GCA Staff Notes by Malcolm – 4

11:00-11:50 “Art of Lucasarts Singapore”

Matt Aldrich (Lucasarts)

Matt Here conducted a very dry, visual viewpoint on a few games that they have been producing at Lucasarts. He didn’t want people taking pictures and there were obvious reasons for this, some of the art was from games that hadn’t been released yet.

First up was the Xbox version of Monkey Island, original sprites was used as the basis for the new version. There was a small story about how one of the original coders for monkey island had, every time he changed computer, copied the source files. He also still managed to be working at the same company, so somehow even after all this time, they the original source code and graphics from the original version. This is quite impressive.

The audience were shown some original (320×200 ??) sized graphics, then scretched up and then the new 720p revisits. They had used the originals as the starting point, but the original sprites were in a format which each part was a seperate entity, this was slightly problematic, so they made 3D models which they could then cut up for the original engine. There was a few before and after screenshots, and the new characters look more cartoony and “internet” in my mind.

We were shown some Avitar on xbox which was instantly forgettable and so I can’t think

of anything to write about here.

Next up was Star Wars Clone wars for Nintendo DS released in nov’08. This is where it got very interesting and useful for students to see. We were treated to some concept art then the progression from this to in game, which was dramatic.

They quickly mocked up levels in “sketch up” for a rough design which would give an overview to the platform world that the levels the player would be in.

They then chose a number of places along the route which were highlighted as important places during a level. Rather than trying to make a whole level look good, which can be expensive in art resources, just concentrating on places that the player will see and these areas would be where art would spend time on and embellish. The net result is usually more impact.

There were a couple of slides showing that a light for progression was a very useful thing, whether this would found through feedback or not, is unknown. Although it’s quite obvious if you make the world look the same the player won’t be able to see what’s the “right way” and what’s invisible collision way

Due to their game being Co-op, they should storyboards for both characters (this was during quick time events but this was a first time I had seen something like this, depending if the player was player 1 or player 2, they would see a slightly different scene. Although a lot of the “story board” (I use this term loosely) would be duplicated, it still was interesting to see.

Also seeing the high poly models of the scene then the scene running on the DS was a particular high point, I thought.

A trailer for the sequel – republic heroes due out oct’09 was shown. Personally, I wish Lucasart would stop milking their Star Wars license.

Next up was some concept art for the Wii version of staff of Kings. Various art was shown showing loose sketches of how the art team worked on their hand drawn style until it was good enough to use in game.

While it was interesting, I didn’t really like the 2D style, non mouths talking of these “cutscenes”, it looked cheap. The graphics were of a high standard but when things are animating because they are moving away and not animated while moving, just looks to me like cutting corners.

They even had explosive barrels.

Interesting but very art intensive and not much I can link to here.