Madrasters — Game Design MeetUp
Recap of the Mar2018 Game Design meetup organised by Madrasters
Madrasters as a design community in Chennai is always focused on opening new design knowledge to students and budding designers. This time the meetup was on Game Design. The meetup happened on March 17th at IIT madras research centre and was sponsored by Playtonia eSports Private Limited
The term Game Design created much curiosity among the designers and we got 150+ registrations. On the day of event 100+ heads turned up to the meetup, we could see many new and energetic faces. After seeing the crowd we were much concerned to give them the best. We divided our core members into 4 main teams as registration, logistics, social media and console to have things in places.
The WarmUp Game
Once we opened the Event hall, everyone rushed up to their seats and took their spots. In every meetup that we do, we don’t jump directly into the design talk, because we want our attendees to get networked with each other and we want them to engage more. So we always start with a small activity( what better can make them more engaging). This time we had a concept named “Attaipetti” which means a small box to accommodate things. The activity was to do a strategic box design for the product that we give them. We split the attendees into 8 teams, and gave each a product, the products were Top, Marbles, small stones( to brush up some of their childhood games 😁) and gave them the necessary tools to do the box design. We time boxed it to 20 mins, the teams started to do their strategy and design. We were actually taken a back by the ideas that they came up for promoting their products.
After 20 mins we asked all the teams to explain their concept and what was the thought process behind their idea. We could see that they had much fun in doing this, because it took them back to their childhood days.
The talk on Game Design
After the activity, we had our speaker Sanupam a game designer and Co- Founder of Playtonia(a E-sports platform provider for gamers) to deliver his talk on game design. Sanupam Samantray also have previous experiences of working for Bollywood movies on the story telling and VFX side. So we couldn’t have got a better speaker to create awareness on Game Design and to let people know the opportunities surrounding it. He carried on with his talk and all the eyes were on him and his slides, because each slide had a story to tell and conveyed that game design is not a easy thing to do. He covered the basics in game designing such as sketching, clay modelling, digital modelling, texturing, rigging, animation, lighting, environment creation, and compositing. Each of these topics take years of practise and dedication to become a pro. The core idea of the talk was to create an awareness to the attendees to let them know what is game design and what it takes to become a game designer. The crowd throughly enjoyed the talk and we could see questions and excitement on their faces.
Lime Light
Every design meetup conducted by madrasters will have a lime light session, where the emerging designers will present their designs and share their design jouney. This time we had Hima Javvadi and Jiva to present and share their journey in design.
Hima Javvadi is a UX Designer at Vodafone Shared Service Ltd — VISPL. Hima started her carrier as a UI Developer then turned into a UX designer. She shared as how the transformation happened. When she was working as a UI develper, some part of her always keep telling her that she is not what she is doing and she had great passion towards sketching. She is obsessed with finding inspirations from nature and things around her. Some of her works were a visual treat and the blend that she brings in between the real life incidents and her skeching were amazing. She said how she started attending all the design events that happens nearby and how she started networking with the designers who comes in for the events. She said everybody where ready to help her and give feedbacks on her works. By doing so she developed her portfolio and she ended up in a design job.
Jeevanantham Jiva Graphic Designer at Report Bee, Jiva showcased his works and many were amazed to see his works. He had a great sense of colour and concept in his works. He also tries to bring motion in every work that he do, he explained how pencil and paper changed his life. He said that pencil is the go to tool for him whenever he gets a concept, he completes 80% of his work with pencil and paper and rest is just a polishing works with digital tools. Jiva is a perfect example to know how sketching saves tones of time in design and delivering things faster.
Special talk on Concept Art
Amol Bhangare a Industrial Designer at Royal Enfield. Amol spoke about the process and the principles to be followed in any form of design. He said that Design is an iterative process and every design always have a betterment to be done. He also made the statement that a good designer knows how to keep iterating things and a better designer knows when to put an end to it(great point indeed). He explained how design revolves around the automobile industries and what are the process that they go through during the journey of designing an automobile. He said more than design the experience is all that matters. People buy things to get good experience out of them, so knowing the customers pulse is very important and targeting the design towards achieving that goal is very challenging. He said design is not a one man show and it is always about helping others and getting help from others. He just made everyone realise that collecting feedback and iterating upon them is very important before making a working prototype. He said that he always get inspire from small things and innovate up on them. His talk made the attendees know the esthetics and the values that a designer should follow during his/her design process.
Time for Group Picture
At the end of every meetup we try to capture the end moment with every single one of them in the room. Madrasters as a team successfully organised our 8th meetup and still counting on more….
