Development
I decided to have a concept that was favoured among all generations from child to adult. The idea of a robot, I believe appeals a broader audience because of it’s popularity. As our future expands and evolves, the human race is gradually becoming dependant on robot mechanics to aid us in life. We have always involved our future to be robot inhabitant, so much so we make movies, stories and even video games about them. For example, existing media like ‘Transformers, “Star Wars’ and ‘War of the worlds’ all involve the idea of interacting/living with or against robots in our future. Even video games like ‘Halo’, ‘borderlands’ and ‘ Lost Planet’ use robots or similar mechanised suits, that look remarkably futuristic and robot like.
As our technology progresses, our human mind has stayed curious with the prospect of robots, that we go to extraordinary lengths to express the way we would react to them. Almost as if it is a form of preparation in how we would approach robots in our future. From this, I believe using this theme is an ideal concept to appeal to a vaster audience, as the interest for them our exceedingly high in our current era.
I began looking at robot designs that exist across multiple entertainment platforms, to get gather an understanding of robot concepts for ideas. I wanted to fetch for a sleek and futuristic design, and with that in mind I used my current knowledge and devised a group of robotic characters I believe would contribute to my productions. I chose a cartoon I used to watch when I was younger called ‘Robot boy’ it’s a story about a robot that was designed to be used as a weapon, but it’s creator chose a different lifestyle for the creature and sent it to live a normal life similar to a younger boy, hence the title ‘Robot Boy’ It’s interesting to see how the artist has masked the robot’s violent capabilities by giving it a ‘cuter’ appeal, something that is more appropriate for a younger audience. Given that our target audience is 10+, I think this is a good approach to research in terms of simplistic and suitable designs. The colours are minimal within Robot boy’s structural make up, alongside the solid shapes give this character a true sense of simplicity and futurism. I liked the idea of his emotion change that his eyes change from green to red when he becomes angry. Using basic emotional colours, we can already assume that green is a neutral and a positive colour, whereas, red is best resembling rage which is negative. Within using this structure it is simple for both older and younger generations to identify the emotions of this character, indicating to me that simplicity is key here to achieve a successful looking futuristic robot. It does not to be overcomplicated to effectively portray the features of the creature.
I also decided to look at something more structural and believably realistic. I chose ‘Star Wars’ for this as I think it is one of the most successful ways of portraying human life with artificial life. Here are some image examples of how I can link robots to us (likeness):
The initial concept of our board game was to have a landscape where you build architecture into miniature cities. It seemed apparent that I was the only one who thought this idea was plain and boring. In a sense I liked the idea of being able to build miniature versions of constructs, but it seemed it could get tedious and become quite dull for the audience we are aiming for. What I like most about our idea is that we can change the theme quite easily and still would be able to be playable. Like Monopoly we could make all kinds of variants to suit every kind of audience, from children to the elderly: but we needed a solid initial design. I wanted to take the approach of building a robot because it is something more presentable and aesthetically pleasing to all target audiences, they would be many ways in which the characters could look or function and have still keep some relation to our outstanding artwork. I believe using the robot theme adds creativity and excitement, as they can take on all sorts of forms. Whereas architecture concepts would stay the same solid and dull shape throughout. There needs to be a variety of colours, shapes and textures to grab the attention of anyone in our target audience, and I strongly believe that robotics is the way forward with our board game mechanics.
There were some disagreements in how we would go about this production, how the themes would fit together fairly from the team’s artistic perspectives. We had to work hard together to devise a new way in which we could all be satisfied and end up with an attractive and fun board game. We began adopting the theme of a pre-war 1930’s style that both would resemble old architecture and open possibilities of robot designs. With this in mind we could devise new ideas and come together as a team to produce an ideal board game that would please all of our aspirations.
Bibliography:
. Google Images
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