gothdoesgames-blog

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Flash Production Diary

For the first animation featured in my graphic novel, I planned to have 5 scenes with the first scene using frame by frame animation, and the other 4 scenes use tweens.

However, the frame by frame scene wasn't long enough, so I decided to tween the last frame to make it look more fluid and longer. This method worked quite well, as I feel that it ties scene one into the other scenes afterward as they are all made with tweens and will look smoother than the first scene. Below is the different frames I used when creating my first scene.

I decided to only tween the last frame as if I tweened all the frames it would look strange as there isn't much difference between the frames due to me wanting them to be continuous and cohesive.

When creating my animation within my novel, I found it easiest to create a movie clip out of the background, which when double clicked takes me to another separate timeline where I could create my animation without disrupting my novel and making it confusing. I feel like doing this will help my novel flow better and make it easier to use the code snippets on my page turners as the frames are all close together rather than having a 250+ frame animation disrupting it.

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Survive/Thrive Final Evaluation

Research: I have been doing many different types of research all throughout my project. I decided that doing this was the best to keep my production on task and relevant to both my chosen target audience, which is older teen males, and the criteria. I also used research to help me decide things such as character designs, the levels or gore, and the soundtrack styles. I feel like this really helped my production as questions and decisions I had regarding my target audience and different options were already answered from my research, speeding up the process. I found primary research more helpful as much secondary research wasn’t specific to the “choose your destiny” game style I had went with due to there not being many on the current market. However due to the lack of saturation, this told me that there was a gap in the market thus making it easier to make my product feel unique and fresh to my audience. Using secondary research also made me look at my work in a more professional and critical way by looking at the way similarly styled products had been reviewed over the years.

Production and Idea Changes: During this unit, I’ve documented many of my choices in my blog. I found that I prefer doing my production and blog writing in long sittings with breaks, as I feel more motivated and that my train of thought is continuous and understandable. This also gives me time to reflect and mull over the different choices I have made. It also allowed me to split my time between work and personal life, meaning I am still passionate about my concept. In many of my blog posts I talk about how my progression and findings affected my work, and how many problems were overcame/affected my project. Due to me struggling with the workload within the timeframe I had given myself, I made the decision to instead rush and finish with a poor quality in the full amount, to instead cut down on the page count and make them to the best of my ability.

Personally, I am very disappointed and saddened that I couldn't finish this story to the full, but I feel happy with the skills I have shown in the first two scenes I produced in full quality. I also decided to still push myself and finish my submitted piece at a reader’ s choice, to ensure the reader understands the story up until that point. I do plan to finish this in my own time so that I can add this to my portfolio, because I enjoy the graphic novel process and the story I have created.

Strengths and Weaknesses: From the beginning of this unit, I already had an idea of my strengths and weaknesses. However, I got to learn more skills surrounding the basic knowledge I learnt from previous projects. I found that after practicing with creating a graphic novel in flash, I found it very smooth and easy to replicate the button and animation techniques I used. I feel that focusing on flash, as it was one of my weaknesses, was risky but I believed that it was necessary for me to learn the skills I needed for this project and would help me expand my overall skillset. I mentioned in my last evaluation and pitch that my most prevalent weaknesses were regarding gamemaker, code, and timekeeping.  Due to my choice of creating a graphic novel, gamemaker wouldn’t be an effective tool to create what I wanted. Due to flash having some code, I feel that using code snippets helped my understand the code I was using. I attempted combatting my issues with timekeeping by using a GANTT chart and I found it helpful for laying out and showing me all the different tasks and assets I had to make. However, I found staying on track with the timetable difficult. I believe that this is due to me being too busy to check the physical chart, general forgetness, and other issues. I will research other methods of timekeeping for when I do both personal, and work related projects. I plan to practice this in my own time to hopefully get a feel of what works for me before the next college year.

Original Vs. Final: As afore mentioned, I decided to shorten my novel to not only submit on time, but to keep it at a high quality. I believe that my original story stayed true from concepts, aside from the research story choices, such as gore. Another change I had to make was not implementing soundscapes I had made already due to time constraints, and having problems importing sound into Flash. However, due to me already having produced these atmospheres, I plan to use them in a later project so they don’t go to waste. Also, my animations were simplified, but I feel that this was actually beneficial as looking back upon my original storyboards, what I had planned was coming across too cluttered and confusing. I am quite glad I had to simplify them because the minimalistic look conveys my main characters emotions effectively as he is the main focus.

Production Diaries: All throughout my blog I have an array of production diaries which follow my thoughts and progression in the different aspects of creating a graphic novel. There was an even mix of audio, art, and technical diaries to show my struggles and what I was better at. I feel that these were very helpful and necessary to create an easily followable journey of my thoughts and issues. I also feel that doing the production diaries straight away were very important in showing the problems I had rather than a polished recap at the end of the project because even if I try to give an honest recap, it will still be missing thoughts and feelings I had at the time.

Communicating to my Audience: My main focus of the project was to appeal to the “kawaii gore” niche. This was aimed more towards older males sure to the main character being a male. However, I decided to appeal to a wider overall audience, keeping his design androgynous looking to make him relatable to more people. I mainly focused on colours to convey emotions, character tropes, and personalities. I feel that choosing colour helps keep the story and space simple, but still allowing for a deeper meaning. I believe that this audience is perfect for my project because despite the older teen audience being quite saturated, my research proved that the style and genre of my project is niche. Creating  a young, student character will create a realistic immersion and emotional tie with my audience.

Conclusion: I am very happy with the quality and how cohesive my story became overall. I found learning how to manage going off schedule and how to work to a tighter schedule. I plan to continue my graphic novel over the holiday to not only see how long it takes a s a side project, but to practice other means of timekeeping. I would love to continue creating in flash and to continue making fun and deep characters. This project has helped me realise what I can pick up on the fastest and how to further my niche and what I am good at.

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Animation Styles - Production Diary

When creating my animation, I wanted to show my progress learning the different styles and processes. I chose to make the first scene frame by frame animation to show the different problems such as continuity and the time it takes to produce. This first scene is him falling into the void so his pose is very fluid.

I chose for the first scene to be frame by frame to show the struggles of making a frame by frame animation fluid, and the other scenes to be made using tweens to show how smooth, yet static it could look. I wanted to show that I could use both of these styles for versatility, and that I understand the pros and cons of each for later projects I plan to do for either college or personally.

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Production Diary - Flash Problems

When putting my frames into place, they all worked very well up until frame 11. This surprised me as I thought I would encounter more problems during my animated cutscene, but did not.

I found that my "go to next frame and stop" on frame 10s button did not work, and instead went to frame 12, completely skipping frame 11.  I found that changing all the "go to next frame and stop" to "go to frame". This took time, but I decided that it would be more beneficial to have working pages rather than a lot of pages that weren’t interactive.

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Feasibility and Finishing

Due to me not being able to stay on schedule and having certain obstacles in my way. I also overestimated how fast I could produce and complete the workload. Instead of rushing in an attempt to finish, I am planning to finish different panels at different states to show the steps and skills I was planning to use to complete the project.

I will also put as many of the panels that are readable into flash to show the skills I was using, giving the reader and marker a very vivid idea of what the project would look like completely finished. I also feel like doing this instead of having finished panels that aren't in flash will show my skills better.

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Colour Studies

For Jorrhild's Hunted I wanted a very stark contrast between the Overworld and Jorrhild, so I looked at different products that had this style of worldly contrast.

The first product I looked at was the Wizard of Oz (1939) as this one was the original Oz with the first idea to film in both sepia and colour. This was revolutionary at the time and created a fantastical image for the viewer as they thought the film would all be in sepia. The beginning of colour and introduction of so many wacky and fantastical characters helps he reader immerse themselves in his new world.

I also looked at the modern take on the classic, Oz he Great and Powerful (2013). I also looked at this as this focused more on the fantasy aspects and different terrains within the world. Both this version and the classic focus very harshly on how a character is portrayed through their clothing and colour pallet.

This is very important to me as I am using such a stark contrast and bold colour connotations within Jorrhild's Hunted. I really like the way Oz the Great and Powerful uses the black and white, creating a certain sad tone for the beginning and the colour creates more of an exciting and immersive feel for the tension and main bulk of the story. The way The Wizard's colour pallet stays almost the same during the transition from black and white to colour, shows his origin. 

I chose to not keep Lars black and white as I wanted to show his transformation and how he is targeted as his colour pallet is unlike many within Jorrhild. I also feel that him featuring unique colours will show how he still feels segregated and alone, even in a world of people in he same situation as himself.

During the black and white panel, I chose to feature purple when showing the portal. I chose purple as it isn't only the unique colour that Lars wears, but it also symbolizes magic, mystery, and power. I chose purple as it stands out from the mainly green backgrounds, without clashing tones. This is due to purple being almost opposite from green, making them very different, but complimenting colours.

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Focus Group Review

Over the weekend of the 15/5/17 I got a group of 10 people together and asked them a wide range of questions regarding genres akin to my game and their thoughts on a newer take on a game like mine. The age of my group was 18+ and I conducted this focus group in an online voice chat. I knew some of the people, but not all, meaning they weren't biased towards my ideas. It was a mixture of male and females so I feel that asking this group of people will give me a good idea of what my focus group want and how I can adapt and change my story/characters to make it as interesting as possible for my 16-18 male oriented target audience.

Firstly I asked if they read graphic novels. Only 4 out of the 10 people said they had ever read a graphic novel and when I asked those who had, which and why, I had a range of responses from The Walking Dead, Sin City, and Scott Pilgrim. For reasons, the majority already enjoyed the series in another format and sought them out, and one person was encouraged to read the graphic novel by a friend afterwards.

Then I asked if they would be interested in playing/reading a newer interactive graphic novel. 8 of them said it would be interesting to try and they said that if it wasn't too long that they'd be interested in giving it a play, especially if it was free as it wouldn't be any harm if they didn't like it. One person said they would enjoy a book similar to a choose-your-own adventure which made me very happy due to that being one of my main inspirations for my project.

When I asked what their favorite genre of game was, only 6 of them said that fantasy really interested them but that is still a majority within the group. The other genres mentioned were action, horror, and  sports. The only one of these relevant to my idea was horror as there isn't really an action aspect to my game, the only fast paced bit being more tense/suspenseful as there will be no way to fully maneuver the character.

Afterwards, I asked what they would like to see in a fantasy interactive graphic  novel and one person said that they would like options to go to different places and the story would be different if they did. Another said that they wanted to see a mix of traditional and new mystical creatures with twists and new takes on the old as many games that used mystical creatures were getting very same-y and uninteresting. I took this into consideration and began switching up my character designs and personalities, making very cute characters creepier and the welcoming characters deceitful and betraying. I believe that this will make my characters fresh and appealing to my target audience.

Finally, I asked if a Happy Tree Friends-esque theme where the characters and colours appear cutesy but then takes a darker twist. Almost everyone said that it would be interesting to see as not many games try this style. The only examples my groups said they had seen was Happy Tree Friends, Fallout, and GloomyBear. These are all very far apart from eachother and none fill the fantasy theme my game has, so I plan to fill the niche of people who are interested in an interactive, fantasy gore game.

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Storyboarding Progress

As I hit the halfway mark with the sketching stage of my storyboards, I start working on the lines of the first panels I did at the start of the project.

The first thing I noticed when I went back to line the panels is that my style has changed quite a lot over this project! I didn’t think that 2 months would make much of a difference but I really did to my style. I decided to make small changes when lining to make the style continuous and to make it all fluid looking.

The comparison between panel 3 (above) and panel 24 (below) shows how I have simplified and changed the way Lars looks to make story boarding faster and easier to line. I also feel like I can convey emotion better if his eyebrows cut through his hair rather than his hair realistically covering them.

I am still working on the lines for the later part of the story, but as this is taking me longer than expected I will begin work on the earlier pages to make all of the pages finish in a waterfall style rather than in different stages, meaning that if I cannot finish this project I will still be able to show the process and design I was planning, rather than having all my pages at the same stage and having to explain what was planned.

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Flash Testing Pt.2

Today in Carlie’s lesson, I checked that I could still make a working choice based novel, and I could! I then began wondering what the best way to approach compiling the images I have into the base I have in Flash. I asked Carlie which way round it would be best  to do first. My options were to either import all the images in and then make the buttons and order it that way, or create and label the full buttons and frames, then input all the images in afterwards.

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Side Character Design Process

In my graphic novel I have introduced another important side character, Tuua Bja. She resides in the Mystic Caverns and helps Lars on his journey to the Dark Pass. She is a very timid and accidentally humorous character. She gets very excited over certain things, and goes back to being shy and reserved after she catches herself. Tuua gets very excited and thinks that Lars is visiting her colony, and even when he reveals he is only passing through, she still insists on aiding him.

My initial idea for Tuua came from watching LavenderTowne's "create a creature" video (Haley, 2017) where she explains what a creature is an she begins sketching the general shapes and colours. She creates a cyborg moth prince who is lazy and doesn't understand his role. He is meek and mild. I was really inspired by this moth character and decided to create a more human and less creature-like character. I decided I wanted her to be female as all of my main characters are male and I didn't want my novel to be male dominated, I wanted the representation to be equal and diverse like the different types of species.

I was really captivated by the body language LavenderTowne gave him, being able to portray his personality through his stance alone. I also really loved the colours used as they were very subdued but still said a lot about the type of character he was. I chose to exaggerate this for Tuua and limit her colour pallet to only 3 colours, not including the flower prop. I used different saturations and shades to create depth and differentiation while still managing to keep her cohesive. 

Her design is very round, but angular at the same time. Her wings, clothing, and head are round while her limbs are angular. Her general outline is very smooth and round. Tuua has less of a realistic body as I wanted to focus more on the idea of an insects thorax and abdomen than a realistic human figure. When I first began sketching her, unlike Lars and Hönnen, I had no general idea of how I wanted her to look apart from her species so I started with generic shapes and lines to try and figure out how I wanted her proportioned. I feel this helped make her fluid and organic as a character, rather than stiff and generic like other characters.

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I made my Target Audience Profile today. Due to my main character being reflective of my main target audience, this is very similar to Lars' character profile.

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My Work with Fragers

Over the past weeks, I have been working on the Razer bus and at various different events. I have been doing an assortment of things from handing out leaflets and explaining the events, to watching over the bus, to packing/cleaning up after the event. I found this experience very fun and rewarding as I learnt many different techniques on how to talk with the general public naturally and smoothly and how to attract the attention of passers by.

I also really enjoyed working in a team at the various events and meeting new people in the various places. One thing I found challenging was not being as good with computers and fixing problems, so I plan to learn how to be better with these areas. Until I learn how to fix these problems and become better, I will focus on customer service.

I look forward to working at Rapture as it will be much more intensive and I will get to meet many more new people! Even thought I will be doing volunteering work, I still hope I can find time to do networking and some research.

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I began creating a “level” map to help me create differentiation within my game to make sure it doesnt get boring and too repetitive. This is the first draft of my level map as I will soon add colours, sounds I will need, the amount of deaths, and the amount of new characters. I plan to use this as a general guide to making my story even and the spread of pages/enemies/characters not too saturated/lacking in points. When I colour this, it will also help me choose the colours for each area to add differentiation in the very “samey” setting of a forest. I plan to have very exaggerated, non-natural colours to not only push the contrast from black and white, and the fantasy themes. It also shows the different ways the player can take, either going through Siren Lagoon or the Mystic Cavern. 

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Audio Production-1

In Rachel’s lesson today, I began to catch up on my audio work. I was behind due to not planning to do my audio when we came back from the holiday, but instead scheduled it during by mistake. I solved this by swapping my large blocks of storyboarding and animatic production with the audio to make sure I was still producing and not being overwhelmed.

I started on creating one of my later soundscapes, the Siren Lagoon. I decided on doing this one first instead of doing them in the order they appear, as this one is the most detailed and is one of more difficult ones to create in a realistic manner. I started with the sound of a pond at night (freesound.org) and layered a creepy hum that was focused in the right ear. I decided to make the hum get louder as it goes on to make it sound like you’re getting closer, making the player feel tense and anxious. I decided that it didn’t sound realistic enough, so I sourced smaller splashing noises and places them at the beginning and the end of the humming, making it sound like the siren is entering the water, to make the soundscape have more depth.

Above is the different layers I used when creating my soundscape. I chose to fade the humming in and out to make if flow nicer and sound more realistic in comparison to the background soundscape.

Next lesson I plan to create the audio for the Overworld, and the starting area, as my animation sound will be made afterwards. 

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Flash Planning~

In my previous lesson with Carlie , I learnt the basics on how to create a choice cased novel with the sketches of my storyboard. I decided to do this in my GANTT chart next week, but as I couldn't begin on my audio when I planned, and that I am getting through storyboarding faster than I expected, I will begin my flash testing early to give myself more time to playtest and record my results. If I do another playtest, I can make sure that my game is on track with both the deadline, and my target audience. I can then make my game more interesting and niche for my target audience.

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Scheduling Reflection (3/5/17)

Today I reflected upon my GANTT chart to see if it was effective in helping me keep my project on task. I found that I am ahead in certain things, yet behind in others so what I plan to do is prioritize my work load differently to ensure that everything is progressing equally. Looking at this change, I have decided to prioritize my animation and animatic production first as  that is the furthest behind, then finishing my script and storyboard. I believe that I can finish on time if I alter the way I work with this unit as there is much more work than the last unit.

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This is the character profile for my side character, Hönnen Mjalr. His profile includes information about his life before, and during his time in Jorrhild as he was there much longer than Lars, meaning his personality and mannerisms have changed due to his experiences.

Categories- (Salmond, 2016)