Saturday 14 March 2009

Creativity

Creativity is the beautiful process of creating and developing new concepts and ideas into constructive and useful mediums, such as a picture, a script a machine or even a movie. It’s creativity that has lead mankind to change the face of the earth into the vibrant but problem filled metropolis is today but as a result every solution creates a new problem so the creative process of finding new and better ways to achieve a set goal whether it be creative or industrial never ends. For my personal stand point my creative process goes into creating images and graphics that try to convey a set scene or idea for a video game property, I have to think about lighting, image placement, environment and many other factors to create a piece the tells the story of the idea I have. All these factors must work together creatively to make my finished piece have depth and meaning and it’s the development of this creative thought process that drives me forward and leads to new and better concepts down the road and it’s the same process that every designer or creative person takes to move their visions forward and the rapid evolution of our culture over the last 15 years shows just how influential this process is to everyday life around the world. Films have become a good example of this evolution in creative thinking, in the last few years the art direction in motion pictures has become as important as the script and story that make the film what it is. The use of colour filters, lenses angles, camera distortions and effect are now taking a greater stance in helping tell the story to the viewer rather than just relying on dialog and sets to convey a set mood or tone to a scene that registers to the viewer as what they should be feeling at this given time. This theme has also seen a great rise to performance in video games over the last few years where now with the power that consoles have at their disposal larger more story heavy games are beginning to center stage once again. Games such as Metal Gear Solid have continued to up the production values and visual presentation in its games over the last few years with ‘MGS4’ being as close to a Hollywood movie in terms of style and presentation we have seen thus far but thankfully this trend is taking hold in and this has caused the overall quality of games to improve and helped develop new graphic technologies that can be implemented to greater effect in future titles which will again lead to quality and presentation to improve further. Games such as ‘Half life’ or more notably ‘Half Life 2’ have pushed the bounders even further with the world itself becoming its own character with every building and landscape conveying a story or the people who remain there and what has happened in the past and with the link of a strong story too it has become one of the centerpieces of video games. The creative process that has gone into creating every little detail from the characters to the landscapes and vehicles is astounding and if any of you have read the aptly named “Raising the Bar” you will know just how deep the development of ideas for this game went and with games such as ‘Heavy Rain’ will show upon its release the boundaries of visual design are becoming less and less constrained by technology and now anything that can be dreamt can indeed finally be created in all the glory that the designer envisioned.

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