Dante Platt STEC Blog

 We done a lot this week, much around the subject of audio. It was a fun topic to learn and experiment with due to the given freedom over the levels of development included within it. We started learning about Foley sounds and how people make certain sounds from everyday natural things. For example, rain could be either bacon sizzling or rice being shaken. Any one of these can be made just by using objects around us. We as a class we’re set to find 10 sounds around the college without disturbing other classes. We all scoped the entire area. Some collected more than 10 such as I and pick out the best, whereas others kept it in that range. I also messed around a bit more on flowlab looking around at other games on the site to see what was at the top. This gave me some insight on how I could possibly make a demo level/level more enjoyable than just some boring walk about coin picker. Some other cool things were that when messing around with audio on some sites I have already given a l...

AudioNodes Great software that allows easy editing of audio. Completely free alongside it. AudioMass Free website that it easy to use and requires barely any effort to edit. TwistedWave Similar to Audacity but very little options but very effective at what its intended purpose is. Editor.audio Easy to use and free, with very little distracting options to use making it effective. Wavacity A web clone of audacity with the same features and all.

artlist Requires sign up, but grants many sounds. zapsplat Hundreds of sounds to choose from with lots of variety. Pixabay Over 4,000 to choose from, some may not be free, but many of them are. Freesfx Many to choose from and easy to use. Freesound Easy to navigate with many people contributing to the site. All is free, hence to name. noiiz Although not many, has good quality with some being nice and smooth. audiomicro Easy to navigate with many free sounds to choose from. 99Sounds Good, free, easy to use and good quality.

Just a few samples i found within the internet. This is for future reference in which i may use. mixkit Full of sounds ranging from achievements to jumps and punches. zapsplat They have very nice retro sounds available from their web. wowsound Many cool sounds to choose from ranging from different categories. OpenGameArt Many different sounds to use and easy to use from their website. Pixabay Many different and free sounds with much variety. 99sounds Lots to choose from and many different varieties. soundsnap There is many of them, high quality and they're free. uppbeat.io easy to use and many to choose from. There's always YouTube if necessary but that might be very risky to use.

                     (not copyright btw) The thing about copyright, it can be tricky in some cases but can be easily avoided.  Copyright is when someone owns a certain piece of property and allows only chosen people to use it at will otherwise they can claim it as an inappropriate use of that certain 'thing' that was used. Quick summary. In short, it is a law that allows protection over your own work and for how long it lasts. You can avoid it by using certain types of media that do have any copyright claims to its name. It started in 1710 and has been fought over even now. Some people choose not put copyright over their work, which to me sounds dumb. However, you can only really get protection when its original and isn't a copy or is 'heavily' inspired by anything. Nothing to close to one another otherwise they'll just end up copies. If you use copyright-free webs or anything of the sorts, then you'll sail through and get no c...

  Freesound Sample Focus | The Easiest Way to Find Free Audio Samples, Sounds, and Looperman slooply Shutterstock pixabay Landr BandLab Mixkit chosic uppbeat.io

 I started off the week by going into some character design bits and bobs. I started by going on about how my character would be part of the mafia as a teen boy. I used a website then to incorporate this idea. Using CharacterCreator.org Then on Tuesday, I started to then go off on about concept art and how to use some websites to help finalize the idea. first one where I took screenshots was HeroForge.com. The last bit I did was an analysis of existing concept art, this one took a lot of time to make. We also took note of popular concept artists, I took note of Ryan Church.

Darksburg Dolorosa Concept Art The thing about this piece of concept art is that is puts everything into one slide. It gets the one idea and adds to it until they have a desired look. They clearly had an image in their mind with the plague doctor type look and made different styles to see which would fit the criteria best. I'm a fan of number 1, due to its simplicity and yet mysterious look, I especially like the robe with the separate parts coming off of it. The thing that makes it a nice piece is that they went through how they got the posture of the character and went through how they got the desired hands. I also really like that they added accessories to them, having different types of clothing is nice but to add objects to it makes it much better. They also nicely labeled each style to make it easier to say which one is preferred. This goes to show either professionalism or just a high amount of consideration, which to me makes it so much more. Even though that might get pass...

 When trying to use concept, you must be open to use different ways in which to get the outcome you may desire. Know the aspects of the idea you are working with and try to stay within those boundaries. First thing you will need to do is have a clear overall concept through many discussions with the employer. The artists need to understand the vision at which is trying to be described. You could always use AI generated images as a sort of crutch but it would not be as thorough as if artists took their time to draw out the wanted image. But it would ruin the process of gathering reference material in order to get the desired type. More that you could potentially use is some websites that can either help you give some prompts or does some of the work for you by making it do some art by giving it some prompts and it generates some work for you following under the AI influence. Here are some websites: conceptstart.net RanGen.com These two are simple yet effective prompt givers that ran...

 I made a moodboard to show images of 3 subjects, muscles, teens, mafia. I then went onto CharacterCreator.org to then make a simple yet effective character concept design of a character.

Concept art is the form of visual art used to convey an idea within four specific categories which are: Building Concept Art, Environmental Concept Art, Weapon or Prop Concept Art, and Character Concept Art. The use of concept art is very important to artists. It helps the artist visualize the key aspects of there art and understand the overall look and feel of how it came to be. It can be used to sharpen features that look out of place as a sort of mannequin of sorts, but with the ability to change the overall look and elements. It's used to show the idea of the project before it takes on its final form and finishes changing. For example, Kratos, Son of Zeus, in the God of War franchise, was not always as he looks in the game.  Taking his features and trying to make a character with said features. Kratos is a tall, male, with tattoos on his face, he wields 2 blades with chains wrapped around his forearms. It makes the viewers question the idea behind the art, how it came to be, wh...

 At the start of the week, we were told to complete a few tutorials to help gain experience using Photopea. The first video I looked at was wrapping a logo onto a coffee mug. I chose Dr. Pepper logo and searched on google images to look for a simple coffee cup. The end result was much better than I thought it would turn out. I love the way the wrap adds the shadows to the logo making it look like an actual cup. I had to warp the logo to make it look like it was actually going off to the sides by bending the corners up and stretch the image a slight bit. Right after the cup was a cartoon type filter, this one was the most challenging out of them all. I chose to filter the live action 'Witcher' TV series. Before: There was a lot to do and to be honest, I've forgotten most of the step already. It took a lot of filtering and recoloring. The layers exceeded over 10 really quickly within the span of only 3 minutes. After: The next video I looked at was creating a 'fire' e...

I will be listing 5 free to use font websites that I could potentially use in the future. Fell free to look at them yourself. 1001freefonts.com Lots of fonts to use DaFonts.com Nice to look at. FontSpace.com Many variety of fonts. Fontesk.com Not a lot but nice looks. FontSquirrel.com Not many fonts but many nice different types.

 Number 3: conceptstart.net This is a nice way to randomly generate ideas for a character if you have trouble coming up with ideas. With lots of features to look at, it comes with certain variety to help flesh out a character. It also gives you an AI prompt to get a concept design to show you how your character would look. I find that neat to have. The only issue is that you only get 10 free random generated ideas. Which sucks but it can be dealt with. ___________________________________________________________________________________ Number 4: bardotbrush.com This is a quick use website that gives you a description of any sort of inanimate or animate object. Its a prompt generator that helps someone who wants to draw something but can figure out what. To get new prompts, just refresh the page. Quick and effective. ___________________________________________________________________________________ Number 5: artguru.ai If you have an idea of the person you want to draw but can't see...

RanGen.com : This software is incredible, I would use this regularly. It gives off loads of information for random characters and it has many more features than the last one I wrote about. I love that it gives so much about their appearance. It really gives way for concept art to be drawn of them. I really like the personality section due to its simplicity but yet effective use of many words to describe a person in a very short space. I love the detail it gives, who thinks about randomly generating 'personal status'? These guys. To even add a job with a satisfaction percentage takes much attention to detail. Love the idea of Marital status and how it shows their preference to gender. Shows that the people who made this took their time to think about the quality and the detail to offer. This is another feature I quite like. To add Religious views along with world and racial is an amazing feature to have as it makes thinking about characters views so much less time draining. I al...

 I found an interesting piece of software to help get a character without having to think much. The website is called character-generator.com , it helps with getting random character information. It also helps with getting random character traits so you don't have to think to hard trying to come up with the perfect character. It helps with quick and adjustable characters personalities. The fact that it gives positive and negative aspects to the character it just so much easier instead of trying to constantly think of perfect traits when you could just keep pressing 'suggest' to find the aspect to your suiting. I love the fact that it gives a random and name. It just so much easier that trying trying to plan an entire character, I mean sure, you might have to adjust the random traits to suit the preferred category of the genre of the game. It makes making a character so much easier in my opinion. This feature is also really good. Because if you want a character that sticks o...