PR

Week Twelve

(or POSTER! poster poster poster)

Tonight our dev team, Violent Traversal, is showing some of the progress made on developing AIM< at UW Stout's Game Expo (SGX). SGX is a place for Stout student to show games they've made in classes or as independent projects. There's a large variety of different games genres, both digital and physical, on display. The students who've made each game are usually there to demo the games, show trailers, posters, etc., and answer questions. SGX signals the end of a semester and allows us to show our work to the public.

This week our whole team was getting ready to show off AIM< at SGX.16. One of my jobs besides Lead Game Designer, concept artist, and audio, is PR. I spent the past couple days putting together an advertisement poster, process poster, and sell sheet. I also did a quick update to the cannon concept. See the gallery below for an image.

The first poster is what you'd expect. I found a visual way to talk about the most important elements of the game and create some excitement for the final product. It's been a while since I took my graphics design courses but I really enjoyed them so working on this portion of the project was a lot of fun. One of the things that stuck with me from my coursework is that posters should have some levels of information. The audience gets the most important information from far away, so that info is the biggest. They get hooked and drawn in to find out more. Contact info, release dates and so on are then the smaller elements. Take a look at one of the final versions in the gallery below!

I designed our process poster to help save time in printing out a bunch of different sheets with concept and ideation art. The audience can take a look at one poster and see a bunch of the work leading up to the current version of the game.

The last PR item I designed is a sell sheet. Basically, a sell sheet or one sheet is an 8.5 x 11 piece of paper that contains all of the most important information about a game. It has to sell the person reading the information on the idea. It's important to make sure the language is concise and creative while maintaining integrity in expressing the final product goals. Sort of a balance between technical writing, creative writing, and graphic design. I put an image for one of the final versions in the gallery below.

Finally; I updated the Facebook page banner and profile pic. The profile picture now features our team's logo. Check it all out on our AIM< page! Either tonight or tomorrow I'll have some photos of the team at SGX.16 as well.

Have a great weekend! If you're up north like us; stay warm!

AIM< Process Poster by Aram Wahler

AIM< Poster by Aram Wahler

AIM< Sell Sheet by Aram Wahler

Updated Cannon Concept by Aram Wahler

More Concepts

Week Eleven

(or Skip Week)

I hope you had a great Thanksgiving! Although I didn't post here, I did get some work done since the last time I wrote.

The art lead finished the drone that will be playable in AIM<. You can read about the final texturing process here on his awesome blog. I took the render images he provided and put together an orthographic to highlight the design and details. You can see the ortho here on the game's Facebook page, or in the gallery below. Be sure to check out the rest of the page and look at the other concept art there! Also, follow the page if you want to be kept up-to-date with the game's development.

Our audio team finished recording, making, and mixing some new sounds as well. I made any necessary tweeks and mixed down the final versions of each sound. We now have audio for the cannon jet engines, drone jet hover engines, a low energy alarm for both drone and cannon, and a general "power-up" sound. There's a lot more audio work left to do but it's a good start. I'll go into more detail on the audio for AIM< in a later post.

Lastly, I've been working on more concepts for various parts to the game. The first one I made this week was for mine hazards that will be throughout the game. I came up with two ground variants and one airborne version. When I construct objects like the mines, I always use photographs and piece together the pieces that appeal to me. I usually come up with a sort of goal for each object as I work, often thinking about the different ways it could be used or how it will effect its environment. Pinterest is a valuable tool that I use to gather together different ideas to use for creating visual concepts. I was inspired by the mines on this board as well as sensors on this board. You can take a look at the final results in the gallery below.

I also drew up a quick concept for some monorails and started working on settlement buildings. I'll post the finished versions of the buildings and talk about the design direction more at that time.

That wraps things up for this weeks post. The team behind AIM<, Violent Traversal, will be showing a demo of the game at the Fall UW Stout Gaming Expo (SGX) on Friday, December 9th. IF you're in the area, come say "Hi" and check out the game! Be sure to follow the Facebook page for the time of the event.

Have a great weekend!

AIM< Drone Orthographic by Aram Wahler

Model and Textures by Daniel Bodunov

Mine Concepts by Aram Wahler

WIP Settlement Concepts by Aram Wahler

Elevated Rail Concept by Aram Wahler