99 designs

Today we joined a site called 99 designs to join a competition to design a logo for someone. Below is the brief.

This is my sketch based on the two reference image he linked.

In the end I could not finish the logo in time because I cannot work well in illustrator and I didn't have it at home.

Catchphrase exercise

Today we had a short exercise a bit like the old tv show 'catchphrase' where we had to make an image for a certain catchphrase and the rest of the class had to guess what it is.

For our group we were give 'spice of life' so we made an image of a load of spice holder's on a dance-floor with glow-sticks. We did this exercise to help us make connections between words and images which is really important when designing stuff especially adverts.

Represent your name

Today we were asked to represent our name via something to do with us our our name meaning ect.

For my name I chose to turn my name into five different smiley faces because I'm a bit over the top and I love to use smiley faces while typing on the internet.

Lateral thinking exercises

Today we did some lateral thinking exercises like making shapes by removing matches from a pattern and connecting dots on a grid using a specific amount of lines. We did this to help us with thinking leteraly, which means to think outside the box in general. Thinking outside the rules is a great way to make original and creative idea's.

The great egg drop

Today we were given the task to protect an egg from breaking from four different heights using only a roll of masking tape and 5 straws.

For our team we decided to wrap the egg in layers of straws and tape and also to use the cardboard on the inside of the roll, unfortunately this didn't work well and our egg broke. 

The point of this exercise was to help us try and think outside the box, idea's like a para-shoot and a rope to lower it down to the ground would have worked much much better and would have shown lateral thinking.

New project

WORD ASSOCIATION

When you are really stuck for an idea, one method of inspiring creativity is to use word association.

The following word lists were created through class discussion, with lists of adjectives and nouns being created.

TASK: Choose two matching pairs from the word list to create two game characters. Produce a front and side visual for each character, along with a “character bio”

This is my design for a "Demonic Deer" I chose this because I though it would be fun and interesting to make. 

Game Design

Our next project was to design a Xbox game for a specific age group. First we made big group mind maps for each age group then when they were full we got into groups and chose an age group. In my team were Aj,  Connor and Adam and we chose the 11 to 18 year old age group.

In my team we decided to make a game  similar to the massive final fantasy games but to turn it on its head, usually in their games you end up saving a princess/country/world so we decided to have the purpose of the game to destroy a country, not because it was evil but because it was good, so good that it destroyed the natural balance. We then set to working on our individual parts to present our idea

For the main character we decided on something different to the usual 'Party' of 6, we decided on one main character who can posses 5 other people instead so you can get a more personalised team. For the main character we decided on a demon for something different with a teal and black colour scheme instead of the original red and black which we felt was to cliché, he also has an arm that holds special powers that gives him six different boost's of power depending on what element you choose.

The six elements we chose were: fire, water, ice, lightening, air and darkness. I was in charge of designing the six different states while Adam chose the powers you got  with the form. I decided the ark would have a texture like cracked earth with flesh underneath with a colour corresponding to the power he's using.

As for the interface I designed a health and demon power gauge that would sit in the top left corner of the screen, the flame in the centre gets smaller the less health you have and the black flames on the outside get smaller as your demon power decreases. 

Our presentation went well, Connor talked about the plot and gamer details while me and Aj talked about the character design and Adam talked about the battle system.

All in all our game was received well and I think we made use of all our individual skills and specialist knowledge very well and we produced a well thought out imaginative design.