HW05 RC Narma
1) The feeling of immersion that my GUI is exactly is what I had in mind. I really wanted to give the player the feeling that he/she was piloting a big robot fighting machine. One way to do this was to build a cockpit as part of the design, but I felt it did not make sense because of the third-person view the game has. So instead, I tried to give it a more abstract cockpit feel.
The use of black to indicate a disabled robo-body part was something that was critiqued. Tomo Isoyama said that gray would probably be a better color. I absolutely agree. Honestly, the use of a black head was completely an accident. I never had intended for it to be disabled, but I accidentally turned it black and didn't have enough time to turn it back. So, I decided to just say that it was disabled.
2) The screen I used while creating my GUI dulled the colors, so when I actually saw my GUI presented in class, I was surprised how bright everything was. Overall, I would turned down the opacity and/or the saturation of all the GUI elements. I find it's a bit brighter and more distracting than I'd like.
Overall, I like the general size and shape of all of the GUI elements. I might like the "target view" that's at the bottom-center to be a bit bigger. It might be a too small to see the target clearly. At the same time, I don't want it to crowd the screen too much.
The GUI isn't symmetric, but I feel it's fairly balanced the way it is currently arranged and sized.
I think I might change the icon for the gun. It doesn't quite match the color scheme of the GUI. I might like it colored and simplified to match. The purple, blue, and green color scheme is meant to have a high tech and futuristic look to it, with just enough contrast between the different elements.
I think I would like little details added across the whole GUI. Maybe small indicators and texts as part of the existing GUI elements can further enhance the nature of its immersion. I think that more details could be added to the minimap, and its icons could be shown a little clearer. The different shades of green indicate distances across the map.
The gundam damage status is meant to indicate damage across the gundam. It's large in the GUI because it's important, and I think it's narrow nature limits it's intrusiveness. The different colors indicate different levels of health. Green is healthy. Red is very damaged.
The ammo and thruster meters are nice and long to clearly indicate ammo and thrust. Their triangular shape is intended to both minimize their intrusiveness as well as to add to the GUI's angular design.
The target lock icon could be a bit bolder with more contrast and could look a bit a bit more interesting. Maybe a different shape might help enhance the immersion, as well.
3) I have good experience in Photoshop, but am not too used to using its vector tools. I'm more comfortable with Illustrator's vector tools, so I had a few minor problems when using them in Photoshop. I used the pen tool and shape tools primarily, and they worked well for me.