Week 1: Meet the team

And so it begins....

Over the course of the next 12 weeks on Game art Design our team, 'Off Our Rockers', will be working on our Alice in Wonderland, Off the Map projects for the British Library and Game City.

But before we inform you about the nitty gritty details, let us first welcome you to our team:

Amber- Team leader: http://amjamblog.blogspot.co.uk/ 

Braden: http://bradenmay.blogspot.co.uk/

Dan: http://www.danbullockart.blogspot.co.uk/

Freddy: http://cantoncreates.blogspot.co.uk/

Luke: http://lukethomasdaygart.blogspot.co.uk/

Denzil: http://denzilfordegameart.weebly.com/

On the first day of the project we were set into our teams by the lecturers. Once we got ourselves together for a group meeting, we wanted to choose the type of game we wanted to create and the specific elements that could be fascinating to implement in our level. Additionally, we identified each of our strengths and weaknesses.

This was vital as it allowed us to distinguish our individual roles for the team. However, For the time being, no roles have been set in stone during this idea generation phase.

During the group meeting, we created a mind map on a wipe-board. This process was not necessarily to identify a final idea for our level. Instead it was to generate many different interesting ideas that could lead to many different unique and original designs.

Our wipe-board

After our first group meeting, we got a chance to discuss with our project mentors, Emma Ash and Mike Powell. They instructed us to follow  and understand the project brief as much as possible. Furthermore, they advised that we stay true to the original Lewis Carroll text. However, one of the most important rules that they instructed was to understand the time scale of the project. Although the OTM project was much longer than than any previous project, it is easy to underestimate how quickly time can pass.

Original book

After the meetings, we all agreed to read 'Alice's Adventure's underground' and discuss potential ideas we could create the following day. 

We wanted to discuss style guides to our level. We felt that identifying the overall style of the level is very important, as not only does it influence the final outcome of the project, but it also the majority of the elements in our level. This includes the style of our characters, environment, the colour and lighting of the level, and also the game-play.

We chose this because we felt we felt that working on a side scroller would be efficient and manageable in the time scale we were given. Similarly, creating a side scroller is a completely new experience for everyone on the team.

An example of a 3D side scroller: Yoshi's woolly world

Unfortunately for our team, we aren't as well balanced as other groups in terms of roles. We have 3 environment artists and 3 character artists which leaves no overall engine or concept artist. This meant that throughout the course of the project we would have to compromise roles, even if that meant not working to our certain strengths. However, all of us were willing to support the team in any way possible.

Deciding upon the style of the level, was not an easy process. We all had different ideas for the project and we needed a way to get ourselves all on board to a similar idea. To do so, we all created mood-boards, to show the various ideas that we were thinking about for the design of the level.

So there you have it, the first, week of our off the map project. It's been an enjoyable experience getting to know each other and we look forward to next week were we will be looking more in depth into styles.

References:
Original book image: http://www.lewiscarroll.org/2011/09/19/yours-virtually-for-free-the-original-under-ground-manuscript/
Yoshi's woolly world: http://www.hardcoregamer.com/2014/12/16/five-games-to-keep-on-your-radar-in-2015/123158/
Snape frustrated .gif: http://mashable.com/2013/06/13/rage-gifs/