###### tags: 'Uni work' 'Games art'
# <21309613>_1J6Z1016_2324_1F_Journal
https://hackmd.io/o7D2CrFaQjKiou4bwGDwRw
### Games for Good (1J6Z1016_2324_1F)
### Games Art BA (Hons) L6
### Keira Steele

---

**Land Sea and Inbetween**
--


When discussing the theme for this project, we pretty much immediately knew we wanted to do a game based on animals. Upon further research we narrowed our theme down to animal endangerment and spreading awareness on this subject. We all collaborated by adding our ideas to a Miro board to effectively communicate our ideas to one another. Once we discussed our theme we then assigned roles. I took upon the role of 3D character and environment artist.
I started my research by looking at websites such as WWF and Sea Life where I found a plethora of information showing lists of endangered animals. I picked out a handful of them and read up upon each one.


As a group we decided to split up the animals and environments into groups with poppy modelling aquatic creatures, Holly modelling amphibians and I would be modelling terrestrial animals. Furthermore, we concluded that the continual theme that connected all our individual animals was that the reason for their endangerment is because of Humans, causing the loss and destruction of their habitats. With this in mind I picked out two animals from the list I created and researched more in depth about them.

---


(2), (5), (6)

----


(3)

---

Once I collected all this information It helped me to start collecting inspiration for each of their environments.


My group was amazingly effective at communicating as we had a scheduled discord call every Tuesday as well as seeing each other throughout the week this allowed us to be able to ask each other questions and clear up areas about our project some people were not so sure about and overall, just help each other out. We decided on a low poly style for our game, I kept this in mind whilst creating a mood board for both my savanna and forest environments. Making sure to investigate into low poly models of the assets I would be needing.




After doing my research I then went on to doing some rough sketches of what my animals would look like in their environments. I had a brief idea of their habitat being on a small floating island which we then ruled out as we wanted their original habitat to look expansive. I also sketched what I envisioned the African dogs getting cleaned up would look like with inspiration from Nintendogs.



I made a list of modular assets to model. Because we were going for a simple low poly style I didn't need to make a lot of assets for the environment. With this in mind I talked with Holly asking if she would need any help with the sanctuary as it seemed she had a lot on her plate. she mentioned that she could do with some help with the equipment for the animals which I then added to my list.

---


In week 3 we took a group trip to Manchester Museum for primary research. We got to see a lot of animals which had gone extinct and overall, the trip was very educational. we were able to find animals which were similar physically to the animals we are working on in this project.

---


I found some images of African wild dogs side profile to use as a reference for my 3d model to get the proportions right. I started my model with a cube in order to get more of a boxy look.
This is the finished look for the African dog. I had a small issue with the ears with getting them in the shape that I wanted, I also forgot that I needed both sides to be symmetrical for my rig, so I sliced him in half and mirrored one side of him. Furthermore, I colour picked off an image of an African dog to get the right colours which made it easier to texture. All of us decided to texture our animals in Maya with a basic lambert material to make them all unified and simple for the art style we were going for.


I followed a tutorial for rigging and this is the start of the skeletal structure I made which I tried to make as accurate to the actual structure as possible.


Next, I started my 3D model of the red panda, I struggled to find a reference for a full side profile of a red panda with the head in line with the rest of its body. furthermore, I did have to start this model again as the file did not seem to save properly so I could no longer access it. Apart from this it was a very straight forward model.


I did the same method to the panda as I did to the African dog with the colour picking and making sure to do similar markings to that of the panda. I communicated with the group to see if both of my models were moving in the same direction as theirs. Poppy and I compared our works and were pleased to see that they looked cohesive. My dog and Poppy's turtle worked particularly well together as they both had a similar colour palette.



(4), (1)

The rigging for the panda was quite hard as I have not rigged a 3D character before. So, I followed a rigging tutorial step by step to make it easier for myself however I still had some issues trying to understand how the skin weights work as I was having issues with different components influencing parts of my model, they were not supposed to. such as the face of the panda getting disfigured when trying to move a leg. I eventually got to a stage were most of my issues were solved however he still looked a little silly. If I had more time, I would have worked on this a little longer.

---

Red Panda Rig Video
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1a_QmF4O57rHCctaKTG0x3fB4h6zxdmAu/view?usp=sharing

---

Animation

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1fT7RU5ALBrFOfoUmmyM5H_63agWv94A7/view?usp=sharing

when animating the walk cycle for my panda, I found that there was still a lot of issues with the skin weight causing him to become a bit deformed in places. however, for my first try the animation didn’t turn out too bad. I will need to research to get a better understanding of 3D rigging and animation.

---



Next, I went on to modelling the interactive objects for the animal. They would be used to help the animals with health and hygiene as the animals are being brought in from environments that are no longer appropriate to live in. Some animals might be suffering from some illness when brought into the sanctuary so these would be some of the items that will help them along their journey.

---



These are my modular assets for both my environments for the animals. I used a YouTube tutorial to figure out how to model a low poly tree as I was not too sure how to go about it however it was simple enough. so, I created 3 normal tree variants for the Savanna and two big trees for the forest. I used all these assets repeatedly changing their form slightly by either changing their scale or rotating them. I shared these files with both Poppy and Holly for them to use in their environments and the sanctuary, so the work looks cohesive.


These are images of my environment composition ideas. I originally started with a small plane which I was going to place a few assets on and then place walls around and make them in to mirrors so it looks like the world expands on forever. However, I decided not to do this and just construct the whole environment. I did experiment with using the image which I had drawn, for the background however I felt it didn't go as well so I opted for the normal background with the added edition of extra rocks to give more dimension to the scene.




This is the finished result for the Savanna environment in which the African wild dogs live. Within the game the player would travel here in order to help move the animals to the sanctuary because it is no longer safe for them to live here. I felt the floor looked a bit flat however, poppy showed me a sand texture she had used for her underwater environment which she then sent me. the texture helped the scene a lot as well as helping both our scenes to match each other. This is very important as the common feedback when presenting our work was to make sure we had a solid idea on our art style and to make sure our work fit together cohesively which I believe we have achieved after much communication and comparisons.

---





Over the easter holidays Poppy and I were discussing our work and came up with the idea of creating art for the loading screens for when the player is traveling to and from the sanctuary. The Idea is to add informative facts about the animals on these screens for the player to read while waiting to load in. I was inspired by the image above and based my composition loosely around it. Mostly using the image as a colour palette. I went for a simple style in order for the facts to be more distinctive against it. however, I didn't get the chance to fully finish this piece as I prioritised my 3D models.




This forest is another one of the artworks I made for the loading screens. I made the environment of a forest and a savanna to match the 3D habitats I was working on. I wanted to give it a dark moody however I felt it looked a little too light so I turned down the brightness and turned up the saturation slightly. this contrasted with the slight light shining through gave the vibe I was looking for. I didn't get the chance to add the loading sign and facts to the image however, I would have going forward.

---



This is my 3D modelled forest environment with the red pandas. Using modular assets severely cut down the time it took me to create this scene as I just kept duplicating my assets and moving them around the space till I had a composition I liked. I changed some of the colours of my assets to give more contrast within the scene which we all agreed worked well. I probably would have liked the scene to be a tab bit brighter as well as adding aspects of human interference such as felled trees to show the reality of what is happening to their habitat however, I am happy with how it turned out and would have added these details if I had more time.

---



I took it upon myself to make the Logo for our project. As a group we hadn't really talked about this specific aspect however, I felt as though we needed some sort of branding to bring it all together. we had already decided to call the game Land, sea and in between as a reference to the animals we decided to create. with this in mind when coming up with ideas for the logo I decided to add animals in the logo however the animals I sketched are different to the ones we 3D modelled. I did this because had we had more time or more members in our group we would have been able to create more animals and I would have liked to think we would have used these animals as both of them are endangered also and generally I wanted to steer away from the animals we had been focusing on and be more inclusive.


---


I created a rough mock-up of what the UI would look like within the game. The bar at the bottom show’s what’s in the hot bar and the players can quickly scroll through them to get the object they need similar to Minecraft. The to do list is in the top left and will regularly update with more tasks for the player which they can also find in the player journal. The top right corner will have continuous facts about animals the player is near to make sure the games as educational as possible. spreading awareness with what’s happening to these animals.

---
link to verticle slices
https://youtu.be/IEpPeJycTUw
https://youtu.be/lJ-acHxuCOM

Poppy experienced a few issues when exporting all of our assets into engine causing us to only be able to produce a basic run around of the complex.

---
Overall, I believe our group collaboration led to a great outcome. Each of us cracked on with what we needed to do while being able to ask each other for help when needed. we communicated consistently and reliably stopping at intervals to make sure our models would fit together appropriately. Within our project we used an abundance of modular assets to make our workflow more efficient and cohesive as a unit.

---