A Battlefield 2 Graphic Novel: “The Dawn of Battle”

View “The Dawn of Battle,” a Battlefield 2 graphic novel on my website.

This is an artistic vision of the popular Battlefield 2 modification, Project Reality. I went in and recorded all the action, in a single-player battle against bots. I then went in with the Battle Recorder, and took a ton of screenshots from a variety of angles.

The next step was utilizing Adobe Photoshop to construct a unique theme to the images. I went in, constructed an HDR profile of each image, then applied various lighting and coloring techniques to try to tie everything together.

Then I applied the images to the graphic novel pages, using a variety of overlays and lighting styles to blend everything together. The goal was to sharpen certain elements – like facial features and the weaponry, whilst blurring out the background. I then applied various artistic filters and blended them into the images.

The final step was adding text. I had constructed the plot before hand, so I knew exactly what was happening throughout the graphic novel. Then, I applied an action that darkened the edges and added a slight film grain throughout the page.

Whilst not the perfect graphic novel (in fact, it’s “to be continued”), I felt it had a very unique, interesting visual style. Especially since the base material was, in fact, a video game. It’s fun to read, even more fun to look at, despite the rather bland plot.

4 Responses to “A Battlefield 2 Graphic Novel: “The Dawn of Battle””

1. Richard Smyth says:

   January 6, 2010 at 9:39 pm

   The link to the graphic novel is broken… I wanted to take a peek.

   Thanks for fixing it and letting me know when it’s ready.
2. Richard Smyth says:

   January 6, 2010 at 9:48 pm

   I also have a question about how you’re able to live stream the Quake game on ustream.tv. I haven’t seen this before but might want to do something comparable (for purpose of teaching a class). Thanks.
3. Mattc0m says:

   January 12, 2010 at 11:29 am

   The link works fine for me: http://www.mattc0m.com/College/Graphic%20Novel/

   If that doesn’t work, try going to http://www.mattc0m.com/College/ and select “Graphic Novel”
4. Mattc0m says:

   January 12, 2010 at 11:35 am

   Here is the step-by-step guide:
   http://www.quake-live.tv/forums/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=88

   Realize this is optimized for a 30fps, fast, high quality stream of a video game. It uses a hardware-based approach (that requires two computers). If performance is less of an issue, you can use a software-based approach and a single computer in conjuction with a Webcam program and Ustream.

   Yamcam is a good free one. http://www.yawcam.com/
   However, I recommend Webcam Max for new users. http://www.webcammax.com/

   You can use these programs to stream your desktop.