Be the New Renaissance Artist: Davinci = Art+Design+Engineering

Be the New Renaissance Artist: Davinci = Art+Design+Engineering

Cyrus Lum

Cyrus Lum • 20+ years of experience • Game production, development, management, and investment roles • Publishing & independent development companies.

Cyrus Lum • Artist, Art Director, Programmer, Designer, Producer, Studio Director, Executive Director, VP of Digital Productions, Game Developer Owner, and Angel Investor/Advisor

GameDev Guru • I help grow game businesses using my expertise, experience & industry contacts. • And in some cases…I help with funding.

Multi-talent In this day and age of “shrinking” development teams, it is more important now than ever to have individuals on your development team who are “multi-talented”.

Multi-talent This is because of efforts to cut dev costs in order to create products on platforms where business models are leaning toward free-to-play

The Early Days It’s a throw back to the early days of computer games when products were created by one or several individuals.

Potential of Artists Of all of the disciplines, a person with an art background has the potential ability to also handle game design, programming, and production duties.

The Talk I will discuss the methods that I used to develop from an artist to a game designer, programmer, producer and beyond.

The Talk I will discuss a process that artists can use to learn how to program and eventually code in many different programming languages.

The Talk I will discuss the iterative “step” process that I used for game design that can allow an artist to develop game design ideas in much the same way as art is developed in a traditional sense.

The Talk Finally, I will discuss how to manage being an integrated artist/game designer/programmer and how this can be applied to rapid game prototyping and even to actual game production.

Game Design • The process steps of game design as applied to a commercial artist. • Client specs • Market/competitive analysis • Initial design treatment • Create user experience Mock-up screens • Create user experience Demo • Production plan

Client Specs Overall, you want to understand the product to be created

Client Specs What is the product’s purpose in the marketplace? Is it filling a “hole”?

Client Specs Understand your client’s needs

Client Specs Understand the constraints – creative, technical, production

Client Specs Understand the value that the project can have to the market

Client Specs Even if you are creating the game for yourself, your client is the market – not you. • Investigate and understand this market – you still need customers to buy your game.

Market Analysis Investigate what other similar products are already selling

Market Analysis How well are they doing?

Market Analysis Whoare your biggest competitors?

Initial Treatment Focus on game “Core” action

Initial Treatment Make this easy for a player to do

Initial Treatment Make this enjoyable for a player

Initial Treatment “Easy to Learn, but hard to Master”

Initial Treatment Overall, focus on the “playground” or the environment that the “core action” can be done in

Environment Use the environment to promote the “fun” aspects of the core action

Environment Design the environment to add challenge to the core action

Environment Design the environment to inspire growth of new abilities in the core action

Multi-player • How can you play with friends? • Competitive, Co-op

UX Mock-up Mock-up the “flow” of User Experience of the game

UX Mock-up Mock-up the User Interface Screens

UX Mock-up Mock-up the game play screens

UX Demo Create an animated/interactive demo of the “flow” of User Experience of the game

UX Demo Focus on conveying how “fun” the user experience will be. (music game)

Programming for Artists How I started learning how to program

Programming for Artists Modding existing games – just changing object characteristics

Programming for Artists Use an existing engine/game – that has “game scripting” capabilities

Programming for Artists Add new weapon : new art & additional functionality to a base weapon

Programming for Artists An example of weapon mods (southpark)

Programming for Artists Add new vehicle - new art and additional functionality to a base vehicle

Programming for Artists An Example Vehicle Mod (mechforce)

Programming for Artists Add new character - new art and additional functionality to a base character

Programming for Artists An example character mod (Turok2)

Programming for Artists Find forums and message boards and sample code repositories to learn how to use and modify game code.

Programming for Artists Learning programming by making a “text editor” is not fun or motivating

Programming for Artists Learning programming in the context of a game is more exciting and motivating

Programming for Artists See direct result of your new knowledge – important to motivate you further

Be the New Renaissance Artist: Davinci = Art+Design+Engineering