Pizzapocalpyse UI
polycounter lvl 6
I am a student and have just finished a small game project with other students in my course, I am looking for feedback on the UI elements, I have composited them all into a single image, details below as well as credits to the other two artists in my team.
Full Image around 2k by 2k pixels.
=========================================================================
For a group project in the game development course I study, we had a team of 4 programmers and 3 artists, we had 2 weeks pre production and 4 weeks of production. Given a game idea we had to refine it and produce a game within the given 6 weeks.
I have learnt from this that I need to start UI work alot earlier, I did this in the last 2 weeks, in saying that I need to also become a whole lot faster
UI is something like 127 images for use in a game engine developed by the programming students at my course. Many many layers/smartobjects with stacks of layer styles
3D Renders apart from the shield were done by another artist in my team and the characters and game logo were done by the third artist. Main menu used an image of a blank pizza box found through google image search and then heavily altered with game logo and blood brushes.
Full Image around 2k by 2k pixels.
=========================================================================
For a group project in the game development course I study, we had a team of 4 programmers and 3 artists, we had 2 weeks pre production and 4 weeks of production. Given a game idea we had to refine it and produce a game within the given 6 weeks.
I have learnt from this that I need to start UI work alot earlier, I did this in the last 2 weeks, in saying that I need to also become a whole lot faster
UI is something like 127 images for use in a game engine developed by the programming students at my course. Many many layers/smartobjects with stacks of layer styles
3D Renders apart from the shield were done by another artist in my team and the characters and game logo were done by the third artist. Main menu used an image of a blank pizza box found through google image search and then heavily altered with game logo and blood brushes.
Replies
I think you've done a good job to outline every asset which needed to be produced however the design itself lacks identity. The User Interface is the first thing a player will see upon buying/playing a game. As such, (generally speaking) it's pretty important to get as much of the styling of the game as you can into the actual design of the UI. Your UI stuff feels quite generic whereas the game looks more interesting than that. There's more to UI than glossy buttons, strokes, and outer glows
I think in terms of the layout and information you have displayed - everything is spot on at a quick glance. You could work a bit more on the visual hierarchy of your images. Ask yourself questions such as 'What should the player be focusing on first?', and employ graphic design techniques and tweak your elements to reflect the path you want the player to follow. You can do this through considered use of colour, style, font and also by playing with the size of elements.
The front-end image is a good start, but it seems like you spent more time on the pizza box and less time on how you fit the navigation/menu into the design.
My advice for future work in this area would be to create something waaaaay over the top, and also create something minimalistic with the basic features you want - then meet half way for good measure
For example the pizzabox being all bloody and detailed would be over the top right as opposed to the minimalistic menu correct? I thought the player would see the art first and easily enough locate the menu in the lower left corner due to the rest being white space. The grey gradient to show selection slides in and out as you move through the menu selection vertically, the grey tab on the left edge slides down after the gradient has retracted. I thought I mixed it well, could you advise where I went wrong?
I agree that its rather generic looking, I've got alot to learn before I can do detailed painted like UI's, at the moment I'm only able to whip up clean or sci-fi like UI's
What did you mean by visual hierarchy of my images? For colour, in the upgrade boxes they appear blue unselected and yellow when rolled over/selected by controller. For the button graphic at the bottom right of the upgrade screen I have used it in other areas for UI at different sizes and like most UI elements that I made for interaction have a highlight colour to provide feedback to the player. Could you provide an example of how I could have done one of the elements better? Would appreciate it
Are there any resources that you can recommend for learning UI design? I'd like to improve in this area alot
great feedback right there..!