Mike
Oct 8, 2007, 02:18 PM
When any number of artists work together on a project, it is essential that they understand each other and work as consistently as possible, regularly taking the time to keep updated on the others' progress. Bryan (http://www.astraware.com/company/team/index.php?name=bryan) and I (http://www.astraware.com/company/team/index.php?name=mike) wanted to give you a taste of how that process worked on our new Astraware Boardgames project.
The programmers were finishing up work on their previous games but for us, the project was underway! We had little time to come up with the visual motif of the Astraware Boardgames pack so we jumped straight in, considering the look and feel of the boards and pieces, that there are set dimensions and measurements to be kept to, and certain items that must be available to a player. We threw around a number of themes, styles and layouts for the games, all of which were, at this point, inconsistent with one another. But the point of the exercise was to brainstorm and get down as many ideas as possible.
http://www.astraware.com/images/blog/80/crockagammon.jpghttp://www.astraware.com/images/blog/80/reversimock.jpghttp://www.astraware.com/images/blog/80/tictac.jpghttp://www.astraware.com/images/blog/80/ludogarden.jpg
Toward the end of pre-production, Howard gave us a big clue which went on to become integral to the look and feel of the project. The clue was 'Grandpa's Study'.
Instantly, our ideas were synchronised...
http://www.astraware.com/images/blog/80/howardgames.jpg
Mike: There was a sense of Christmassy excitement when Howard arrived laden down with boxed board games. We gathered the team together along with some pizzas and beers and an evening of board game fun was underway. The key questions on our minds were 'what makes this game fun?' and 'how can we make our versions feel real?'
Bryan: We were also thinking about how to make these games better. One thing we discovered with Snakes and Ladders was that it can take AGES to play. Some of the team also really enjoyed cheating when backs were turned. For a while we thought about incorporating that. One thing that was problematic with the game was that it was the same experience every time. Nothing but the dice rolls changed. We realised we had the power to improve on the game in that department.
Mike: After the board games night we broke up the workload a bit. Bryan, being the more experienced of us both dealt with layout and design, working closely with Kieren (http://www.astraware.com/company/team/index.php?name=kieren) to come up with solid functionality that worked visually, while I began to experiment with cosmetics. While I collected photos of various wood textures, (mainly focusing on oak and walnut), and spent hours hidden away lighting and photographing various game boards and pieces from all kinds of different angles, Bryan was figuring out how we make the games feel real.
http://www.astraware.com/images/blog/80/backgammonsketch.jpg
Bryan: I wanted to use the items you'd expect to see in a board game in as real a way as possible. When you roll the dice, rather than have it show a number and move the piece, I wanted the player to actually ROLL the dice. I tried various mechanisms to make this work, eventually coming up with the dice shaker.
http://www.astraware.com/images/blog/80/dice.jpg
Mike: We did some great sounds for that too... I especially enjoyed conducting the staff in the cheering chorus used when you win a game. While Bryan was putting in the functions, I wasn't having much luck with photos of pieces. There was a sense that I wasn't getting enough of my own ideas into the pieces, and there were loads of issues with lighting and angle consistency, no matter how careful I was with the camera and lights. Eventually I went down a road I haven't visited for a couple of years. I fired up 3D Studio Max and was soon glad I did. The chess pieces were comparatively quick to produce. They were dynamically lit and I was able to get completely consistent shots. I could texture them in the wood material of my choosing and get exactly what I wanted. Having the models also meant I had assets to use for other areas of the game. I was able to theme things within it to keep the same look. Things like the loading bar in the form of a box full of board game pieces gave things a very organic and themed look and became very possible with some careful composition once the heavy modelling work had been done.
http://www.astraware.com/images/blog/80/loadbar.jpg
Bryan: There were places where we had to dispense with realism and go for the hand drawn approach for functionality. With Snakes and Ladders we wanted to be able to make the game really user changeable. We experimented with ways to allow the player lots of different ways to play the game. I knew the secret with that was to make enough variants of snakes and ladders to make the board really user definable. To cut a very long story short, I broke the snakes up into small pieces, all with their own colour values attached to the different bits. It got very complicated and took a lot of design and reworking, but eventually I managed to make it all very memory economical and it worked really well.
http://www.astraware.com/images/blog/80/snakesandladders.jpghttp://www.astraware.com/images/blog/80/snakesbits.jpg
http://www.astraware.com/images/blog/80/chesspieces.jpg
Mike: I was finding loads of need for pixel popping too. Especially when it came to the low resolution versions of the games. I had to basically redraw the models, which had now become reference material, in pixels. This took a lot away from the realism, but with low resolutions we can't mess around. Clarity is too important. So what we lost in realism, we gained in nice clear graphics which still keep in style with the original models.
http://www.astraware.com/images/blog/80/knightart.jpg
Mike: Also I had to add a lot of hand drawn art to the title screen and close up graphics... Unless you spend weeks on the detail, a 3D model tends to look a bit dodgy when closer up than it's designed to be. When suggestions came in that I give the knight model some character and use him as the game's main title emblem, I generally handled the request with a couple of hours in photo shop. I'm particularly happy with the little guy. I based his cool, smug grin on a young Bruce Willis!
Bryan: We really pulled together on the game. Usually we can cope with one artist putting the style to a game at any one time. This one has taken a lot of concentrated effort between the two of us. I think it's because the devices we're making the games for are getting more and more powerful.
Mike: We're having to evolve to stay as far ahead of the devices as possible, improve on our visual ideas. Basically, the moment we discover there's more we can do, we get right in there and do it. Having the two of us co-ordinating our efforts on Astraware Boardgames, helps us to match up our styles. That can only strengthen the quality of our graphics. We know we have a good reputation for that so we obviously want to keep the games looking better and better. Our customers are loyal and appreciate crafted games. They deserve the value for their money.
The programmers were finishing up work on their previous games but for us, the project was underway! We had little time to come up with the visual motif of the Astraware Boardgames pack so we jumped straight in, considering the look and feel of the boards and pieces, that there are set dimensions and measurements to be kept to, and certain items that must be available to a player. We threw around a number of themes, styles and layouts for the games, all of which were, at this point, inconsistent with one another. But the point of the exercise was to brainstorm and get down as many ideas as possible.
http://www.astraware.com/images/blog/80/crockagammon.jpghttp://www.astraware.com/images/blog/80/reversimock.jpghttp://www.astraware.com/images/blog/80/tictac.jpghttp://www.astraware.com/images/blog/80/ludogarden.jpg
Toward the end of pre-production, Howard gave us a big clue which went on to become integral to the look and feel of the project. The clue was 'Grandpa's Study'.
Instantly, our ideas were synchronised...
http://www.astraware.com/images/blog/80/howardgames.jpg
Mike: There was a sense of Christmassy excitement when Howard arrived laden down with boxed board games. We gathered the team together along with some pizzas and beers and an evening of board game fun was underway. The key questions on our minds were 'what makes this game fun?' and 'how can we make our versions feel real?'
Bryan: We were also thinking about how to make these games better. One thing we discovered with Snakes and Ladders was that it can take AGES to play. Some of the team also really enjoyed cheating when backs were turned. For a while we thought about incorporating that. One thing that was problematic with the game was that it was the same experience every time. Nothing but the dice rolls changed. We realised we had the power to improve on the game in that department.
Mike: After the board games night we broke up the workload a bit. Bryan, being the more experienced of us both dealt with layout and design, working closely with Kieren (http://www.astraware.com/company/team/index.php?name=kieren) to come up with solid functionality that worked visually, while I began to experiment with cosmetics. While I collected photos of various wood textures, (mainly focusing on oak and walnut), and spent hours hidden away lighting and photographing various game boards and pieces from all kinds of different angles, Bryan was figuring out how we make the games feel real.
http://www.astraware.com/images/blog/80/backgammonsketch.jpg
Bryan: I wanted to use the items you'd expect to see in a board game in as real a way as possible. When you roll the dice, rather than have it show a number and move the piece, I wanted the player to actually ROLL the dice. I tried various mechanisms to make this work, eventually coming up with the dice shaker.
http://www.astraware.com/images/blog/80/dice.jpg
Mike: We did some great sounds for that too... I especially enjoyed conducting the staff in the cheering chorus used when you win a game. While Bryan was putting in the functions, I wasn't having much luck with photos of pieces. There was a sense that I wasn't getting enough of my own ideas into the pieces, and there were loads of issues with lighting and angle consistency, no matter how careful I was with the camera and lights. Eventually I went down a road I haven't visited for a couple of years. I fired up 3D Studio Max and was soon glad I did. The chess pieces were comparatively quick to produce. They were dynamically lit and I was able to get completely consistent shots. I could texture them in the wood material of my choosing and get exactly what I wanted. Having the models also meant I had assets to use for other areas of the game. I was able to theme things within it to keep the same look. Things like the loading bar in the form of a box full of board game pieces gave things a very organic and themed look and became very possible with some careful composition once the heavy modelling work had been done.
http://www.astraware.com/images/blog/80/loadbar.jpg
Bryan: There were places where we had to dispense with realism and go for the hand drawn approach for functionality. With Snakes and Ladders we wanted to be able to make the game really user changeable. We experimented with ways to allow the player lots of different ways to play the game. I knew the secret with that was to make enough variants of snakes and ladders to make the board really user definable. To cut a very long story short, I broke the snakes up into small pieces, all with their own colour values attached to the different bits. It got very complicated and took a lot of design and reworking, but eventually I managed to make it all very memory economical and it worked really well.
http://www.astraware.com/images/blog/80/snakesandladders.jpghttp://www.astraware.com/images/blog/80/snakesbits.jpg
http://www.astraware.com/images/blog/80/chesspieces.jpg
Mike: I was finding loads of need for pixel popping too. Especially when it came to the low resolution versions of the games. I had to basically redraw the models, which had now become reference material, in pixels. This took a lot away from the realism, but with low resolutions we can't mess around. Clarity is too important. So what we lost in realism, we gained in nice clear graphics which still keep in style with the original models.
http://www.astraware.com/images/blog/80/knightart.jpg
Mike: Also I had to add a lot of hand drawn art to the title screen and close up graphics... Unless you spend weeks on the detail, a 3D model tends to look a bit dodgy when closer up than it's designed to be. When suggestions came in that I give the knight model some character and use him as the game's main title emblem, I generally handled the request with a couple of hours in photo shop. I'm particularly happy with the little guy. I based his cool, smug grin on a young Bruce Willis!
Bryan: We really pulled together on the game. Usually we can cope with one artist putting the style to a game at any one time. This one has taken a lot of concentrated effort between the two of us. I think it's because the devices we're making the games for are getting more and more powerful.
Mike: We're having to evolve to stay as far ahead of the devices as possible, improve on our visual ideas. Basically, the moment we discover there's more we can do, we get right in there and do it. Having the two of us co-ordinating our efforts on Astraware Boardgames, helps us to match up our styles. That can only strengthen the quality of our graphics. We know we have a good reputation for that so we obviously want to keep the games looking better and better. Our customers are loyal and appreciate crafted games. They deserve the value for their money.