Light and Shadow

So in my research about the games creation, I came through what people call "feeling" or "game atmosphere".

It is when you are looking at a creepy scene with a couple of corpses, at night, in the woods. And even if it is just a game scene you see in your computer, it gives you the creeps.

This is a hard part in gaming making, even in a simple game like the one I want to make.

What make the difference in that scenes?
The light, and the shadows!

Yes, yes... it seems that a scene can have nothing else than shadows and dark silhouettes and give you the creeps.
Plain and simple... not?
No! It may sound pretty easy but there is a whole theory behind the usage of light and shadow. Even if you are painting in canvas, drawing freehand, making CG images or whatever involves a scene which must give a specific feeling to it's audience, it is a hard part of the creation, to use light and shadows in the way you want.

Even the prospective can make a scene boring or awesome.

You can notice that here:

(bigger here http://nitro912gr.deviantart.com/art/Shadows-161729243)

I made this to demonstrate the lighting and shadows in vue 6, but while you look at it, the feeling isn't right. I wanted to made something to make you feel a melancholy, or something like that. But it is not working.

In the following video I used the same scene, but changed the focus of the camera. The results are way closer to what I wanted to show at the preview scene.



So when you are attempting to make a scene you must take in consideration the theory of lights and shadows, even the prospective of the camera.

That was good lesson for me, mostly because I learned it in the initial state, before the project start for good and have to correct big mistakes in my scenes.

Change of plans

Well I was thinking deeper about the scenario of the fantasy project and realized that the "fantasy setting/scenario" is not what I really want.

So I came up with the idea of having a crazy world, something like Alice in Wonderland. With no limits. Everything can happen, everything can be seen. This give a nice opportunity here to mix up any idea that will come to light. I was even thinking of making it like some short of psychedelic cyberpunk world where logic is gone and the principles of nature does not apply, as I said, like Alice in Wonderland.

Then I was wondering about the characters. I really have no knowledge of how to make 3D persons, so this can be a trouble and a big slowdown in the progress. But since I decided to go on with the cyberpunk think I guess the characters can just be anything.

So I made this:




Also I was thinking about doing a "voice over" on the dialogs by using the great text to speech which coming with the MacOSX.

Wall and grass

So here is a little (and bad) addition, I added the wall and the grass, but the wall is very fake, I don't like the final come out so I will change it.

It is very isometric for a man made wall of that age and it ended up very mossy, I need something more sunburned stone to use as material.
Also I changed the door a little so it is more realistic at the joint with the frame.



Anyway this is the result.