MA Games Design Diary

Stephan Dube Stephan Dube is an experienced game design industry professional with over 25 years of experience creating UI and UX designs for AAA studios such as Ubisoft, Activision and Sony. Dube's learning platform UI PEEPS  has helped me to discover a variety of UI and UX design industry professionals and his talks with Adobe and Gnomon were a valuable source of research during my previous essay module.   Simon Brewer Simon Brewer is currently a Principal UI/UX designer at Supermassive Games and previously was the Lead UI Artist at Rocksteady Studios, Unbroken Studios and Rebellion. Since starting his career in the games industry in 2008, Brewer has gained a vast amount of knowledge within the industry which he has included in his book,  The Pocket Mentor for Video Game UX UI , soon to be released in February.  Ryan Klaverweide  Ryan Klaverweide  is a designer with over 15 years of experience. During his career, he has worked with freelance client...

For the DE4402 Research in Context module, I will write a 2500-word essay about the processes and philosophers of practitioners from various creative industries. The main content of the essay is split into two sections - personal research studies and practitioner lecture series. For the personal research studies part of my essay, I will contact practitioners within my area of speciality, interview them and then discuss their work, philosophies, processes, techniques and more in my essay. For the practitioner lecture series, I will critically evaluate the creative practices, methods and philosophies of practitioners who will present lectures during the DE4402 Friday morning sessions. In the practitioner lecture series part of my essay, I will explore practitioners from other creative disciplines, such as graphic design and animation, and discuss relevant connections which have informed my practice.

During week 1 of project 3, I followed the  Unreal Engine 5 Tutorial for Beginners  by  Game Dev Academy  on YouTube. Since I had no prior experience using UE5, the tutorial introduced me to the software interface, navigation techniques and keyboard shortcuts. It taught me how to import assets, apply materials, create lighting, add a player start location, create Blueprints, create print strings, apply ragdoll physics and more. Upon completing the tutorial, I created a functioning simple level in which the character has to retrieve a keycard to open the door of a spaceship which is on fire.  The Process:  Firstly, I created a new level and imported 3D models (created by Game Dev Academy) into the meshes folder within the Content Drawer. Using the FBX import options, I generated missing collisions, combined meshes and selected 'do not create materials'. In the Content Drawer, I double-clicked each 3D model to open the Static Mesh Editor and apply materials. ...

My experience in graphic design enables me to create static UI design concepts for video games and my knowledge in motion design enables me to simulate how I intend my UI designs to function; however, I don't have any prior experience creating functional UI designs that directly respond to player interaction and events within gameplay. Therefore, for my third project, I aim to learn the fundamentals of Unreal Engine 5, with the goal of creating 3 functional UI designs, each with a unique design style.  I created a schedule to structure how I will learn Unreal Engine within quite a short timeframe. Since I have no prior knowledge using UE5, in the first 5 weeks I aim to learn the fundamentals using tutorials, courses and books. Next, I aim to learn advanced skills and conduct more in-depth research into relevant areas such as blueprints. I then plan to apply my knowledge by creating 3 responsive and stylized UI designs.  Week 1 Plan:

Presentation: Crosshair Designs: Radar Interface: Research + Development Document

To achieve an 80's-interface-inspired design style in Photoshop, I used inner and outer glow effects, the halftone pattern in the filter gallery to create scan lines, gaussian blur, noise filters, low opacities and various blending modes. I applied the same effects to my logo design to achieve a retro interface style. I also used 'Lens Correction' in Photoshop to subtly distort my logo to achieve a rounded effect to replicate the bulge effect old monitor screens had.  I also applied the same effects used in my HUD and logo design when creating the radar interface in Photoshop to achieve a consistent retro effect.  Finally, I imported the Photoshop layers of the radar design into After Effects to create a short animation. I created the spinning effect by rotating the layer consistently throughout the duration of the animation. I created the blinking effect and the movement of the enemy by changing the position of the red icon and changing its opacity from 100% to 0% e...

After sketching concepts for each weapon's unique crosshair design and animation style, I began to make each design in Adobe Illustrator. I organised the elements of each crosshair design into individual layers ready to be imported into After Effects.  Once I finished the crosshair designs in Illustrator, I imported the files into After Effects to create motion designs of each weapon idle, firing, reloading, hitting an enemy and killing an enemy. To achieve a line drawing animation to indicate a weapon emptying or reloading, I first converted my Illustrator layers into shape layers in After Effects and then used 'Trim Paths' to add or subtract to the length of the lines.  To create the rapid firing effect for the assault rifle crosshair, I changed the position of the lines in even values on the artboard and timed evenly across the timeline. I also used motion blur and 'Easy Ease Out' to create more natural-looking movement.  While creating my motion designs, I also ...