Concept Art

Concept art is the basic design of the art work in a game e.g. characters, environment and objects so on and so forth.

Concept art acts as a plan for 3D modellers it's an easier way of describing how they want an object or a character to look in the game.

The people that make the most use out of the concept art are 3D modellers and level designers. This is because they need a brief plan of what it is going to look like e.g. level designers. 3D modellers make use of it by seeing what ideas for the characters are e.g. whether they are tall, short look evil all of this is what they need in the concept art to get a basic idea of what the characters and so on need to look like in the game.

Textures

The texture is like the cover over the 3D model for instance the skin on the character and the face is a image that has been created and flattened then folded over the model.

But textures are not all for characters, there are other things in games that do require textures e.g. objects, backgrounds, plants, buildings and many other.

Optimisation

optitimisation is when you change the settings or detail of a certain document or object for e.g. if you have a computer program thats laggy, then you would optimize it to run more smoothly.

There are only a few things that you can optimze such as:

The size of the image, like if you want to send an image by email and the file size was 1GB then you can optimize it to be a smaller file so it sends quicker over the internet.

The quality of the image.

DPI(dots per image) per image.

File type of image.

Number of colours in image.

Scanners

Scanners are machines that scan things like photos, text, paperwork. There are three different types of scanners and these are:

1) All in one- this is a printer, scanner and photocopier all in one machine. 4000 DPI.


2) Flatbed- this is just a singular scanner and its a flat based scanner. 4800 DPI.


3) Drum Scanner-  this is a big scanner and it scans paper really fast and very high quality. 12000 DPI.

Digital Cameras

There are three main types of cameras and these are:
-Mobile phones
-Compact camera
-DSLR

Mobile phones can cost £30 up to £600 and they are used to take quick shots. The advantages of a mobile phone is that its convienent for anyone to use as we use mobile phones for other things, the disadvantages of using a camera on a phone is that its poor quality as it can go from 1-8 megapixels and it has ditital zoom.


Compact Cameras can cost £60 up to £200 and uses pretty good quality. The advantages of a compact camera is that its a mixture of convienence and has ok quality, but the disadvantages is that its not as good a DSLR as it can go from 8-18 megapixels but it does have optical zoom which is better than mobile phones.


DSLR can cost £400 up to £4000 and uses textures which is in high detail.It has super picture quality which would be an advantage but as a disadvantage of a DSLR is that the cost is too expensive. The camera quality has 20+ megapixels which is really good, and it has optical zoom as well which is why this camera is used for taking celebrity pictures.

Graphics Tablet

A graphics tablet is a screen base like board that plugs in to your computer using a usb cable, and with it you can draw pictures and do writing with it.There are lots of different graphics tablets but the better ones are the bigger ones, the bigger the graphics tablet, the more it will cost for example, an A6 tablet would cost about £40-£50 but an A1 can cost up to £1000 becuase its alot bigger, and the more bigger you buy the more sensitive it is likely to be, for example if you press lightly with the pen on the screen it will draw a thin line but if you press hardly then it will draw a thick line.

File types and formats

What is lossy compression?


Lossy is a method we use when we save our files, it is when you save it in a different file format which makes the image look smaller but you can still see the full image, and then throws away the colours that it doesn't mainly need in the image. This makes the file size more smaller, this is good because then if you want to put the image on the Internet or send it to somone it wont take as long as it would with a much more larger file.



What is lossless?
Lossless is the opposite of lossy. What it does is it makes the file smaller however it still keeps the colours and does not delete any. So it keeps the picture exactly the same as it was before. This method is useful if you are only storing photos on your computer however it might take a while to send them to somone or load them on the Internet because of the file size being too big.

File Formats?
JPEG is a raster file format. JPEG mainly stores images that are being placed onto the Internet this allows faster uploads and downloads. We do not use it with digital images from cameras or images from your phone. The disadvantage of JPEG is that once you save the image in this format you cannot get back the image quality after it has been saved as a JPEG.

Gif is a raster file format,it only stores 256 colours. It mainly supports lossless compression which makes it a lossless format. This type of file is mainly only used for drawings and line art. the disadvantage of this file format is that it mainly only stores 256 colours on your images.

PNG is a raster file format which is very good for sending images across the Internet without loosing the quality. This file supports lossless compression which makes it a lossless format. We dont use PNG with low quality images like drawn images and never with images that use layers. The disadvantage of this format is that it doesn't store additional information.

PSD is a very good file format with good quality images. This file format supports lossless compression which makes it a lossless format. This file format is mainly used for Photoshop images. The disadvantage of this file format is that the file sizes are large and it only supports photoshop.

pixels, resoulutions, bitmaps and vector

Pixels

In digital imaging, a pixel (or picture element) is a single point in a raster image. The pixel is the smallest addressable screen element; it is the smallest unit of picture that can be controlled. Each pixel has its own address.

Resoulutions

resoulution is the number of dots/pixels used to display an image, its normally used on a computer screen or on a digital camera.


Raster/Bit-map Images
A raster image, also called a bitmap, is a way to represent digital images. The raster image takes a wide variety of formats, including the familiar .gif, .jpg, and .bmp. A raster image represents an image in a series of bits of information which translate into pixels on the screen. These pixels form points of color which create an overall finished image.


Vector images
Vector graphics is the use of geometrical primitives such as points, lines, curves, and shapes or polygon(not photos), which are all based on mathematical equations, to represent images in computer graphics.

Game art styles

Smackdown vs raw 2011

Photo realism - is when you have a game image and it looks realistic ( real life graphics ).

Cel shaded - is when the game has pastel like colours and always has a black outline like you would see in a comic book.

Abstract - this game is abstract because of the different/weird art style it has, and makes it also cartoony, which is when the image is colourful and it stands out, which makes it more fun which attracts people to buy the game

Exaggeration - which is based on real life but is done in a style which is not real.

2D and 3D

                                                                              2D

2D is a two dimensional game, which is where the game is flat and you cant see around the picture or cant look around a character and also doesnt go in to much depth and also you cant look in to a picture such as you would in a 3D game. 2D games are still used on consoles such as nintendo wii or nintendo ds and the iphone.

A popular 2D game which was released in the late 80s early 90s was sonic the hedgehog which was for me and addictive game about getting through the levels and seeing how far you can get until you would have no lives left.

                                                                               3D

as popular as 2d games were back in the 90s they are nothing compared to the games we have today which are three dimensional games, which means you can see more further in a game and things come towards you like bullets in shooting games.as well as having height and depth you can actually look in to a picture in 3 dimensinal games.The reason why games are so popular today are because of many reasons such as the graphics, the graphics are more realistic looking, and how much more entertaining games are now days. popular games such as wwe smackdown vs raw 2010 and call of duty and halo sold millions of copies worldwide, another reason for games being more popular is that they are more entertaining now with lots of choice games that we woudnt of had backs in early 90s.