Francis Varley: Games Art 2024-25

What is Copyright Protection? Copyright Protection is the law that governs how Intellectual Property may be used by those who are not the proprietors of it, that typically being those who are not associated with its ownership or creation (Gov.UK 2025). Intellectual Property, then, is something created by someone: Intellectual Property may be a product, a piece of art, a story, design or icon (Gov.UK 2025). Intellectual Property may be 'tangible' or 'intangible'. Tangible works represent those that quantifiably exist in a physical sense, being physical products, artworks, books or ideas that physically exist. Intangible Intellectual Property is given similar protection, but exists in a none-physical sense. Nonetheless, these pieces of Intellectual Property still bear monetary value, as they represent a potential for monetisation or may constitute a part of a wider piece of Intellectual property.  In the UK, Copyright protection is assigned automatically and does not requ...

Life Drawing When Life Drawing, I have used Charcoal to mark out abstract forms, using this to create a rough outline that focuses on the negative space around the anatomy instead of focusing on the accuracy of the forms. I found this allowed me to disconnect from the drawing itself and not overly obsess over its perceived "quality", able to instead focus on how I am describing the form of the model.

Sound Design Brief : As a group, we have discussed how the soundtrack and sound design of our game may be developed. This discussion was split into two areas of discussion: the game soundtrack, that being the music that plays throughout the game in the background of the project, and the sound design for sound effects. This would include sounds for the character's voices as well as other potential sound effects that could play across the game in other circumstances. In such discussions we spoke about how the music and sound design could be used to cultivate a specific atmosphere in the game; this could help in enforcing the themes of our project and may help in establishing the mood and feeling of our game and what it is trying to say through its narrative. These discussions were considered in a meeting, and were made with the scope of the game in mind: we spoke of having slow and atmospheric music play over a majority of the game, a simple piano track that could would not distract ...

Creating the Clothing To create the robes seen in my character design, I decided to take the model of my alien back into Blender, using the hard-surface modelling functionalities present within the software to create a base mesh of the clothing that could then be sculpted atop. This functions similarly to how I created the legs, using the mesh as a starting point that then could be added into ZBrush and sculpted upon, adding detail and refinement.  To create the clothing I used a plane, a flat surface that I placed before the alien. I would use Blender's Mirror functionality to create this model: I would only physically create half of it, but this half would be mirrored on the alien's opposite side. I could then finalise this mirroring process after the model had been completed, creating the mirrored geometry. As such, to begin with, I extruded edges of the plane out to create new faces and repositioned vertices to allow the material to flow over the form of the alien's bod...

Reflective Statement - Building Alliances  I am unsure how to feel about my contribution to the group project; I feel that I have helped my team, and feel that - really - I have completed a solid chunk of work that contributes to this, particularly when I compare what I have created in this project to the outcomes of projects I completed last year. Additionally, many aspects of this project and the work that I have completed in regard to it fall well outside my comfort zone: environment pieces, the bulk of the work I have produced, are still something I struggle with, and in this, I feel that the pieces I have completed for my group pushed me outside my comfort zone and challenged me. The age rating of our project was also a source of discomfort in my designs: we as a group settled on a lower age rating which promoted simplicity in our designs, yet this age rating was a target demographic that I have very rarely produced artwork for. As such, I feel that my drawn pieces were often ...