CT4011 Assignment 001
This assignment has four categories: Branding, Interface, Character Design, and Environment Design. For each categories we have two options for what we want to create, based around a game title of 'Smasher' and 'D-Light'.
To begin understanding each category I am going to research into games that I feel have similar; logos, HUD/UI design, characters, environments, interfaces, etc. to get a better
Smasher - Research
Before breaking down into a specific category I decided to make a mind map for what a game called "Smasher" could potentially be, this is just to help me consider multiple areas and quickly break each idea down into what the character designs, environments, HUDS/Menus, and logos could look like based on existing games for inspiration.
D-Light - Research
I did the same with D-light, but ultimately I felt like with the brief for this it is a bit more set out for what you need to make, such as futuristic building, and a superhero character. Nethertheless I looked at games that make use of futuristic buildings and their architectural types, and superheroes that can fit this theme,
Brief 1: Branding - Logo and Store Icon
The first brief requires a logo and a store icon for either category based on a game or mobile app. From my initial impressions of both of these names, I like the idea of a game called 'Smasher', I personally believe it can expand across so many genres and themes of video games, and therefore this can offer a wide variety of how a logo and store icon will look. Despite this I still think it's important to generate some ideas for a logo for 'D-light', this way if I change my mind on early ideas for a 'Smasher' logo, then I will still have mood board research and maybe early sketches to help.
To go about making a logo, it will be important to do lots of research into existing logos, explore multiple themes for what the logo will need to convey, create mood boards and early sketches, and then move into photoshop and illustrator. I will look into learning more about colours, typography, styles and more to consider when making a logo.
Because of how broad I believe the term 'smasher' can be, I looked at games from many different themes including; fighting, platforming, action, adventuring, and more. The styles of these logos follow specific ideas depending on the theme of that game, a fighting game logo usually has bold colours, sharp edges, angled and stylised typography, this well represents the type of fast and action heavy type of game they are for. Stylised fonts are common across video game logos and titles, whilst it makes sense for a business or most brands logos to have professional, often single colour and plain fonts, this is almost the opposite with video games, as they are trying to represent an entertainment platform, and appeal to a market that is going to be more interested in a creative, bold, unique logo. This will be important to try incorporate to my designs.
Some logos in video games have symbols as well to help represent the game, examples I looked at were Mortal Kombat, Skyrim, Destiny, and more. These symbols are recognisable to me, however if someone didn't know much about video games, then these alone wouldn't be enough to inform someone on what the product is, so for my logo I think it will be wise to make sure the name of either 'Smasher' or 'D-Light' are clear, however I do like the idea of having a symbol as well, for 'Smasher' a fist symbol could help to enforce what the logo needs to say. In the case of the 'Fallout' logo above, the lightning bolt style symbol through the letter 'O' using negative space not only adds detail to the aesthetics of the logo but represents the use of energy in the games, and in general the symbol implies action.
This was my initial design for a logo for smasher, the fist representing 'Smasher'. I wanted the style of it to look like the fist was embossed in metal to look like it had been punched in, I found this quite hard to achieve in photoshop so it is more of an indented look, and I don't think it looks good enough for a final design. I spoke to my tutor and we discussed that this would actually work better as a store icon, which is something I will keep in mind going forward, as a logo should be cleaner and usually be a transparent background design.
I tried to clean up the design and add some more detail.
Because my first attempt ended up more as an icon, I tried to take the theme of the fist and make an actual logo, experimenting with the colour, and positioning of the text.
Due to Illustrator being better for making logos and icons due it's good Vector tools, I spent time learning some techniques for illustrator, as my designs in photoshop were not vector shapes and therefore did not scale well, which is not good for a logo. The idea for the store icon above is based around a superhero cartoon style, as I feel this is still a good representation for the term 'Smasher'. It uses the same fist style from before and simple vector shapes, I feel the colours are bold and punchy, which is what I wanted for this style.
Using the superhero theme I attempted these logo designs, once again using Adobe Illustrator, they are fairly simple, reusing the fist shape I made, and with a fun font that I feel is simple and still conveys the theme. My issue with these designs was picking colours that worked together. I didn't want the fist and the text to be the same colour, but finding two that worked proved challenging, so I will probably try some more logo designs.
For the term 'Smasher' I had an idea based around a warning stamp that you might find on a letter or important document. I followed some tutorials to create the stamp effect shown above, I was hesitant to use text with a texture effect, as most logos just use a plain fill or gradient, but I like the way this looks, however it is still finding the right colours, and placement.
Final Logo
I started to move away from the stamp look, but still use the textured effect, and simply duplicated the text and the fist, and then experimented with the colours, until I found three that work well together. The result is what I think is going to be the final logo design. I feel it isn't the typical style that 'Smasher' would follow, this being darker, grittier, tones, however I believe it still works as the logo is bold, bright, eye-catching, and stands out. I personally think it is memorable and that is important for a logo.
Final Icon 1024x1024
Final Icon 120x120
To finish off this brief, I changed the colours of my store icon to match the new logo, I think it looks really nice and would stand out on an appstore, to visualise this I made the concept above showing how it would look on the Apple Appstore.
Brief 2: Interface: Visual mock-up
Creating these basic wireframe sketches was harder than I thought, video game huds take a lot of planning as key information needs to be displayed, and be easily accessible, but if these elements take up space and are visually displeasing, it will take away from the experience of the actual game. For 'Smasher' the elements I think that are important are; a health and energy bar - (Type of gameplay that would involve fighting and combat), A minimap - (Locating enemies etc.), Item boxes - (To display thinks such as grenades or abilities), and then perhaps something like an XP bar. What to include would vary based on the actual game.
Making the wireframes in photoshop required using grids and rulers, to make sure the spacing was good, and things were equal distances away etc. Things I had to consider was the spacing between the edges of the screen and where the HUD elements start, then if there are elements near each other then how far should they be, the positioning of the mini map was tricky as I have it as a circle, and if its in line with boxes, it looks slightly off, so it took some use of the rulers to position it in the middle of the boxes below that represent health and energy.
In Adobe Illustrator I made these health and energy bars, I took inspiration from games like doom, as well as overwatch. These are fast paced games that require focus on the gameplay, and therefore things like health bars shouldn't be too distracting, but I also wanted it to be clear. This is why I shortened the health bar as when I imported the longer one to a 1920x1080 blank page, it took up way too much space than I wanted, so shortening it in Illustrator to five blocks meant it was less obstructing.
Character Designs - Smasher
This first mood board shown above contains characters that I initially thought of when considering the term "Smasher", these are a mix of strong, large characters, robotic and non humanoid characters, or a mix of the two. These are from a wide genre of games and media but something I noticed is a similar pose of a few characters, with their hands in the air, this makes their strength very obvious and is something I will consider if I choose to design a character in this style.
From my mind map I had the idea that "Smasher" could be about mining gems and minerals, rather than a strong or large character. I think this offers a more unique visualisation on the term and I have played lots of fun games with this objective and theme such as "Spelunky" and "Steam world Dig" and I have had some initial thoughts on my own designs for a character for this type of game which I am going to sketch up, as well as something that could fit a different genre, such as a fighting game.
I don't have much experience with sketching or have many art skills for designing characters, so this is a challenge for me, especially with the body positions of characters, I created two very different characters above that both have elements linked to smashing things, e.g. the mining equipment, or robotic body parts.
I used some simple watercolour brushes to visualise how the characters would look with colour, I decided to use the character design above as I felt it had more unique elements. Because it's not a fully human character I decided to experiment with different body colours to portray this. The tubing shows the character is obviously different and this is likely the cause of his strength. The robotic legs also add to this.
For some more detail as I wanted this to be as unique as possible, I created this enhanced boxing glove sketch, it might take away from the seriousness of my character designs, but I think it adds a fun touch whist also showing strength.
Environment design: Futuristic Building
