THE JONGLEUR BEGINNINGS - INITIAL IDEAS

This Blog is a record of a group project that me and a team of other CGA second year students have taken on. Our task is to create a point and click level of a game, using Autodesk Maya, And Unity among other programs. Our level must conform to a Environment Tri count of 100,000 and a Character Tri count of 10,000. This will mean that we have to be Intelligent with our poly usage and our usage of textures to create a more detailed environment and character. The structure of this project is that we have a group of five members all given separate and specific roles in the production of our game. These roles are as follows:

Team Leader - Ryan McGreavey.
Concept Artist - Curtis Adams.
GUI Artist - Chris Rothwell
Environment Artist - Lloyd Mather
Character Artist - Jack Shuler

Role Information
*Team Leader - Heads Meetings, Leads Game Direction, Writes Code, Assists Other Members when Needed.
*Concept Artist - Leads Game Art Direction, Character Art Design, Environment Art Design, Writes Blog, Works Closely with GUI, Environment and Character Artist To Implement Art Direction.
*GUI Artist - GUI Art Design, GUI Animations, Works Closely with Concept Artist to Correctly Implement Art Direction.
*Environment Artist - Environment Design, Asset Design, Texturing.
*Character Artist - Character Design, Texturing, Character Animation.


We as a team were given two random words and tasked to come up with an idea for a game based on these two words, these words didn't have to be the title of the game or be prominent in the game, however these words had to come into mind when describing the game. The words we were given were Lost and Opera. We quickly brainstormed as a group and realized we all had a similar idea of what would be a successful game to produce. We agreed that an opera house would be a good setting for our game as it would create an interesting environment. The lost part would be described by our game dynamics. The idea for our game is that you are an opera singer lost in an opera house, the lights are out and you use a handheld candle to see. The win condition of our game is that the player finds their way to the main stage before the timer (Candle) runs out. After this we had a few more tasks to do before starting work on this game, we had to decide on a name for the game, general theme and look. A Victorian time period was chosen as we decided it would give us a lot of options and creativity with the character and environment art design. The option of a 75 degree view was also chosen (Much like League of Legends, DOTA2 and certain RTS games like StarCraft 2 and Dawn of War) Finally after a lot of research we came across the word Jongleur, it is originally a French word which literally means Travelling Singer and we thought this described our character well and would also be an interesting game name.

During this brainstorming session a quick mood board was put together by our concept artist to give us some inspiration and ideas for colour schemes, the scene etc. 

GENERAL MOOD BOARD.