Task 1 - Research artists/designers/interactive media artists and game designers
http://www.tiki-toki.com/timeline/entry/208939/Evolution-of-Art-Movements/#vars!date=1915-04-22_00:57:04!
This is a link to my Tiki Toki timeline on different art movements.
This lesson we did on getting research for our essay went very well today and was very helpful and is good to use for when we do make our essay as it gives us a lot of information for us to use. The method we used, KWL, is very useful as it allows us to learn new things and things that we want to know about a specific subject and I would like to use this again for when we cover more subjects and other video games that we may or may not know about.
Task 2 - Write a 1000 word essay
How has Art Influenced Games Design?
“How has Art influenced Games Design?”
Introduction
Art in video games has evolved massively since the earliest of some games such as Pong, to newer games such as Beyond Two Souls where the characters, environments and many more aspects look realistic and appeal to the human eye and allow the players to engage with the game a lot more.
In this essay, I will be writing about art in video games and how it has influenced games design and made it an important aspect of games design and will for years to come. During this essay, I will be referencing one of the first games I ever played to talk about the art of video games, which will be Spyro the Dragon.
Body
The first section of this essay that I'll be talking about is how Spyro influences games design from when it first came out to now compared to other games in the genre and what other movements affected this genre and Spyro itself.
Spyro is an action adventure fantasy game that was very graphically impressive for it's time and was very eye catching to it's target audience with it’s cartoony and childlike colour and style. Its art style is consisted of many different art movements and styles such as Surrealism, Fantasy, Digital 3D and much more. This helped influence games design as an art form for its time for how it mixes other art styles and art movements together to create something, which has a lot of nostalgic value to this day. Today, this is considered still graphically impressive for the fantasy genre.
As an art form, a lot of things in this genre of art consisting of fantasy and surrealism have influenced games design in a number of ways by creating some amazing stories that are immersive and are really popular in gaming such as Final Fantasy, The Elder Scrolls series and the Warcraft series and so many more games. A lot of surrealist games also have been influenced by the art genre also such as the Abe’s Oddysee series. Art has influenced games design in a number of different ways from the textures, tones and much more. I feel things like this are how art influences games design and how it makes video games so popular as art and how it gives the player so much immersion that they can feel it’s real and follow the story very well through art and story.
“Video games use images, actions, and player
participation to tell stories and engage their audiences. In the same way as
film, animation, and performance, they can be considered a compelling and
influential form of narrative art.”
- Smithsonian American Art Museum.
The next section of this
essay that I’ll be talking about is how Spyro has evolved over time from his
beginning stages to now.
Early concepts of Spyro the
Dragon are around the Internet such as him being a lot more goofy and
childlike, to him even being different colours before he was eventually decided
on being purple. Below are some early sketches and concept ideas for how it was
wanted to look like.
As these were early concept
designs, he was then finalized as a purple dragon as shown below, he was
originally going to be green as seen in the concept picture above but was
changed to purple as the developers didn’t want him to blend in with the
environment and wanted him to stand out from the environment so it would be
easy to see him and keep control of him in-game. A lot of things are good and
bad about this design in Spyro such as that it’s very basic and childlike for
young kids to understand and for it not having good t
Recently, Spyro has been redesigned again for the
popular kids game, Skylanders. As you can see below, he has a lot more texture
to his skin and looks quite a bit younger also with quite a menacing look for
the character as well, this is very good for it’s target audience as it gives
that cool feeling that kids would enjoy playing with and feel immersed playing
with. There are some flaws with it however, I feel that it doesn’t keep to the
nostalgic value that older people who played the first Spyro games would enjoy
and would give a lot of negative feedback on how he looks now compared to back
then.
Characters in games design evolve all the time as game developers want to keep to the same design but want to make the character look better and more eye catching towards their fan base. They also still want to keep a nostalgic value to a character so that people who played the original games can still get immersed and enjoy a reboot in the series or something similar to that. Sometimes it can be a good thing and can attract new fans also but can lose fans in the process that may not like a new design and feel that it doesn’t give the same nostalgic value.
Conclusion
From this essay, I have
learned that art has influenced games design by doing many different things
such as using different art movements and genres of art such as Fantasy and
Surrealism to create something that appeals to art in general and is considered
a classic to many different people and something that creates a lot of
nostalgic value towards people that may of played that game for when they was a
kid or recently getting into that game.
Going back to the thesis, I
feel that I’ve covered it very well by using the game, Spyro the Dragon as a
reference for giving my opinion on how art has influenced games design and that
it has made art such an important aspect of games design and how developers
need to take it into account for when they were to make a game for it to appeal
to people and give them a sense of immersion or awe. It has also influenced
storytelling through an art form by telling stories just through art and giving
a great sense of immersion that people may not think is possible.
Overall, I feel that my
opinion is that art has influenced games design heavily in the industry and is
so important to take into account for when I or any other developer were to
make a video game from now till the future.
By Jordan Cleverley
Jordaanc.blogspot.com
“I think video games are going to completely take
over storytelling in our society. Video games are not a fad. They are
absolutely a narrative form and a medium that is already evolving and recognized
as a narrative form…”
- Guillermo del Toro, award-winning director of Pan’s
Labyrinth (also producer, screenwriter, novelist, artist, and designer)
References
http://www.theanimationacademy.com/spyromenu.htm
How I gathered early pieces of artwork of Spyro the Dragon.
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/131581/lessons_in_color_theory_for_spyro_.php?print=1
Helped me gather information about the development of Spyro the Dragon.
https://www.google.co.uk/imghp?hl=en&tab=wi&ei=_6nvUtHJJYrnywO9-oKICA&ved=0CAQQqi4oAg Early pieces of artwork of Spyro the Dragon.
http://gamesasartnow.wordpress.com/quotes/
Quotes used during this essay.
I do not own any images or quotes or any other pieces of
information and I give full credit to the websites that I’ve got them from to
use them as secondary pieces of research.
