Outbreak begining sketches...

For the game Outbreak, I've designed a few zombie and human drawings, just sketches to see what would work. I plan on drawing a few more human figures though just to have some variety...i figured more of the 8bit style would fit with the Human 1 (guy with hat) and characters like the other zombies and humans would fit into the cut scenes...

you can click and zoom in to see any detail...

(if any of the game designers would like to have a jpg of the image sent to them just let me know! ^_^)

computer space reading

While reading the article on computer space I found the idea behind space in computer programs to be really interesting. I play video games, but not a lot, so to think of space in a digital realm is kind of difficult for me. Though i really think this article helped me to understand a few key points. For one, i didn't know what sprites were. When i read the article i found out that they were just 2-d animated objects and characters, kind of like "pac-man" and "space invaders." The idea behind the name still confuses me a bit but i've definitely seen examples of this in several video games. Also, the idea that by simply adding shadows and reflections to characters/sprites can turn a 2-d space into a 3-d space is really interesting. I think it's funny that since there are basically two mapping planes being put together to create the game, the characters and the background, the system can't tell that it's to different layers, and therefore a 3-d space. It represents it as 2-d, not 3-d which makes the entire game seem flat.

One quote that i really enjoyed from the reading was "the space medium is objects mapped onto space." I think that this quote is trying to say that the space created in different mediums is nothing more than a background of space with objects laid overtop of it. It makes sense though, if you take a background, and lay objects overtop of it with shadows and reflections, our eyes are trained to see those objects in a spacial field. We instantly give these objects a positon and place on the background that they sit on top of. This even changes with the spacial field in videogames where, like the reading states, different levels, rooms and corridors can also lead to separate spaces. The more objects that are placed within different realms and levels, the more space is created.

Although i found a few helpful tips within the article, i also found a couple of things that i'd like to know more on. Such as polygonal modeling when creating 3-d worlds and a "3-D scene being a VRML-list of separate files." Overall though, i think that the idea of space in a medium that's essentially represented to us as 2-d (old games, pac man..etc) is pretty interesting, and that by adding a shadow or two i can turn this 2-d space into a 3-d space similar to reality.