The Good And The Bad

I don’t think I could have left this much closer to the last minute.

What makes art good or bad…?

It’s hard to determine an exact set of rules to govern the judgement of any type of art due to how subjective art is. What one person says is bad another considers good.

However it can be easier to determine what is good and bad when you look at what the aim of the piece or pieces in question. For example if the aim is to produce a picture or 3D model that is as close to an exact replica of a real physical object, person or scene then you’ve instantly got some criteria to make comparisons with and the closer to the real thing the picture or model is the better it is. You can check the shape, colour, perspective and scale and tell where a lot of the good and bad points lie. There are still problems, the chosen composition may appear good or bad depending on who is viewing the work for example but it does make things easier.

Once you start deviating from or modifying reality the potential for contradicting views increase as it’s harder to say whether or not the piece in question looks the way it should as it’s harder to find things to compare the subject matter to.

Then there’s the issue of stylisation where you can take even real life things and although you may still know what subject matter they represent they are more than likely not made to be a 100% accurate representation. This can still potentially look good but it’s more subjective than it would be otherwise. Even if there was a set style that the piece had to be made in at the end of the day the viewer may or may not like the style.

In the end the biggest factor that determines whether a picture or model is good or bad is the artist’s skill. Their ability to convey there idea in a manner that represents their subject matter in a way that is as close to what the artist is trying show as possible while being pleasing to the eye in terms of subject, composition and rendering.

As game artists it should be easier to grade most of our art as opposed to a fine artist as the majority of our work is at least based on real life objects and forms so objectivity is by no means out of reach if not necessarily easy to achieve. However I’d think we are also being marked on originality which throws in a few potential hazards with our experiences being different to our tutors (something original to me may be a near exact copy of something I’ve never seen but my tutors have).

And now I’ve run out of words (not that I’m entirely sure the ones I’ve written so far even make sense) and I’ve barely written 400 of them….

How can you grade good and bad art…?

• Is the composition good?
• Is it rendered well?
• Is the method of creation good/appropriate?
• Is the perspective correct?
• How long did it take? (appropriate length of time being determined by complexity and method of creation)
• Does it look feasible? (in the world/environment/reality that the subject is intended)
• Is the subject’s construction suitable? (3D models)
• Has the artist got his/her vision across well?
• Are the proportions correct?
• Is it original enough?

I’d imagine there are probably other criteria on which things should be marked but I can’t think of them at the moment. I’d also imagine that some of the ones I’ve mentioned would be far more difficult to grade than others.

I think that’s it, for now at least (not that I have much time to do more). I’m not sure I’m really literate enough to get my points across but hopefully I’ve succeeded if only partially.

Bye. See you at the grading.

Creative Armour Design

I can’t remember what it was that sparked my memory but I recently remembered a video I saw of this guy talking about his new “Trojan” battle suit ages ago and I never wrote a blog about it so now I’m going to get it blogged and its even reasonably on topic (creativity). Already famous for his bear suit and I believe he has also made a heat proof suit, he started work on a new body armour suit to be used by soldiers in the field.

Here is a video of his bear suit and how he tests it (that’s him in the suit by the way).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q3CzYw5-qdA

And here is the video of the Trojan. You’ll never guess what things he had been looking at for inspiration. The watch is in an odd place.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JPS2l5fQ55A

TED Is A Very Creative Guy

Time to get blogging! Way to far behind with things though to be honest I’ve technically been working on this blog for....however long it’s been since my last one. But yes I have been trawling the TED website for good videos on creative subjects. Here are some links to some of what I deem the best ones. They’ve each got descriptions on their relevant pages but I’ve tried to give them some brief descriptions here. I need to hit my word quota some how.

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/108

Sheer coolness. I think I understand it yet can’t explain it so just watch it.

Okay I watched it again just when I was getting ready to post this and as the on site description says it is better watched after you’ve seen a number of other videos from that year. Don’t feel that you need to to appreciate it but I certainly picked up on one or two references to other videos I've seen and at least one of them is on this list.

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/172

A guy explaining why we’re attracted to simplicity and complexity.

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/176

I found this one fairly boring till they got to the videos and demonstrations towards the end where they showed some impressive gliders and…we’ll say flying machines.

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/148

Incidentally…I first watched this video at around 4am lol.

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/146

This one has an actual direct link to our course. It’s about the game “Spore” and what the creator was aiming for the game to be.

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/117

An excellent fiddler. I was going to put a bad joke about how I fiddle with things but it just sounded rude. The best bit is towards the end and if you follow links in her profile to her website you can find some clips of her music to listen too.

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/109

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/110

She has an amazing voice. Not sure what she’s doing with her hands most of the time though. Actually she might be doing it to affect her voice. You might see why I’m thinking that when you watch it.

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/103

A world famous and almost completely deaf percussionist explains her interactions with music.

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/40

A nature photographer details the history of the Earth.

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/87

Damn it why can’t I think of anything to say about this other than it’s funny. Oh and I tried the Google thing, it doesn’t work.

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/60

An actress plays out some interviews she’d had with various people she had met travelling across America.

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/26

This is the third link I’ve posted of this guy’s poetry. If he doesn’t class as creative I don’t know who is. I need to find out if he rehearses all of his stuff of whether he adlibs some of his performances…

Had a look at some of the information on him and it seems he does.

His name is Rives. Despite my extensive attempts…ok 10 minutes on Google I saw no indication of him having a last name (or first if “Rives” is the last).

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/179

His dancing puts even Michael Jackson to shame.

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/82

I knew people had managed to link the human nerve system to a robotic arm and make it move. I had no idea that with today’s technology it was possible to achieve this, at least not within that size and weight limit.

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/45

This girl was mentioned in the Ken Robinson talk, ((2:50 minutes in) “I mean Sirena last night was a marvel, wasn’t she, just seeing what she could do?”) and referenced in the talk by Rives at the top of this list.

She was 11 years old at the time of filming and already an extremely gifted violinist who has played with world famous orchestras.

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/43

This guy makes some excellent points on designing things. (A bit of a vague description but meh)

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/81

A cool song.

I’m going to continue looking through the vids, which are steadily increasing in number (167 last I checked). I’d like to encourage other people to look as well if you aren’t already. I'll keep posting links to all the videos that I like on my blog. If you find any that you think are good please post a comment with a link.

More Creativity

Here are a few things i forgot to put in my last post. These are videos on the TED talks website that i really liked.

http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/162

http://www.wefeelfine.org/

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/144

This is one of the things mentioned in the above talk.

http://www.wefeelfine.org/

http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/165

If i remember to I'l post more of these cool videos as i find them.

Back To Blogging (Creativity Again)

Another year, another attempt at producing something resembling a half decent blog. To all my regular readers (if I have any lol) sorry it’s been so long since my last post.

Now on with the task at hand.

Creativity

What is it? How do you get it? What do you do with it? Why am I asking these questions when there’s no clear answer to any of them?

“The process of having original ideas that have value”

Ken Robinson

“The quality or ability to create or invent something; originality”

Wiktionary Definition

I tried googling the word “creativity” to see what I got despite the fact that I imagine pretty much everyone else doing the task will have had the same idea. I first looked at Google images and to be honest the images it came up with were pretty unremarkable and disappointing.

I then went onto the normal search. There were improve your business and/or workforce websites, a few others detailing ways to help improve your own creativity or encourage your child’s. I did find a website that was mildly interesting:

http://www.wisdomquotes.com/cat_creativity.html

creativity-online.com at first glance looked like it would provide some nice material on the subject but wouldn’t you know it most of what I found in it seemed to be adverts. All the things that looked like they’d be a bit more on topic required me to subscribe and most articles were going to cost money to view (they charge you if a post is more than 7 days old) so frankly I couldn’t be bothered.

For the past few weeks iv been watching bits and pieces from the TED talks (http://www.ted.com/index.php/) which is where the Ken Robinson Talk we saw a little while ago came from (here it is for anyone that might want to see it http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/66).

When I first found this website and the Ken Robinson talk for our week 20 task of last year the website wasn’t nearly as well structured. They have now revamped it and it’s much easier to find things of interest so I highly recommend just browsing through the videos for something of interest (I think there are somewhere near 200 videos so there should be something for everyone and they seem to update it with new ones relatively often).

What is my definition of creativity?.....

I don’t know…to put it simply. My definition is constantly changing as I read other peoples definitions and look at things that are considered creative. At the moment it might be something along the lines of “An individual’s ability to achieve, attain or create something original from anything or nothing”.

Damn it I need to learn how to produce a decent blog (among other things).

Sorry its so late Mr P. I wrote this a while ago and forgot to post it.

Week 24 Task

I’ve thoroughly enjoyed the course so far and although there have been things I haven’t enjoyed, on the whole think I definitely chose the right course.

The things I’ve enjoyed the most have been the modelling and character design and I’m actually beginning to enjoy 3-D modelling with max despite a fairly rough start learning and getting used to the 3DS Max software. I think the only thing I have to add to the things for next year that haven’t already been mentioned is some form teaching on how to use Photoshop to digitally enhance 2-D work and textures for 3-D models. I’m not sure about everyone else but I’m still very shaky when it comes to producing texture and as far as enhancing 2-D work I barely know where to begin.

I can’t think of anything else that hasn’t already been suggested so I think I’ll finish there.

Week 22 Task

This particular blog as well as my last two are more than a bit late but this one is supposed to be about the GDC and what particular bits interest me before it occurs (or at least that’s how I interpreted the task) and since the GDC has been and gone all the information on the lead up to it has been mixed together with the results of what actually happened there so I'm going to add some on what happened as well because 1) I want to 2) I want to make sure I’ve cover the task if I misinterpreted what we needed to do.

In general the serious games talks look quite interesting. We had a lecture on serious games or something similar a while ago and I really didn’t think much of but I spotted a session titled “Labyrinth: Keeping the Play in Learning Games”.

“LABYRINTH is currently being developed collaboratively by MIT’s Education Arcade, Fablevision, Maryland Public Television (MPT) and Johns Hopkins University. LABYRINTH is a multi-player puzzle adventure game, promoting math and literacy skills, and targeting middle-school students. The game will explore new approaches to storytelling, player collaboration, and pedagogy. Delivered both online and on handheld devices, it will also represent a new distribution model. Unlike many learning games that attempt to recycle classroom activities in interactive form, Labyrinth seeks to engage students in authentic play, and to help them build intellectual scaffolding that will benefit their formal academic learning.”

My preferred type of game is one I can play with friends and a multiplayer serious game is an idea that’s never actually occurred to me before. The setting of a labyrinth also interests me because of the potential variety of gameplay that could be included.

When I was at school although there were educational games I found only a few of them that were actually educational and fun. I think this game idea has great potential and I’d like to find out more about it.

I’ve now spent a good amount of time looking through a load of websites and so far all the extra info I’ve been able to gather on “Labyrinth” is that it’s played online. So I'm going to talk about something else from the GDC instead, the Maverick award winner Greg Costikyan.

Greg Costikyan founded Manifesto Games in late 2005 with Johnny Wilson. Manifesto games, an online PC game retailer founded to enable small developers to publish and distribute their own independent and experimental games. Costikyan envisions a world where game design is a recognised art form in a similar way to film and novels have been and that vision is not going to come true if the games industry continues as it is.

The GDC Awards. Some of the videos don’t completely work and there do seem to be bits missing. Greg Costikyan is in the Maverick chapter.

http://www.gamechoiceawards.com/video/2007/

These are volumes one and two of “Death To The Games Industry”, an article Costikyan wrote in Escapist Magazine outlining some of his thoughts on the industry and how it needs to change.

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/issue/8/3

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/issue/9/4

Week 21 Task

To be completely honest I hardly did any reflection on any of my work before I started at uni. Even my main art projects received very little reflection and what generally happened was I’d come up with an idea that I really liked but then I was told I need to do more development work and come up with more possible ideas. In the end I would always end up reverting back to the original idea because the others just didn’t seem nearly as good and were sometimes just there to fill pages in my sketch book.

Since I’ve come to uni I have begun reflecting and improving my work and the result is that what I do reflect on does seem to be improving. However I do have trouble when it comes to reflecting on work that I wasn’t that enthusiastic about to begin with as my lack of interest leaves me impatient and I end up not spending as much time as I should on certain aspects of the work.

I’m steadily getting used to reflecting on my work and the class critiques do seem to be helping as well. I’m hoping to get my reflection and critiquing skills up to a suitable standard by the time I finish the course and lets face it if I don’t I probably won’t manage to finish the course or at least not with the grade I would like

Week 20 Task

What is creativity?

It is new, old, simple, complex, strange, bizarre, normal, big, small, genius, obvious……creativity is everything.

Creativity is essential for progress in any thing you can think of and can manifest itself in a solution to a problem, a random idea or anything that would get someone thinking.

Creativity can be both helped and hindered by technical constraints. If the constraints are introduced mid way through the creative process the thought gone into the idea up to that point may need to be altered to fit the constraints in the event that the idea doesn’t already fit to them. This can result in the idea becoming completely unreasonable. On the other hand the addition of constraints both before and during the creative process can cause an even more creative idea to occur.

Everyone is capable of being creative but it’s easier for those who have nurtured their creativity to come up with creative ideas on a regular basis rather than just every now and again when the right inspiration happens to pop up at the right time.

“Creativity without craft is like fuel without an engine - it burns wildly but accomplishes little...”

I believe this statement to be one hundred percent correct. Being creative without being able to express that creativity will only result in frustration.

There is a video of an excellent speech on creativity and how it needs to be focused on more in education here (http://www.ted.com/tedtalks/tedtalksplayer.cfm?key=ken_robinson&flashEnabled=1)

In games creativity can manifest in any aspect of the game be it programming, art or gameplay related. It could be something so small that you barely notice it unless you know what to look for or it could be so big that the game is marketed on the idea itself.

Everyone working on the game can “do” creativity if given the opportunity although I suspect that the higher up the chain of command you are the more opportunity you have to be creative.

Creativity can look like anything and doesn’t even have to be visible although in that case its effects will be. In games it could be a new way of making something look or behave, it could be a something completely original that’s never been seen before or it could be a new way to interact with the game or something in the game.

In my opinion high levels of creativity can be found in games like the Final Fantasies, Doom, Halo, Black and White and practically any best selling game franchise although not just limited to them.

The bottom line is that creativity is a big part of games design and production. Without it all the games being produced would all be mediocre and similar and the games industry would grind to a halt or at least slow to a crawl as opposed to its current behaviour which is to advance with leaps and bounds.

Week 19 Task

“Some game companies want highly trained graduate artists and programmers. Some claim they really prefer creative individuals with a good Liberal Arts background. They can’t both be right can they?

How can education meet these opposing views and yet provide a valid and fulfilling experience to students?”

I’ve never really thought of creativity as something that can be taught in the first place. You can teach people how to tap into their creativity but at the end of the day if you’re not creative you’re not creative. If that is the case then an educational course would simply need to include a number of exercises that teach the student to keep an open mind and look at things from as many different perspectives as possible. Basically anything that will change a persons interpretations from “it’s a tree” to “it’s a tree, a climbing frame, a lookout, a hiding place, looks like it has a face, shaped like an out stretched hand ,etc.”. If those exercises are added to a course that teaches how to use a decent sized variety of materials and techniques or develop whatever skills are necessary for a good programmer and improve the skill of the student to a point where they are producing industry standard work then the course should succeed in producing graduates that are what the employers are looking for (assuming they admit capable and willing students on to the course).

As far as which is right well trained or good creative minds who are capable of producing good work I’m not entirely sure there is an argument. Of all the advertisements I’ve looked at they all seem to say either “we want skilled applicants” or “we want skilled applicants who can come up with good creative ideas”. I’m yet to see anything saying “we want applicants who have gone to university and got X grade or higher”. All the employers seem to be looking for is skill in a relevant area and not level of training with creativity seeming to only be necessary for the slightly more advanced jobs. As long as you can produce work that is of the calibre the employer desires, work as part of a team, be able to communicate well, keep to work deadlines and at least have some idea of what your doing they don’t seem to care much about how you came to possess those skills. There probably are exceptions or I may have just been looking at the wrong websites but that’s my interpretation of what employers are looking for judging from job advertisements.