Week 3, Month 2

This here is the animatic. I started by just drawing out all my storyboards, some I edited as I went giving shots different angles or wider fields of vision. Changed a handful of the actions as well added and a whole bunch of keyframe poses that will help me down the line. Then spent a bit of time padding out the timing with frames where I needed holds or cuts.

All the timing is completely off I just spaced out the timeline so that I could read it easily in photoshop. I think each frame holds for roughly a second, with the exception of a couple of keyframes where I just needed to get the animation going so that it still read appropriately. Best example of this is the 'wait a sec' finger pose where it's three frames to really accentuate that action.

I added some actions to  demonstrate a few animation principles that I wanted to get in there. The lifting of the boxes before the boy reaches into his pocket gives me the opportunity to show some shifting of weight and get some nice secondary motions happening with the balancing of the boxes.

Also found a nice expressive moment when the girl notices the dog, is tempted but then ultimately turns away. Really tried to make sure that she goes through all of it distinctly, surprise then temptation/ intrigue then a resolved refusal. These are all quite small and subtle poses but I feel like that if I hit those keyframes strongly enough it should come across well.

Week 2, Month 2

Storyboards.

As far a storyboards go these are sort of pre-storyboarding storyboards, just done in my sketchbook to get them done as fast as I could. They are just the essential visual representation of each of the beats. The challenge for me here was to try and not to many extra ideas in. I kept having to remind myself that I just needed to get the bones of it in so that I can build on it as it goes. I purposefully kept elaborate camera angles or detailed poses out so that it can be understood even at this early stage.

It's an interesting debate that goes on in my head about what frames I need to draw right now and which I will remember to put in later. Each frame to me represents an action not just a moment in time. I feel like ideally animation should strive to do this with every frame but especially here when putting the story together I try to find those moments that feel like they already have build up and release with just one image. For instance, on the first page I've drawn the boy coming in from the right and shuffling on to the scene, it's two drawings but for me that foot coming in and then sliding across is all happening in real time. Also in the second page where the boy goes from holding the boxes to the 'wait a sec' finger, to hand in pocket, I wanna get that feeling of snaping between each movement. So there is already a sense of timing in these early drawing that will help me later on to fill out the frames. I'm going to do a of drawings during animation but I still want to make sure I'm not doing too many unnecessary ones, so knowing where the keep movements are help to create a sense of pacing with the piece.

I have started translating these storyboards into a simple animatic, which is where I will fill out some of the actions and framing, etc. In the interest of time I've decided that rather the do all the animation in a sketchy aesthetic, I will work out some keyframes that really need some thinking and some essential inbetweens that will help the keyframes make sense and from that I will dive straight into doing some finished lines. I'm using Photoshop to create the animatic, and while I initially looked into using some of the free or trial versions of industry standard animation software, after finding a very interesting video on how to animate in Photoshop using video layers I've decided that I will do the complete animation in PS. There are plenty of challenges that come with this but I feel like it's going to give a good result while allowing me to concentrate on the technicalities of animation rather that working out a new program.

Week 1, Month 2

A new challenge. Wooo!

This challenge is to create a 1-2 minute narrative animation with the program of my choice.

The idea for this narrative came to me very quickly after reading the challenge. I wanted to create a character piece with some level of interaction between at least two people. For the sake of drawing different styles of people I immediately decided that it would be a male and female.

The easy choice to make was that it would center around a romance between the two leads, but in my experience the boy meets girls story has been quite played out. So I thought about other stages of a relationship including finding love after already being with someone for some time or how one adapts to learning new things about a partner early on. What I came to though was to explore the idea of 'wooing' someone, which I feel happens at many stages of the relationship.

So my story is about a boy trying to win a girl over with presents not realising that all she wants is him.This is a very quick breakdown of what happens.

Boy brings big stack of presents to girl and gives them to her one by one.
She rejects each one kindly.
The boy goes through all his presents, each one getting bigger until he has one big present lef.
The girl rejects even the biggest present leaving the boy with nothing but empty arms.
With his arms free, the girl is finally able to hug him and show her affection.

As for visual style I am thinking i want the animation to be quite rough, maybe even incorporating alot of my working and structure lines in to the design to give a feel of being unprocessed. I idea with this would be that I can be a little bit more relaxed with the exactness of the models and animation while also giving it a unique style. But I will test it and see if it's worth doing.

I am very excited for this project the idea came to me so quickly and clearly that I feel like it's going to be fun to execute and I haven't done hand drawn animation in a long time so it will be good to practice some core skills in animation.

So I really like the narrative idea I've got. The next thing I think about is the actual visuals of the story. I want to get some interesting animation techniques in there and execute some animation staples to showcase my understanding of them. For instance I want to get a walking animation in there but perhaps do something different with it. Also want to do some character animation where you can see the change of emotion. I want to get a technical bit of animation in like a 3d head turn and also the 2 characters actually physically interacting.

Right away I conceive how these key pieces of animation fit into my narrative. I see the walk happening with the boy bringing in the presents and that can be unique and different in that he will have to balance the presents while walking. I see it being a shuffle with the feet and balancing act with the arms and back. There are plenty of moments where characters can show change of emotion, from when the girl first sees the boy, the boy's face when his first present is rejected and then changes to determination to win her over with another one. Head shakes as the girl refuses will be technical as will the hug at the end.

I've done a few drawings to get an idea of the characters. The first is a sketch of the boy carrying presents.

My aim is to keep the design relatively simple so that I can actually animated them but also flexible enough to show some of those more detailed emotions. I chose to use full large eyes (an easy disney inspiration) so that you can read the direction they are looking and register blinks and squints. It can be a very difficult thing to do with just dots for eyes and requires more style in its execution. Also lots of area for the mouth, for similar reasons. Going for full five fingers for some of the articulate gestures that I have in mind but the the rest is generic body. A simple shirt and pants combo so that my time is spent getting the animation right and not trying to keep on model so much.

The next piece I did as a sort of target render, what I hope the final piece can look like.

In this one I really wanted to try and achieve a balance between finished line work and a sketchy kind of aesthetic. Even from the first drawing I tried to refine the character design already, giving the boy a cleaner hairstyle so that some of the expressions can be read easier. With the girl I'm going for a simple elegant look. I imagine her to be in a dress with and easy to draw hairstyle. The dress is just an effective signifier of gender which will help tell the characters apart. It also helps show femininity in the character while not being overtly sexual. I want her look pretty but not unobtainable. It also has the benefit of being simple to draw but can be used effectively to show movement with secondary action.

I'm working on storyboarding the scenes out which will then become the basis for my keyframes. The idea with this will be to make sure I hit the major plot points and illustrate the major animation moments that I intend to include.

Week4, Month 1

Technically game production on a short hiatus as I further research the skills necessary to complete the project as I intended. So this will be a small placeholder entry so as to allow it to be updated at a future date.

Things I learnt about game development still grow though. I read some interesting information about creating resolution independent artwork for 2d games using flash. Flash has wide array of tools for creating games and I've looked into recreating the game with this program. The same art assets could be utilised and  it would have the same style of design, just that the mechanics behind the scenes would need to be completely rewritten. A rewrite would also have to include learning some amount of actionscript ( the language Flash uses for programing) to execute the same results.

Week 3, Month 1 (Belated)

First up, Here are working files for the Picinic Goodies. As a game design aesthetic I've used 3 distinct shapes and colours to differentiate the items as I want each to be recognizable from the background as well as from each other.

I have attempted to implement some jump animations for when the character jumps and ran into a real roadblock with the program. I seems like it has a lot of conflicts with the run animation when the 'jump' action is activated. This is one is doing my head in because logic doesnt seem to apply here. Currently scouring the internet for possible solutions.

I am currently working on smoothing the run animation a bit more and will probably end up doing twice as many frames as it has currently. Although there is a concern that with more frames of animation the transitions to jump animation will be a little bit more choppy. If I can work out how to put in transition animations for actions this wont be a problem.

I've also put together a target render image that gives some idea of what the final game should look like. Keeping in mind it is design to display on a phone screen the resolution need to be tweaked a little.

Week 2, Month 1

Second week of the challenge and I've made some minor advances in both art and design. For the first I've managed to finesse the run animation and iterate on it several times. For the first I completed a rough so that I could implement it into the game engine for testing purposes.

This piece of animation is mostly to check for timing, what I found was that with a scrolling background the animation actually works and different speeds. It just makes the background look further away if he's going faster. This is a happy mistake to stumble upon as I hope to implement a mechanic in the game where speed increase the longer he runs and this means that if I can work out how to increase the animation speed within the engine it'll be a cinch.

This is the screengrab from that placeholder animation the game ground still needs to be created but the trees and mountains scrolling in the background are working ok. There is still an issue with a gap in the scrolling background that shows the seams of the loops. I'm going to work around this in a few ways. First I will separate the sky from the mountains so that I can hide the mountain seams behind the trees. Second I will cut the trees so the there is a gap anyway and i wont be so noticeable. Thirdly another layer of trees will be in front of those that are currently in place and will be sparse anyway.

Although hard to see the screenshot also show the character jumping, which was easy enough but I will add a specific jump animation sequence to the action to help it look smoother.

Lastly I have done a clean up version of the run animation with colour to test for resolution dependance, I added a face to the bear to give him a bit of personality as it was really bugging me that he looked like a generic run animation.

I feel like there is room to improve the personality side of this character through animation by giving him a few more secondary actions. I am considering adding a backpack that would bounce and get some dust kicking off the end of the steps. My research in to endless runners has given me a good sense of the details that you can get away with using characters that will fit on an iphone. The animation will also play quite fast so I need to keep it simple.

The next week will be finishing art assets for 'Picinic Goodies' and obstacles and the implementing collision system to the game as well as scoring. After that I hope to get start on the 'Drop Bear' aspect of the game that will involve swiping and scene transitions.

Week1 Month1

Week 1 of Month 1.

So I got my first Challenge on the 1st of May. The Challenge is for a Game Design, an exploration of small scale game design. I must produce an app that can be played on a smart phone and make it available on the open market.

Awesome.

After a little research I've found the free program called 'GameSalad' which allows you to create game for use with iphone and even has a publishing feature. The app utilises object oriented program without the need to know specific code language, which is perfect since it's been a long time since I've done any coding whatsoever.

The type of game that I will be developing will be an endless runner. My concept for the game is that you play as a Drop Bear, a somewhat mystical creature known only to Australian folklore. The Drop Bear will run through the national park collecting Picinic Goodies ( It's not a typo), earning points along the way. The Picinic Goodies will also help to fill you 'Drop Bear' meter which once full allows the player to launch into the sky and come smashing down on an unsuspecting picnicing family. All of their Picinic Goodies will fly into the air and the player will have to bear swipe them down to get the extra points. There will be hazards along the way which can include logs, rocks, low hanging branches, water, birds, monkeys, hunters and bees. Failing to avoid these hazards will end the player's run but in tripping over and falling to the ground they get one last chance to earn some points and the Bear's Picinic Goodies get thrown in the air.

So far research into endless runner tutorials for Gamesalad has given me lots of useful tools and understanding of the program and I feel confident I should be able to produce the game to the standard I'm hoping for. I've begun creating a scrolling background ( a necessary staple of the endless runner genre), a quick animation test, and some prototypes of the endless runner.

 Background plate - others to come to create a layered scrolling background effect.

 Initial sketches of Drop Bear - in normal run and 'Full Powered' run

 Picinic Goodies - Different shapes for readability at small screen scale.

 

Animation Test, First I've done in a very long time.

The challenges I've met while addressing this challenge have really come from getting to know a new program. GameSalad is still in beta for the windows version and doesn't always give you all the information you need when something goes wrong. I can be very frustrating setting up rules and behaviors for game elements and to all your understanding have done the right things to make them work and then have them not respond at all. Coding is very difficult and while the node based coding allows for alot of ease of use it can still leave a lot of logical gaps in it's execution.

I have enjoyed learning so far and am very happy to create some art for the first time in a while. Although it's as simple as it can get for a run cycle, knowing that, that information about animation hasn't left me makes me feel relieved and happy.

Next to come will be learning more code to be able execute all my ideas for the game and getting stuck into creating all the art assets.