Day 175: Reflection

Unfortunately, I don't think my drawings of M. did the voice actor any justice, at least in the close up scene of them - the character looks too old for their voice. it came to my attention more specifically in the end of the scene, where M. is finished reading the script, chucks it away, and walks off screen. originally, they had a more apathetic nature, which seemed too 'teen-like' rather than childlike - so I changed the expression. It feels younger, but still not quite to the extent of the voice actor's age

Day 174: Reflection

I believe my trailer stands out, as it not only introduced the game concept, but it introduces the mood and charm that I'm going for, inspired by some of my favourite kickstarters (my research was not necessarily limited to videogame kickstarters - I mostly used cartoon kickstarters as inspiration ) I used the characters, themselves to go nuts and essentially do a parody of a kcikstarter.

One thing the above kickstarters had in common was the character interaction - it wasn't just a boring character, or person, or voice alone in a room, explaining the kickstarter, it showed the character's personalities.

Unlike the kickstarters above, mine was essentially a parody of a kickstarter - with Arkac making fun of tropes everybody has seen before in these trailers, M. not caring at all about the video and skim reading the (arguably) most important parts - selling the game. and Nex trying to stop it/ get it over and done with so they can progress in escaping.

I also made the kickstarter one of Arkac's plans for escape - so it could be cannon in the gane's story and subsequently my world.

I think my game is very memorable and engaging, in this sense, and could potentially get people to back this project.

Day 173: Finished

Okay, the trailer is done, now - sound effects, music, shadows, everything!! and I really like how it came out. It looks exactly like how I imagined it would from the mock-ups.

Despite it being covered by Arkac's dialogue box, the majority of the time, I added a very subtle  amount of detail that makes the characters look like they occupy this photo realistic setting - which was my greatest goal, aesthetically - the characters are casting shadows onto the ground, that moves as they do. there are some soft shadows around the characters, giving them a slight amount of 3D form and they even have reflections on the ground - everything looks just like how I drew them in the mock-ups:

Day 172: After effects

added shadows to the bridging version
added music
did the slight changes i was told to make during the review, yesterday
I think the trailer will be done tomorrow

Day 171: After effects

Finished all lip-syncing, added special effects and edited the audio - both the DDM and the bridging versions are almost done - just a few tweeks to do, and everything is good to go!!

Day 170: A LOT!!

Today was a busy day!!
I made an alternate intro for the bridging version of the assessment - because I couldnt shorten my DDM one down to less than 3 minutes
So I had to write up a quick script, change Arkac's dialogue and poses and cut SO MUCH STUFF OUT!!
So now I have 3 videos to finish...
animation for DDM, animation for bridging and the pitch video

I worked on the pitch video after finishing that alt. intro
I added dust and specs to the slide, a glow, finished the clean up and did 90% of the lip syncing

check list of the stuff I have left to do

DDM animation

• lip sync
• add shadows
• audio edits

Bridging animation

• lip sync
• add shadows

pitch video

• lip sync
• shadows

Day 169: Clean-up and colour

It's almost entirely done, now - just need to clean and colour the little walk off screen at the end, and it's complete.... well the animation is - I still need to:

• add shadows
• add dust and specs to the slides
• add glow to the slides
• shorten the intro (I'll try tackle this in the weekend)
• and edit the audio a touch

Day 168: Inbetweens and clean-up

Best frame!!

Today I did the animation of M. throwing away the script and walking off screen - which is the last bit of animation needed to be done, so now I've started on the clean up

Day 167: Animation

Finished most of the slides - just have 1 more to go - at the moment, I'm animating M. looking at the script and throwing it away

Day 166: Clean-up

everything is timed out all nice and spiffy like!! with the sliding animations all done!
now i'm just cleaning up each individual slide - going to stay late and hopefully finish the rest of them

here's some gag slides that i cleaned up, today

Day 165: Pitch Project

still working on the slides, but now i'm going to go about the process a little differently - by using the SCRUM method - I've.... why is there a British lady narrating everything I type?... I've scribbled up all the slides, and am now working on timing them out - so at the very end, I can polish it all up.... go away British lady - you're annoying me!!

here's some pictures - bye!!

Day 164: pitch project stuff

Doing a slide show projector type thing to show what M. is talking about

Day 163: Roughs and a few concepts

started the pitch video, today - did the key frames of the beginning part

and now I'm making a little UPA styled M. to use in a diagram behind them

Day 162: Lip sync

Today, I did all of M.'s lip syncing - all cleaned, timed, coloured and edited to fit behind Nex.
what an incredibly tedious process!!

Day 161: Clean-up

Today I drew all of Nex's eyes and gave them a glowey effect

They are both adorable!!

All thats needed, now, is M.'s lip syncing

Day 160: clean-up

I cleaned up all of M.'s poses, I finished the weird little ending part (pictured) and I started Nex's glowey eyes.

I just need to finish animating nex's eyes, and lip sync M. - and I'm done!!... might add some shadows if i have the time

also Arkac made a video in case we had to do rushes, today

Day 159: Clean-up

cleaning up M.'s symbols and getting it ready for the lip syncing

Nex's eyes will be animated a little more than what i have so far.

above is clean up with lip syncing all done - this is the only one with lip sync so far

Day 158: Clean-up

finished all of Arkac's clean up - that actually took longer than expected, I did start one frame of M., though........ geez

Day 157: Clean-up

did most of arkac's clean up and colour, today - he has a couple more inbetweens and two or three more symbols to get through, now - he will be finished tomorrow, and I'll start M.'s clean up

Day 156: Clean-up

Up to clean up..... yep - did that

Day 155: Animating

Almost all the key poses are done - theres just one last bit where nex is talking - I'm going to add a couple inbetweens, here and there, but keep most of it snappy like a video game

then I can move onto clean up and colour - after that would just be adding some shadows and it's done

Day 154: animating

i've shown it to a couple of people - they all seem to like it, unfortunatly it's too long for our bridging course's brief - maybe i'll just have 2 versions - just cut a minute out of the DDM version and hand that in for bridging

Day 153: audio syncing

dialogue boxes are all synced up with the audio, so i know how long this thing is going to be - now i'm up to animating Arkac - i've been looking forward to this, because he doesnt have a face - that crate can't even squash or stretch - so i need to rely on his posture and legs to do all the acting - it's going to be a challenge to emote this little guy and i love that - here's him acting all nervous/sorry

Day 152: animatic...ish

planned out the timing of stuff with sounds and such - very technical stuff.... i'm in a rush

sorry

Day 151: Animation time (take 2)

this is a much more practical animation to do.... just need to make sure i'm on top of things

Most sound effects are done and i'm pretty much jumping into the animation part, now

Day 150: Alright - new plan!!

I mostly did my lit review, but I managed to sneak in some animation

I thought of a way to simplify it though - wrote up a new script - I think this one is actually practical - I'm going to try doing an animatic of that this weekend

149: Animatic

havent done much today - too busy writing a literature review - you don't want to get me started on that

148: Animatic

welp - i'm 40 seconds into a 5-10 second animation..... I need to finish this quick, so I can get some help narrowing stuff down!!

Day 147: animatic

More animation tests for story stuff - I;ve decided that the close up shots should be fluid animation - and the full shot of the set, should be limited, like how you'd see in sprite games

with the animatic, I'm up to page 2 or 6

Day 146: Animation time!!

Just learning to animate the characters, starting with Arkac
Gotta love flash's abilities to gif things

I've got an idea for the animation and video as a whole - I even wrote up a script, last week, but I'm not sure if it's practical at this point, so i'm testing my skills - then I might pitch it or make an animatic and pitch it after that - I feel like, if I can make an animatic in a week, I can finish it pretty easily.

and these aren't just little animation tests, by the way - I'm hitting two birds with one stone, by animating little tests that are part of the animatic I have in mind

yay!! we're animating again!! this is going to be a fun couple of weeks!!

Day 143: I'm pretty much done

yep...
did some maths
did some tiny touch-ups
did some doodles
everything is done

Day 142: Mock-up touch ups

Today I finished the first mock-up picture

And did some slight tweeks to the second one - Arkac's crate was off model and the door wasn't mine

Also changes the colours a tad, to match the first one

My to do list is getting very small:

- ending picture

- use pledge rewards to do a little maths

Day 141: Matte painting

Today, I've been working on another matte painted background

Day 140: Pledge rewards

Today I started with the story section's graphic

Then moved onto the pledge results

After a bit of maths to do, all I will be left with is the two pictures for the gameplay description - which I will finish next week.

Day 139: Budget and attempting painting

Didn't do as much as i should have, today

Finished the budget and split it up into a pie graph

and I tried to do a graphic for the story section, of the exterior of the skull building, but maybe I should try something else for that

Perhaps I can save it - I might ask for feed back, first

Day 138: Stretch goals and budget... UGHHH MATHS!!

use of funds:

game developers 11750

office space 4700

music and SFX 4700

animation 11750

matte painters 11750

kick starter and rewards 2350

Day 137: Characters and titles

to do list:

- story (needs one picture)
- gameplay description and mockups (one more picture)
- pledge rewards
- stretch goals
- use of funds
- title background

Day 136 - Character descriptions

Did a couple of characer bios - should do the the hooded characters, and the enemies, though

Days 131-135: Kickstarter

At the beginning of the week, we had some technical issues involving the interwebs, so I decided to update how my entire week went here.


So research was kind of difficult without the interwebs, but I eventually managed to get a fair idea of layout stuff.

Did a trailer thumbnail

 and cleaned up my demon evolution chart which took up most of the week

The rest was just me writing stuff up

Today (Friday), i'm starting on the character section, but I don't know how I want that to look, just yet.

Day 130: Finishing up

Finished both the design document and development proposal for my game idea, today

Day 129: Anxieties part 2

NO WORK - ONLY STRESS!!

Day 128: Mock-ups

Almost done - just need to do one more mock-up, now

It'll either be a cut scene, a title screen, or how M. hides in the vents

My to do list:

-t-shirts

-one more mock-up

-finish writing stuff in the design proposal

-write up pitch presentation script thing

- put stuff in the bridging share folder