D_Rogue Game Art Project

H appy  New Year! For my first blog post of 2020, I thought I'd briefly start with a recap of the last year; to see how far I've come with D_ROGUE. I created   concept art to technical drawings, visual dev to illustrations. I even made animations, to reveal the projects name! 2019, for me, was full of building, learning and improving my 2D and 3D skill set. I learnt so much and overcome so many challenging...challenges. Taking the notes I had from my head and actually creating artwork (shaping the project to where I am now), has been one of the most rewarding things creatively. In 2020, I hope to take what I've built on and take it to new depths. I'm sure that with learning new software, tools and techniques, will come with its own set of challenges. But as Rikki Rogers once said " Strength doesn't come from what you can do. It comes from overcoming the things you once thought you couldn't.".                 ...

For the next step of the modelling process of the crab pot, I was challenged with another huge hurdle ( to say the least). This stage was where all the painstaking problems crawled in again.  The rope. I thought making some bendy cords would be simple enough, but believe me, it was anything but. There aren't many tutorials, covering the whole modelling process to the end 'game ready' product, for rope. So, like previous obstacles I faced in the modelling stage, I used multiple methods and trial and error to find the best path.  Actually, creating a tube following a manually placed path, was the easiest part for me. I had picked this step up while at University. However, I had to manually place and move each Bezier path to form the guide lines, for yards of rope, in a natural and realistic way. Hundreds of them. I spent more hours than I would have liked, setting up the paths to guide the rope along. I kept asking myself that there must be an easier way to tie...

While I am developing my game art project, I have been building various 3D assets to create a scene within the game engine Unity. The scene I hope to create into a playable build, will be on the main working deck of the F/V  Scully. I aim to create a grey box build that showcases the fundamentals before polishing the environment and atmosphere to that of a high quality.  One of the most  significant models on the main deck will be the many crab pots that are used to catch the king crab. I thought I would show my progress so far in the modelling stage  (see image below) , as in between other things (and life in general) it's taken a long time to model. I began by creating the body of the pot, with a human skeleton rig as a size reference. I then built up the other parts around the frame, such as all the linked rope and buoys. Again, like previous models, I had little reference to go by. There is plenty of footage of the crab pots fr...

Once I decided to announce the name for my game art project  D_ROGUE , I planned to do a reveal animation to launch the title. This was an exciting challenge as I had not animated anything since my time at University. Before I created the animation, I had to create a title logo and encompass it in a certain look and theme to fit the setting. D_ROGUE is set during the late 70's. The decade of the personal computer, roller skates and disco. I looked at ideas from the era to incorporate the new title into an animation (minus the roller skates). After some time researching, I found the personal computer idea kept sticking out for me. It wasn't because that seemed to be the easier-to-animate route (which it was anything but). However, I found its features fitting for the game and genre. You may be wondering how does a retro computer fit into a survival mystery set out in the ocean then? I'll get to that in a bit. While looking for a font for the title ...

Ahoy! It's been exactly one year since I embarked on this game art project and after much considerable thought, between research and development, I feel it's time to reveal the official game title...                                                                                                                                           Jason Bartlett © So here it is! D_ROGUE. Or,  Drogue. A definite improvement from the previous vague place holder 'Untitled' that's for sure! In time, I'll explain what the title means as a whole for the game. But for now, I'll let you speculate or google the word for anyone who doesn...

Back when I was in Junior school (Elementary school for any Americans reading), I vividly remember having a morning assembly all about the Bermuda Triangle. I have no idea now why the head teacher dedicated a whole half hour on the subject. Why he projected his voice about the topic across the hall in the wee early hours (way too early for us to process anything) is beyond me. Whether it was towards a special class project or to just bore everyone I don't know. However, unlike my friends and most of the year group around me, a spark of interest into this enigma, off the west Atlantic Ocean, captivated and fascinated me right to the core.  It would take many years later for me to work out (ironically) what this thing I was so struck and influenced by growing up as a kid was. Mysteries. Perhaps the aim of the assembly was simply to inspire young minds. Yet, that one assembly irreversibly helped channel my interests into unsolv...

Red sky at night, sailor's delight.  Red sky  in the morning, sailor's warning. I love the idea of this foreboding premonition sign as a narrative tool and using  the latter half of this classic saying fit perfectly. The phrase comes from millennia of weather forecasting and is a well-known meteorological prediction by judging the glow of evening or morning clouds relating to nearby storms; the changing of weather systems flowing from west to  east . This foreboding event will be the very beginning of the storyline...the calm before the storm. All seems well, but hell is unknowingly on the horizon.                                                                                                     ...

After creating   the first set of  character designs and enjoying the line art process,  I set about making the next sheet for the deckhand crew of the F/V Scully.                                                                                                                                           Jason Bartlett © This sheet, of three  deckhand   members, completes the crew of six (see here for previous post). Here we have the Engineer (Left), Deckhand #1 (Middle) and Deckhand #2 (Right). In each character, I hope to convey their roles; while describing what sort of personality they have. For example, ...