Recent Sketches and Gestures for Infinite Spiral

First off, news, "Infinite Spiral" is officially live.  Explore the worlds here!  You can also enter the Spiral on Tumblr, Facebook, Twitter, and DeviantArt. dA showcase pages 1-10 (though edits are made as necessary before they are posted to the main site).  Page 04 will go live on the homepage on Friday.

In the past two weeks, I've been working through a ton of gestures and rapid sketches just getting to know possible characters and planned characters in "Infinite Spiral".  I shared these on the Infinite Spiral Tumblr, but want to compile them here for those that follow this blog. 

This piece is simply working through body language and poses of main characters, mostly Christian and James.  Christian is more open and gregarious, while James is more timid and protective.  I want to be careful to convey that through postures and movements, as well as facial expressions as they are introduced.  This gives room for this to change as the characters develop.

Another page of Infinite Spiral Sketches

Tons more gestures and sketches from the past week. Fun Christian drawings, Allie and gestures, a Kitty face sketch, and working on some ideas for how Matron Ava Fairchild ought to look (the whole bottom corner is full of thoughts).

James Hartwell Sketchdump

I was out of town (visiting family, vacationing from tech), so did a ton of sketching in lieu of my current page I'm working on. This is the first sketch dump from the last 5 days of crazy drawing, the focus James.

Top is a moment between James and Rory I'm playing out. There are several James sketches with different expressions, a sketch test working out thoughts for a scene in the Infinite Spiral that is scripted, a silly moment between Christian, James, and Allie, a wood elf that James, Rory, and Christian may encounter much later in the comic in Gelthor's forest (teasers!), James using his powers, and Gavin (he snuck in there ... apparently going Super-Saiyan or something). Christian is in the very bottom right corner again messing with that yo-yo. Suspicious.

Have fun with these!

The Wicked Children: Infinite Spiral

Here is are the other named children that live in the Asylum for Wicked Children with James and Christian.   This is a fairly rough and early sketch, with rough and early colors so I can begin to turn them around in my head (particularly those like Kitty that were fused with another old character of mine).

Allie: Infinite Spiral Character Design

I guess I got on a roll yesterday.  Allison "Allie" Collins has a bit part in the intro to Infinite Spiral, but is actually a more significant character down the line. How you will have to discover by reading.

Digital Colors for James and Rory Character Designs

I couldn't stop yesterday and just kept practicing digital coloring (mostly cell shading style) with sketches.  I'm glad, because I'm getting a great feel for how I want the Angelborn world to look when I begin pages.

I digitally colored my character sketches of the adbal from Angelborn who wanders around with James  I was down to two names, Rory (Aurora) or Perry (Peregrine), but my sister approves of Rory and I think she is right that it should be the name that sticks.

Now for last names, the list (in no particular order):

More character designs, must be Spring Break

I've been busy with pencil sketches, and trying some new techniques to quickly test color palettes, etc without full painting (as the Gavin picture has demonstrated that takes hours and hours).

I had to draw Alexis again!  It has been so long, but I finally got that vivid character picture in my head I've been looking for.

Alexis is a character near and dear to my heart.  She's bitter, a little crazy, and probably the only person in the Angelborn universe that actually understands exactly the kind of world Gavin lives in on a daily basis.  She has a "milder" version of Gavin's sight, which is actually scarier in many respects as she does not see his world of realities and spirits as clearly, leaving what she sees open to misinterpretation.  A kindred spirit, then an enemy, then an ally, she is a character that I look forward to exploring as I tell Gavin's story.  Not on that, but she is also, hey, an abdal, and the daughter of an old ally of James's (what a tangled web?).

This piece was a pencil sketch and I applied layers of flats using Photoshop to give it a wash and explore her new color palette.  She's gotten less "goth" and more gray, which I think will make her a stronger character.  May go back and make those buttons brass like I'm picturing in my head.  I think I've nailed her costuming though.

Quenby Digital Colors

Using my tablet and various select tools, I spent some of this morning practicing digital coloring with my Quenby lineart. It could use some tweaking, but I'm pretty happy with the result, given that it was a quick color.  It looks like Quenby.  Of course, her colors are pretty much blacks, navies, and greys.  I'm going to spend some time with lighting in the near future.

Twins, Villians, and Wannabe Characters: Oh my!

Throughout the week I've continued on my mission to develop and redesign characters from Angelborn.  I've amassed a few more concepts (though I may have to sit on them before I decide how happy I am with them.)

The first is of Celeste, Gavin's twin.  She dies at the beginning of his part of the tale, rather the catalyst for his adventures.  She's always been a troublesome character to draw, but these sketches have captured many ways she should look.  Also, if you look carefully, you can see where I decided to try and draw with my left hand (I sometimes get the desire to do things like that).  That could be because Gavin is left-handed.

 

But I'm not done yet.

Artchives: The Evolution of Gavin

So, as much as I've adored the manga style Gavin picture I've done through the years, as I've stated before, the Angelborn world is moving away from that style.  This means I get to redesign Gavin ... again!  Actually, he really is the most consistent of all of my characters.  I just need now to actually make him look like he is nine years old instead of four years old (seriously!  I made him look super young).

Gavin is easy, so I'm pretty pleased with this interpretation.  I was actually redesigning James at the same time, so actually am trying to give them an acceptable family resemblance.

But I suppose you are ready for the iterative tour of Gavin's character design, right?  Hoo boy! This will get trippy (and go clear back to high school if I can dig out those images).  We'll start from the old (and scary) art and move forward.  This is a great lesson in how art should improve over time if you are always observing and drawing.

Flora Concept Art

I had the opportunity to pitch a game this semester, and although it wasn't chosen in my class to develop I got some good practice combining traditional sketches with my new toy, a Wacom Intuos Tablet.  The whole process was less than a week, and I had to share my time with other concepts we pitched as a group. Overall, this was good experience in rapid character development.  I'll have to take my wild, flash character development runs for practice.

This is Flora, a mischievous and joyous wood sprite.  She enjoys wreaking havoc by accident.

Post Mortem for Wave: A Rhapsody in Cantando

You are a jellyfish, an outsider to your tribe. Sunken ruins call to you with a haunting song. You alone wonder what could lie waiting in this place of music.

You cannot understand why others of your tribe cannot hear its need. You feel compelled to return it to its glory. Therefore you leave your tribe in search of the city that pulls your spirit. What awaits you, you can only imagine.

I was the 2D artist (among other roles within a four person team) for this ambitious, experience driven game project in Brian Winn's TC455 class.  This was my first opportunity to push the limits of what my 2D skills could accomplish in a 3D game engine.

Read more to find out my game art and design lessons from Version 1 of one of the most ambitious game projects I've tackled yet at Michigan State.  Better yet, play WaRiC!

Crafting the Story of a Place: Omairi

Platform 12:  Waiting on the train to Ise-shi.

This week in my Comics and the Visual Narrative class, we finished our silent comic challenge.  In the silent comic, you may use no words (not language or sound effects) and must convey the meaning of the story through gestures, facial expressions, and body language alone.  I went through many ideas, but something that stuck with me was the idea of a story of a place and how that place can weave people into merging and diverging tales.

This idea has resonated with me since I traveled to Japan.  I think, that often the United States feels so new that as a culture we miss that places cultivate different patterns of behavior in us.  I think, often enough, there is a lack of the truly "sacred space"  and place so old and monumental you feel humbled simply by being there.  There are few places here that give the average population chills--few places that inspire silence.

Deconstructing Creativity: Motivation

What is motivation?

In Teach for America’s Teaching as Leadership (TAL) Rubric, motivation is called “I want.”  In order to achieve or create, one must first want to achieve or create.  Games research points to motivation as something games are excellent at cultivating, therefore, the exploration of creativity, motivation, and games prior to building an early concept or project idea is essential.

First, for there are the obvious motivation breakdowns of intrinsic motivation and extrinsic motivations.  In my experience, the best creatives are primarily intrinsically motivated, as somehow the act of creating is motivating.  Reflecting with my adviser, I told her that there is something extremely gratifying about feeling and watching a creation take shape, then holding it in your hands and reflecting upon it once it has been birthed.  How does that motivation develop?  What is needed?  Why do have I had it over the course of my life and, say, my mother has developed it only since my graduation from high school (and its still a work in progress), and some folks never get there?  There are a couple of theories of motivation I will discuss here that seem to provide some level of explanation for this.

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs

Perhaps one of the oldest theories of motivations Maslow's Hierarchy of Human needs, (1943) is a pyramid shaped view of what is required to be motivated.  At the first level are physiological needs (food, water, shelter), followed by safety, love, then self esteem and finally self actualization.  Creativity and creative acts fall into the top of this pyramid.  In particular, the issue of self esteem, broken into achievement, recognition, mastery, and respect seems vital to creating.

 

Deconstructing Creativity: Environment

For my masters project the area I want to explore is the intersection of creativity and games, a broad area, but one that allows me to touch on several areas of interest for future research.  Ultimately the project will have a much more narrow focus.  However, at this stage, I am general reflecting and researching in order to better understand what immediate research and design needs exist within emerging creativity studies.

To do this, involves deconstructing creativity, defining its elements so that I might be able to see what areas a game can build skill or confidence.  As it stands, "Creating" or "Synthesis" has long been at the top levels of Bloom's Taxonomy of the Cognitive Domain, being most recently moved to the very highest level.  This suggests that there are many processes and aspects to creativity to consider.

From "Bloom's Taxonomy of Learning Domains"

If you look at the taxonomy, it is clear how many cogs in this domain are relevant to the creative process.  When considering creativity pedagogy or environments to encourage creativity, one must remember the level of cognition necessary, and the structure built up beneath it that allows success at creating.

To deconstruct from here results in a large number of relevant aspects of creativity: environment, motivation, process, and community being paramount.  However, to be more descriptive for the sake of exploring creativity further, I have broken those down into descriptive subsets:  Environment, Motivation, Process, Invention, Reflection, Exhibition.

 

Today I plan to focus on Environment, and explore each other area in depth at a later time.  There is a great deal of content to work with in the concept of a creative environment alone.

Developing a Framework/Process for M.A. Project Planning

This morning I've been doing so of the more boring work for an M.A. project:  coordinating research on best practices for planning and implementing media and education products.  I recognize, that what I am working on my be beneficial to everyone else, so I am sharing my top planning resources and approach.  Actually, following this approach will largely get me to the proposal submission phase, rather than final project (I hope). 

First off, frameworks:

1)  Backwards Design

Backwards Design (Wiggin) is an educational planning practice where you start with your objectives and evaluation and then ultimately plan your learning experience.  Although not user centered, it is objective driven, and I recognize combined with user centered principles can create a meaningful structure that provides positive outcomes.

Final Submission for Autism Connects: Keeper

Keeper is an SCI based tablet game for the practice of emotions in context in 9-15 year olds with ASDs.

What is it?
 
  Keeper is an Social Competence Intervention based tablet game for the intervention and practice of emotions in context, a component of mentalization,  in 9-15 year olds with Asperger Syndrome, PDD-NOS, and High Functioning Autism.  Since children and adolescents with ASDs demonstrate higher levels of engagement with interactive media a digital game is a great place for practice and intervention (Mineo et al, 2009). 

View a Vimeo of the paper prototype of a main level here.


Why is this an important design?
 
   Individuals with ASDs are often impaired in their ability mentalize. They struggle to interpret “ nonverbal … socially salient information from face, gesture, and body positions,”  causing atypical social responses leading to social anxiety and social isolation (David et al, 2009; Kuusikko et al, 2009). 

Sketching: Visually Communicating and Archiving Ideas

I would like to start with my own personal relationship to sketching.  I sketch frequently.  I sketch in the margins of my notes, I sketch on Post Its, I sketch formally and for fun.  I love it.

I sketch all of the time, but I'm not good at using it to communicate with others.  In fact, I don't do it.  So as I'm reading this great article about how we sketch, when we use it and why, I begin to think of the formative experiences in life that keep me from sketching to communicate with others.

It starts in school.  I bet almost everyone here can remember the first teacher that told you "Now is not the time to draw."  In fact, I heard it over and over again--doodlers and sketchers alike being called out for drawing in their notes and on their homework.  Visual thinking was a second class citizen in the K-12 room (in fact, when I taught I found myself saying the same things). 

I fear it has never occured to most teachers that instead of telling a child not to draw that instead they should have taught them how to draw and make it relevant.  Instead of teaching budding designers to hide their skills and force words when it isn't appropriate, they could have encouraged visual thinks to explain and think visually.

Memories from girlhood: On becoming a kick-butt maiden in games

It is a bright, sunny March day. My sister and I are wearing windbreakers out in the newly thawed lawn of my grandparents. We are not sitting with dolls, having a picnic, or playing house. We are sitting under the Goomba Tree digging a cavern to the hollow inside where the goombas come from at night. In this way, we planned to travel to Mario World.

If you read a certain slice of research on girl play habits, then girls who play in this kind of fantasy world are either rare or do not exist (Kafai, 2009). However, today I will take you on a journey of gender identity and the development of a girl who likes games, watches games, plays games, studies games, and most recently, makes games.

Player Experience is Paramount: Report and Discussion on Come Closer

There is much discussion in modern game design about the concept of "playercentric design" and the importance of the player experience.  However, most would find it difficult to boil that down into a basic vision statement.  At the 2010 Meaningful Play Conference, Jamie Antonisse and Sean Bouchard attempt through their presentation to give a formula for such a design statement.

What makes designing playercentric games particularly challenging is that there are two sides to the design.  One, the creator's side, is what Antonisse and Bouchard describe as the statement "I want to make my game about ..."  Sometimes, the design process stops there.  However, the two emphasize there is another important side, and that is absolutely the player's side, described in the statement "when playing this game the player should feel ...".  They believe that there is a disconnect in many designs between these two sides, caused by the fact that designers often think of player experience soley as accessiblity and engagement.  These two elements, although important to the design of a quality game, ignore another key feature:  player experience. 

Antonisse and Bouchard argue that one must have two design statements, one related to the topic the creator designs the game about and the other what the player should feel, or the player experience.  The trick to this is that the experience must resonate with the topics.