Art Direction Bootcamp: Building a Visual Threshold

[Music] hi folks okay my name is Jeff McDonald this is my first level GDC talk like this month on to GDC so uh I make apologies for the Scottish accent I'll try and keep it tones down as much as possible so building a visual threshold we often employ corpsman or visual troops and pop culture elements into our games but the question is why do we employ these visual elements and what useful effect does it they can have on the audience so let's talk is about this considered use of visual trope and how it can help we've come a useful tool for the art director in several ways so first I'll go through my bio and theorem from the largest part of my

career after I was an architect for several years I taught an architectural school too so I moved into environment heart I was a rock star for nearly nine years and worked on several of the GTA titles I was an environment artist responsible for the Contras a tour in San Andreas and then we've done two gt4 and finally I was lead environment artist on gt5 for roughly half of the production and after eight or nine years of making GTA had to say that I wanted to try something else so after an initial creation of the world for GT 5 like my team isms responsible for all the landscape outside of the main city so I was quite a big project to start with after that to say that I wanted to move to somewhere colder and darker than Scotland so I moved to Finland where I was with remedy entertainment doing them for our own waking and Max

Payne so I was with there I worked on the island week's American Nightmare initially and then we moved on to a new project and then your IP quantum break where I started workers out director an interesting thing was it was a promotion from resource a new out director on a new IP on a new platform with an engine with new technologies so it was something of a challenge but there's some really interesting visual challenges with this project and pre-production we had things like the holders time look would give us some physicality and as something I'll cover later because this relates back to the use of common visual tropes and then lastly with the quantum break completed and only one more years ago I moved on to try some a hand at some mobile development again it's a new thing for me and it's new worlds and new IP to develop so coming from a world building point of view it was going to be an interesting challenge so I moved to play

Raven so a visual threshold what is a visual threshold as I said most of my career has been involved with building worlds and I wanted to do talk about something like instead of when creating these new places not only for finding inspiration for the new elements of the design but also for introducing the role to the audience it's the point of where they actually get the visual comprehension when they arrive in the world so it's a collective set of methods and visual guidance designs to assess the effort an investment the audience has to take when they become oriented in and immersed in and the the world with the visual design rules that you've created so like ours through the looking-glass or eyes when when Dorothy steps through that door the audience has to spend some time working out how how the world works one caveat I would say that I've actually been involved mostly

with real world projects which really helps with audience engagement and comprehension but all the all of them have required some degree of investment and employer emotion and narrative exposition remedy in particular strive for narrative cinematic storytelling action games so and there's a sort of strong emphasis on establish our atmosphere and tone which you have to spend some time building before you get into the room of the game but that said all were all game modes require some visual orientation for the player so when it comes to world building and immersion how do we actually construct these accessible visual thresholds for the audience when we with the help with arrival in your world is to employ visual stereotypes or visual troops visual stereotypes are quite powerful if used carefully as the stereotype is a container for preconception and that's not necessarily a bad thing because the

use of a pop culture or common element that taps into audiences preconceptions can actually be leveraged positively especially for those projects we hope to reach out to a large audience like a triple a title for example this is the 1973 movie Westworld I mean hopefully a lot of you have seen this and the movie is a future resort of sorts where and visitors are arriving as mock historical world that's been created to for them to live out their fantasies I mean it's basically a simulation it's a theme park and now it wasn't Androids I'm going to kill everyone I mean that's the storyline but it's a place where vistas of Stepford the real world and are presented with familiar visual tropes in order to live it these fantasies so it's a really good analogy for a video game and we do the same thing we create these worlds we carefully craft them and we have these visual user can use visual tropes in order to assess the players expectations when they arrive in the

world but that said and see a visual stereotype isn't a cliche and it's not always clear the difference between the two I mean if you look at the description of a cliche that's an expression idea or element of an artistic work which has become overused to the point of losing its original meaning or effect and that would be a visual element it's taken on a life of its own and what I would do is that actually we can weaken the structure of your visual design for your world and something you have to be careful with it's definitely something that is different from the visual stereotype visual stereotype is more of a functional trope that we can use the simple test really is to keep in mind when I think these are elements is to ask yourself does this support the visual design rosette that you've created for your world it's a fuzzy and subjected boundary between cliche and visual stereotype but we have to rely on our internal compasses afters to see

what is supportive or not and they can be interchangeable too I mean when pop culture element and when title or help support the game road design whereas it might actually hinder and fight against the design and another title so use that question always check your work especially after spring when to bring something new into the world you did have a clearly defined faz euro set for them to do this check with but some gameplay cliches are actually become so ingrained in our culture and our medium that become convention so these things are dangerous and require too much time to challenge within a project so I mean it's okay the red bow is explored healthbox is here that's fine move on and leave them alone so in games we have a complex role to communicate and the use of visual stereotype can communicate the foundations of these settings and help free up the audience's

time and energy to focus on the introduction of new elements and your more unique properties of your world I mean this is a list diagram but if you imagine all this parts of the game they need to explain to the player as buckets that you got to fill if you think of that of a national exposition available with the audience is limited then you have setting clear motivations character introductions and gameplay mechanics to teach the player and to get to the point of player comprehension and emotion within the game can be quite difficult with a limited amount of time you have you know well it depends in the game if it's mobile you get seconds almost before the players had enough and then and there's a triple-a game you've got a few minutes really to really start to compare the man so if you can't really fellow those buckets then there's going to be a problem with a clear understanding some of the elements of the game in fact

we're not like the real world so a lot of the time we have to devote the book there's a lot of the player education it's a game play and it's something you don't consider an architecture or film I mean we don't have to teach somebody moving into a new building how to use the door and walk up the stairs or have someone had to watch our screen for a film so education of how to actually function and the world is going to take a lot of the time so whatever the distribution of audience focus at the beginning of your game the use of visual stereotypes can actually help fill some of these areas by allowing them to be partially filled by the preconceptions they bring to the game world and also that brings a anticipation allows you to spend more time and focus on communicating the more unique aspects of your design for example if the player orientates themselves to the world and setting and a quick and efficient manner we can devote more time to the introduction build more interactive plot details within our world without extra

focus and energy with the audience we can start to resolve some of the excess of exposition that we can sometimes use in games for instance of 1950s B movies have this particular stage the exposition scenes were set up for the player it's almost like a stage set where the where the the actors are actually facing the facing the audience and explaining every detail the world even though the characters were then our world would actually understand all these rules so something we need to try and avoid in games seller - audience have largely moved on from this technique flex position and as our media matures we're seeing more improved approaches they take advantage of a game's unique interactive features and methods for interactive storytelling I mean such as going home or Firewatch that they've done particularly good jobs of of building environmental storytelling in the world looking to

movies a great example of production design ethos and role storytelling as with Mad Max there's a much deeper world in Ko children as initially explained through the audience and fact if it been an older film you would pull out margin a wall of text or some early season to describe what it happened to the world but there isn't the viewers presented with info and visual information and left to the dock the rope the dock to the rules and relationships of the various elements they make up the world's backstory and current state even if the viewer doesn't wish to invest the time to focus on understand those will rosettes presented them they can still enjoy the story for water as and then re-watch still gradually build more into that there's one example as a dystopian future but where the modern cars are rolled has just collapsed I mean you don't see a souped-up Prius driving along and it's always there's a clear style choice there but the classic car customization

imagery employed as a familiar pop culture element that stands for the hands-on personalization and near worship of the classic automobile so it would stand well with the audience and gives them some grounding the audience can understand how vehicles with it would exist like that in this world movies often employ visual stereotyped as convention to support exposition on a broad skill to settle the audience into a theme or genre often referred to as cliche but usually has a negative connotation I feel is often a disservice to some of these common visual elements it helps movies which have a limited time of this audience to efficiently and effectively communicate the setting of place and historical time classic example as in westerns with the use of Monument Valley I mean it's been popularized by John Ford and in over 50 films and western themed films have been

filmed in a location to the point in Greenland cinema and stands as a symbol of the Wild West and it's also been used as a classic visual stereotype in modern films attempting to immediately grasp that Western theme so if you're to making a Western game of course your audience with laylee expect to see the setting depicted in your game world and also helps to borrow the history of cinema abused western western genre another example is you wouldn't expect us to be setting for a romantic comedy but the cabin in the woods is a classic horror horror visual stereotype and it's not necessarily a bad thing as the preconceptions it carries weather builds audience anticipation as something terrible will happen and that anticipation is part of the emotional currency that the genre traditionally uses to trade for scares I mean the setting kick starts the momentum and sawtooth emotional paths that offer ever

creasing tension and released the genre employees moving on to games have extramental a spacing issue and need for rapid visual comprehension and exposition is mobile games and with the title we've been developing at play or even it seems that unlike triple-a any investment in a visual introduction to your world for more than a handful of seconds could result in players losing interest and potentially abandoning the game altogether and looking elsewhere so play play Ravens wento step it's a vehicle combat strategy game and the set in the US East Coast after a frozen ecological apocalypse if you can imagine it I describe as Mad Max meets The Day After Tomorrow and it's set on say on the East Coast with a bit of frontier West vibe through an end for good measure so to create this world we brought in a consultant

writer and together we created a really rich backstory of a new society and culture those Gruen sense elements froze this world however there's a problem communicating much of this as establishing the setting alone needs to be rapid and as in a typical mobile game I knew we would have to rely on the use of already established imagery in order to get a quick message across to the player and use those preconceptions anticipation to get them into the game world so looking to movie tradition and ends belief for inspiration and reference it made sense the echo Hollywood's long-standing obsession with destroying the Statue of Liberty the statues been commonly used icon in Hollywood for representing the collapse of the u.s. or the world and an apocalyptic event from planet of apes famous final scene to flying Liberty's head in Cloverfield as a powerful statement of disaster and something abroad audience will likely have seen and recognized as used in

associations this was great I gave as place an event and a single recognizable motif and gave us some storytelling shorthand for a limited attention span audience so we started to develop that an le key our concept our and then finally for the loading screen of the game its first thing the clear sees immediately sets out that setting and one shot upon loading the app so it's like an example of employing a film trope as a visual stereotype it's functional and it helps with a project on a critically short time for the exposition next I'll come to my work on the pre-production and visual development for quantum break I'm no longer attached to the project and it launches in three weeks time on April the fifth remedy came Lee agreed for me to be able to discuss some of the pre-production phase of the project so once the plan lies of the game and theme

had been drawn up we started rolling into pre-production and there was a few standout visual design questions we had to answer to do with the game's theme especially as we knew we had the opportunity to define unique visual elements for those of you that don't know it's a third-person action-adventure game and as plot as a time travel story where time is breaking down and it's up to you as Jack Joyce to try and save the world from ending so the main premise required us to show both the players time-based powers and the effects of an ongoing temporal disaster throughout the game and that presented us with one of the most difficult challenges which was to answer the question what does time look like I mean you can't actually see time you only see its effects so some of the easy decisions like setting the game in fall it was an easy visual metaphor which stands for changing time and one obvious example but for the VFX we had to work a

lot harder since we're creating a game about time manipulation we had to invent a visual and physical presence from time itself within the game to create something tangible to show that time is clearly breaking or behaving abnormally at certain points of the game first thing we did was to look at how other art forms handle the representations of time and that's what you'd call casting the net weight looking behind you the industry for inspiration special and such a tricky theme we gathered reference from other art from such a sculpture painting photography and video art to fill a set of visual elements that would form the ingredients for our version of time within the game of particular interest was futurist painting and sculpture slitscan photography and some video are from this research and reference gathering we

found the broken multi-state imagery the most compelling the first element of our ingredients for time we developed was the last prismatic fractured look I would echo shiron distort the image on screen time was breaking and fracturing in the story the main events for the spring turn manifest itself are what stem stutters within the world they were the world events the with fries skip and repeat time with only a few characters able to move and exist within less dangerous a unstable state so as a visual metaphor for the moments of broken time the prismatic could distort and break the worldview and the disturbing and violent way and further help emphasize the stress and spectacle however one issue was that we employed purely the plasmatic sin the world it would feel exactly the same will damage shield and distort it and it would confuse the audience with the best be confused worst would actually think it was a rendering bug so no the world would

freeze from these broken time events or Perrault's with hurt but unless it was an obvious moving objects it wouldn't make such a difference in the world state it was hard to communicate that shift so we needed a clear transition and shift in a visual perception of the time only the main character on another scarcely could really exist in a state but they also had to do something with a shaft in players vision because it was their powers allowed them to perceive and live in a state so we followed another period of research into the visual reference gathering we found something that might work so we used IR photography IR photography has us very brittle very brittle frozen feel to the world and it's also a very strong perceptual change in the sky tones this indigo color and trees go pain communities it's connect some really crazy looking photographs and frozen elements like people frozen in time we

have this porcelain look too so in order to do this frozen desaturated world we realized we'd have to actually push the lighting put more color into the actual real world and time's running so that drove contrast and impact in the shift for a lot of the game by using wall warmer palettes and the materials and lighting and then we shifted to the grid for frozen time and it was a simple color great shift but it made the light feel harsher as well we got some of the high level bloom so I made the world feel slightly over little exactly time and slowed light itself so it was as heavy saturate desaturated overly bright harsh environment so we had a clear of state change for time now however there was one more thing we had to address the need for an overall change and the visual state of the world and we had the

prismatic still didn't feel like frozen time the gradient prismatic effects though when is the comprehensible visual tell for time we needed an additional visual ingredient in tonight some familiarity to the recipe and help the audience comprehend the altered reality and give them a visual grounding and visual anchor we needed a visual stereotype when the audience would understand this time-related again a period of research and reference gathering and one of the commonly seen visuals for slowed or stopped time that we settled on was long exposure photography as I really attractive visual tell because we're capturing brightly and moving like sources like headlights or sparks also the photography for Star Street tonight night skies I find particularly compelling so it found the special stereotype that we could use to support their own recipe for a broken time and I say broken time here because that

allowed this freedom for a broad our power of visual reference long exposure photography isn't really frozen time it's except the act of capturing the actual image it's words time so being able to pill and various examples of abnormally behaving time was less restricting outdoor areas again with the warmer color palette and lighting they were especially effective with this long exposure photography sky where time is stalled but also blended we can mix in the long exposure on night sky elements because even though it's there when the time breaks down we can obviously mix the UH night together so it give the world a dramatic and obvious shift in reality we added the star streaks into the sky dome they also used contrails from aircraft as well as all of leg streaks the Ruthven later we introduced a special element into the recipe I gave the audience the recognizable visual anchor they also

helped highlight and reinforce the look of the prismatic fracturing billet trail sparks and moving light sources all created this linear sculpture in time and helped give us firefighters and the stutters and time powers a clearly different vibe this is the example again or fusing the application of a visual stereotype to help reinforce and provide a visual anchor for a new and unique element in the world an addition to these elements the technical art director also devised to further additions and to the ingredients for broken time Wellman was flakes evaporate off the surface of the world and also an audio driven distortion effect these helped add more violence and instability to the scene they gave well initially when we were actually looking at the reference there was one particular video that I remember being the most compelling for me which was actually the video of someone filming an oncoming soft wave from above the water

surface and there's always noise and violence approaching and then you get a sudden world shift when the cameras swallowed by the water suddenly the audio scape changes and also the movement becomes more much more slower than has a definite I'd effing feel so that's how with this device these distortion effects the audio driver and he's helped to communicate our violence and instability to the scene and also that's our incoming natural event almost when they trigger these brought it all together and a visual ecosystem for the moments of broken time and it really helped communicate with the world freezing skipping and repeating the rendering team in the art that technical art direction came together to create what is one of the standout visual elements of the game and I feel it's a good example of art and tech working together I mean it was it there was a technical solution in terms of the rendering but it was also also something visual that we really wanted to communicate the next use for visual stereotype in the game was palette the

main n-type antagonist in quantum break was monarch solutions as a corporation with heavy investment in science and research we wanted them to feel real and familiar they also give a believable corporate identity to them again weave through a visual research where ended up being really settled and particularly the 1970s NASA brand guidelines had this palette that felt like iconic science or sci-fi that burnt orange gray and white with this reference for the palette then game company was aimed at you a similar take in this classic color palette you've seen this palette before repeated in sci-fi film from 2001 through to the recent the Marshall we believe that could we could still create something with a unique presence in the world that would feel more real with a palette that would lay a foundation and players mind of a corporation with the strengths and science and research with the general palette theme set and they

need for a visual looser and plausible logo design a higher the graphic design company who had designed that branding for various real world companies and together we devised a simple brand guide which we could then use as a springboard to inform the branding of Monarch throughout the game and also the live action before passing the design to the graphic designers the logo had actually involved from the prismatic motif of the time effects and the game to you can see the sharp prismatic shaped language and a few aspects of the Corporations design philosophy from the architecture through the world good design the brand guiding guidelines were then used as a foundation for the team to work on uniform design elements of the logo will used in addition to the color palette and the corporate logo to untape style with progression and power and differing rows and the three of enemy characters also vehicle levering permutations and

proper branding were also back part of the application much like a real-world corporation the presence was stamped in all their equipment and props by color or complete branding design the color schemes for monarch interior design and signage used the palette to which roses it was reserved from a monarch so their areas would have a much colder scientific vibe and contrast the warmer natural tones of the older buildings and structures in the city of Riverport I also have to say a big thank you to the the rendering team at remedy because they actually boost the architectural challenge I said for the architecture of monarch it was a clean mode on angular style I actually coined the term prismatic futurism to describe the work it was something of a challenge for the rendering team as require an advanced lighting solution they excelled the the global illumination created with ambient occlusion reflection rendering they developed allowed me to build such architecture one further advantage of

the color scheme or speaker tune the grading for broken time mentioned previously to push warmer color of tones belonging to the corporation that really helped the readability in combat so again it was a case of considering something of a pop culture or a visually stereotypical element to add familiarity to overall new creation in the world and then using external expertise to attempt to create something of a credible entity as only the visual threshold for the audience we need to concern ourselves with though we also need to think of how to introduce and communicate the world design vision to the team internally to use of visual stereotype and visual metaphor and distort visual games can also help communicate the visual direction of a project into something easy to follow and comprehendible by a large team using a visual metaphor or visual stereotype internally helps to simplify the comprehension of complex

tasks for the team with bold building in particular we need to often create something that captures the spirit of a place how did this del done and communicate its essence to the viewer effectively and efficiently with a exchange without extraneous the visual information on detail for example set ease in urban environment environments have a lot of visual noise and distilling that visual information into the lair through the game can be a daunting task for an out team game roads usually use far more condensed versions of the real world and using a visual metaphor for your team can actually help the approach to the vols location and skill check I've used before for crafting the rolled reference from the real world is to think of your world interpret it is a souvenir salute snow globe what would the dispelled version of that snow globe contain what's important to the character of the place and how does the scale and relative positioning work it's basically a visual metaphor for thinking and seeing like a tourist

as a foreign perspective of a place that can help shape the bigger brush strokes the define a place without the over-familiarity of the native inhabitant which in this case is the creating artist somewhat a tourist visiting a place for the first time if you imagine clears eyes the tourist your player has initially at this foreign view theater games environs and if you think of as a single globe you have the global landmarks and key areas and the skill and possession these landmarks are quite flexible if based on the real place but it's also scalable to the overall city and world as a single group how do you think of the next correct level of granularity within the world each district or area of your map has its own globe too so with regional rat landmarks and significant elements of that help oriented the viewer and so on don't in neighborhoods or even blocks of course they're all relies on a lot of research and a lot of reference trips to the actual place if you're setting it in a real world visiting the real place

gives you a better feel for the what's important buildings and structures to your essence of the place but the principle can be applied to fictitious places too for example quantum breaks set of rubber port doesn't exist as an East Coast us location so when laying out the world we created an imaginary history for the area crafting to create the vibe of an East Coast University town with an industrial heritage it has no direct analog but it has its own snow globe as a world that's planned and laid out based on its own SoDo historical landmarks and the relative locations of course laying out the world is more than just us as all our requirements such as the four landmarks and orientation such as narrative or player progression fostering a sense of discovery or filling a window and also hierarchy of groups and travel ease oh and one more thing about the plausibility of a place

that comes to graphic design when the designing is urban places you need to remember that the world is filled hand-painted oddly designed signage and your worlds more retro for paying attention to the ho detection flavor the ads I'm not seeing us as necessarily example but the world is filled by the graphic design and you need to be careful of not losing the feeling of a place by over designing roads graphics a simple term can also be employed to communicate the visual concept to the team for quantum break we had this very heavy science feel to the look of technology and so we captured a lot of energy of research science and coupled with monarchs purposeful aggressive underlying intention so we tailed the name apologies to the company but we're telling the name militarized NASA as a term for such a several company but helped fix this viewpoint and the artists head of somewhere that employed

science and research with a purposeful intent and led the team together and use reference of various heavy science projects from around the world as inspiration for the technology within the game it helped gate the visual design and aspires to feel more grounded in real from props to the more exotic enemy and location designs we tried to reference an echo her real experimental technology was constructed doing this liner solids clearly manufactured look yeah with some of the fragility and complexity of real-world experimental technology so we're thus Kayden's then ends up is often in a sterile gate or our Bible and one caveat I thought this is from my experiences with a sterile gate as it can very rabbit hole for the art director can grow in size and complex the over pre-production to the point you're managing one or several large documents on projects visuals and something I learned was at the end the

pre-production I almost put that to one side that's not where I actually showed the team I created the cities of one sheets that was quite to look through and used carefully chosen visual stereotypes or visual troops just one image and one single line that captured that part of the visual design it was really easy for the team to read team won't read visual style gags I thought I thought too small to large you have to create something really concise for them so we've covered the use of visual stereotype and both world-building key visual element design and also internally as a communication - the last thing I should feel I should cover is the flip side of that so from the use of using visual support of visual elements what are the ones that can potentially inhabit the world design intention we see the use of archetypal jokes and cliche in our industry often but it's worth covering why their use can be detrimental to the art direction and impact on clear experience and crafted

game world for Less the best examples to look at as a contained example of design within a world of characters a character is an important element in the building and visual storytelling of our world for starters interactive you have a much broader range of expressing your design and narrative with interaction and animation than the static game world can lend so therefore as an opportunity you shouldn't waste when trying to tell the visual story of your world and communicate a narrative of your game take the heavy for instance the 1987 movie predator has a lot died and so far it's left us with a visual legacy of almost 30 years or when the most commonly utilized archetypes of game design don't get me wrong this isn't a comment on the use of the archetype per se but it's great for adding the variety

to game play a love and also love predator Jesse Ventura's Blinn is a memorable character but a few of the characters looks have gone on to partners with years of repeating 80s action hero visuals and games especially those for those enrolled in narrative to communicate you can see the visual trope employed in part or whole when it comes to the use of game play archetype in many games from the beer sleeves to the chain gun that's one of these things that you see often but for projects where you're attempting to create a wholly immersive world with a compelling narrative the use of such imagery breaks the fourth wall the characters reminding your audience you are playing a game it's comparable to the 80s action movie posters were often the actors name was larger than actual movies faithful itself the characters playing is overshadowed by the actors or in persona

so the character becomes throwaway and star feels somehow a separate element the world they're performing in and something to consider especially with the onset of virtual reality this is going to be compounded with arrival of a truly immersive experience the VR can offer I said I understand the use of visual tropes or archetypes can have its place and use the recitations when the use of visual cliche is part of the art direction using preconceptions of the viewer to the game's advantage the office example Team Fortress 2 where the visual tropes are a function of expression of character class within the game and of course one character argument as that players need the special cliche to recognize the archetype and its role within the game as I said su fails to express as a first express the visual design of the world

it loves them and also wastes potential interactive storytelling opportunities but as something of a sweeping analogy if you imagine car design not having evolved since the 1950s and any car design new car design requiring to have till fenders to be recognizable as a car it's ridiculous cars today have the functionality functionally defined visual foundation for wheels lights grill and so on I mean it's not changed in years the design has still evolved we can still recognize these vehicles today as cars but even though they lack some of the visual design elements of 60 years ago no I'm not I'm seeing all classes archetype or cliche I mean size and skill and also the setup of the introducing the habit are old is something we still need to have but again one thing you could do is to check your visual design against the world's rule set assess the design does

the support and strengthen the visual design of the world if you have any doubts then reassess if you have the best design for all within the restrictions of functionality technical requirements and production theme you have if there is an issue however how did you decide how to handle the addition of an element and possibly breaks or challenges the visual model of your world especially potentially late in production should it be dropped to keep the elegance of the world design there's always a risk of diluting that clear dimension if they remain but that's a really extreme set step and something you may not be in apparel to decide they would depend on you take those aspirations or seuss take a step like that needs discussion and appraisal of course a better solution a sense the game development such a complex fluid and collaborative process is to have a robust enough design rule set for your

world and a mythology to support and change for change and expansion because generally with game development appears off to plan change for some extent it does seem in inevitability some things so f when building a world with a compelling and appealing visual design rule set were the good examples for examples of the the heavy archetype do I think have an artistic success story and passed it does the support and strength in the visual design of rule set of the world test well an obvious example is that sprung to mind is Bioshock Art Deco and of still art deco styled underwater city of Rapture has become a classic setting and a great example of world building of course it's the Baghdady it's an iconic heavy and it says well in this underworld city and clearly builds a strong foundation on visual references related to its setting and as overly

reliant on game character stereotypes or recycling a more traditional heavy and visual tropes another game that strides strives to have hearing visual design and all its elements and a personal favorite is dis Arnold again doesn't necessarily have a have in its traditional sense but the tallboys would probably satisfy the tougher imposing enemy's lot the visual design and expression of verticality behavior and gameplay works in unison to create something interesting and different it's a good example of visual the game design and are working in unison to create something unique of course a rational had a knack of creating other interesting heavy class enemies such as the motorized Patriots the classic chain guns actually there but it helps reinforce the irony of a George Washington statute toting such a weapon

so to summarize the visual threshold as your audience is gateway and your world and narrative crafting an accessible visual threshold to world requires a few things and example potentially leveraging a pop culture visual element to ease the players into your world or even maximum with a more unique visual elements to provide visual reference point it should be accessible and understandable that's what careful and considered use of visual stereotype can be a tool to help build the visual threshold for the audience and avoid the comprehension or exposition traps that exist manage your audience's energies for comprehension towards your new identifiable elements and leverage the preconceptions of the audience with visual stereotype it all comes in that crucial pre-production stage where you have a plan to use these

visual tropes strategically to give you the room to explore your more memorable and unique elements thirdly reassess all editions through the lens of the world design role set as the project evolves and chefs enter development I feel the most crucial part of world building is consistency of vision so when adding new elements check they belong to the special room set and ask that question your wallet we were always stronger for it hopefully this talks provide you with some thoughts on when game are except making game accessible but finding ways that I didn't support the unique flavor they can have - if it can help add the art direction - set for world building or consideration on how to support visual comprehension of your newer elements then that's great it's helped thank you [Applause] [Music]

any questions hi um quick question as you were talking about the quantum break process as you were sort of coming up with these different ideas of ways to represent time how did that process take place was that a series of meetings that happened in like a month or was this you picked a couple things ran with it for a while and then picked another they actually ran for four months and there was a lot of visual reference gathering like I said and we actually wanted we deliberately steered clear of of previous game visuals but I just wanted to pursue how other art forms I mean other art forms have handled the effects of time like cubism and futurism so we knew there was references there that we could actually use and actually bring to

enta games because the things that haven't been seen before so we want to create something unique I mean it's easy if you look at other games some things it's easy to be influenced by those and we wanted to try and steer clear of that so we created a board basically and in a room and gathered reference and then eventually if we filtered it down and we created like our almost like a memory tree of sections of what the elements of those that research was that we wanted to actually combine together so yeah it's a long process thank you so my name's Ryan I'm from Alberta University Dundee nice to see familiar voice see a familiar was here of home twist and so when you gonna write this book it's a really great topic and I think I'd be really great to have a book on something like this and so I'm trying to make a questions to ask in in place of the students I would have and the big one I was really interested in was that visual

research process that you go through I was wondering what level that happens you know is it air would be your whole art team or just to help see maybe just at the lead sort of positions the level of visual research well the whole team I mean the thing is with the dark direction you don't want to be an author or such you don't go what yourself in a room in income oh I have a vision everyone must know follow this would be mad yeah but I don't think it would really get your team on board as well as in bringing them into the process so like I said that's room I mean this is where that was actually the room where me and some of the love teams saw the technical director as well we had this huge board with officer build array visual research galloped but we'd go around and talk to the team and we'd actually have meetings with the team as well and give them updates on how the house is going and leave it be involved in it too they can send visual research lately it found if they found a good example they would send I we discuss it with them on a daily basis as an

evolving process really I mean all the team have a stake on investment and to some extent it's more of a collaborative method I think it should be because then everyone becomes or it gets on board for the visual design of the game and it takes a long time and eventually when you get get that get that idea that the visual visual design is effects then all artists heads then you don't need to manage them so much it's more of a case of discussing and guiding them they can actually go ahead and the environment artists were on the on the same areas they had ownership of the same is a long time and they knew exactly what they were creating it was ingrained in the brain in visual design so that's the best way to do it think yeah great work thanks very much thank you personally my experience has been a lot of marketing in games which is obviously very closely

linked to you know the visual design and my question was specifically about targeting and the target audience and interest focused targeting does that ever kind of come into play for you when you consider color palettes and visual styles interest focus on demographics or say you're targeting fans of certain genre or you know fans who are interested in this type of game yeah I mean I think I think that dead-end fluence see that the color palette is tailing for for the corporation and quantum break I mean it's a science fiction game so has that that interest group I guess people that were more into the into the science fiction or our cent actions and a lot then they're gonna see some recognition there I think that that actually comes more and mobile mobile so so focused on on demographics in a way

that seems a bit more aggressive and focused on on who you're appealing to and what what your target group is so it does seem to be more more designed that way with Triple A it seems to be it's more of a general plan you have and you know you know roughly who you're building the game for about it's much more complex so we can't really change a whole visual aspect of the game that much and it has to be cohesive so thank you hi my name is Wayne which she was talking about it bring up my own question of when you speak of threshold how do you know this might not exactly be the same definition insurers but like how do you know whether you've crossed a line where you've where you might have lost your audience even though you've created something visually amazing it's a little hard to explain it just popped

into that yeah but no it's a how do you know when you've crossed that visual threshold well as a fuzzy and very subject of like I mean some people will will become immersed in the game a lot quicker than others so it's it's something you get through play testing really I mean it's something that they do especially in mobile but I mean we do that as well later on in the game and also I mean there's a lot of discussion and playing internally as well and covering that with the the clear after director on the creative heads of the the game will actually get feedback on that so it's a it's a lot of discussion the how many times well I don't know if you have example how many times have you gone back to the drawing board then yeah yeah it happens a few things actually the the idea for the time visuals was actually very early we seem to settle down on uh on a on a look we really wanted to pursue very early and I took a long time to develop there's a lot and

it would be great to have the 10 o'clock director here to explain the details behind the timing there's a lot of new rendering elements designed into the engine so it took a long time to develop but we knew we were going very early and like I said that that went on to inform the architecture further for the the corporations they were inspired by the look of the little broken time so I actually helped form of visual umbrella over the whole project thank you hey um I was just wondering how do you know when you have a design that just needs a little bit of tweaks or if you're like oh I just need to scrap this whole idea as a whole if you know that makes sense err how do you know when there's a design that needs some tweaking as I posted like if you don't like an idea and you like the direction it's going but you're like okay it needs something now but what if you add too much to it

and it takes away from the original idea instead of like oh I could have just tweaked it a little bit like how is I don't know if that makes any sense but well I mean I used to be an architect and that's more of you know after designer you have to work from our brief in a way it should be a design brief and that's where your game designers help as well because they they have an intention like the heavy for instance you don't need someone to tell you he has to have many gonna and huge muscly arms and you know yeah but what you want is something to say I want to seem unconcerned or and arrogant over the players firepower and and you can give a brief to the to the artist and then that gives you some framework to work with so then you know when you start to extend beyond that so talk about building like that free work in a direction that go - yeah it's about communication yeah okay thanks thanks for the great talk right now I'm

dealing with an environment that's sort of very anchored in cliche and it's it's first of all it's a desert so as you know you have extremely cliche elements that work like pyramids and sphinx or whatever what have you so I guess what I've been dealing with right now is introducing elements that will sort of expand it into more of an interesting less clear less cliche thing without making it seem visually incongruent so I guess what I'm asking is do you have any experiences with that sort of thing where your your cliches and your visual stereotypes that inform the player are covered and now you sort of want to diversify a little bit and how do you deal with that without becoming visually incongruent and sort of confusing and blame so when you've got an environment steeped in visual stereotype in truth then how do you introduce unique elements with a disorienting or yes finding out too much the player it's

kind of like a flipside of the same powers we talked about for actually it was mostly 90 percent unique and 10% visual so and you have to try and find something something that would it's the only set within that world so there must be a visual design rousseff that world I mean I mean how people exist in this world I mean the do be guidelines then for how this world functions so if you can find a unique visual element that still behaves as though it's like the federal stereotype check does this support and strengthen the visual design go serve the world you just did you need to do that with the unique elements as well you need to make sure they're balanced and make some kind of logical sense in terms of the visual rule set for the world so obviously you're not gonna put like are may not want to put a shiny stainless steel cap on the top of the pyramids because it doesn't look right but I mean it's a unique element but it's breaking that visual rule set so it's research again

Princeton researchers what they artists always have to do it's their underlying foundation of our work so you need to look at a lot of stuff say the games okay and just quickly I guess part of it also is like in a team environment wanting to give time to ideas but some ideas being sort of clearly unfit or just a little off the wall so I mean how do you manage in a team environment choosing wisely and in what you're going to put more visual reference or research into I guess I would you know yeah yeah well it's just an interesting thing for you it's an intense things and experience to some extent there's also a lot of discussion yeah I mean if everyone has reset and a meeting in as well or there's a lot of ideas through an end early on in pre-production then you just have to try and distill down and discuss for what works together in combination and again some made some concepts may just not gel whether they

are offset that you're starting to build so again it's shining that matter of world design no set on everything I mean it's the same thing on your linear or old for GTA or somewhere you don't want to put in some something just that doesn't belong in the real world it's just this doesn't work as always it's a lot of discussion okay thank you very much no problem Thanks last question I mean so have you ever been a part of a team that maybe was a little anxious to start production before having all the style guides and visual target well yeah that's an a-team anxious to start before the sterile gate and pre-production is completed that's normal though because it's you don't want all your artists and your team sitting around waiting on you again it's that electoral thing you don't want to come and go right here's the art Babel as you're going through pre-production you you'll gradually get get work that

they can start to progress with I mean it don't have to have the entire team waiting for robust final version like an river port on a break when you are going to have Doxey that part industrial heritage so guys can start going and getting visual reference for and actually can start building props and all the some of the other elements we know we know what a barrel looks like we don't have to wait for the visual design guide on the prop work that's like a movie set prop work if you have this store that you have to fill with props really before you start building the rest of the world so there's always there's always work that can be done they need to contribute to the final production that can be done you know Leah it's not like everything weeks for that ddr1 of production here's the visual style gate right everyone start it's it's a stag of thing and they gradually progressed into production thank you I think that's that's sighs okay thank you [Applause] [Music]

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