Visual Production Research

1.1 - Visual Production Mind Map/List

AKA: What you can see in Games

1.1 - Visual Production Moodboards

ANIMATIONS:

Game: Destiny 2

Both of these Videos show the use of hand movement and gun placement to signify movement and impact. Depending on your action your gun swings about in your hand as it's a very heavy piece of a equipment. After jumping and hitting the ground it will swing vertically due to the impact of your movement, when running your character holds the gun up to signify also it cannot be shot while sprinting. Also upon being fired it kicks up due to the recoil of the heavy shots on top of then upon reload the character purposely throws the weight of the gun to use it at an advantage to quickly reload a new clip in as they throw the weight of the cylinder outwards to open it. Showing Animations being a large part of Visual Production in First Person Shooters.

The same thing applies with reload animations:

This is a video made by the animator behind most of the titanfall 2 gun animations. In the animations he has purposely used weight and impact to show off the characteristics of each gun and create realistic movements using this. This is in the same as Destiny 2's animations as they both have fluidity and impact as common factors in the design of Gun animations. However these concepts don't only apply to gun animations, these physics based animations, taking what's real in the setting of the game and applying them to the concepts of the real world work for pretty much any animations. Take for example the movement and running of the destiny 2 player characters, they might be wearing heavy armour and multiple weapons but still can run fast due to sci fi logic but this still doesn't affect how the characters are heavy and their animations feel weighty even in comparison to their speed: ( link )

This creates a realistic approach to animation in video games which I feel to be much better than others even when it comes to 2D animation.

For example 'Katana Zero' (steam link) & 'Dead Cells' are both games that use a high quality pixel art style in the 2d form but keep high quality animations by having emphasis on their impact and fluidity.

Katana Zero:

Dead Cells:

From these short gifs you can see how the same concepts that apply to weapons work with character models and movement as they create visually appealing fluid animations from the impact, form and weight of items or people. This creates good looking realistic animations for things that aren't so real and bring the content up a large step in quality, this especially applies when as you play these games see the animations you also 'feel' the animations due to how intuitive they go alongside controls and gameplay making you feel more in tune with the player character and with them shooting or slicing while moving around.

HEADS UP DISPLAY (HUD):

Game: Devil May Cry 5 (DMC5)

In DMC5 the Hud is normally hidden and generally only shown during combat, this is because the hud is build to be combat oriented with your health and special meters being the main assets. Without using any numbers it gives simple info of health and special while also keeping a stylized look depending on character, the hud popping in and out depending on when interacted with.

Game: Hades

In Hades the Hud always on and shows health, "money" or the different pickups and then some other important factors like projectiles, ammo (if needed), extra lives and current item and special "abilities" on the left affecting different character factors, the extra lives represented with faces over the health bar. The other key part of the Hud in Hades is enemy health bars, compared to DMC 5 healthbars are always shown and are clear 'bars'. DMC5 health bars are shown when locked on to an enemy in the form of a stylized circle making it much more subtle this also takes a much more cinematic approach to the hud as your looking at your cool combos rather than focusing on damage compared to hades. This is also accentuated by the fact that in Hades you see your damage in pop up numbers when fighting so you know your exact damage.

Game: Cyberpunk 2077

Cyberpunk2077 then switches to a completely different genre, being an open world fps (first person shooter) compared to the action combat of hades and DMC5 (even when one is top down and the other 3D). But still some factors still come over, with a healthbar that only displays in combat, weapons and ammo and consumables but due to the game being an open world rpg (role playing game) as well it has Hud elements such as a mini map for close by/on screen navigation and a quest tracker to know where to go. Another factor to the Cyberpunk hud is the use of on screen button prompts to allow the player to view / activate Hud elements such as consumables, weapons or say using the in game phone or calling for your car.

Game: Destiny 2

Due to the "open world" (less so) fps (very so) elements of Destiny 2 being the same as Cyberpunk it generally uses the same Hud elements including weapon and ammo counts with "consumables" being replaced with abilities but still retaining the mini map however the key difference between the 2 games' mini maps is that in Destiny 2 its not used for navigation but rather for giving the player info on nearby enemies by showing red markers in different directions. However, Cyberpunk does also show location of nearby enemies on their mini map, they are located with dots showing exact position rather than it being more of a directional radar. One other key difference is the style of the Hud in Destiny 2 compared to Cyberpunk 2077 as in Cyberpunk they are trying to make the game more immersive so the Hud is more stylized to be Cyberpunk themed and intertwine with your character's cybernetics as if that was what you'd actually see with cybernetic enhancements while also keeping it efficient enough to be easily understood. This is compared to Destiny which does away with a fully stylized Hud and has a more function over form approach using mainly whites for all info and actually uses colours to clearly relay info to the player. As your ultimate ability in Destiny suddenly goes from a white to a yellow when full and your abilities gain their coloured square (colour dependent on current subclass chosen) when charged, Also your guns gain a coloured symbol dependent on their archetype (element). Again with weapons when they run out of ammo the number goes from white to red and you get red on screen displays telling you where you were shot from. This makes the Hud much more simple but at the same time a lot more efficient in telling players info fast making it a much easier user experience. It is debatable whether or not the Hud in Destiny 2 can be stylized but due to its while on colour contrast use It could be argued that there is a style applied to it to make it seem to pop, especially with pictures of guns in use.

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