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Sketches created in honour of the “Iceman” Wim Hof from the Guiness book of records, who has many Ice endurence Guiness book of records. In the picture he’s taking a dip in a cold bath casually and wearing the bandana he wore when breaking the record for the first time.

Here is an experimentation with diferent colours and shading to create the onject. The object being a Plane made for woodcrafting.

#Adam's Artistic Activities

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During Production after I finished my monster I decided to research sound and come up with music for our title screen along with Jed, as the title screen was his baby. I was told to create a simple tune and then we’ll “Fiddle” with it until it fitted what we needed. This was the original music that was planned but after multiple different iterations and styles. Jed decided it would be best if he tried a different approach towards the soundtrack. The end result was far better than any of the previous versions so I stand by the decision as it was for the better.

This is the flow chart of the monster’s mechanics in Unreal. I was able to successfully implement into the game.

These are the stages of the monster models creation. It started from a plane and was a fun challenge to make. The original concept art showed a monster similar to “Stranger things” with an openable face and a thinner body.

This version was dismissed because an opening face would be a nightmare for me to currently animate and so I suggested it not having a moving mouth. However, the group came to the conclusion that is it’s mouth doesn’t move then it just looks like a bald person.

The second concept art was of a more “Bug-like” monster and it had bug like characteristics such as: Feelers, multiple eyes, hair, carapace... However, the end result was a melting pot of creepy features on bugs stuck on a bi-ped. I reminded the of how much time we have left to work with and they dismissed the remaining ideas.

After this second meeting I was left to my own devices, so I sketched a few head and body designs that would be doable in the timeframe and decided it best to stick with a Biped as all our current monsters had been, two-legs not seven.

Using the bug concept art I influenced the texturing to give a cell-like pattern of Black and white. I chose those colours because our moon monster would not have much use for other bright colours on the moon. And would look more menacing in the dark of the station.

Keeping it to a Bi-ped I used my research done before and selected two-traits to work with. these were Carapace, and Mono-eye. This made the monster have thick, bony carapace sections which would be white and a single eye socket in his head. If I had known how I would have liked to apply an emissive material to the eye, which would have made him more ominous and extra spooky.

Psychological Perspectives: Asphyxia

Horror games are very good ay getting into the player’s mind: finding out what makes them tick, and exploiting their fears. Good horror games are designed very well to make the player question their surroundings, their environment, and ask how they got here.

Horror games weild fear in different ways depending on the game which can add a freshness to it even if the player has already experienced it. examples include P.T: which was a very good psychological horror game that used a looping hallway. “Outlast” Which threw the player into several situations which made them question their own sanity. And “SCP-Containment Breach” Which forced the player to move forward through a facility that held monsters that try to force the player into giving up hope.

Our game Asphyxia plans to use the fear of isolation as you’re disconnected from your group, you wander around a facility in space with an unknown threat stalking you. The only Voice of comfort being a scientist who’s using you for his own ends. This would make the player, Who is isolated and alone. Work with and help the scientist due to loneliness and hope for a way out. However, they are ultimately betrayed and die in a tragic ending as they suffocate without air.

Our project manager wanted to use the word “Pandorum” to describe the game, to have the player come to the hopeless realisation that they wouldn’t live or be saved. He detailed a “multiple ending scenario” where the Scientist drains the room of air and leaving the player with the choice to either: Remain in the room. and suffocate to death. Or return to the monster and be killed quickly. While I liked the idea it proved too much to implement.

Asphyxia Event Log.

For Asphyxia I Chose the role of Lead 3D Animator. For this project, I wanted to focus on the job i desired in the industry as well as to experiment and introduce myself to 3D animation. In my spare time, I modelled Bi-pedal humans and other models some varying from 2 limbs to 6.

However, my productive days in college were spent covering for any section the group would miss, for example, the Book. In the early stages of production, our production book was empty and just had piles of unlabeled sheets thrown in the book, not stuck in, not organised, and generally a mess.

I took it upon myself to fix this and spent many consecutive days sticking work in and labelling it accordingly, I labelled pages for others to do and with help from Dave spaced out which pieces of work should go where. after filling in the book a substantial amount out,the project manager prevented me from writing any more in the book. I was both relieved and worried but thankfully the pages that I and Dave labelled were being filled out by the other members of the project. Confident that I wouldn’t have to worry about the book a dove back into 3D and Discovered Mixamo: A free rigging and animation site. Mixamo provided a good alternative for animation,as given the time we have, I could not say with 100% certainty that I could finish modelling the monster and create all its animations. With the Monster, I began modelling and used the concept art I was provided by our lead artist to create a basic mock up of the monsters body size. However, during this time our group would be split. Our project manager, lead artist and Narrative designer would focus on producing the cutscene. And the other half would focus on creating the game.

The Project manager appointed me Project manager of the other team and wished me luck. Given this new role I started immediately ensuring our assets would be made and finished. with our deadline looming closer, there was no time to be wasted. I was determined to see this game completed and finished the monster and it’s rigging thanks to Mixamo. I focused on creating the assets first before texturing them, this meant we could at least hand them over to our Unreal expert who could start putting the game together. With only a week or two left. Our assets are complete, but not all are textured. I firmly have faith in everyone on our team, and everyone’s abilities to succeed. They are all exceptional individuals, they all have quirks and flaws and that's what propels them to work harder and be able to sit back when it’s all done and say. “I did that.”. And I could not be more grateful for the hours they put into their work.

In 3DS Max I learnt a new method of texturing that allows for the texture to not be stretched and lets me put more detail into it accurately without compromising the scale of the texture. In the picture above is a render of the hammer at just 730 polys it looks really good. AS such I will texture using this method from now on. Due to in an earlier project my textures were not scaled correctly and i was given feedback which said that I should have scaled them down or chosen different textures. With this new method I believe that I won’t have to compromise on textures and can give a model the texture it deserves to make it look awesome.

Audience perspective analysis of Asphyxia

In Asphyxia the audience are people who seek out the adrenaline and the scares to get their blood pumping, the people who enjoy getting creeped out and scared.terms of age these people could vary from 16 to 49 as the horror genre is a very popular genre. This can be accredited to YouTube, as Horror games, unlike any other are played by popular YouTubers for many views, which in turn generates free marketing for the game and interest from the audience. Of course for people who buy the game when they go into the game they aren’t expecting a “Good story” or “Great graphics”, what they buy the game for is too get scared. Look at the game that kicked off the horror genre’s explosive popularity: Slender. A game with very low graphics and near to zero story. In the game you walk around a forest collecting pages while a spooky character “Slenderman” passive aggressively follows you. The game is simple, it’s concept is simple and it is executed wonderfully, Slender used good sound design and ominous music to build tension and only occasionally you saw the monster followed by a startling and loud sound. However what made it so popular was how scary it was, and thanks to youtube the game only spread it’s popularity. Asphyxia’s audience is the same one as Slender. People who want to get scared, they don’t need a complex story or the best models and graphics. A horror game is designed to scare people. And that’s just what the game should be. Many people will NEVER make the connection to Nazi concentration camps, and a lot of people don’t care. It’s nice the story is there but ultimately it’s not what they’re here for. The Audience wants to be scared above all else, they can buy into a concept and a story but only if the game IS a horror game. And not just a cranked out rushed attempt to capitalize on horror games recent popularity.

Cultural persepctive analysis of Asphyxia

IN out game our characters are all from varying parts of the world, this was done to show diversity among the crew and appeal to more people. Our characters include.

The main heroine: Shavogne Dobrovolsky. Is a russian gypsy and the granddaughter of the cosmonaut Georgy Dobrovolsky who dies in space. In the original concept of the game, she died at the end from asphyxiating from the lack of oxygen, which would be a link to the title of the game AND be an ironic death as her grandfather also died in space. However due to our limited knowledge in Unreal we focused on having a playable game, rather than sticking with our original concept.

The others characters were chosen for diversity so we were not focusing exclusively on one country. We felt it important that the main character be a woman as to not appear sexist, Having an all men group propelled an old stereotype that the men would do all the work and the women would do little else.

Historical perspective analysis of Asphyxia.

Asphyxia took it’s influence from the Nazi concentration camps of world war 2. Those Atrocious places were subject to many unethical things and were forced to do manual labour and ordered around until their deaths.

We wanted to incorporate this into our game which started as you go around the base and you complete tasks that you are forced to do. Because if you did not the monster would find and kill you. however implementing a task based system in unreal was a lot more complicated.

So our game changed to reflect the gas chambers, a very dark and sensitive topic among world war 2′s history. We believed that you go around the base collecting Datalog’s - reading about what happened here while a scientist who’s survived somewhere talks to you on the radio. This man at the end of the game betray’s you by draining the station of Oxygen and stealing your ship.

This ending was what tied the title and the game’s concept together as you’d been collecting datapad’s (A task you are forced to do) and have you unknowingly passed or in this case suffocated as he betrays you.

He was also german, though it was a stereotype of the german man being evil. We didn’t want to change his nationality as German’s were the most recognisable “Bad guys” in the war. Due to this it was kept in.

here is a cutscene planning piece for a cutscene I planned to implement in the game, It was a good idea and built tension between the player and the monster. However it was not as long or as narrative driven as our introductory cutscene. As such, while i stand by it as a good idea. It would be more to the games benefit to focus on our introductory cutscene, more so than this one.

Here is the concept art for Gatsudrasm the Necrotic. He is a large monster with fleshy vents covering his body, which he uses to release gas. he has six eyes reminiscent of birds in design allowing for him to have good vision which helps his large figure see his surroundings and move accordingly. given his huge size his body moves slower than his brain process's as such he has evolved a level of intelligence which allows for adaptive thinking. With the lower half of a combination of crab’s defensive legs and the spiders abdomen all his important organs are inside his abdomen and protected by a thick carapace, his main body is more fleshy and mucus covered similar to a frog as to allow the gas to escape easier. I love his design and will possibly re-use him in a later game. however I am dissapointed he won’t be used in our game and lament not being able to include him in a scary cutscene.

#LoveMyBoi #HappyPapaValdarakk #MonstersAreCool

My Atrocities Idea

For our Atrocity project we had to come up with ideas individually and then select 3 ideas that were best among them. For my Atrocity I chose the mustard gas attacks of world war 1, Which I knew there was plenty of research for, and is a recognizable Atrocity. For my game idea I wanted to create a monster that would be the representation of the gas attacks. Since both sides used gas I wanted to use the monster as a representation of the gas itself, showing that no matter which side used gas the affect it had on people was devastating.

I chose the location of Alhambra because it had a lot of interesting architecture and it has a good environment that could function as a good level.

In terms of gameplay I planned for it to be a 3D maze game, with the goal that you would have to navigate and escape from the city. With a gas mask durability bar and small monsters that attack you to keep the game interesting. With the dense gas fog obscuring your view putting the player on edge and having them focus on sound to listen out for monsters.

The story would be a twist at the end where the monsters that were hunting you would reveal themselves to be people once you put on a military grade gas mask. The message being that the monsters were just people who wanted your gas mask and were desperate to save themselves. A message that I thought would be a good way of showing the atrocity.

However my idea was not chosen as the final idea due to people believing my game would be too linear and boring. While I do not believe my game has these faults I believe that the problem lied with me for not being able to show them my idea clearly enough or that the group were more excited by space and more interested.

#RIPGatsudrasm #GatsudrasmWillAlwaysLiveOnInMyHeart

The Beyeux Tapestry

here is my logo design, I created this logo in the pixel art style and wanted to use colours that would resonate with medieval times. The following is my analysis of my logo design.

The logo uses brown as it’s prominent colour and emphasizes on the oaken part of the title. The keep, walls and background are all wooden brown except for the flag and the flag pole. The flag is bright red to contrast all the brown, similarly the metal flag pole stands out bringing more focus on the red flag. The corner designs are reminiscent of the colours used in the Bayeux tapestry and tapestry fabric choices of the time. As most fabrics depicted the environment in a battle, a village, or even in the Bayeux tapestries case-The life of William the conqueror.

The background is imitating the grain present on logs that were used by wood carvers at the time to further emphasize that the design is wooden. The overall colour choice of the logo is to reference the main materials used in construction. Stone and wood. The Title “Oaken Keep games” has very fantasy sound to it, for example instead of calling it “Wood castle” “Oaken Keep” sounds more impressive and strong. The usage of these words to sound strong is shown again by the main wood they used in William’s time was Oak, Not to mention that Oak is a hardwood a catagory of wood that as it’s namesake suggests is hard and strong-and Oak in general is considered a strong tree. Hence the phrase “Strong as an Oak tree”.

The logo follows an obvious pixel art style that looks pleasing and is iconic of early games and some current indie games. Using this style it appeals to people who are fond of that style and could perhaps hint that the games they make may all be in this style.

In conclusion the usage of design to appeal to that time era, the choice of words and font project a strong, formidable base that draws inspiration from the Age of castles, in English history.

#BringOnTheDay #LetsDoThis

I researched other logos that incorporated a castle in their logo. Considering that my theme was “Medieval” and castles are a staple of the medieval era. In comparison to my own logo I believe it should incorporate a castle as it is the most recognizable, however to ensure it stands out it will not be a stone castle but instead a wooden keep.

#CastlesAreCool #Stylised logo's

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