00:00www.mesmerism.info
00:10Hey everybody, I'm here with Johnny Likens, our UI Designer.
00:14Johnny, would you like to introduce yourself to everybody?
00:16I'm John Likens, I'm a UI Designer and I've been brought on to the project
00:20to head up all the design and UI elements inside the ships
00:26that you'll be interacting with when you're playing the game.
00:28Can you tell us how you came to Cloud Imperium Games?
00:31So my background is in film and television and I got a call from Travis
00:36who was referred to me from my work on Iron Man 3
00:41where I did a bunch of the HUD design and UI work in that film
00:45and it was at that point he explained to me what Star Citizen is all about
00:51and how the work that I was doing in the film world could directly be applied
00:56to what's happening in the game world.
00:59So you work with Zane and a bunch of the other guys in the office,
01:01what is the workflow that you work on for the HUD specifically?
01:07So when I start a project like this I think it's really important to become quite familiar with whatever it
01:16is
01:16that you're designing the interface graphics for, for example the Hornet.
01:20I'm creating the HUD and all the interface sort of design elements for it
01:28and I believe that it should be cohesive and feel like it's part of the same system.
01:34You know, the design aesthetic of the ship should be reflected in the UI.
01:40I started out by just sort of flying around the ship getting a sense for some of the design work
01:47and the line work that's already been built into the ship.
01:51You know, just taking notes from some of the forms and shapes that have already been created for this particular
01:58asset.
01:59From there I'll just do a lot of sketches and I'll be very loose and very fast paced with sort
02:07of getting a lot of ideas out on paper
02:09and then I'll just like loosely either scan in those sketches from the book
02:14or I'll just come in here and draw freehand on top of the plate
02:19and vectorize it and make everything clean and nice and work with a grid
02:24and do all my typeface exploration in Illustrator
02:27and solidify all those ideas that were executed in the sketching process.
02:34It's different just because in film, you know, all the UI and stuff, it's all just fake
02:39and we get to sort of, you know, make it up as you go
02:41but in the game environment all these things have to have a purpose
02:45and they have to have meaning and they have to sort of, you know, function as an aid to the
02:51player.
02:53So I worked on the design for about a week and a half and then worked on the animation for
03:00a few days
03:01and that's kind of brought us to where we're at.
03:04But there's also been a lot that's kind of gone into it just to get to this point.
03:08For example, if you see this reticle, it's an actual 3D object
03:12and so taking that vector design that you saw over here, knowing that we want it to fly in and
03:21be three-dimensional
03:22and then eventually end up looking like this, taking that design that I created, that 2D vector art in Illustrator,
03:30I can then bring it into Cinema 4D and extrude all the pieces and place them in their own depth
03:38and animate them accordingly
03:39and then I'll be able to export that out for the developers to work it into the game.
03:46So what Johnny's focus is in this whole workflow is to come up with a high-level visual concept of
03:52the HUD
03:52which includes the animation of the boot-up sequence and also sort of like the damage states and how that
04:00sort of animates
04:01and what my focus is in this workflow is to take that and then animate it so that it gets
04:09translated into an in-game asset
04:10which I can then hand over to Brandon.
04:12Zane hands that flash file off to me and I plug it into the engine and make sure that the
04:16C++ code is interfacing with it properly.
04:19So the cool thing about how we're developing this game is that we're releasing it piece by piece
04:24and so for this first dogfighting module, the work that we're doing on this HUD, we'll be able to put
04:30it out there to the players
04:32and get feedback on that, what things could be improved, what sections of the HUD are readable or not readable
04:39and then we'll be able to fold that feedback into future iterations of the HUD on different ships and even
04:45the Anvil HUD.
04:46In Star Citizen, there's not a lot of abstraction in how these ships function.
04:51Everything is a real part that actually exists in the system and all of those parts need to actually communicate
04:56with each other.
04:57So I've been doing a lot of work to make sure that there's interconnectivity between all of the various ship
05:03systems
05:03and making sure that those have a way to communicate with all of the various output devices like the player's
05:09HUD.
05:09So our goal is to create a really cool HUD, a really immersive experience and one of the ways that
05:16we're doing this is to actually diversify the visual style of HUD by ship manufacturer.
05:22So right now we're sort of initially concepting the visual look and feel and design language for the Hornet or
05:29Anvil Aerospace rather.
05:30So you'll see the same style in the Hornet and Gladiator but later on when we actually get this workflow
05:38going and we start fleshing out more HUD designs,
05:42they're actually going to be way different. So in a trading ship like the Musashi ships, you're going to be
05:50able to expect a whole different experience because the visual language will be different.
05:54Well there's a lot of systems that are going to be brought into Star Citizen and you're going to need
05:59an interface into all of those.
06:00So we're thinking about things like navigation, star maps, things like that, possibly trade interfaces.
06:09All of that is going to be done in world. There won't be any sort of game abstract UI.
06:16So there's a lot of stuff to look forward to doing going forward.
06:20One thing what we're doing is we're defining different color spaces that'll be applied to different things.
06:25For example, customizability of these different color spaces. So a user can take the red color space or the critical
06:32alert color space and assign a different RGB value or color to that so that it's more readable to them.
06:40Coming from, you know, my background, not really being much of a gamer or anything, I sort of offer a
06:46fresh perspective and maybe like a new set of eyes
06:49and I would maybe approach problems and tasks in a different way than regular designers in the game industry would
06:57because they sort of know the limitations
06:59and they know sort of the boundaries of where they need to be working in. But for me, I don't
07:04really know anything about that.
07:06So I'm just kind of, you know, doing my thing and then we'll work to incorporate it into a usable
07:15state for gameplay.
07:19Before we wrap up it in here, go ahead.
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