Extended Practice: Presentation Artwork and Branding Ourselves

Name and First Logo

The first thing that we wanted to do was come up with a name for our 'company' so that we could get a good solid logo up and running and then start the marketing process of the game. Coming up with the name did prove a little tricky, but eventually after consulting friends, we came to Ctrl, Alt, Delete. We felt that this represented all the times where we had laptops that didn't quite run programs properly and hitting these keys where the only solution, and they never fail to help.

With this in mind I made this quick logo below. I believe the final look can be improved on but for now this is the look we want to consider, going for a hand drawn appearance but also with old keyboard keys, making it seem like its from an old computer and I think this works really well, but as I said, some improvement can definitely be made, and maybe even get a graphic designer to take a look at.

Box Art: Research
We knew that we really wanted to include some box art for our game, and thought about how we could do this in the time that we had spare but also by still taking influence from the games we had previously looked at.

I started by looking into a lot of game box art to see if I could get any inspiration from them and the main theme that travels through them all if that the 'hero' of the story is usually something that is featured on the front.

Next is the font/logo of the game, it usually is big and bold on the front and really easy to read so you know what the game is called, this is then usually taken into the game as well to keep the theme consistent throughout.

Then there is the platform that you are publishing the game on, for us this would need to be a PC game box, something that can be found on the internet very easily and then our graphics can be added over the top.

The company logo is then also featured somewhere on the front of the box, in most cases at the bottom at either sides or in the middle, to keep it out the way, but also to show you the company if you do want to know.

The finally there is the back of the box. From what I can tell from the box art of these games a lot of them feature the character in a pose, or maybe a few dotted around, but then there is also some smaller character models throughout the text, like with the Spyro box. 

Another feature that I have also found is that there is usually a chunk of information which gives some indication to the features that are in the game, and also a small piece of information about the story that can be included.

Finally the last feature that I have found are that in most of these games box art there are screenshots of the level which is a nice detail. They are usually down one side to keep them separate from the text but usually include about 3 or 4 to show of some of the level design and keep the player interested.

'Keith the Koala' Box Art
I took all of this on board and then thought about how we could display our box. I really like the idea of the 'hero' character taking centre stage in the middle of the box but also having some of the secondary characters on show, even if they are not on the front, but featured on the back, which is the idea we went for in the end. Sophie used the model that I had of Keith and put him into the pose I wanted to use for the front.

Instruction Booklet
With the instruction booklet, this was a little easier to get right. We knew that shape and size, as it has to fit inside a PC case. We then knew already that we wanted the front of it to have the same image of the front of the Box Art, as this is a usually tradition when it comes to it, so that in the end everything is linked up correctly. With the outside already sorted we had to think about what the pages would look like on the inside and what information would be on them. I knew from having old PlayStation games that there would need to be a lot of instructions on how to play the game, but also wanted there to be introductions to the characters, giving a little bit into the back story of them to make them seem more interesting and then give some information to the back story of the game itself and details on the different types of collectibles in the game as well. With the instruction booklet I designed everything getting the general look of it together along with getting all of the writing sorted and I then passed it onto Sophie who added in all of the images and put everything in the correct layout.

Disc Art
Finally I wanted to look at designing some disc art and again I looked at the disc of games already out there and looked at the games I researched and again, either they were very bland and were simple the chrome finish with the name of the game printed, or they had the box art again on the front. I think rather than go down the boring root, going for the box art idea was an interesting one. This way if it was all presented in one box all of the artwork would fit together nicely and there would be a solid theme running throughout. Again Sophie did this as she had the file already for the game art.

I think overall of the work really goes well with the whole image of the game and looks great. We would have loved to get them printed, but this is something more for the End of Year Show or Games Republic that we can think about organising then.