Katie Lofts MA Blog

Introduction As I got further into this 3 week project, my ideas for what I wanted to focus on within the MA developed too. My current idea has changed quite a bit from my first one, being the topic of Accessibility within games, and now the topic of Art Styles. As I researched during the latter part of these last few weeks, I came to the realisation that I'd like to focus on art styles within games as a topic. I've always had a love for art history in general, and discussions of modern technology and developments within game art is something that sparks a lot of joy within me and I have always been passionate about learning more on this subject. A particular field within this topic I'd like to focus on, at least at the moment or firstly, is the Art Nouveau style - one I can confidently say is one of my absolute favourites.  I've noticed particularly within games that this style is not portrayed much, and yet, what can be seen as its counter-part - Art Deco - appears qu...

In this post, I plan to find different sources of the process behind the creation of environment art in Riot Games' League of Legends and evaluate it. Why choose League of Legends? Firstly, in my opinion, I think that the world Riot Games has created is one of the most flavourful and interesting ones that's currently still being worked upon. I think it's revolutionary the extents they go to, to showcase and develop their world to their players. They consistently release music videos, comics, art, writing and much more just to expand upon places within their lore or world. Currently, they're also known to be working on an MMORPG based upon the expansive universe.  Another thing is quite obviously the addition of Arcane, the Netflix series. I think that this shook up anyone within the art scene purely for the unique visuals and overall approach. At least for me, this art style is something that instantly became one of my favourites. Starting off, there seems to be a Dev b...

I decided that I wanted to make a blog post to collect all of the artwork and references I've found within the week. Perhaps this may become something I do weekly on my blog, should things go well. On the 10th of this month, it was "Portfolio day" on Twitter. A lot of artists of many mediums take this day to use the hashtag #PortfolioDay and share their work and a bit about themselves. This meant that this week I was especially flooded with a lot of great work that I wanted to save somewhere - and so, I thought why not my blog! 

As briefly mentioned on my previous introduction post, I had a list of topics for my MA that were my initial ideas. They were: Accessibility Social and ethical problems within games Artificial Intelligence Learning and teaching others within games Lighting and atmosphere within games Visual communication Lore and worldbuilding However, since then, I've still been trying to think of other topics or areas that excite me the most. This led me to my newest topic idea, and perhaps the one I might be most passionate about at the moment: Environments Within Games A good game environment encapsulates a snippet of a world within a game, representing all the storytelling and worldbuilding within it.  I think that this topic might be a good fit for me because, within environment art, I believe I can cover other smaller topics within it that I mentioned before; like lighting and atmosphere, visual communication, lore and worldbuilding, and even accessibility.  Also, it helps that I also w...

About me I'm Katie Lofts, a 3D artist that was previously just on the Bachelors Games Design course at UCLan. After graduating, I decided I wanted to continue on to do the Masters as well! Previous work on the BA My Skills The work I made within the undergraduate course varied quite a bit towards the last year; going from my comfort zone of heavily stylised work into dipping my toes into some realistic styled work as well. Stylised art is probably my favourite kind to work in and learn more about. I used and I am comfortable with programs such as; Photoshop, Substance Painter & Designer, Maya, Unreal Engine, and ZBrush to name a few.  I think that a strong skill of mine is being able to break down and analyse different references or art to inform my practise, or at least, this is a particular area I enjoy. I've worked on collecting all different kinds of art over the years, sorting them into different categories within my own personal Discord server, as to ensure I have a w...