Task 14: Elements of game design, part five: planning and concepting

When talking about planning and concepting i'm sure i'm not the only game art student who, whenever a new task is set, mentally makes a long list of all the awesome things they want to put into their game environment and then end up only adding half of it to the final scene, due to poor planning and extravagant concepts. Concept and planning are words that i've heard frequently since first starting art at secondary school, and for all too good a reason, they're the foundations of any successful piece of work produced, be it a 3D scene or a piece of concept art.

From the planning perspective my flaw is time management, it's the first thing that comes to mind, as we're told the time we have is ridiculous. There have been days when I get up with good intentions and mentally lay out what I hope to accomplish, and it often results in either spending too long on one certain aspect or just stretching it out throughout the day and having a classic procrastination. For example, the trash project in which we had 4 weeks to complete, it is so basic a task that I had the following planned out: Week 1, model the mesh and gather pictures, Week 2. unwrap and texture, Week 3 maps and any other improvements, In the third week i was still working on my maps and tweaking the diffuse. Not that I view certain modules over others, but there have been times where I need to prioratise which is the most important task at the time and which requires more time for it.

Next to time management, the other factor which is crucial to me is reference, usually for 3D for textures and so on, there really is no point starting out a piece with nothing to work from, even the most creative of us must have a muse or inspiration.

Thumbnails are the center point to all our 2D work, the more the better. They are brillaint references that we use to record the atmosphere of a location and helps us decide what we want for our final. Whilst they are a quick and simple way of working, I still find myself unhappy with just having blocks in my thumbnail even though that is generally all that could be needed, having said that, I have somehow managed to restrict the level of detail I used to get into, I only wish the same could be applied for finals. Normally i know what i'm going to draw as my final straight away, so i find myself rushing my thumbnail sketches. This is because i know my final peice is the image i'm going to put most effort into, thumbnails are for me to learn, final peices are for other people to judge.


Going to Loughborough train yard was profitable because not only did it give my chance to get some cool rust and grime textures, it also helped with my perspective which I have been meaning to improve.

One thing which I havn't done much of in the planning process is record scraped ideas or duds, mainly out of fear that they aren't worthy of being displayed to all to see. On the other hand, I feel as if I don't produce enough thumbnails sketches.I understand that doing preporation sketches is essential to better your quick mark making skills, but i'm too much of a perfectionist, it's hard for me to do quick sketches and leave them looking simple. If i do them i want them all to look like final peices, which takes too long, which i why i put all my energy into my final peices. Definatly a planning process i need to balance out.