CUVDSP05B

CUVDSP05B – Typeface, Game Graphics, Branding and Packaging (the development)

I found it really difficult to design a typeface that would fit my game graphics and look aesthetically pleasing. I made a few attempts to get it looking the way I wanted, and possibly came up with at least half a dozen different typefaces before choosing one that was suitable for my game design. A number of times I thought about changing the name of my game to see if it looked better with my chosen typeface as some words don’t look right when they are put together.
I tried a grungy kind of typeface because I thought it would be suitable as I was using a dragon, but every single grungy typeface I designed was too thin, didn’t match or was not to my liking.
When I thought of a dragon almost immediately I think of ‘medieval’ and ‘strong’ so I designed a bolder typeface that would look stronger and more suitable then the original grungy typeface I designed.
Building the main image for my game was probably the hardest part for me as it was very time consuming to vector the image I had drawn, which was very detailed. Choosing the most suitable colours was also very hard; I changed my mind so many times before I came up with the one I liked.
Before coming up with the colours I used, I tried to colour the image with gradients as a gradient has so many tints and tones. Though matching a radial gradient with another was too hard as it was difficult to make them match the way I wanted without making it look unattractive. I still wanted a few different colour tones so I put the image through Photoshop and used the dodge and burn tools to make shadows and highlights where needed.
For the background behind the dragon I decided to use a gradient to make a sky scene to make it look as though it was sunset, and also because it looks kind of mystical and adds colour to the whole image. I didn’t want to you use greys and dark greys as I thought I had already used enough in my dragon.
Building my dragon ‘orb’ was difficult as I didn’t want it to look like a basic circle that had been placed in the image. My ‘orb’ has five layers, consisting of a sphere used from a brush, a circle that was filled with a radial gradient, and three flares, all of different sizes. I used flares because I needed my ‘orb’ to be glowing; I also put the image through Photoshop again and used the burn tool everywhere I thought the glow would be, when coming from the ‘orb’.
One part of the assignment I found most frustrating was cutting my design down to the exact scale once it was printed. It was difficult to cut in an even line without making it look dodgy. I think I would have achieved better results if I had a guillotine to do the job for me.