Soldier

The Jackal

This world we live in needs every day hero’s, ordinary people doing extraordinary jobs, people like our armed forces and our police, not a caped crusader with a celebrity culture surrounding. The jackal is a hero behind the scenes, he helps everyday people to become hero’s, help themselves, help others and inspire trust in our police force and belief in our justice system. Originally created for military missions, he went behind enemy lines to give us the advantage we needed. The Jackal is elusive, a master of espionage, he has the power to teleport at will through the power of his suit and a naturally talented sharp shooter , the Jackal never misses.

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Josh Allen Submission to the Talenthouse The Stan Lee Foundation & Todd McFarlane Invite

Source: http://www.talenthouse.com/creativeinvites/preview/a42e4b6ae593959f62fba8ab6d8e37be/154

Games Night

Cyber punk thingy ?

Animal team

Animal team

Animal team

Animal team

Animal team

Animal team

Menu

Game Play

Multiplayer

When you go multiplayer one person will control the environment and the other will control the character, same controls apply to the environment player but the character players has left, right and jump to navigate the level. So you now have the choice to either work together or try to kill the poor trapped character.

Game Play

Controls

After play testing different games I decided to use the tilt controls as I thought they suited best and not enough games out there utilise these controls. The environment needs to be rotated to in order for the character to escape the level so as controls go I decided to make it so that you have to tilt the ipad to move the environment.

Props

During the game you will be able to personalise the levels with graffiti and stickers, you will also be able to add pictures from your ipad. What I really want to do is to have completely random graffiti every time you play e.g. every time you play the game whilst connected to the internet you will be able to see graffiti that other people, although I’m not shore of the practicalities of making happen These are the default stickers that you can use in game. Solely for the games enjoyment and personalisation, kind of to add humor and mock the authorities in this dark game.

Environment

This is one of the dangerous mazes the contestants find themselves in.

Environment

onstructed like many others to house the remaining population of human kind. They are self-sustaining environments only built to withstand a certain number of people, but as overpopulation spirals out of control, the resources are stretched thin, trouble looms, the enforcers and powers that be take a heavy hand in trying to lessen the numbers, one of the by-products started off as a game show and then developed into a way of life, instead of xfactor, families in this future sit around watching ‘trapped’ people killing each other as they try and free themselves from the maze.

Character

This is one of many of the enforcers of the game and the city, no. 5.they are a dominant presence, that people greatly fear.

Character

An arrogant, strong, silent type, with a strong sense of justice and right and wrong, he just to end the game.

Character

Danny’s young, agile and very opinionated, it’s her big mouth that got her thrown in in the first place.

Character

I wanted Johnny star to stick out as a cocky, confident character, overly sure of his own ability, colourful and interesting, like the other characters, in order to stick out against the dark environments.

Character

This character is an unknown, rumours spread that he may have been part of the security forces at one point, and to be silenced he was thrown in the game.

Character

         I wanted a male character to reflect Rebecca’s character. He’s vibrant and a bit crazy himself

Character

About character: This character was heavily influenced by tank girl, a strong willed, crazy character who’d be great at leading the revolution, as a homage to tank girl I have even named her after tank girl, Rebecca buck, tank girls real name.

Apps

Visited the Apple Store for more product information, workshops and events on Apple

products Address: Merchants Hall, Chapelfield, Norwich NR2 1SH

For my research I visited the apple store to play test the iPad, iPhone and iPod to see which platform would be most suitable for my game. I played an array of games to see what’s on the market now and to make sure my idea or something similar isn’t already out there. As I went through the apps store, I looked through the most popular apps such as ‘angry bird’ and ‘plants vs. zombies’. 2 very simple games which started off as internet games have earned the creators a lot of money! As much as I didn’t like plants vs. zombies, I couldn’t help feeling slightly addicted to it. Angry bird appeals to the sense of humour and puzzle solving, it’s like fun destruction.

I took this simplicity from the games, its surprising because some games have created 1^st person shooters but they are nowhere near as popular, they just don’t appeal to the casual gamer.

Research

These are the eclectic Game and film narrative styles that I feel influence me.

·         Tanzk Girl (James Hewitt ) for its weird alternative wasteland characters and for the strange eclectic fashion sense on the characters, which have lots of random badges, dangling jewellery, military hats. I want to make my characters have their own identities and stand out from the dark environments and plain clothed enforcers.

·         Soylent Green, for its strong narrative that shows how far people will go when civilisation is on the brink of collapse. With high population and low resources, it questions are morality and speaks a harsh truth.

·         Running man , What I want to take from running man is the game show mentality, where the public have become so de-sensitised that they wouldn’t react to people killing each other for entertainment on television.

·         Blade Runner the beautifully, dingy, dark environments where it’s always dark, always raining and has a sense of overcrowding on the streets where the public know about the pending doom.

·         Judge Dread I want to take some of the environment and time period, lack of supplies and overpopulation in the mega cities again.

·         Fifth Element again similar environment and gritty, urban time period.

·         Loco Rocco’s Simple fun and beautiful art direction, and its tilt controls that move the environment to move the character.

·         Little Big Planet for its randomness and use of stickers 

·         Limbo for it’s alternative art direction and puzzle solving throughout the game

·         Mirrors Edge’s I like mirrors edge for its modern urban style and a small minority of people fighting against the authorities which is essentially what I want my game to be about.

From this mismatch of ideas the best way I summed up the genera was as an Alternative, Urban Scifi Grunge whatever that is.

Apple Interactive Concept

Brief

I found during my research into apple apps for ipad, ipod and itouch that the majority of present games is of an arcade nature; classic, clinical and ordinary. Apart from the exception of a few they are all provided for light entertainment. I feel not enough games of this type focus on art and story, they seem to lack depth.

I want to make a concept that is more artistic and storyline based something that keeps the players playing on and entices them in.

I have gathered research and gained inspiration from games such as ‘limbo’ and ‘Loco Roco’. Simple but fun and have a beautiful art direction, ‘Loco Roco’ is a perfect example, it has the controls I want to utilize, I want to create a platform game where the player controls the environment not the character. As for ‘Limbo’, the alternative art direction and the puzzle solving throughout the game gives a good basis for what I want to achieve and the mix of the two games should create something enticing and addictive.

MC Escher’s stairway drawing, ‘relativity’ or ‘house of stairs’ is a great example of the kind of creepy, confusing environment I would like to create with muted colours and shadows to add to the mood it makes you feel the environment is in control not the characters.

The character I want to create is going to be a fictional creature or person, depending
on what fits in with the game play, the game play is side-scroll platform and using the motion sensitivity on the apple products, tilting the environment to make the
 character react and complete its objectives.

Final Outcome

After finalizing my ideas i met up with the group to decide on what contributions (as some of the design jobs where done by the same person,) would be used in the final mock up.

My contributions include:

• Initial idea of Build it Up board game
• research  (Transition into Modern Media) 
• Art Deco theme and narrative
• board art & design
• box art
• skyscraper building and pilot laying pieces
• rule booklet
• game logo
• print and assembly of board, rule book and box

All of my ideas were used in the final outcome apart from the skyscraper building, it was decided by the rest of the team that robots were more fun. Although I am happy with the final outcome, I still don’t feel that the robot idea quite fits with the rest of the design, but it is good to include the robots as it shows the diversity of the idea – as in it can be used easily over many different ideas and genres i.e. a star wars edition.

Character Concept

Character Concept for Build It Up

Build It Up Tower

This is the sky scraper that you would build during the game; the building is heavily influenced by the empire states building.  The building was completed in 1931 the limestone-and-stainless-steel Streamline Deco dazzler climbs 102 stories (1,454 ft.) the Empire State Building is one of the city's favourite landmarks and a shinning beacon of its era. The other building that I conceded was the Chrysler building built 1930, this building is a very beautiful deco sky scraper but it was not as the most imposing, the limelight was taken up by the empire state building (at the time the tallest building in the world.)

Reference http://www.frommers.com/destinations/newyorkcity/A24015.html#ixzz13egZPhW6

Box Net

Rule Book

Rules

These are the amended rules since play testing, we found with the original game it was too long and nothing got built as players would use the sabotage too often and it was too hard to get pieces.

Before the rules were as followed

We did not have build or chance cards as they were places to land on around the board, in theory the player would try to get to the squares that had the reinvent pieces, that sort of worked but it took a long time land on the right square.

Then we also had 8 chance squares but at the time they only had two functions one was to steel from an opponent when they were carrying their pieces or to demolish something in their build area, it sounded fun but it ended up with know one with any pieces or money.

Those where the only problems that we could find with the game so we decided to introduce cards and on the board I made build squares and chances squares so when you land on them you pick a card from the relevant pile. For the chance cards we decided on 40 different outcomes good and bad that ranged from giving and taking money, destroying parts or dud cards that did nothing but make you laugh.      

These are the new rules of the game     

The aim of the game is to build up your building/robot before anyone else.

1.      Roll the die to move in a clockwise direction.

2.      When you reach a build card square, you can pick up a card from the top of the deck, but you can only take a card if it is a foundation piece, as you can’t build from top to bottom you must build up.

3.      You can only carry one build piece at a time until you get back to your build area.

4.      If you land on a delivery port, whatever piece you are carrying will be delivered to your build area, so then you can carry on collecting more pieces. there are a total of 4 Delivery ports to land on so you could get up to 5 pieces in on trip around the board, “if you’re lucky”

5.      Chance cards if you land on a chance card, take one card from the top of the deck and ether reap the reward or suffer the consequences.

6.      Money! To fund your build you will be given 1000 credits at the start, each piece costs 500 credits, on each trip round the board you will be given 300 credits when you pass your start point. You can barter with your competitors for their pieces, but they can make up any value   

7.      Whoever adds the final piece to their build area Wins!  

We play tested again after we made the changes and enjoyed the outcome it took us about an hour to finish the game, it had many ups and downs for me as one minuet I was broke with no money, the next I was the richest on the board.

The chance card added really fun twist to the game, we all cringed when it was are turn to pick one up, despite there been a lot of good cards that help you out, we still feared the prospect of getting a bad card. 

Overall it was a really fun games that got very competitive, I am glad that the play testing showed the faults as we now have a much better game.

Box Art

For the box art I have tried to make an authentic art deco appeal that reflects the overall style of the game.
I have kept to the principals of the art deco style by making the building symmetrical and imposing, a lot of art deco art celebrates its architectural beauty and technical achievements .

Build it Up Board

For my board I wanted to make fantasy flying city witch I felt held the ambitions and ideas of the 20s/30s era.

Build it Up logo

This logo was inspierd by the ufa film who prodused Fritz Lang's Motropolis in 1927 this film was a big insperation to me and it shows a beutiful art deco interpritation of the future.

Build it Up Concept

After we all researched different aspects of board game design we met together to discuss what we found. I wanted to make a board game which the player could build a part of the game the other liked the idea and we came up with Build it Up and the idea was for four players to travel around the game and collect building materials to build something like a house, we had in mind that this concept could be remade in to many different genres, this would add to saleability so we all chose a genre, I chose architecture the others chose robots, rockets and, builders.  

The genre I chose was architecture as it is something that I have a great interest in, my two favourite eras for architecture are the Georgian and Art Deco. I ended up deciding on the 1920s – 1930s Art Deco.  
The 20s to 30s was a time of grate economic boom where industry and beautiful art deco architectures thrived, but the latter half of this era came great economic depression and a world war was looming.

 It was an era of optimism, architecture, art, enterprise, and then of great depression were people struggled to live and the need to escape was ever present.
This seemed the right era for the game as the building gives you the sense of achievement and wealth, and with the flying city portrays the need to escape.
I think this era mirrors are own as we have had are time of fanatical prosperity and now we are paying the price with a resection like in the 1930s. People will enjoy be able to enjoy this games because it gives you the optimism of building, enterprise, struggle and the need to escape. Especially when you are winning, it will give you the elution that of power and that you are wealthy and good with your money. This is the sort of game people needs these days, it gives them a chance to retreat to a fantasy and think everything is ok.

I tried at first to make a New York style city with central park in the centre, as New York was the centre of art deco architecture and the modern marvel of the sky scraper, but when making the art work for the board this seemed a bit boring. I wanted more fantasy so I decided to make it a flying city witch I felt held the ideas of and ambitions of the era.

Board Game Research

Board Games Transition into Modern Media

Intro
These days board games can be can be played from your games console and online games sites and you can do this with friends across the world. Within the last 20 years modern technology has greatly advanced, we have seen the birth of the games console, personal computing and the internet. Will this make board games as we know them obsolete?

Advertising
Since 1940, TV commercials have become one of the most effective, persuasive, and popular method of selling products of many sorts, board games included. Thanks to advertisement millions of board games are sold every year, you only need to go into you local toy store and see the large variation of games to see its popularity. While this is still the main source of advertising, campaigns have started to move onto the internet.

The Transition
Board games popularity has needed to keep up with modern times e.g. monopoly using a chip and pin reader instead of money; more and more we are seeing board games turning up on the games console market places and on the internet, it seems that the direction of the board games is digital. There seems to be a big generation gap between people who only like board games and people that like digital games.
On a computer you can’t lose the pieces, you can play with people across the world, it’s convenient and easy to setup and no tidying. The other side of the argument is that you lose the tactile experience of the game, and using a computer is less social than playing with friends and family around the dining room table.

We have slowly started to see the board games arrive on pc’s e.g. 1985 spectrum, commodore 64 1988 windows 3.0 1990; showing that the industry has realised a need for their merchandise to be available in this format – this also shows the growing demand for computer versions, as this fills a gap in the market as the only way to reach teen-twenties audiences. Previously, the only way they tried to reach the teen market was by producing many different versions of the same game i.e. monopoly has many: Simpsons, lord of the rings etc. and a star wars versions of risk.

One of the biggest challenges for the board game makers of today is making something innovative enough that it will capture the imagination of the next gen consumer. They have tried to make it more exciting for those who are not computer literate whilst also including a more social aspect by using touchscreen pub machines with lots of games, which can be activated with money. This has added new elements like gambling into the game to try to make them more exciting. But this then asks the question, are they really board games anymore?

ConclusionAlthough the board game industry has made a leap into the digital medium and has established itself a part of the new market, sales of board games remain constant and the large fanbase will continue, as it has been a traditional family concept for a millennia.Bibliography
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Television_advertisement

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly_(video_game)
 

Super Georgian Mario Bros

When I was colouring the images in Photoshop I had to options, I could paint it in the style of  Turner or John Constable or in an early photographic style, as I had little time I chose photographic style. Also I wanted to add colour but there was no colour photography in this era, So the Georgians use to colour over photos with a light wash of colours to try and bring the pictures to life, I decided that this would be the best way to colour my pictures.   

Luigi

Luigi makes up the other half of the Super Mario Bros
whilst making the brothers I needed to keep their identity
so I made Mario strong and stocky with a red colour
scheme and made Luigi lithe and agile, I also kept their signature moustaches.

Mario

When making Mario’s characters I realized that pluming was not a very common occupation of the time. So I decided to make him a chimney sweep instead, then the idea that we could replace the pipes in the game with chimneys and have the levels play out on the roof tops of London.

Toad the jolly mushroom head servant of Princess Peach

In the Georgian era was all about power and opulence and one way of showing this was to have servants and to dress them up in exotic cloths from far away pleases. So for Toad i gave him a turban to mimic the mushroom and a similar colour scheme to make his character recognizable.

For Princess Peach the hole team agreed that we were bored of Peach been a pathetic damsel in distress. We felt she needed to be a stronger character, so i wanted to give her more on an attitude\rebellious nature, but also i wanted to keep elements like colour scheme and her gracefulness  

I had to look up Georgian dress and look at the fashions of the time to make it look authentic but at the same time make her recognizable as Princess Peach.

Yoshi

The first thing I thought about was that there were no green and red bouncing dragons with sticky out tongs  in the Georgian Era, so this was the first character I started as it was the most interesting.

In the Georgian era Kangaroos were made to have Boxing matches with men and they rarely lost, this gave me the idea to make Yoshi in to a Kangaroo. Plus kangaroos have all the right treats to pull off a Yoshi, they can jump, run fast, have a tail and their loveable, but for their attack I thought that the kangaroo kick the enemies with his big feet or punch them with his boxing gloves.

Games Art

Group Project Induction Week

Mario in the Georgian Era

In this project we were put into groups of 8 where we then chose a team leader to pick two random subjects out of a pot, we ended up with Super Mario Bro's and the Georgian Era.

Next we had to assign rolls to each team member to create the Antagonist, Protagonist, Props and Environments; it was my roll to make the protagonists as my strengths lie with character concepts.

The only guidelines given were to include one original aspect from the original game and to be done in the style that was chosen out of the pot. So, the original aspect we decided to keep from the game was the side scroll platform and the characters setup to keep its identity.

First of all we needed research into the Georgian era, this research definitely benefited as all the initial ideas looked too Steampunk, which is Victorian influenced.

I'm looking forward to start  my characters as i love the Georgian era, i feel that i could make to interesting interpretations of a Georgian Mario.