Design basics for professional game development

Dr.-Ing. Wolfgang Höhl


Concept Art für "Mass Effect" von Matt Rhodes und Derek Watts, in: ArtStation . https://www.artstation.com/artwork/lgZPe

"We shall not cease from exploration,
and at the end of all our exploring
will be to arrive where we started
and know the place for the first time."

T. S. Eliot (1942): Four Quartets - Little Gidding


The module "Concept Art and Game Design" focuses on the examination of design, technical and organizational fundamentals for professional game development. Necessary theoretical knowledge and knowledge of the conception and practical implementation of computer games are covered. In the form of a practical seminar, work is carried out on the basis of an individual project. The whole seminar consisted of five practical workshops and a project week.

The topics of the workshops were perspective drawing, image concept and composition, depiction of human figure and space, game environments, game characters and look development, modeling, texturing, lighting, rendering and animation with Blender.


Literature references:

Understanding Hybrid Spaces: Designing a Spacetime Model to Represent Dynamic Topologies of Hybrid Spaces, in: Juergen Hagler et al. (2024). Expanded Animation 2024 - Conference on Animation and Interactive Art, Ars Electronica Festival . https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.13382838 

Unraveling the Tales of Aurora - An Imaginative Serious Games Approach, Demo paper accepted for presentation at IMET 2023 Conference on Interactive Media, October 4-6, Barcelona, Spain. https://diglib.eg.org/items/9dd3a4b1-cee0-4b28-b4e2-1eb7347b622e

Ambiguity in Utopian XR-Games. European Journal of Futures Research 11, 6 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1186/s40309-023-00218-w

Grimma Floodfighters - Open Geodata in a Real-time Strategy Game, Poster presentation at Federal Forum for Remote Sensing and Copernicus 2022. https://mediatum.ub.tum.de/1662305

Nykus Exploration - Open Geodata in a Survival Game, Poster presentation at Federal Forum for Remote Sensing and Copernicus 2022. https://mediatum.ub.tum.de/1662306

COVID-19 and digital transformation: developing an open experimental testbed for sustainable and innovative environments using Fuzzy Cognitive Maps, in: F1000Research 2021, 10:264, https://doi.org/10.12688/f1000research.51357.1

Ideale Architektur ist eine Utopie, in: Deutsches Architektenblatt 10/2020, S. 26-27

Amtliche Vermessungsdaten und Virtuelle Welten, in: GIS Science 3 (2020), Die Zeitschrift für Geoinformatik, ISSN 1869-9391, S. 95-102

Official Survey Data and Virtual Worlds - Designing an Integrative and Economical Open Source Production Pipeline for xR-Applications in Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises, in: Big Data and Cognitive Computing 2020, 4, 26. https://doi.org/10.3390/bdcc4040026

COVID-19 als Beschleuniger der Digitalisierung? in: Baumeister - Das Architekturmagazin vom 1. April 2020, Georg D.W. Callwey GmbH & Co. KG, München, 2020. https://www.baumeister.de/covid-19-digitalisierung/

Wayfinding in Museums - A Cross-sectional Comparison Between 3D Serious Games and 2D Drawings as Tools for Participatory Design, in: Proceedings of 2020 IEEE Conference on Games, Kindai University, Osaka, Japan, https://doi.org/10.1109/CoG47356.2020.9231921

Game-Based Learning - Developing a Business Game for Interactive Architectural Visualization, in: Proceedings of 11th International Conference on Virtual Worlds and Games for Serious Applications (VS-Games 2019) Vienna, Austria, 2019, pp. 1-4. https://doi.org/10.1109/VS-Games.2019.8864595

The Role of Serious Gaming using Virtual Reality Applications for 3D Architectural Visualization, in: Proceedings of 11th International Conference on Virtual Worlds and Games for Serious Applications (VS-Games 2019) Vienna, Austria, 2019, pp. 1-2. https://doi.org/10.1109/VS-Games.2019.8864576

Games, Interaktive Technologien und industrielle Anwendungen - Interdisziplinäre Vernetzung | gemeinsame Technologien, in: Bartholdy, B. Breitlauch, L.; Czauderna, A.; Freyermuth, G.: Games studieren – was, wie, wo? Staatliche Studienangebote im Bereich digitaler Spiele, Transcript, Bielefeld 2018, ISBN: 978-3-8376-4032-8. https://doi.org/10.14361/9783839440322-016

Interdisciplinary Integration – Transportation and Applied Interactive Technologies, Innovation survey by the Federal Ministery of Transport and Digital Infrastructure (BMVI), in: Boehnke, Niels: Verkehr und Applied Interactive Technologies, BMVI and Stiftung Digitale Spielekultur, Berlin 2017, pp. 33-41. https://mediatum.ub.tum.de/download/1576108/1576108.pdf

Open Innovation and Applied Interactive Technologies (APITs), poster presentation at SAP 2017 – ACM Symposium on Applied Perception, 16-17 September 2017, Brandenburg University of Technology in Cottbus, Germany. https://mediatum.ub.tum.de/download/1576102/1576102.pdf

Augmented Reality in Architektur und Stadtplanung - Potenziale und Anwendungsbereiche von Augmented Reality in Architektur und Stadtplanung, in: GIS Science - Die Zeitschrift für Geoinformatik, Nr. 1 / 2015, ISSN: 1869-9391, pp. 20–29.

Sim Games, Simulation und industrielle Anwendungen, in: Kaiser, Markus (Hrsg.): Ringvorlesung Games - Retro-Gaming, Gamification, Augmented Reality, 1. Auflage, Verlag Dr. Gabriele Hooffacker, Medien Campus Bayern, München 2014, pp. 80–97.

Interactive Environments with Open-Source Software, 3D-Walk-Throughs and Augmented Reality for Architects with Blender 2.43, DART 3.0 and ARToolKit 2.72, Springer Wien NewYork 2009.

MedienStädte - Stadtplanung und Kommunikationstheorie (Cities of the Media - City Planning and Communication Theory), Passagen Verlag, Wien 2000.