Inspiration

Within any game there has to have been an initial idea behind it, and this idea must have been generated from something. Inspiration is behind any ideas, even if it is something completely original, something that has never been done before, there would have been something that influenced or inspired the designer. Inspiration can come from absolutely anything, anything that happens to catch the eye or attention of the designer, the tiniest thing could manifest into something massive and overwhelming.

I watched a DVD of behind the scenes for the video game Siren, a horror game that is known for its disturbing and strange zombie like creatures called Shibito. These range from regular looking human like creatures to deformed gruesome creatures that no longer resemble the people they used to be. The team who designed the game went out of their way to research and find inspiration and referencing material to make the game the best it could be.

They wanted the game to run like a TV series would or a Hollywood presentation of sorts the game is heavily influenced by this. This structures the game into shorter segments each one following a different character in the story. The characters themselves were created from photos of real people then made into 3D CGI models, this made the characters more believable and reinforced the theme and structure of a TV series like approach to the presentation of the game. To add to this face capture was used, again to make it more believable, as facial expression is crucial to horror based stories, actors where also hired to act out scenes in the game for animators to work from. The motion capture was also used for the Shibito, they move very differently from humans, very laboured and often dragging themselves around. However there are many different types of Shibito some move more like animals or insects.

The designers studied many different insects and used them in their designs for the Shibito, a lot of people are afraid of insects and they played on this fear to make the creatures believably scary. One of the insects that they talked about in the DVD were the Silk worms these were the inspiration for what I believe to be one of the most disturbing Shibito in the entire game, the maggot Shibito. Its neck is swollen up and looks like a giant maggot and it has the face of a human on top.

For the look of the game and environments in the game, like the characters they wanted it to feel real. They went to various different parts of Japan to mountain towns that are cut of and very secluded, some even abandoned. An average of 50,000 photographs were taken for reference material. They also looked at old horror movies and used some affects that the camera made that would usually be unwanted in films and be filtered out, but in this case they used them to add to the atmosphere of the game. New technology in the games industry allowed them to do some amazing things with the lighting and texturing. The overall look of the game is very dark and grungy but without the new computer software none of the shadow affects or the atmospheric lighting would have been possible, this would have been a completely different game and not a vary convincing one.

When designing my own ideas I use a lot of magazines and books, for visual referencing and mainly for anatomy practise. I am heavily influenced by films and novels and enjoy anything with an in depth story line, the main reason behind my choice in games. I have been exposed to a lot of different styles of design through my study of animation and fine art, as well as my countless days watching cartoons when I was younger and till this day. I enjoy looking at the designs and art of films and games, a lot of the time more than I enjoy the experience of playing or watching.