#capstone progress

[13thdoodle]

bunch of Phantasy AU doodles n wip from earlier this year

Basically I just found out this year that ball-jointed dolls actually have strings in them and not just... magically attached by the ball joints themselves? And 31 in this AU is a ball jointed doll that were made out of Danny's energy so here we are :3c

I've been watching a lot of doll customization since earlier this year and found out from dollightful's video that no they are all connected by elastic strings inside so that's where the idea came from

...i was looking on google to find a good example to put here and clearly I'm not exactly paying attention to how the main body strings are actually.. pinned to?

the video I've been watching the most is dollightful n moonlight jewel and they have their bjd usually only to the bottom of the doll head instead of all the way to the top on the skull pin like the diagram above

Which is why 31 has his strings all connected to the 'heart' in the middle instead of the head kasjdnkasjnd

But yeah uhhh specifics aside...

----

Those ball jointed dolls made me think of 31, and then thinking about the clones in Phantasy AU and like.. the logistic of it

for 31, the idea is that during the circus gothica arc for this AU, Danny actually got kidnapped all the whole way into another universe/plane in which he met Valeska (Enn's oc) who unalive what his face the circus leader n break Danny's hypnosis

and now that Danny is essentially stuck in a whole other plane/realm/or sth he just following Valeska hoping she'll help him find his way back.

In one such trip, Danny got kidnapped (again) by another group/cult who wanted to use his power/energy as a gate keeper to the ghost zone to make their own gate keeper so they can open portals to ghost zones and maybe other realms too

31 is part of the experiments. He's a doll made with part of Danny's energy as his core.

And then it's.. uhh.. sth sth Valeska finally found out where they kept Danny and devour everyone there safe from Danny n 31 who helped him escape so now the three of them travel together~

The last pict is me thinking about clones and kingdom hearts :tm: so dramatic about Danny being the soul separated from the main body and 31 a clone made from part of the soul too and all that Not sure where I'm going with that but it do sound cool

And there's also Danielle but I'm not exactly sure.. how she would fit in? but it would be interesting if she was made from Danny's body somehow

so 31 made from part of teh soul and Dani from part of the body sounds poetic somehow

[stunted-boars]

There's an art thing I WANT to work on but I have COLLEGE ugh

[gravehags]

assembled my bookcase, now to head to the dollar store and/or target to find some small storage solutions for the approx 15,783 candles i have jammed in my current bookcase along with yknow. actual books (don’t look at me) wish me luck

[oozeandgoo-art]

wip update 3 almost done

finished here!

[evanarita]

Progress Report #5

There isn't much time left, but I haven't gotten a lot of Senior Project work left. Just to cover what I am planning to do for my senior project, my big deliverable is going to be a Self-Discovery Video. A video that talks about my journey of how I discovered Character design, what role does character designing have in video games, what I have learned about it, and while talking about these topics, I will show how I design my characters. During the progress of my work for the deliverable, I decided to add one more step and actually color my sketches to show the final step of my character designs. As shown here

As for the other steps, I am doing alright. I still need to create a scene of me drawing a character in front of the camera to show how I design my characters. I have even decided to add one more scene into my video where I actually color the new sketch to show the completion progress. I gotta be honest with you things in my project could have been more quicker, but Im kind of under a bit of stress with dealing with a bunch of other classes as they're nearing to the end. I will still find a way to make things smoother before the time comes to present my big project.

[futureworkplace]

Progress Update #6

What's been happening

I've been doing final polishes on my demo. I got some worthwhile playtesting done this past week from a couple of peers that gave great feedback. It's gotten me to fix up some parts of the demo that seriously needed attention, either grammatically or outright game breaking (causing crashes and unintended actions), the playtesting was 100% worth it.

What's Next?

Further polishing of code and maybe some last minute playtesting. I want to see if I can get some final art put into the game, but it seriously isn't my main priority. If I can't get it in on time, I did what I could and I'm overall satisfied with what I got.

I also plan on including audio, but it is also not as much as a priority as the coding is, but it is in second place for priority.

Hiccups, Hurdles and AHA! Moments.

Okay, so a major hiccup AND hurdle I came across was a genuinely game breaking bug that wasn't allowing the demo to end properly. The combat minigame I have in the game was looping on itself during THE ENTIRE runtime of the game, so it was causing it to never finish and resulted in an outright crash. It took me multiple tries to figure it out, but that's what led me to my AHA! moment: Stop the "while loop" (which I intentionally coded in at the beginning) and just force the game to loop in a dirtier way that makes the game function better. Maybe if I had more time and knowledge, I could have gotten the minigame finished the way I wished, but the way I fixed it will do.

I ran into multiple hiccups while I was observing my playtesters that I can't even list here without the post going on FOREVER. So, just know that I ran into MANY hiccups and I managed to deal with all of them.

Where I am on my Timeline

At best, I'm still a full week behind. At worse, I'm still a month behind. I didn't really get my playtesting started whenever I wanted, the demo isn't entirely finished or completely in a place where I wanted it, I didn't get to start coding until Spring Break, and I didn't have the knowledge needed to make the game happen until Spring Break. I definitely went into this... ambitiously. I heard somewhere that ambition is an artist killer. While I am not dead, I definitely took some fatal wounds from this entire process. I've had to scrap A LOT of things from my documentation, workback plan, and other things to get the game in a decent place. I hope my demo satisfies in the end.

Some Visual Documentation

I don't really have any visual documentation from many of my playtesters, but I do have some screenshots from one of them at least. I don't want to post so much that it'd reveal a lot of the demo, but here is what they reported to me.

Game breaking crash I was talking about

[lighteraryloredump]

just a girl and her stuffed animal against the world -- a sneak peek at a visual development/prop design project I am working on at the moment!

[capstonereports]

I finally got this working, this took way too long 😭

But hello everyone! It's wonderful to meet you, and I wish you all luck with your projects :D

[bloomingonionbitch]

(rn i'm simultaneously Syd puking behind the dumpster and Carmy stuck - and unraveling - in the fridge).

[rapunzelsunshine]

having an absolutely terrible day. left for my class at 10, it broke down at the side of the road around 10:40, called my aunt and uncle so they could take me the rest of the way to campus and had to call AAA to get my car towed, just got here around 1:15 and missed my first class, presentation in an hour and I've barely memorized the script I made for it...

[pre-dentalstudentdiary]

[firebrand-comic]

Firebrand Week 8+9

So uh, it important to remember to take breaks. We are not machines! We are humans that need rest sometimes!

Ive sent the past two weeks working on redoing layouts for the first three pages. Ive gotten advice to format the layout to make the establishing shot more clear, as well as set up the characters better.

I started off with a series of rough sketches to experiment with different layouts. While deciding on new layouts, one new page got added to the final count, bringing it to 17! Weeeee!

These are the final layouts ive decided to go with. I get to reuse some sketches from pages 1 and 2, which is nice!

[ethos-labrador]

fucked around and edited my "website" the other day. i'm so good at social media management ;-; one of these days i'll be able to upload to instagram regularly at least ;-;

[miss-wizard]

i've been in the situation where i break first and it's literally never resulted in an equal dynamic. in fact, in every situation where i've been in conflict with a TME person they've always been able to completely and instantly eject me from whatever shared space we were in.

the truth is there is currently no basis on which i or any other trans person should justify reaching out to other parts of the community. until we see real, major changes, it is simply not worth risking so much of the little safety and security we have.

i dont really like making argumentative posts but like. it really upsets me the way that trans women are always the ones expected to extend the olive branch in these situations.

transfems are very demonstrably vulnerable to other members of the trans community, so any instance where we make the first consession will necessarily just further that disparity.

[evanarita]

Progress Report #6

There really isn't much time left before I need my project completed, but I shouldn't really worry that much since I am pretty much almost done! Within the last week, I have been able to finish recording myself drawing a character as a demonstration of how I design my characters.

I was going to put what I recorded in this post, but unfortunately the file was impressively large and it wouldn't let me. I was able to find a work around and take a few pictures of some of the scenes in the recording as a way of a sneak peak.

I have a spot in the video plan for it too. With that done, all I just need to do is just put everything I have together to make my self discovery video complete. There are still few things I still need to record though, mostly voice overs, but besides that everything should be good right now. I do still have my other classes to keep track of along side making sure this Senior project gets done, I'm doing my best to stay afloat.

[futureworkplace]

Progress Update #5

What's Been Happening

I'm keeping this update brief because I want to get back to work fast.

I think this past week I focused a little more on my art for the game. I wanted to get it out of the way before really moving on to anything else. I needed stuff that would work in context, but didn't create so many that it would overwhelm me. It's just another reminder that I refuse to do this alone ever again if I'm bound to a timeline.

What's Next?

Polishing on all fronts. Grammar, coding, a little bit of art. I also need to finish up the overall gameplay experience because it's do or die time.

Hiccups, Hurdles and AHA! Moments.

I didn't really run into any hiccups that I can recall. A hurdle I came across was basically the creative process that comes with creating the art for the game. Honestly, creating the art felt like a hurdle itself. I wish I had someone to task this to, like a studio would, so I had more time to develop the game. An AHA! moment I had was realizing I didn't really have to go super hard on the art and I could make it simple. My main reasoning was because I'm trying to create something functional and not something super pretty.

Where am I on my Timeline

By my estimate, I am maybe at least 2 weeks behind. At this rate, it is what it is and I have to cut some losses and cut some corners to get this deliverable in a proper state.

Some Visual Documentation

Here's some of the art I've done in the past week for the game. I got more polishing to do to other ones before I'm fully satisfied, but I'm glad to have gotten this done.