Concept Art

Development of artwork, requests, suggestions, samples, or if you have artwork to offer. Primarily for the artists.
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Josh
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#16 Post by Josh »

The following is taken from a conversation in another thread. These are the highlights of the conversation for me:
pd in response to 'Humanoids and Freaks are fine' wrote:Exactly, but in both cases it has to be possible to tell something about the race, by looking at the design(communication through design). This works by referencing familiar things. I don't want arbitrariness and I can't stress this enough.

All those are mainly concerns for the people going to visualize the alien races though. I'd encourage the people who "write up" alien races to leave the visual and physical descriptions as loose as possible. Most likely they will have to be adapted and changed anyway.
To stress this; you need plausible reasons for adding stuff in, and try not to get too attached to the race. We will find arbitrariness and root it out, and you have to accept that the original design might not come out the spitting image you wanted after it passes through the system. I apologize, but it's one of the hazards of teamwork.
MentokTheMindtaker wrote:btw
@Josh
you rule! Thanks for sharing your conceptual thoughts with us. I very much like what you have created(I'm not only refering to the Gyisache drawings). If you search for more on the cowardly herd alien concept, maybe you will find this interesting: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierson%27s_Puppeteers.
Thanks ;) But I have no idea what other "drawings" you're referring to :P
And thanks for the puppeteers link too, it's a very insightful read.
Tortanick wrote:Well the Eaxaw are certainly different, being xenocidial nuts at war with everyone, if that's not exactly what you mant you could have a look at the Etty (better names are welcome), although I'd be weary of useing the Etty, Eleazar hasn't evaluated them yet and secondly I've got a strong suspision they're more suited to being a minor race than a playable one. That said looking strong and noble are explicit design goals for their warships. Its not a proud warrior race but their ships would be a strong contrast to the Gyisache's.
It's more of future thing. I'll get done with the Gyisache ships first before trying the Hhhoh or the Eaxaw. Nothing is set in stone, but the way I see it, minor races, if they exist, will have generic ships if they have any at all e.g. Space Empires V. (Minor races would be a neat way to show people's creative influence in the game.)
Utilae wrote:The Gyisache ships should have the following traits:
-able to retreat/runaway ie speed
-small, stealthy, not noticeable
-individually small, but together a group of them are a 'flock'. Like a school of fish, they can come together to look like a bigger fish.

I adopted Impalers ideas [about the Gyisache's appearance] so I stand on that side. But the original idea was not about a race of sheep, but a race with sheep like behaviour. The behaviour is the key, and that is there cowardly, conservative, flock traits.

...The only real sheep thing about them that I was aiming to capture was their behaviour.

Like most race, I made up a random name. But if it helps, this is the pronounciation:
Gyisache (Yee-Saish)
This was the most important segment and something I'd like to explore further. Possibly here or in the story thread or on pm, whatever they are more comfortable with. As it stands, the ships you see now ain't gonna work. Shame. Some inspirations for ships:

- Star Control's Spathi Eluder
- Grape clusters
- Maracas
- Bottles
- Solar sails

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Re: Concept Art

#17 Post by marhawkman »

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Puppet_Masters

Hehe... I dunno why but for some reason I was thinking that was what Mentok was talkign about. (apparently I was wrong)
Computer programming is fun.

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Josh
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Concept Art, he screamed

#18 Post by Josh »

Bleh.

Image
Image
Image
Image
Image
Image
Image
Image
Image
Image
Image

Make what you will of this. I won't post anymore Gyisache stuff in this thread; it will get it's own when the time comes.

I think it deserves it.

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pd
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Re: Concept Art

#19 Post by pd »

Nice work. I wasn't sure how to treat buildings. Having them look like tech icons allows us to reuse (most of) them for other races. Using actual pictorial representations adds fun, but means we'll have to redo them for every race. Your sketches are quite varied in style, which doesn't have to be bad and is to some degree even more realistic. They still can be "unified" by using similar colors, materials and lights. If we decide to go with images instead of icons the next step would be to paint on top of those sketches. I might do this myself.

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utilae
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Re: Concept Art

#20 Post by utilae »

I really like those sketches.
Excellent work.

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Tortanick
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Re: Concept Art

#21 Post by Tortanick »

Very nice :)

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Re: Concept Art

#22 Post by pd »

Do you guys have an opinion about using images vs. icons as well?

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Re: Concept Art

#23 Post by tzlaine »

I prefer icons. I really like the style of icons we've used throughout the game so far, and frankly I'm almost always disappointed with the little pictures of buildings, techs, etc. that appear in many games.

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Re: Concept Art

#24 Post by Tortanick »

pd wrote:Do you guys have an opinion about using images vs. icons as well?
I'd go for icons, but less abstract and more detailed than the tech icons. That said it these are nice pictures it would be a shame to waste them. Maybe they could turn up in the manual?

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Re: Concept Art

#25 Post by tzlaine »

I was thinking those would look nice as iconified versions of those same sketches -- that is, they could become the detailed icons Tortanick suggests.

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utilae
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Re: Concept Art

#26 Post by utilae »

I think pictures would be very welcome over icons.

Pictures can immerse you into the game better.

There is no reason why we cannot have both. Because the picture artwork adds a little imagination to the tech.

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Josh
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Doo dee doo

#27 Post by Josh »

Doo dee doo...

Image
Laser
Image
Ion Cannon
Image
Neutron Blaster
Image
Hell Bore

You know, it doesn't seem like anyone has (really) given any thought the specific nature of ship components or buildings, which I find odd.

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Geoff the Medio
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Re: Doo dee doo

#28 Post by Geoff the Medio »

Josh wrote:You know, it doesn't seem like anyone has (really) given any thought the specific nature of ship components or buildings, which I find odd.
Could you elaborate on the meaning of "specific nature"? (In a brainstorming thread if not graphics related)

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Josh
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Re: Concept Art

#29 Post by Josh »

No it's not really graphics related, but it's not really a big deal either, it was more or less an observation. It's more obvious with the description of the ship components, because the descriptions seem short, vague and tentative. As for the buildings, they just seem generic to me.

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Re: Concept Art

#30 Post by Geoff the Medio »

The ship components had nearly no effort put into their design. I just needed a functional basic set of components to demonstrate / test the new ship design mechanism and to replicate the previously-existing basic set of hard-coded ship designs (mark I through mark IV, scout and colony ship). I also obviously didn't put any effort into their descriptions, due to having other things I wanted to focus on getting done.

Buildings are a bit more mixed. Some are just test / demonstration. Others were made a couple years ago by someone who didn't really put much thought into them, at least as far as I can tell. Those are mostly the generic +X to Y type, which is, I think, most of the buildings. The Caducean Institute likely falls into this catgegory. These are the type I'd like to avoid making too many of, as they're really quite boring if there are too many of them. Better, in general, are techs and buildings that alter how the game rules apply or what the player can do, rather than ones that just give some numerical bonus to a statistic...

A few buildings are the result of random ideas I've had that seemed nifty or that I felt were needed now or in future to test game mechanics. The Observatory falls into the latter category, by giving planets extra detection so that when we have a decent visbility system implemented, there will be a way for planets to interact with it and to test it.

Basically, buildings and ship parts and hulls are content. Before then can be done in a long-term useful and satisfying way, we'll need more game systems and mechanics to be implented. The v0.3.1 and later effects system let us to some trivial test / filler buildings, and more recent ship design stuff let us add some ship parts, but not much can really be done with them until more of the game (eg. combat) is implemented.

We could probably pare down the existing buildings and techs to get a basic set that's more playable that could be balanced and that fits well into the currently functional scope of the program, but it's not really a priority for me when basic game systems need designing and implementing...

Or if you're just referring to the fluff descriptions for the techs, parts and buildings, rather than their function, then I suppose you can think, in general, of tech descriptions as the result when I tried, most buildings as the result when someone else didn't try very hard, and ship parts as when I didn't try at all to write decent descriptions.

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