Primary Research Two - Team Fortress 2

As I've already briefly written about Team Fortress 2 as part of my written assignment, I will be using this post to talk more in-depth about the aspects of Team Fortress 2 within my creative assignment. This blog post will also be used in part to investigage further within my written assignment, as well as provide evidence and additional sources of information for my written assignment.

Team Fortress 2 is a heavily team-based first-person shooter multiplayer video game developed by Valve Corporation. It's the sucessor to it's previous games Team Fortress Classic, which was a sucessor to the Team Fortress Mod, for Quake. It is my second and final main primary sources of inspiration for my project.

After nine years in development to release, as well as numerous post-release updates, Team Fortress 2 contains a goldmine of research supporting it's development; from external sources such as CGSociety, to Valve's publications, to Team Fortress 2's Official Blog.

It is worth mentioning that within the game they've included a commentary on the design choices from the staff which allows the audience to visually understand the development of elements within the game.

Furthermore, Valve has a page on their official website containing publications from all their games. I will be Specifically looking at 'Stylization with a Purpose, The Illustrative World of Team Fortress 2', and 'Illustrative Rendering in Team Fortress 2', which is avaliable in slideshow, paper, and video format.

For this blog post, I will be posting the video of 'Illustrative Rendering in Team Fortress 2'. Although the video talks about Rendering in a 3d software-stance. I will be aiming to implement those elements they have talked about within my 2d concept art

Considering the wealth of information I've accumalated, I will be instead talking about how Team Fortress 2 will reflect upon my project, and what it will be as part of my creative development.

Besides the Time Machine. Team Fortress 2 will be the primary source of inspiration towards my creative assignment, helping to create a unique world that appeals to its audience. As for my written assignment, Team Fortress 2 will be The concept final three concept paintings will be a reflection to what I aimed the art style of my film 'remake'.

The main reasoning behind why I propose to take the design of this particular game into my creative assignment is due to many reasons, some of which are due to its techniques into my paintings, others due to the illustrations its inspired from. The game contains elements I aim to experiement with in my final concepts as well as impliment into my final visual concepts.

• The game's influence is derived from conventional early 20th century commercial illustration, in addition to 1960's industrial design elements. This compliments the work on my blog that relates to the Time Machine.


• The art style is, to put it boldly, a unique choice compared to other conventional games/films, (in contrast, Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, which was released at around the same period). Team Fortress 2 utilises specific rendering techniques in order to reflect the illustrations it's inspired from. Adequately named "Illustrative Rendering", I may adapt this into the lighting in order to create important areas within my paintings.


• It's use of strong bold colours creates an artistic appeal to its audience. This is in part of my formal visual elements I aim to try to conform to.


• Although the core elements of the game are complete, the development is still ongoing. The game today still produces many major updates to reflect with real-time events, most recently a Scream-Fortress update, that added elements to the game to reflect the event of Halloween. Not a major factor in reflection to my work, I just really like the concept that there is always room for a masterpiece to grow and change over time, its an interesting contrast to other games in this manner.

Promotional Video. Showing in order to visually present the aspects of the environment - 'Meet The Soldier'.

Other promotional Videos are at

http://www.teamfortress.com/movies.htm

Screenshots I've taken from the game and will be using as inspiration for my visual concepts.