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One of my best projects (personally) made was my Rogue One alternate movie poster featuring Vader. Although it wasn't necessarily difficult it was very time consuming, taking two entire weeks to complete opposing to the average 1/1.5 weeks. The project also had me use the skills I've learned through my time using Illustrator and taught me a few more. This was the process of me making Vader for my Alternate Movie Poster assignment. The first thing I started with was the helmet, because I knew it would be the most complicated bit. I started with the "hood" of the helmet by just making a dome and expanding it on both sides, I then made the rest of the helmet using a series of different shapes that I would later group together to form the helmet. An example of that is the "cheeks" or the sides of the triangle respirator (another example) which were just different quadrilaterals that were formed around each other. The eyes of the helmet were possibly the biggest struggle, as I could not get the shape right and it would always look off. Not only that but when I attempted to fill both shapes with a gradient to show the red in Vader's eyes it would look weird as if the glass had shattered. In order to make the eyes look good I made a clone of it to cover the actual eye, and I changed that to appear more like the one in the movie and had the one under it be better for the gradient, and I learned that you don't need to connect vector points in shapes to join them, and only had to select both and join them with one of the right mouse click options, this helped fix the gradient.
Next was the body, which wasn’t as difficult as it was confusing. I started with the cape since it already covered the general outline and when I was done with that all I needed to do was fill in the rest with detail. I made the cape by creating a line in the outline and cloning it and putting it on the other side, which worked well except the cape didn’t look good on the shoulders. Due to Vader’s pose in the picture and the way his cape is held it apparently looked like “Mrs Vader” as said by Mr B and a few others. So in order to fix that I changed the shoulders’ shape to look like, well, shoulders, and repositioned the cape a little. This fixed the problem and made it look so much better, now all I had to do was put in detail and color. The cape was a little confusing at first because as of giving it color I didn't know all you had to do was select both ends of the cape and join them (the exterior and interior sections were different lines and not one shape). This is where I learned that simple solution, and it helps so much today. Finally I was done with the body and the detail within, now I needed to make the rest of the poster. Finally, at the end, I created the Star Wars logo in illustrator instead of the “Star Wars font” that there apparently was, and I created the ROGUE ONE with just Times New Roman (or a similar font) because that already looked identical to the actual Rogue One poster. I added the background which was a rectangle with a gradient from red to black, to show the lightsaber’s light lighting up the room (say that 5 times), and I added 50% transparent shapes to make the dust that is floating around to add more depth. And I was finally finished with it, all I needed to do was make the required paragraph and post it. I learned a few lessons and practice pre-existing methods in this project, which still help me today like with the bouncing background project (for the background and joining the panels in the back). And that was my process of creating Vader.
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Warframe is a 3rd person cooperative scifi PvE ever expanding game that includes fast combat and special abilities, both small random generated and large open world maps, and an interesting story. Keep in mind that Warframe has a lot of gameplay mechanics/lore, so I’ll only cover the basics. Warframe’s combat is very fast paced, with many different ways of mobility like rolling, sliding, gliding, and even flying at times. In this game, you are way more powerful than the enemy (individually, at least),as you feature special abilities called “warframe abilities” that give you the power to heal yourself and allies, damage enemies, spawn allies, leech enemy health, and everything in between, depending on your selected Warframe(aka chosen “character”) but the enemy comes in large hordes in an attempt to overwhelm you, accompanied with their own special abilities.
Warframe’s gameplay, personally, is very fun to me. It’s fun to whiz by enemies to get to your objective/ eliminate them. It’s so satisfying to clear a room of difficult high-level enemies. However it can get a little annoying when enemy scaling starts to get too difficult, and they gain too much armor (which is a form of damage reduction, and when it gets too high they can become virtually invincible to low level attacks); which brings me to my next topic: difficulty. Warframe is not a difficult game for anyone who’s played a shooter, as you’re practically invincible if you can dodge enemy attacks/ make a good defensive build. Most weapons at mid-level are fairly effective against almost all enemies and are good enough for late-game. STORY (some minor spoilers) Warframe has a lot of lore that is continuously added to, so this will be the review on the story so far. Warframe’s lore in the beginning was very mysterious, hinting at what happened before the events of the game with relics and descriptions of certain things, but many updates later they added 3 mainline story quests that really expanded the universe. The first mainline quest, called The Second Dream. Where a great foe known as Hunhow the Sentient has reawoken and sends a killer and his fighters to kill you and your species, motivated by hatred of his destruction that happened thousands of years before the events of the game takes place, and that the protagonist had caused but had long forgotten it. The story was a little cheesy, but had some great moments and reveals and a wonderful soundtrack. It also added some new characters and some depth to pre-existing characters, such as The Lotus, your guide in the game, and the Stalker, a killer that hunts down you and other Tenno (what the race of your people are called). The second mainline quest, called The War Within, introduced a few more characters and more depth to other pre-existing characters, featuring the leaders of one of the enemy factions, the Twin Queens, on their quest to take control of your warframe, as you fight back and stop their plans. Possibly the best mainline quest (in my opinion) as it didn’t have a lot of bad moments, the characters were consistent and had goals that made sense, and added more lore to the table (like the previous quest but even more). Last but not least is the newest installation to the story, The Sacrifice. The Sacrifice, which had a great betrayal, the rescue of an old warrior, and a huge reveal that changes everything for the player, and gives you a lore-heavy greatsword at the end of it. More characters were added and more lore about the past was given, like how everything came to be, and why the Sol system (where everything takes place, our solar system) is in its current state. These quests were pretty well written in my opinion and had a good overarching story. It was very engaging and interesting, I often found myself watching lore videos and reading things about it for hours (probably because i’m obsessed with lore but I'm sure others have too). However there is one main problem and that is that later installments retconned things a billion times over, saying one thing was caused by this, but later stating it was caused by that. Sometimes dialogue would be generic and basic, but there are some very good lines. I think the gameplay style and lore were for the same demographic, I can't explain why, but the fast paced “space ninja” fits perfectly with the story and your powers, so someone that would like one aspect of the game would like the other. VISUAL STYLE Warframe has a very magic-y futuristic style to it, which fits nicely with the “space ninja” feel it has. This game was made 6 years ago and with few updates to the visuals it still holds up today, with smoothly made animations and modeled characters and a pleasing pallet. Some maps feature different pallets in this game like different faction maps. Corpus, basically “futuristic space pirates” have a bright white and blue pallet to fit with their technology and cold environment, while the Grineer on the other hand which are militaristic and use old mechanical designs have a more gritty pallet, like using green, orange, and dark colors to show the mentality of the war-like faction. The animations in this game are very well made and choreographed at times and is pleasing to the eye (when you can see it, of course). That is, there are a few awkward animations in the game. For example, a recent update changed how melee works but did not update the animations, and for greatswords (the ones I use all the time) that hit once, and the character raises the sword anticipating another strike, but goes back to its resting position. Sometimes when you’re in the archwing (how the player can fly in certain maps) gun animations will not register properly with your pose, causing an awkward position. Luckily with the fast paced nature of this game you can barely realize the tiny glitches your warframe can make. Character models work really well for a 6 year old game, there is no clear specific polygon showing (by that I mean things look organic and not like a bunch of random shapes) and can look really nice with the proper skins/armor/etc. AUDIO/OST The music in this game is great, there are ost’s that really represent the enemy you’re fighting, with more electronic music playing with the technologically advanced Corpus and more militaristic gritty music with the Grineer. There are also great scores that play in important parts of the story to deliver a feeling of panic or relaxation. The sounds are well made with none being extremely annoying to the point of wishing to mute them, and the sound effects do fit with the style of the game. Overall, the sounds and OST work perfectly with the environments they are in and emerge you in your surroundings. INTERFACE AND ACCESSIBILITY Generally most interfaces are user friendly, they’re simple and don’t need a lot of work to navigate through, they are easy to understand and organized, text is easy to read and can be customized to fit your suiting, a great system overall. However, a recent update has added many unnecessary additions like pop up menus, where the information could have simply been displayed in the first place instead of needing to be hovered over. The controls of the game works very well, both with keyboard and controller, and are fully customizable. They don’t make the gameplay feel clunky and allow for very intricate moves. The only players I feel that could be excluded are people that are photosensitive epileptic, because this game can have a lot of flashing lights and explosions going on at times (ESPECIALLY with some warframe abilities). TECHNICAL The game runs smoothly and as of having 700 hours (exactly) I have not experienced any huge game breaking bugs. I have, however seen friends get some bad visual bugs where character models will glitch around and cover the screen, or just straight up have a black screen. There’s also some bugs where you can get launched through a wall and fall under the map and continuously fall without dying/repositioning. I’ve had this problem before and you can solve it by using the command `/unstuck` which can also get you out of corners you’ve trapped yourself in. I’ve only had the game crash but that is because warframe works differently as when you turn off your console (i'm not sure if it’s the same on PC) it will continue to run, and kick you out once you turn your console on again, making you have to restart it. Overall, not many bad bugs in the game unless you purposely try to break it (as many people have tried) ENJOYABILITY + CONCLUSION I’ve really enjoyed this game when I played it, the gameplay is phenomenal and the story is great, and at the cost of nothing, because it’s completely free! (minus the microtransaction, but every free game has those). Whenever I would log off I felt satisfied with the progress and always anticipated new updates regularly checking to see if any big things have been announced. As of now, I wouldn’t say I quit but i’ve taken an extended break due to burnout and boredom, but that happens to every game. The main problem of this game is simply burnout and not having new content, but there are still millions that still enjoy this game since Day 1 and support it. I would rate this game 4.5 stars, for the fun times and would totally recommend to others |
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My name is Mario, and am currently studying Digital Design and Game Art in DSA. This is my class blog Archives
January 2023
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The views and opinions expressed in this blog are solely those of the author and do not represent those of Durham School of the Arts or Durham Public Schools.
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