Commercial Storyboard

Storyboarding thumbnails for a commercial about the board game we created.
Going to have lots of cheesy premiere animations.

Demonhunter Version 2.0 now avaliable!

Second version of my prototype Print 'n Play game is now available! Check it out!

From Concept to Final Illustration

I think it's interesting to see how something inventive grows and develops over time, so... I decided to sorta have a little monologue/assessment of how I went about creating the theme for my Print 'n Play game.

It began with some quick silhouette scribbles for character ideas. I knew I wanted the game to be competitive and to contain some sort of resource mechanic (if you read my earlier posts, I made this pretty evident). So... I made up some sort of good vs. evil stereotype. Elves and Demons. But I wanted them to have something in common so there wouldn't be an obvious "bad guy". If that makes any sense. To clarify a bit more, I wanted each side to appear from the same roots, as if to hint they were both just in their reasons for wanting a certain piece of land. That way, when it comes to choosing, the player would go off of aesthetics alone. ...Or whatever they prefer. As the creator, I don't really care which side they pick for whichever reason. It was just something I thought I needed to convey in order to break the cliche.

Then I doodled. A lot. Both sides got a variety of different looks before I started the finalization process, which began a week or two before our illustration part of the assignment began.

Of course, with character comes environment. Especially in video games. So that got some sketches as well. (Also shown in an earlier post.)

Then, these two pieces came about. These were to be the final looks for the two heroes/races of the game, as well as the chosen color Palette. Now, to move onto the illustration!

In the post before this one, I created around twenty or so thumbnails. Out of them all, I chose this one to sketch up further. (I did do four other larger sketches, but this is the only one that matters right now, so..)

After that came linework. This is how I usually start my more complete pieces. Line everything that is close-up or that requires detail. Everything else can be blocked out.

Then comes value blocking. A really annoying part because it requires a lot of tedious brushwork. Coloring within the lines. Ugh.

Now, shading. Also added a few more details to the background to create more depth (as well as show off more game mechanics)

Color, now! Also messing around with the shading a bit.

Finally, a croppsed version (to fit in the 11x17 boundaries) to turn in, with the contrast amped up. All done... until critique, at least!

Storytelling Illustration

Thumbnails for the storytelling/visual aspect of my boardgame!

My mind is all over the place with this one. Limited down to like, twenty of my thumbnails (as shown), and then seven of those that I liked. Might do more than one because I'm pretty quick when it comes to illustration.

Additional stuff, as well! Made visuals for some of the class cards I created for the new PnP version (coming soon! Soon as in, tomorrow):

Don't why they kept getting bigger... My mind magically ranked them by size?

PLAYTEST Part 2 !!

Alright, I went out and playtested "Demonhunter" at least 3 or 4 times and got some pretty good results.

First of all, some balancing issues:
Fire is used to purchase special units like Flyers and Generals.
I had a problem with my original scenario because one user could accumulate all the fire easily and then sweep the other person's team with special units.
So in order to balance this out, I had most scenarios start with a fire piece on the first rows, so each player could grab one at the start of the game.

Another thing I balanced was limiting the size of the army. Originally, you could buy as many pieces as you could afford, but that got crazy and too luck-based.

I also balanced the hero unit and made it so he could roll to retaliate against moves. The reason why I added this was because heroes started chasing each other across the board, and the game became tedious and unfair.

Another huge problem I had with my rules was general clarification of certain things. Also, a lack of visual guides, which would help guide the player.

Things to add:
-Visual Scorecard so each side can keep track, complete with hp bar.
-Visual guide to each class with simple bulletpoints
-Rewrite rules to just be simpler overall
-Difference between the demon general and hero
-General rules page as a guide for small things

Boop boop a doop.

Rules Draft

As much as I'd love to, I'm going to refrain from posting my rules draft for the time being. I don't feel... "safe" posting it this early. So, instead, I'm going to talk about a bunch of problems I faced whilst writing them.


First of all, the size of my grid became a problem very quickly. Using a 6-sided die for moves became a problem in a 5x5 grid, seeing as if you rolled a six you'd fly off the map. So, instead, I'm trying to push for a 7x7 grid. However, this is messing with the layout I created for my original playtest, which sucks because I have to remake most of the assets.
Another problem that came with the gridsize was balancing issues. I tried to keep the number of resources down so players couldn't end up with massive armies at the end of each play. So, a lot of larger maps ended up with more "decimated", or resourceless, pieces.

I ended up finding a solution to my die problem- if someone were to roll more than they could move on a smaller map, they would add up the additional movement points that they lost and could use them to move again. Or I might even implement an additional modifier later. Not sure, trying to keep everything lowscale right now.

Another problem I've encountered is developing the combat system. Creative, interesting combat is difficult. It's a fun challenge, but it really wracks your brain. So far I've come up with a system that involves a small, three "hit" based health system, which can be tracked easily seeing as you only have to deal with a maximum of five units at a time. Pencil and paper is going to be an important kitbash asset in the PnP version. I'm probably going to end up designing a cool place to keep track of all your units. Definitely in the commercial version.

Stay tuned for more updates and the finished rule booklet later.

 

Yaaaaaay

Concept Statement and Theme

My concept statement for "Demonhunter" will be "Quality versus Quantity".
This seems kind of vague at first, but after thinking about the strategy of the game in my head, it seems to revolve around choosing particular resources in the first phase to get a strategical advantage as opposed to gathering as many as you can. When I playtest it, we'll see if my theory is correct.

The theme/art for the game will be based entirely on the narrative side. The narrative is short and sweet, so it doesn't complicate things that much-- the game's narrative is summed up pretty much in one word: "warfare".
The setting is a forest that is being demolished, so all the pieces would be pictures of things set in a background that could be rearranged and still make logical sense.

Each one of the little icons on the pieces that represent the resources would be done in an elvish-style to represent the homeland of the hunters.

As far as the color schemes go:

Color scheme for Demon Designs.

Color Scheme for Hunter Designs.

The two opposing sides would have their own schemes, but I think for the entire scheme of the board I'd use the Hunter scheme, since the fight occurs on their territory. For the tokens for the demons, though, their designs will all be around this one scheme, with variations of teal-green, yellow, and a saturated red. As well as whatever values entail under those colors.

Here's some concept art:

I plan on doing some simple vector art in a combination of photoshop and illustrator to make the board and the chips/cards for the game.

Brainstorming Session: Theme, Mechanics

So our big assignment in game design now is that we're creating a Print 'n play board game. Which is awesome, 'cus I've always wanted to create something like this but never really found a good place to start. Anyways...

I have my mind set on a certain theme. So I've thought of different mechanics that can work around that theme, since I'm still not entirely sure how the game should be played. I don't know if I want it long, short, simple, (relatively) complex, etc...
My theme is a thing that I'm going to call "Demonhunter" for the time being. I'm looking to create a competitive 2-4 player game that possibly involves collecting resources, chance-based movement, different game phases, and a set space for the players to work in, unlike in Pocket Civ, which did not come with pre-determined space.

In this game, there would be two different sides of the board. This is a mechanic I know I want to keep for sure. However, I'm not entirely sure about whether or not I want to make it possible for opposing sides to cross over into each other's territory. This depends on the balance of the game. If the goal of one of the phases is to collect resources quickly, then could the opposing player steal the main player's resources from their side tactically?

Another mechanic, specifically about the space, is the shape of the board. Is it a basic square, grid pattern that the players move across linearly, or is it a bunch of hexagon pieces that the player puts together, in order to spice up the game everytime? I think the hexagons /might/ be a better idea, especially if resources come into play. I could include cards that indicate where to place the resource pieces and have special challenge versions of the game. If I create a grid setup, do they come apart, or are they all together? If so, should I create resource tokens instead of tiles to change up the game? And if more than two players want to join, should I add on additional rectangular pieces to each side in order to join up?

After the game starts, it's important to consider the game's central mechanics.
If I were to do phases, I was thinking about a resource collection phase and a fight phase, to keep things simple. The players would use the resource phase to collect various resources such as stone, wood, fire, etc., which could be traded in before the fight phase for different types of soldiers. Then these soldiers are used in the fight phase.
There would be four different types of soldiers to, yet again, keep it simple. Each would do different amount of damage to one an other (like rock paper scissors). For example, a regular "soldier" class would be effective against a "magic" class. Then a "magic" class would be effective against a "flying" class. Then, in order to balance everything out, both sides would have a "hero" class. Hero classes would be effective against /all/ classes, so the player wouldn't have to worry about getting enough resources to purchase every class. This allows for strategy on the player's part and careful expenditure of resources.

There is a problem with this system, however. If all classes are semi evenly matched against each other (there is also a disproportional amount of luck required, seeing as you and your opponent cannot know about your opposing armies), what is the point of gathering different resources? Well, you can sort of see your opponent's strategy based on what resources they go for within the time limit or turn limit (idea pending).

But, in another case, a different system to try would be classes that do more damage but also cost more resources. So, depending on what you earn, you can get a bunch of low cost troops and swarm, or you can buy a one or two big guys and deal out a ton of damage. However, keeping track of damage is another thing to consider, and may be difficult to manage.

The fight phase, and the game ends when one team is wiped out, or, alternatively, the hero is killed, for hardmode. The resource phase has a bunch of different ways it could end: a. when the entire map is leveled (all of the resources have been expended), b. time runs out, or c. the players have taken a set number of turns. Leaning towards a or b as an option, but could probably be played either one of these ways.

Alternate Versions of Theme:

Another version of the game I thought of was one with a ranking system, and health points. This I found more difficult because health points on PnP games is generally (from what I've seen) a sloppily done mechanic that is annoying to keep track of.

The player would start with the lowest rank. After collecting a certain amount of resources, they would get higher, the higher the rank, the more specific resources. If the one of the two, three, or four players meets, then one can chose to attack the other.

With an idea like this, balancing comes into play. Because of the open-ness of attack, I'd like to say that a player rolls the die in order to decide how far they move. The map would need to be medium-large for a game like this, so a player can keep their distance from another if they want to.


I'll post more versions if I think of them. In fact, I'd like to create a game that can be played in many different ways, because it'd keep things interesting. However, for this assignment, I need to narrow the scope to one main, effective version, in order to learn how to execute and balance a game correctly.

Pocket Civ Deconstruction

At first, I was hesitant to do this game for this particular project. Why, you ask? Because... Part of our project is to be prepared to explain the rules and demonstrate gameplay to the entire class. That... is going to be difficult. I accepted the challenge regardless, though! And here it is, my deconstruction of "Pocket Civ".

So I recently figured out through some d'oh moments and a couple of revelations that this game is basically a smaller, "simplified" version of the grandiose franchise "Civilization", which is available for the PC.
The game is incredibly similar in it's mechanics and terminology, but overall there is a different feel, since you are focused more on survival as opposed to expanding.

The goal of the game is simple... To survive. You must survive eight "eras", or rounds, in order to "beat" the game. You can also play off of things called "Region" cards, which have a specific goal and placement for all the regions in the game.

The game does not come with a board. I'd assume you have to kitbash it from another hexagonal-shaped strategy game (the purchasable version of pocket civ comes with one, not the PnP one), so I decided to use a whiteboard to make my life easier. I saw someone on a forum do something similar so I stole his idea. And it worked out great. The map would be the space of this game's play.

The core mechanic of the game is probably, or straight-up sheer luck. At the beginning of each game, after the player has either followed a region card or placed all of their tokens (Mountains, Forests, Tribes, Desert), the player draws three event cards. The number on the event card that represents the Era (for example, if it is the start of the game, it's Era 1. So the player would follow the corresponding number on the card) is the event that occurs in your empire. The events can be read on cards, which are in a deck that you can look through at your own will, or just keep in one giant sheet to check on to see the results of.

An Event card, a hand of advantages and a hand of event explanations. 



Your tribe tokens are the main objects of the game. Their attributes are their relation to the map, or the space, and how each card effects them. For example, a tribe placed near a fishing village is going to be destroyed by a Tsunami event. But a tribe surrounded by land will not be affected. The state of the token effects its attributes.

If your little tribes (and, or cities) survive all three event cards, you have survived an era. You add on an era for each round you win until you've reached eight.

More objects that effect gameplay are things like gold, resources, advantages, and glory. Unfortunately, this is where the game's rules get confusing. There is literally no clarification on these rules. I had to research a bit before I found a somewhat clear guide on how to gain and lose resources, gold and glory, but it still is confusing to me. So... I've tried to play without glory as a factor. This is definitely detrimental to gameplay, as it is a requirement to have a certain amount of glory to accept different advantages.

From what I understand from the rules, after each era you can build three more tribes. You can also combine four tribes to build a city, and after you have a city, you can start purchasing advantages. Advantages can help or hurt you (operative and resultant actions), (this is where luck and strategy plays an important role), based on how you use them. Advantages are bought with gold and resources. Gold is obtained through trading with other cities and expeditions (when you send tribes to search in frontier zones). Resources are obtained from the main empire zone (wherever your city is placed), based on the tokens that inhabit the same area.

So, as I said, the majority of this game is strategy and luck. The player learns how to carefully chose where they build their city in order to receive certain advantages to survive against events the longest. Cities cannot have over two advantages at a time, and in order to have more than one, the player must sacrifice another four tribes. The rules are also... very confusing. They take at least 30 minutes to commit to your mind, and ten minutes to read. It can be frustrating trying to figure it out, but in the end (at least in my opinion), it's worth it.

(Play zone.)

Each scenario has a different goal which spices up the game everytime you play it and encourages replays. I thoroughly enjoyed this game, besides its setbacks.

PnP Partay!

For an assignment-- yes, I can't believe it either-- we were required to print out some games and play them. AWESOME! So I tried three different games in my spare time, two of which frustrated the crap out of me and one that I enjoyed thoroughly for the brief time that I played it.

The first game that I played was a single player game called "Pocket Civ".

"Ooh, Ominous."

This delightful tree-destroyer (there are about 17 pages of cards and information to print out) was actually the most successful game I played, in my opinion. Even though I was playing by myself, I really enjoyed the strategy of it. You are given eight empires that you must keep from being destroyed by the most... random of tragedies. From famine, to lightning strike, to plain ol' misfortune... This game has it all. The catch of this game is the fact that it doesn't have an official board you can print out and play on, which I found to be kind of detrimental, but it does come with "scenario" cards with pictures of what your empire is supposed to look like. So I ended up drawing it on a piece of paper.

Now, I think I wasted around 3 hours playing this game by myself. Each game lasted around 20 or 25 minutes, and usually ended with my cities getting destroyed. There is an alternative way to win, however, which is your motive to keep playing. If you can survive all eight eras-- as the game gets more intense-- you win the game. You survived!

My favorite aspect of the game was managing resources. It is necessary to keep certain parts of the world alive in order to keep the resources from them incoming, so you can implement more cultural cards to benefit your society. Stuff like Laws to prevent your villagers from killing themselves, Farmhouses to keep the crops from totally dying off, etc. etc... Something I'd definitely like to consider implementing in my table top game... Oooh...

...I also played a few quick games that took under 10 minutes with my good friends Kevin and Hugo. These games were... frustrating. We understood them, but the rules were so oddly explained and vague for BOTH that we just... gave up after three games or so.

First of all, a game called "Shape Up." For the most part, this game made sense... until the end game. Scoring was DIFFICULT. It was hard to wrap our heads around.

"As you can see, Hugo just got three points! Or... two points?... One?... Ten? Do we even know?"

The main problem was how the symbols were repeated on each card. It would be a little easier to score if we had some design-oriented way to tell what associations gave us which amount of points... Which goes to show design is key! Make sure your game is designed CLEARLY, please, thank you!

And, finally, a game called "Bad Grandmas". This game was... alright. It was quick. The directions were a little vague, but the visuals were hilarious and entertaining for all of... 15 minutes. The point modifier was an interesting way to try and spice up the game, but since it only took a few minutes to play it would get boring fast. I mean, I totally understand the guy made it for his friends as a joke, so that's cool. Hope they had fun with it!

In conclusion... I really enjoy large-scale single player survival/adventure-esque games. Yes.

Maya Adventures (Part one?)

In 3D class, recently, we've started doing some relatively difficult stuff in Maya. And by difficult stuff, I mean UV mapping... which still makes no sense to me.

It makes WAY more sense than it did a few weeks ago, but, still... I have no idea what I'm doing. Teachers and Upperclassman reassure me that it'll make sense soon, so... I'll take their word for it.

Unfortunately, I am still not allowed to post screenshots (I wish, though!) so I'll just use this as a way to complain about some Maya functions that absolutely piss me off. That way, I can come back to this post a year from now and laugh about how stupid I was. Great.

First of all, ALL of my Maya hatred manifests in the "Unfold" tool. Now, I understand there are different ways (and yes, I have used them successfully so don't worry), but... this tool seems like it's trying to simplify the process. But all. It does. Is make it. WORSE. Ten times worse. It RARELY ever works, and when it does, it usually screws your UVs up, and you have to undo or remap them completely. God, I /REALLY/ hate this tool.

Not exactly a specific tool this time, but something that straight-up pissed me off was when I was working on a cloth piece... and an upperclassman showed me a tool called something like "sculpt polygon tool". What. The. %(#^. If I would've known about this tool before, I wouldn't of spent four hours trying to model a fluid piece of cloth out of polygons. Jeeze.

Well, that's all the rage I have today. Stay tuned for more infuriating lectures later.

Steve Hickner Stuff

So, about a week or so ago, I was lucky enough to sit in on a Steve Hickner lecture. Who is Steve Hickner you ask...?
Well, Steve Hickner is a relatively well known storyboard artist and story director who worked previously at Dreamworks. (I don't know if he still works there or not, by the looks of his IMDb he hasn't worked on anything in a while.)

Anyways, apparently every year Steve comes and recreates a few Computer Animation student's storyboards. Since he has a /ton/ of freetime on his hands (as he claims), he is able to make them around thirty times better.

I took notes during the lecture and there are a few important things I'd like to remember about storyboarding for the future. As a GAD student, I'd like to be flexible with what I do, so learning about every aspect of game art/design is important to me. So, here are some key points from his lecture that I consider important:

- Don't go too tight with zooms. Make sure you draw everything in the shot at a comfortable distance.
- Have at least 3 frames for action shots (while storyboarding). It's difficult to communicate the action to an animator in less than that.
-Make sure the characters are within "the golden egg", or the halo around the shot.
-Don't be afraid to use follow shots. Following the character's action can be interesting and should be used more often.
-Reptitive eye level shots are boring and uninteresting.
-Watch the perspective in your drawings. (Always important)
-The eyes are going to go to whatever is moving in the shot, so be careful as to where you place the energy.
-Go crazy with sound effects. Worry about the emotional impact over the realism. (I.e. how he used bacon sizzling to emulate lava burning)

...and those are the important points I wrote down from what I witnessed in his lecture. I look forward to taking those into mind when I work on my own storyboards soon.

Project Pitch and Concept Art

So... for 3D class, we had to propose and pitch an environment and/or narrative that the class would work on modeling for the rest of the semester. My idea was a little risky and didn't get chosen, but the idea that was the grand majority had similar elements to mine which is fantastic for me!

A piece of concept work I did for my idea- a native american theme.



Another piece I made to show some tapestries that could relay the narrative a bit better.

I'm seriously looking forward to incorporating some of my themes that I developed into the new idea. Unfortunately, I'm not allowed to talk about our project until three months from now, so you'll have to wait until then, internet! (Or whoever is viewing this.)

I can, however, share you some pieces of my concept art to peak your interest:

Oooh, what's this?

What are theeessee?

Lots of learning's gonna happen in the next three months. You just wait. If I don't make it out alive... tell my parents I love them. But I'm pretty sure I'll make it.

Freshman Turnaround

 Freshman year was... a learning experience. I know for a fact that I became a lot better in different facets of my artwork; especially composition, value balancing, and color scheming. I think my Drawing II class taught me a lot about creating depth and organizing environments and got me into something that I otherwise wouldn't of cared about. (It got me really pumped for the GAD major in general, too.)

Some stuff I did in Drawing II.

I also really enjoyed my animation class. It helped me understand that I really enjoy doing looping animations-- or idle standing animation. (Which, conveniently, is animation typical of video games.)

 

                                                       It won't let me post these videos!

Overall, I wouldn't trade my experience for anything. However, I would never want to repeat that. Ever again. It was a painful year of learning, yet totally worth it.

Favorite Trailer - Warcraft + MGSV

Picking /one/ favorite trailer was... extremely difficult. So I narrowed it down to two. After a long debate.
So I picked something recent and something not-so recent. For my first trailer, I chose the original World of Warcraft trailer:

World of Warcraft has almost regretably been a huge part of my life for a long time. (Mainly because of how time-consuming it is.) This was the first thing that peaked my interest in the game-- seeing something this fantastic in 2006 blew my mind as a 13-year-old. Even though I was young, a trailer as enticing and brilliant as this was difficult to forget.
  Now, the beginning is pretty boring, but notsomuch for those of you who've played Warcraft I-III. The beginning narrator provides a bit of context for the situation, which was almost not even necessary because the cinematic is just so dang beautiful. The trailer gives us a preview of each of the races and even though each one is only on screen for a few seconds, their actions speak so much more than words.
  World of Warcraft is based almost entirely upon character creation, so emphasizing the characters was an extremely intelligent move for the director of this trailer. As soon as the potential player sees this, they already know which character fascinates them. Heck, they're already deciding who they're going to play based on how they look and how they behave in the trailer.
  In conclusion, this trailer follows one of the old and not entirely ethical rules of making a great trailer: make the trailer look WAAAY better than the game itself, and boy does it look way better.

...My Second trailer actually effectively breaks this rule. This trailer was released a few months ago at E3, and begins with actual game footage.

(Watch an amazing 60 FPS version of this trailer here.)

  The Metal Gear Solid 5 E3 trailer. Yet another trailer that blew my mind. Luckily Metal Gear Solid is already an extremely cinematic game, so editing the trailer into an awesome teaser reel was not difficult for the guys at Kojima Studios. The thing about this trailer was it was so ridiculously simple yet so ridiculously enticing. The trailer simply consists of around 5 minutes of gameplay inbetween in-game custscenes. This alone, edited along with music, makes for such a great cinematic. In the beginning, they show off a few interesting game mechanics, then explore new controls and show the player that they have options in strategy. Kojima studios then shows off their new Fox Engine-generated cutscenes, which look so real it's almost disgusting.
  There really isn't much to say about it. It's a simple, elegant, and awesome trailer. It really shows a little editing can go a long way!

Breaking the Ice

Hey readers, welcome to my blog. Here you can find a bunch of posts related to my ~exploration~ in game design, particularly while I'm a student at Ringling College of Art and Design. This blog will follow my process in my 3D artwork and my Game Design-related perils, which is intended to improve the way I work and help me get a better grasp on my process.

Before I get started, I need to have an obligatory, maybe even somewhat cryptic introduction post!

My name is Tudy Gallahan. I was born in New York City, raised in Virginia. My primary entertainment when I was growing up was -- yes, you guessed it-- computer and  video games.

I owe A LOT to video games. And like I said, I might begin to sound cryptic here (and I apologize for that), but I sincerely do. Video games are what brought me into the art world, and to this day motivate me to pursue art as not only a medium but a form of expression. I'll go more in-depth about my design ideals later, though.

All that aside, I just really, really enjoy video games. I mean, so does everyone else, but what makes me unique is the style of games I seem to flock to, or have flocked to throughout my life.
 My favorite style of games, (that I also intend to stick to when I'm designing them), is --put very bluntly-- "Cartoony". Studios that interest/(have interested me in the past if they are no longer in production) are ones like TellTale Games, Naughty Dog, Insomniac, Suckerpunch Studios, SCE, and Doublefine. I believe I can work in any style, but whimsy is just my preference.

Well, I think I've covered the basics for now. I look forward to posting some actual progress here soon !