Janine "Iris Ophelia" Hawkins' ongoing review of gaming and virtual world style
Firewatch is an upcoming game from Campo Santo, a small studio made up of a group of friends and industry veterans. Since the game is still in development material about it is stillpretty sparce, but this week they shared a post on their blog that is fascinating whether or not you've been following their progress. It's part two of a Twitter Q&A with fans where the developers responded to questions about the game's art and visual design, and it's an interesting look at what it takes to make a game look as striking as Firewatch.
There's a lot to take in (and some of the answers are admittedly a bit "inside baseball") but they're still an incredibly interesting read... Especially if you're looking for a little artistic advice yourself. For example, when asked if it's hard to design dozens of distinct rocks and trees, they write:
Oh yes. Describe a rock to me. It is about as difficult as that. I’m not being cheeky; understanding what makes a thing read the way it does visually is key to being a good modeler.
I learned a lot about how to make rocks during The Cave, and have brought along the lessons with me. The key lesson is that less is more. Don’t spend more than 30 minutes sculpting one. It is slightly less difficult now, but it is never easy. Making specific props like the typewriter and the radio is really fun and to me they are a welcome break from making rocks and trees, especially stylized ones.
Read the full post for yourself here. Be sure to check out the first part of Campo Santo's Firewatch art Q&A while you're at it, and keep your eyes peeled on their blog next week for part three.
TweetJanine Hawkins (@bleatingheart on Twitter, Iris Ophelia in Second Life) has been writing about virtual worlds and video games for nearly a decade, and has had her work featured on Paste, Kotaku, Jezebel and The Mary Sue.
I think it was William Gibson who learned, when young and in school, writing by describing things. Those where the assignments or exercises given to him and the class by his english teacher, I think. Maybe a creative writing teacher though.
Communication as a foundation of many arts? I guess art is some other category than communication, because each can exist without the other. Non-contextual art is one example, and some communication is really not intended at all to be art. Then people claim it as art, or merit worthy and people point to a tree and say it is a piece a work of art. I guess so many things are devoid of context that different words should exist, and art is one of those words that should have been clarified or replaced? But without all those words we end up with blander art, or at least more similar works. Then again, from one person to another this isn't so hard, it is the mass communications and mass media that suffers a bit as communities argue over meaning, purpose and worth.
Natural languages are full of these, shame so much context is needed and words are so confusing. They do expose the human minds confusing relationship with the universe though.
I bet there are books about this, I should really at least give a try and answering some questions that arise in my mind instead of just pondering them out loud.
But, interesting article non the less.
Posted by: anameofsomesorthere | Sunday, October 26, 2014 at 10:21 AM