as laser cutting) and still have it easily recognizable.

We also wanted the logo to be unique and represent who we are as a company.

Overall, I think the logo is exactly what we need. The octopus tentacles represent how we are capable of adapting and changing in a number of different ways, the simplistic cartoon style represents our light-hearted approach to design, starting all projects with an open mind and the clean, minimalist look keeps everything professional.

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I’ve been designing the medium range islands that we are going to use to create a contrast between the sky-sphere and the lighthouse that is near the player. The logic behind creating these islands is it should break up the difference in sizes between the islands and how big/small they look. Hopefully this should allow the player to feel that they are in a more realistic world and that everything is believable to being the size of a Kraken.

On top of this, I also designed the ghost and fish that James will be modelling and putting into the game in the next few days. The ghost is going to come out of the pirates once they are hit by the tentacle, their bodies will then sink.

We’re hoping to have schools of fish swimming around underwater. We will only do this if we have the time to do so though.

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Last week I finished off the texture painting of the large boat. It required painting two separate UV’s, one for the main hull and one for the sails.

Having all of the boats and the majority of the assets texture painted means that the game is looking a lot more cohesive and refined. We’re now in the process of finalizing the mechanics, pirate voices and particles so that we can have the game ready in time for hand-in.

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We're float studios - a team of artists, innovators and problem solvers who are passionate about what we do, and how we do it. With a background in game development and creative technologies, we specialise in crafting engaging immersive Virtual Reality experiences.

Our website is up and running! We’re going with a clean yet whimsical style to go for a professional look that’s still light-hearted. Eventually, once we’ve built up our working portfolio a bit more, we’re planning on making the site more minimal, keeping our look clean and more professional.

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Concept design for one of the islands that we are going to have reasonably close to the player. We are using this so the player can judge how big they are compared to the rest of the world. This will also serve as the vessel with which the player collects their souls to.

We’ve decided to change from using coins within the game to souls. We’re going to have a comically sized locker with which all of the souls are going to be gathered into. I think this is more fitting (Davy Jones Locker) and will make the game a more fun experience.

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After many variations and a lot of testing, we have finally refined our sky-sphere down to a finalized state.

The sky-sphere plays an integral part of portraying the scale of the Kraken and boats to the player. When I first began designing the sky-sphere I went wrong with the fact that I was only painting clouds. Not only did this make it harder to create a contrast between the sky and the sea, it didn’t give the player anything to base their size off, causing the game to feel off scale and miniature.

Once I started painting islands of various sizes we began to notice that the Kraken felt better within the world and the boats scaled better.

The next step is adding actual 3D models of islands that are at a mid range between the sky-sphere and the player. This is going to break up the scene even more and make the world feel a lot more immersive.

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I haven’t posted a proper blog post on here in a while so I decided it is a good time to show what I have been working on.

Above are the texture paintings I have finished. Last week I completed the bell buoy, 3 different cannon designs, chest, tentacle and finalized the medium boat painting.

I’ve really enjoyed hand-painting each texture for our game as it has not only allowed the project to be more stylized, it has also meant that I have more to work on now that the majority of game concepts are out of the way. James’ now has more time to work solely on modelling assets too.

We’re going with a more whimsical/comical style as we want to draw in the players interest as quickly as we can. When we started this project we understood that if we wanted to make the game super realistic, we would also need to make all of the mechanics as realistic as possible. We knew that we didn’t quite have the skills to do this yet, so we went with a more cartoon-like style as it meant the player would be able to accept the game-play feeling even if it wasn’t perfect.

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Float Developers Log 05

Fifth video in our development series.

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Float Developers Log 04

Fourth video in our development series.

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Float Developers Log 03

Third video in our development series.

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Last week we tried out new methods of texturing the models within our game. This in turn made us re-look at how we have been doing everything and decide that it is time for a change.

Instead of James modeling and texturing everything, we have decided that while James is still going to model everything, I’m going to start texture painting the models by hand. We found that this allows us to get a much more stylized look that is both more vibrant and more interesting. This also means we can paint in shadows/highlights and emphasize parts of the ships that we feel is most important.

So far I’ve found texture painting changes the entire look of the game drastically, it also means that I have more to work on after the concept stage of the project has been completed.

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More concepts for Kraken.

All of the boats have been designed now, and so a big focus is on smaller assets within the project such as barrels, crates, etc. I’ve also started to refine the colours we’re using within the game.

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Float Developers Log 02

Second video in our development series.

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I’m trying to both increase my speed and quality of my work when generating concepts for the team to work from.

This is the general look that I envision for the game. I want a very vibrant colour scheme that is complimented by the high resolution models.

I’ve found that having James give me a screenshot of the boats in perspective makes it a lot easier to generate ideas from and paint better concepts.

I’m also trying to spend less time creating irrelevant concepts and instead drawing images that will inspire the group rather than just add unnecessary details.

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As of today, we are an officially registered company!

It’s a very exciting time for Float, we’re looking forward to the opportunities ahead.

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Final logo design for Kraken