Folklore : Art Production

Art production is a very key factor in the whole process of making a game. It’s important to know and plan out the art assets correctly to avoid potential problems near the end of the project.

Continuing on with my previous post on Folklore’s development process, let’s focus a bit on the art assets. The biggest telltale sign of the Folklore team’s first environment would have to be the Faery Realm. The reason this is so is evident in their first demo, which features the Faery Realm, and Warcadia. Sounds like the obvious of course, but there are other things that point to that, and the reason I’m going into it is because it sheds light on their production process.

Folklore : Development Process

I’m getting incredibly close to finishing Folklore for the Playstation 3, so I felt it was time I did a review on it. However, rather than presenting a typical review, here is more of an in-depth look at how they actually made the game, and how these practices should be used more in the game industry. Now, this is all purely speculation, but by applying industry experience to it, I think some of my speculations should be fairly accurate.

In Depth : Elwing01

Many of you have seen this photograph, and many of you have asked “how is it done?” Here’s an in depth look at how this image was accomplished.

How I Work

I’ve decided to put up a little diary of the processes I go through in order to create a piece of art. This is not really a tutorial, as a lot of this stuff is hard to explain other than “You just gotta keep at it until you get it.” but this will give you a pretty good idea on how to approach a project. I’ll be using my Apprentice Mage painting as the example. (how fitting for a tutorial).

Using Photoshop to Create Interesting Photos

Welcome to the second part of my basic compositing tutorial. If you haven’t gone through the first tutorial yet, I suggest you do so. Otherwise you will have no idea where I’m coming from or what I am doing at this halfway point.
The purpose of this tutorial is to teach how you can use the various tools in Photoshop to bring more life to your composited image. We’ll go through things like setting mood, changing shadows and lighting, and the principles of depth using light and general photoshop filters.
As a recap of the previous tutorial, we’ve gone through the process of selecting a background that would fit our subject, (in this case, Miko is our subject) and cut out her shape using the various lasso techniques in the previous tutorial. We also did some minor adjustments using a few of Photoshop’s adjustment menus. After we were finished, we had a fairly nice and convincing composite. But it still looked a little flat and uninteresting. Let’s add a little drama.

Basic Photoshop Compositing

This tutorial assumes you know very basic photoshop skills. If you don’t know anything about Photoshop, you may have trouble following along. I will try to be as clear as possible and have images to illustrate exactly what I’m talking about where needed. This tutorial was constructed using Photoshop 7, but Photoshop CS2 and above work the same way. To see a larger image, just click on the thumbnail and a pop-up will appear. Be sure to close the pop-up before continuing.
The purpose of this tutorial is the basic construction of compositing two different subject matters together into one. For this particular example, I will be using one of my figurines and compositing her on another background.

Darth Vader and Yoda in Soul Calibur 4?!

The weirdest news today, is that Darth Vader and Yoda will be appearing in Soul Calibur 4. It’s so weird and illogical, but yet is a welcome addition, as it seems the response is generally shock but still positive on the NeoGaf forums.

As you know, I’m an avid Soul Calibur fan. Though I’m not as big of a Star Wars fan, the thing I liked most about Knights of the Old Republic was swinging that light saber around and the cool sound it made. Being able to play as a Jedi, and Darth Vader at that, is just too cool, even if it did seem entirely out of place. I’m sure many people are asking “Why Star Wars and not Dante?” No idea, but who knows? Namco Bandai could be pulling a Smash Bros. on us and introduce even more characters as we get closer to the release date. This is still a very welcoming surprise though! Soul Calibur 4 will be released on Playstation 3 and Xbox 360. I own a PS3, so if you would like to challenge me online, don’t forget that.

My Wife is a Gamer

I never really thought that my wife was a gamer. She never plays Soul Calibur, or Final Fantasy, or Zelda, or Half Life. She’s just not interested in games. But she actually is, though in a very different sense.
There’s something to be said when a woman plays video games… (please, the image on the left is not true about female gamers) actually, there’s something to be said when a woman decides to do anything – especially when it comes to my wife. When she gets into something, she goes hardcore on it, and gets really focussed. This seems to transfer to her gaming habits as well. Most of the time, she has no interest in video games, but recently I got her MySims for Wii and I just can’t get her off that machine! I checked out the play history one night, and it showed 11+ hrs were clocked on MySims for the day. ELEVEN! It’s taken me 6 months to clock 29hrs on Final Fantasy III DS!

flOw

So it’s finally the weekend again, and my wife is doing overtime at work. Soon I know that I’ll be doing overtime too. Last night though, I decided it would be good to try out flOw, one of the Playstation Store downloads.

FlOw is a game about piloting an aquatic organism through a surreal biosphere where players consume other organisms, evolve, and advance their organisms as you swim deeper in. As you play, you grow and evolve into an elaborate, and often aesthetically appealing form. At the end of each level you unlock a new organism to grow and play around with. Controls are simplistic to the point of almost non-existent. Literally anyone can pick this game up and play. All you do is tilt your controller and your little organism will move in that direction. Press a button, and that organism’s ability activates, ranging from a speed boost to going temporarily invisible. There is a built in dynamic difficulty adjuster too, so anyone and everyone will have an enjoyable time playing it no matter what skill level.