The Gnomon School hosts great talks on the making of games and movies. I’ve attended a couple of these talks before and they were always more impressive than I imagined them to be. The last one I went to was one by Naughty Dog, on the subject of the making of Uncharted, and I had attened a Wall-E session before that. It was a great talk that not only covered the visual side of development, but how the game design meshed together with it.

The latest talk was covering the visual effects of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3. The game was developed as a joint effort between two game development studios, Infinity Ward and Sledgehammer Games.

Lighting

The first segment discussed lighting, the talk was given by Dave Blizard of Sledgehammer Games. He began his talk going over the history and significance of light.

• Light is made up of a combination of colors.
• Science & Religion has long given significance to light.
• Mayan’s Yucatan Temple of Kukulkan was designed with light in mind. 2 times a year, a shadow is cast on it to bring a serpent to life along the outer walls of the temple.

He showed a slide of how a sun overhead can be a religious symbol and fascinates people because it is so unusual — showing pictures of tourists capturing the moments when the shadow is directly overhead.

He then uses this point to show how a directly overhead shadow in a game looks pretty terrible and bland.

For inspiration in lighting scenes, he would look to chiaroscuro in old paintings.

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A few months ago the Gnomon School of Visual Effects in Hollywood hosted a Making of Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune talk, titled An Evening with Naughty Dog. The guest speaker was Richard Lemarchand, the lead designer for Uncharted. An excellent speaker, he opened by shining some light onto the environment of Naughty Dog. I wasn’t just there for the free booze and pizza — I also took some notes.

• Produced by Artisans. Everyone on staff at Naughty Dog actually has a role in making the game. No-one only does management. NO PRODUCERS (sounds like heaven to me). The people with responsibility are creatives that are making the game.
• Disciplined leads should know how long tasks should take to be completed because they do the same work themselves.
• Give people responsibility. Trust the members of the team to have good judgment and make the right decisions.
• Face-to-Face communication. Less disruptive than e-mail. Builds teamwork/camaraderie.
• Short meetings. Keep them brief to get the message across and to stay productive.
• Cross-functional team.
• Allocate work to those who are passionate about it. That’s where the magic comes from.
• Do-acracy — individuals choose tasks for themselves.
• Never get personal w/criticism. Don’t get bent out of shape.
• Micromanagement is usually the enemy of excellence.
• Waterfall development process from software development doesn’t necessarily apply to game development.
• Games are like painting. Before painting you make sketches, research, rough in charcoal, etc. before even touching a brush. Continue Reading…

Here are some NPCs from the Sokay Donut game I’ve been working on for forever. These characters are designed by our character designer Ricky Enriquez. I spent a couple days converting the game to AS3 in late May. Since then I’ve been polishing some things and working on getting the NPCs in it. I’ve been concentrating a bit too much on the presentation of the game and have returned to focusing on the gameplay, since it’s still not fully there yet. Right now I’m working on finding the fun, but it’s looking great so far.

This is a background concept I sketched out for a new project we started, a game that Chris is programming. It’s a Western so it’s gonna be a lotta fun.

Beyond this stuff I’ve been reworking the blog — I added the little video jukebox in the top right corner. I’m revising some of the other Sokay sites, experimenting with new ideas. I’m working with David Rodriguez on a more elaborate Luvtank.com as well.

Read on to see what’s been inspring me lately…

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