Victoria Hunt_222.454 VCD Research Project

[since I have used this blog since I was a baby 1st year] 'Major project' posts are tagged #454vcd

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Move to Miro

After SuperCrit, I liked the UI of Miro and think it’s just a bit easier to chuck stuff up than Tumblr, so from this point I’ll be posting more stuff on my Miro boards

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Based on the feedback I got from SuperCrit- I’m going with this logo- just tidying it up making a Illustrator version- also a pixel version, and some experiments with gradients like the street fighter one its based on

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Just some old layouts that I ended up scrapping 

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Some pixel tests (dithering, using a website to generate pixelation with text)- I was finding a 64px canvas was working, so trying that out with some different characters (Spiderman, thinking meme guy)

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Narrowing down potential logos- quite liking these

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What I’m thinking for the transition between ‘lvl 1′ and ‘lvl 2′

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Character Select screen

I have managed to skate by in this design degree not being capable of drawing (in hindsight classifying my 2nd year illustration elective with Donald as a whoops). Fortunately in this case I just used some DnD character creation software (HeroForge) and based the characters that a player could choose from off that.

I originally had a bash at doing just straight lines and fills, taking inspiration from more of the 90s comic book arcade games (XMen- Children of the Atom specifically)- but it looked trash. (top right)

Switched to pixel style renders (middle left) + just a cursed image that happened that I thought was worth documenting (middle right)

Potential layouts for the character select screen (bottom)

Bambang- pirate (mermaid/ water adventure) Hector- knight (goblin/land based adventure)

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Thinning the herd down- I liked this Defender style one, tried it out with some more traditional fantasy colours (and then just some others for fun).

In the end it just looks a little too Marvely/actiony/adventure/ Indiana Jones for the vibes I’m wanting (a little more fantasy). The one I also liked before (lucky 6) got culled too- didn't perform well when scaled down small for lvl2.

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Had this concept from wk5ish (top)- the font in hindsight was an atrocious choice, but I liked the idea of the bigger X (and its adventure connotations). Tried mashups with other concepts I liked but looked like more of a dead end than it was worth. 

Last attempt was with the Mortal Kombat style font- but ultimately the X became too heavy handed and threw the balance off

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Had a chat with the table group- Sammy suggested this toggle feature to reveal the “simplified” or the paradaxian version of radicalisation 

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Experimenting with some layouts for the Cheat Codes page and some scribbles working stuff out

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Important Discoveries while doing initials for the Devil’s Advocate feature A- I can just use mosaic in After Effects to get pixelation in a pinch (to use in combination with CRT) see left

B- CRT (cathode-ray tube, not critical race theory) or what gave old monitors that very specific look I can also do in After Effects, which can lend more to the arcade look. However, something I was still toying with, doing more line based illustration (to line up with circled style stuff for the text I had planned for in lvl 2) did NOT work with the CRT effect (again in hindsight that should have been obvious, but crystal clear now) so that sort of style was canned. (see right).

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Exploring how a chiefly text based game might be formatted- what fonts might work, dialogue vs exposition, how it might fit in the monitor shell, how it might lock up with graphics.

Had a long look through old arcade games and key formats used there- absolutely trawled through this Youtube channel > https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9mrDyAw2EvsnFozzrxLrmQ looking at old arcade games.

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Trying them out with how they might look as a start screen

Top right- conveyed the right vibes, but looks too much like Stranger Things- 

added in the 80′s gradient style to the font to try and distance the Stranger Things vibes but the serifs of the font clashed with the emboss back.

Adding in a CRT style layer, bottom right looks more promising.

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A lot of the arcade game logos were just 80s style text so had a bash at some of those- [metallic] gradients.

^ here are some of the rejects (& why)

1st- too golden, is just not gamey enough. 2nd- a bit Mojave desert- not that gamey. 3rd- adventure vibes, but leans a bit too much into Schwarzenegger 4th- the font is too scifi > which led me to  5th- I followed a 80′s logo tutorial which used the grey back emboss, but I didn’t like it > 6th- replaced the grey back with a purple- makes the gradient pop a little more

The 6th one I think has potential

- the ones below were just me messing around doing some warmup stuff, getting overly attached to the glow effect for a solid 5 mins.

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Music for Lvl 1 

Shopping around for some royalty free 80′s arcade/8bit music that I can use- found some of xDeviruchi’s stuff (bottom pic) which they’ve allowed people to use for free so score for me!

HUGE CREDIT TO THEM (where I got it from)> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5bn3Jmvep1k

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Wk 6- Delta 

No more Supercrit, and a move to lvl 4. In the meantime, I’m wanting to explore more of an arcade aesthetic, and was struggling for a bit on how to communicate it on a modern day laptop. Creativity managed to strike though, with an outline of an old arcade style monitor that could evoke it. There were a couple of different styles of monitors though, and it also depended how far back inside the machine the monitor was set- a lot of them were set on an angle. Testing out some differing outlines.