As part of the project it was important as usual to create a risk assessment as well as a location recce. This was vital to make sure everything was safe and all issues were brought up and discussed overall. These can be read below:
Author: goliathsgrumblings
Reception Theory.
Reception theory is a concept discovered by Stuart Hall. It is highly popular in media and is very important for research and analysis of audiences. Reception Theory is the concept of looking into how people react to media and the things they read and watch. The way people react depends on many different factors such as age, wealth, culture, race and morals. It is a very interesting concept and Iv’e enjoyed looking into it and how it could effect my project.
I used the website below to research Reception Theory and how it can help my project:
Revisionworld.com. (2019). Reception Theory – Media Studies – Revision World. [online] Available at: https://revisionworld.com/a2-level-level-revision/media-studies-level-revision/reception-theory [Accessed 23 Apr. 2019].
There are 3 different ways in which people respond to something they watch and all are fairly crucial towards my project. The first of these are the dominant/preferred reading. This essentially means that the audience member reacts to the piece of media in the way that the creator wishes them to. This is because they share similar cultures, morals or of the target audience the director or creator has intended. A good example would be placing a villain into a film and the audience understanding that they are a bad person due to their appearance and actions. If for example we see someone dressed in a hockey mask and jacket roaming around in the woods killing innocent people we understand that they are bad people. This is what a dominant audience member means and it is a very common thing.
The second way a audience member may view a piece of media is in a negotiated way. This means that they will se a form of media in both ways. For example in a film such as John Wick a audience member may feel that he is a violent and harsh killer on one hand whilst on the other understanding that he has done it out revenge for his dead puppy. This is a interesting way to perceive a media piece and I feel that this is also a common approach. The reason this occurs is that people may share some factors the creator intended whilst lacking some of the others. They may be the target audience for example but might have different wealth which means they can understand but disagree at the same time.
The final way an audience can look into a piece of media is in an oppositional way. This is when an audience look at something and disagree or don’t like it. For example some people don’t agree with violent films such as the Saw films and this is due to their beliefs, age and other factors. An older person probably wouldn’t enjoy the Saw films due to their violence and horror aspects so they may disagree with the idea of it and may oppose it. This often happens online such as twitter disputes and people not believing in certain aspects of the media.
What I need to be aware of is how people will look at my project and target audience is really important for that. For example I doubt that a woman over the age of 50 who has no clue about video games would usually enjoy my project and would most likely feel that it is either inappropriate or boring. However a younger audience who often play games would definitely be much more engaged and would like the project much more. This is due to them being brought up with video games as a much larger demographic of teenagers and young adults are beginning to play and enjoy them so my project would most likely be preferred by them.
Another thing that may effect who likes the project may be culture. Some cultures for example would frown upon the game and may deem it as disrespectful and to realistic whilst others may love the game and it’s concepts and may want to play it immediately! This can really effect the reception of my project as there are so many different groups of people out there in this current generation which effects watch time and focus.
Another factor I have to consider is social class as this can effect people’s thoughts on a project. For example a much more strict family in an upper class area may possibly be upset with the project and it’s fairly violent themes however a person of lower class may believe the project to be much better as they are more lenient with violent themes. Although stereotypical a large part of the reception theory is stereotypes and how people view media in that stereotypical way. As much as they can be looked down upon stereotypes can be very useful for a project as you can condense a group of people down into subcategories.
When looking at my project however I have a slight advantage when it comes to the expectations of my final design. A massive part of any gaming community is fan art and people often enjoy viewing them. Even if they are of slightly poor quality fan art is always appreciated by someone and many people in the Siege Community create fan art regularly to varying levels of quality. However even poor fan art is viewed in a positive and preferred way which is great for me. I haven’t been able to find out just yet how people would respond as I have not done an practical stuff yet but once I have begun creating designs and mock ups then I will be looking into the way people respond to them.
Overall the Reception Theory is a really valuable thing to be aware of and I believe that it is useful to my project. I may at some point create a survey based around the concept as I think that it could help with my primary research in the future.
Ethical issues considerations.
Due to the nature of Siege it is important to consider any ethical issues that arise when looking into this project. A great way to do this is to look into the ASA guidelines on their websites which is similar to the BBFC and the way they work. These guidelines cover many different categories. The two I am looking into are violence and threat as well as young people and how the content should be constructed when dealing with children. It’s important to ensure that these issues are thought about to avoid offence, any legal issues or bad reviews that may come about because of ethics. An example of this would be a scene in 13 Reasons Why Season 2 where a main character is raped with a broomstick in the school toilets. This caused massive uproar and many people wanted the show to be taken down and some even considered law suits because of the scene which admittedly was very dark and fairly un nessecary. Although my project is a graphic design project I still need to think about these factors. The ASA website provided great information and insight.
Practice, A. (2019). 04 Harm and offence. [online] Asa.org.uk. Available at: https://www.asa.org.uk/type/non_broadcast/code_section/04.html [Accessed 20 Apr. 2019].
There are of course a large variety of rules which need to be followed and although some of these don’t apply to my project some do. An example would be 4.4, I don’t want the project to encourage any violent behaviour whether in the game itself or in person. This is important as I don’t want negative behaviour to be associated with the project. 4.3 may also apply as I don’t want to mock the military or anything along those lines as this could bring negativity to my project. Something else I need to think about is how children may react to the project as well as the game itself. This is what the ASA states.
Again this is very important to consider especially 5.1 as Rainbow Six Siege is bloody and contains small amounts of language. I may place an age rating on the website to try and deter children as this is important to make sure that the children are kept safe and away from inappropriate content.
Overall I feel that this research has been really handy and valuable to my project and I’m glad that Ive carried it out. I want my project to be as clean and as well thought out as possible and thinking about these ethical scenarios is vital.
Treatment.
Below is my treatment for this project which goes over my project and smaller details such as budget and other key points which viewers should be aware of.
Trademark, Copyright and Intellectual Property.
An important part of my project is looking into the legal side of my project and think about what I am doing and considering. I need to be very careful because I don’t want to infringe on any copyright issues as of course I am designing projects for something which already exists so I need to make sure that everything I’m doing legal. The first thing I need to do is go over each of these 3 categories in the title and explain what they me and and how they work.
A trademark helps to protect a logo, design, symbol or quote. A trademark can be placed on any of these things mentioned which protects them from unauthorised use. This means that people can not use the design in their own work and fully plagiarise their effort and time. These rights are usually in place from 7 – 20 years and can be renewed as much as the creator wishes. However a trademark can be lost if misused or a lack of use. Trademarks are separated into 42 international classes and a trademark can be part of multiple. However the trademark can only be protected in the relevant class it is a part of. A trademark is often distinguished by a TM symbol which helps people distinguish it as a trademarked piece of work. Without permission or consent, this logo or design can not be used and as long as money is paid in regular intervals and specific documents are filed trademarks can essentially last forever.
Copyright is a legal way of fully protecting work. Copyright allows the creator to use this work in any way they wish whilst protecting the work from others, allowing only the creator to utilise it. Without permission from the creator this work can not be used whatsoever by anyone as this breaches copyright, making it highly illegal. Examples of work which can be protected by copyright are films, books, songs, artwork and plays. A good benefit to copyright is that when you post a piece of work/art you automatically (in most countries) gain protection over that piece of work and it fully belongs to you as you have put the time and effort in to make it. To help back this up you can post the well known copyright symbol on your work to help show others it is protected. You should also write a little line which states Copyright Year of creation – Current year to help people easily understand. Furthermore you can also contact an agency to register copyrighted material to help prove ownership in court or disputes. Rainbow Six Siege is of course protected by copyright law which means I can’t rip off or steal any elements from the game in my work which is very important for legal issues.
The form of legal protection is Intellectual property. This is fairly similar to the other forms of legal protection. It allows you to protect something you as an individual physically create. For example a book or film idea can not be protected by intellectual property but the words themselves are protected. Intellectual Property can be bought off previous owners and a trademarked piece of work is also intellectual property. If you’re an artist and you create a piece of commissioned work the intellectual property still belongs to you as you are the original creator.
I need to make sure that I consider these three protection methods when looking into my project and creating things and as mentioned above I need to make sure that I take nothing from the game as part of my project as this could cause issues legally.
Font Research and Decision Making.
Another thing I need to consider is what I will use for my fonts. I intend on using two different fonts for my project. The first one I wish to use is the font used for Rainbow Six Siege and the game in general. This would make most sense of course as I want my project to look as close as possible to the real game. As mentioned previously I want to create the operator screen for these characters and this will be. A great help for that. An example of one of these is below:
This is good as it means I can create a much smaller character as creating a full size one would take time and a lot of effort and struggle. As much as I’d like to I feel it’s to ambitious so making a smaller character is much better in my eyes. I love the idea of replicating the screen as this is very present in the game and seen a lot throughout. I need to make sure that the fonts I choose to use look similar to Siege and are believable in general.
The first thing I need to look at is which font I need to use in order to create a similar effect to the Siege screen. An example of This is below. However first I looked on the Ubisoft forums and other sites to try and find the exact font used. Many people had lots of different opinions but eventually I believe I found the correct one on the site https://fontmeme.com/tom-clancys-rainbow-six-siege-font-2/ This states that the font was based off of Scout Condensed Bold and I feel that this very accurate.
The font Scout Condensed Bold is also below and I feel that this is a great font to use. The first example of the font looks very much like the R6S logo and it really is very similar.
https://fontlot.com/13072/scout/
This font will be great for this project such as for the operator names and backstories. It is a very blocky and well organised font which links towards the military and the way they work. This font is also really easy to see and of course is extremely bold which is great to spot and emphasise throughout the project. By using a variety of colours in the project I can create a great font which is very similar to the original font used whilst not being identical which is important due to any copyright issues. I may also consider using this font for the title Operation Bulwark.
This would make sense as the font here is strong like the operators I have created. I feel that this would suit the title of the DLC due to it’s bold aesthetic and look. I am glad to have found this font and believe that it is the best choice for the project overall and what it does for the project really helps set up a wonderful blend of power but style. It is very easy to read and understand which is also very useful as I don’t want to choose a complex font which distracts from the project itself.
Colour Research and Decision Making.
As part of my research it was really important that I looked into colour and began to consider what colours I would use for my project and why those colours should be used. A really useful book which I found for this project was called Colour and Meaning, Art, Science and Symbolism by John Gage. This book looks into colours and how they are used within projects and artwork and what connotations can be taken from the colours used. This book is fairly detailed and the language used is sophisticated however it is easy enough to understand.
The first thing that John tells us about that interested me is the content of colour and how it is use and viewed by others. A great example he used was the colours Yellow and Red and how as humans we associate both of these colours with warmth. However these are for different reasons. We think warm when we see red because we think of fire whilst when we see yellow we think of the sun. This is pretty interesting when thinking about my project as I can really see how colour can change peoples perspective. I also need to think about which specific colour to use as many have similar meanings but for different reasons. He then goes on to say how this perspective can be an issue as there are a massive number of colours in the sun so only thinking of yellow can sometimes not work well. Combining colours wit similar meaning can work really well as by blending them together we can take even greater meanings.
Gage also discusses how we can link politics to colours. We can associate political parties and different social groups by simply looking at colours. Although slightly inappropriate by seeing the colours black and red we may think of the Nazi party as they often used Red and Black in their flagwork and other uniforms. This can also be linked to countries. For example if we think about the colours Red, White and Blue we think of the United Kingdom and it’s flag where if we think about White and Red we may think of Japan. However as Gage mentions context is important. Many flags have the colours red White and blue and depending where you’re from may depend on which country to associate the colours with. This will matter for my project as I may try and use the colours of the Norwegian flag.
Another thing we may think about according to Gage is the colours used when thinking about gender such as the classic Blue and Pink for male and female. This is very common today as stereotypically girls love pink things such as dolls and princesses etc. As both my operators are male the colour blue may help me out.
The book that Gage wrote was really useful and just by reading the extract I have considered a lot in my project. This extract link is below.
Google Books. (2019). Color and Meaning. [online] Available at: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=EU74cB7kMMsC&printsec=frontcover&dq=colour+connotation&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwie19ypvbbhAhUhUxUIHTiQB44Q6AEIKjAA#v=onepage&q=colour%20connotation&f=false [Accessed 5 Apr. 2019].
The first thing that I have thought about heavily is the base colour of the operators uniforms. I feel that dark blue along with highlights of light blue is a great choice for several reasons. The first reason I think this will work well is because of the Norwegian Environment. It is a very cold place with a lot of snow and ice and is of course surrounded by the North Sea, a cold and gaping Ocean. The colour blue works really well to link to ice and the ocean. I think that using darker blue works much better as it comes across as much darker along with more intimidating. This matters as Siege is a realistic game and lighter colours would be much easier to see in a war zone. Another great use for the colour blue is due to them being Males. We will associate this colour with masculine and the fact they are Norwegian may actually help people link these men to Vikings and their acts.
Another thing I have touched upon is utilising the Norwegian flag colours in my project which is below.
The colour blue also can be seen here which links to my decision making. The use of white will also help me with symbolism towards snow and ice as well as the flag itself. I may also use Red in my project for some smaller details as I feel this is a great way to include these colours. Due to my target audience being teenagers people may also link the colour red to violence and anger which also links to rainbow Six Siege and it’s themes of violence.
Another reason due to the darker blue is the connotations to a teenage audience. The colour lighter blue may be linked to sadness and in some cases happiness which isn’t what I really want to achieve. The use of darker colours may present darker themes towards teenagers which is the goal ultimately as Siege isn’t of course a child friendly game.
I also need to think about what I am going to do regarding what needs to be most present in my designs. For example on Goliaths character model I want his face to be the most clear thing. I have had an idea to make the visor of his helmet glow blue and turquoise which means that the viewer will be most drawn towards this characteristic which is what I want. Overall I am happy with the research and thoughts I have put into colour and I feel that this will aid me heavily in my project.
R6S Public Opinion.
I wanted to have a look into what the public thought about the game and what reviews the game was given. As mentioned previously Siege was once seen as a fairly poor game by critics due to bugs, a lack of progression etc. However some reviews were still brilliant at the time which paid off well. My main source of reviews is IMDB as this is a reliable place for critics and reviewing. A selection of reviews from the R6S IMDB site:
IMDb. (2019). Rainbow Six: Siege (Video Game 2015) – IMDb. [online] Available at: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4779020/reviews?ref_=tt_urv [Accessed 5 Apr. 2019].
This review above is very positive and is a very accurate description of the game. It is essential to think and plan out strategies on the fly in Siege and this review really proves that.They have also stated that it is so good they have forgiven the company for previous failures such as Watch Dogs etc. This next review is not as positive however:
This person is upset about the lack of a single player campaign which I agree is a shame. The game would be incredible with a campaign and I feel it’d work really well. They also comment on the toxic behavior which often occurs in the game. This is a really large issue in the game and it effects it’s popularity and reputation across the globe as more and more people feel it is ok to act in an inappropriate and often disgusting way. This review backs this up.
It also complains about the team killing in the game as this is a feature which was implemented to make your decisions more careful and ensure players would watch their fire. However the community have twisted the feature and many use it to troll, torment and terrorize team mates.
This review comments on the lack of content which arrived when the game launched however for the most part this has not been rectified with a large variety of skins, daily and weekly challenges, events and charms to customize your look and characters. Ubisoft are constantly making movements to improve the game and it’s features which I really appreciate.
This short review really helps to make the game sound great and it really helps big up it’s overall experience.
Overall there are a large portion of reviews online for Siege, some bad some good as always but with a total score of 8.1/10 the community along with critics clearly view it as superb and very well constructed which I think is excellent and I couldn’t agree more. Any issues that have been brought up in the past have already been rectified and if not is being looked into as I write this, really showing how much Ubisoft cares for it’s community and people.
Operator Designs Survey.
I have conducted another survey on reddit using closed questions only so I can receive more responses as it takes less time for people to carry out the survey. I wanted to get a feel for what people would enjoy in my designs and how they want the operators to look overall as this is highly important. I managed to get 29 responses which is really helpful for me and the FMP. The first two questions were fairly simple:
A massive number of the people who responded were happy to see Norwegian Operators which is good to see and the majority also felt that older operators would work better for the project, 24% believing that one of each would work well. I feel personally however that older operators would be much better as it means that they are true veterans with experience. I can also make them look highly battle hardened which I think will look really great. The next two questions asked about their actual look:
I was glad to see that people liked the idea of a beard as i really want to give them big beards to practise my skills as well as reflect their Norwegian origins. This is why I asked about the Viking Warriors and if people would enjoy it as I really want to base them off Vikings. They’re often associated with being very tough, strong and violent and this is what I want my operators to represent. The final question I asked was what they thought about the body types of the operators.
This was again a massive majority vote for the yes option which is great for me as this is how I want them to be designed. I am excited to begin the practical side of things and how I begin the process of designing and creating my characters. This survey has been useful as always and I will use these positive results when creating my final product.
Head on an angle research.
A main staple of my design overall is the head of my operators. I need to be able to draw a realistic head as this is the main focal point of my design. For the most part this is what will be most prominent in my design. As can be seen from the image below once the team choose all their operators this screen shows. This is what I will be designing for my project and this is why the head is so important as it is the thing that draws the most attention.
Reddit.com. (2019). Mid-Season Bug List: New and Old : Rainbow6. [online] Available at: https://www.reddit.com/r/Rainbow6/comments/603djd/midseason_bug_list_new_and_old/ [Accessed 2 Apr. 2019].
I found a great blog by a professional artist named Stanislav Prokopenko. This is a great blog about the angles and shapes of a head and how to construct it properly. I will be attempting to replicate this approach with my design and operators. As can be seen from the blog he first goes through the shape of a head and what needs to be included and considered.
Stanprokopenko.com. (2019). How to Draw the Head From Any Angle | Stan Prokopenko’s Blog. [online] Available at: http://www.stanprokopenko.com/blog/2009/05/draw-head-any-angle/ [Accessed 2 Apr. 2019].
This is a very useful start to the construction of a head and the next thing he goes over is the angle of the head. This again is really useful as I need my two heads to be on angles for the project to make it as real as possible. I appreciate his expertise here as it really does help me gain an understanding of how a human head should be drawn and how angles can be formed. I want my operators to be quite head on to express a feeling of power and confidence.
Stanprokopenko.com. (2019). How to Draw the Head From Any Angle | Stan Prokopenko’s Blog. [online] Available at: http://www.stanprokopenko.com/blog/2009/05/draw-head-any-angle/ [Accessed 2 Apr. 2019].
The next step is creating the chin of the operator and jaw. This is the final part of creating the head itself which I feel is very important. Again there is a lot of insight into how it’s best to approach the head of the operator. It actually surprised me how simple it was to create these shapes as all I needed to do was draw a few lines and angles correctly. I’m very grateful for this blog and it’s insightfulness into human anatomy.
Stanprokopenko.com. (2019). How to Draw the Head From Any Angle | Stan Prokopenko’s Blog. [online] Available at: http://www.stanprokopenko.com/blog/2009/05/draw-head-any-angle/ [Accessed 2 Apr. 2019].
Overall this blog has been excellent for me and my project and I am excited to start practising my drawing skills in the next week.
Jack S Runshaw Media FMP 