Design for Society- Game Structure Screenshots

Here are screenshots from the final game that show how my research has influenced the design and gameplay mechanics.

All the characters use abilities that refer to proper scientific terms relating to jellyfish.

All the enemies are the names of real scientific names of jellyfish.

The Message- Completed Perspective Walk Cycle

Here is the final animation of Koya walking from one end of the scene to another in perspective. It was relatively easy to do, especially after the practice from life drawing.

Click here to view it on YouTube.

The Message- Finished Walk Cycle 1

I've completed the first walk cycle animation in Flash, in which a character walks from a side view perspective in a scrolling background. I'm particularly pleased with the outcome as I feel Koya (my creature) works quite well with his dance-type of walk.

Or click here to watch it on YouTube!

Design for Society- Old Thumbnails and Storyboard

I just finished scanning the remaining things to augment my Design for Society, such as the original storyboard as well as planning sketches and thumbnails.

Design for Society- Animatic

I've finished my animatic, using a combination of my own music and the in-game music and sound effects (from RPG Maker VX).

Click here to watch it on YouTube.

Design for Society- Animatic Updates

I've basically got everything ready to make the animatic except for some of the music. I plan to integrate screenshots of the game with my work on Photoshop to make the animatic, with animated text and camera movements to give it a bit of emotion. I've done the music myself as well, although as said before, I'm missing one track to give the animatic a bit of a threatening feel at the end. Right now, the music is more peaceful and mysterious but I need something more dark for the end of the animatic.

Here are some of the Photoshop images I've done by scanning in my research sketches of jellyfish. I plan to do something clever with letters on each of the images to reveal the game title at the end.

The Message- Final Animation

I've finally finished my animation after redoing a few things that my tutor Sonia pointed out, such as the fact that my character was sometimes walking above the ground (noticeable as you could see shadows under his feet). Anyhow, I've edited it slightly differently and dubbed sound and music onto it. For my first go at Maya, I'm pleased how it turned out and I'm glad I was able to grasp the fundamentals of the program enough to make it.

 

Or click here to see it on YouTube.

The Message- Walk Cycle Updates

A part of the brief I've neglected a little, my work with walk cycles is far from finished. However, I've got straight onto it again today and intend to concentrate on this area for a few days since my other briefs are much nearer to completion.

The Message- Test Render

My Maya animation is finally finished and edited together in Sony Vegas. Here's a test render without any audio (I'm working on that in Audacity right now). I need to slow it down in some areas and resize the aspect ratio on one section (it's pretty obvious which section) and add some effects to make it better. But otherwise, I'm happy with how it turned out!

The Message- Storyboard

Here is the original storyboard that was done a while ago, for the Koya sequence. My initial draft on Maya is closer to this storyboard, and my re-rendered is roughly the same with some slight differences, such as different camera angles.

The Message- Everything Re-rendered!

After one big solid day of working (especially since I hadn't actually saved individual stages when I was animating each section!), I managed to re-render each scene in my initial draft of the animation. As a massive improvement, Koya casts realistic shadows and each frame is at a much higher resolution at full 1024 size. In order to make sure that I don't lose quality like last time (as I converted them to gifs), I'm going to construct the animations in Flash to ensure they keep the same resolution.

Here's some screenshots of the new frames with improved detail.

An awkward situation...

Getting ready to jump...

...in the air!

Walking around the desert.

Deadline Schedule

There's only a week left before the deadline for our briefs arrives. So I've worked out a schedule that I'm really going to strive to stick too, in order to complete the assignments before the deadline. The only real hindrance is my decision to re-render most of my Maya animation to include shadows, but I'm determined to get it done.

Contextualising Design- Essay

I've just finished my critical studies essay. It's under "Pages" if anyone wants to read or click here to view it directly.

The Message- Shadows

Despite having rendered all my frames, another tutorial today revealed a missing element that I'd forgotten: shadows. My world is bathed in intense sunlight, yet Koya has no shadows. Rendering shadows on definitely added a sense of depth to the atmosphere and it seems I may have to backtrack and re-render all my previous shots. It will be worth it however!

New Logo

Some people have asked me about my blog's bizarre title, and I also needed a logo for my blog's title. So I decided to design a creature with that title in order to give the nonsensical title a bit of meaning:

Here's the biography I wrote for it:

"An esperus (plural: esperi) is a creature most foul, only spawning when a lunar stone becomes infused with the planet's magic. It is an extremely vicious and strange-looking humanoid, with several distinguishing features. It resembles a terrestrial merman with a very long tongue, slimy jellyfish-like appendages in place of hair and a swollen, calloused neck. This species uniquely finds rusty metal objects fascinating, and like a spider, weaves complex 'wings' with jagged edges and complicated geometry for their own ornamentation. Very few creatures have been seen without these decorations and one can only assume it is a hereditary trait. Lacking any claws, the esperus relies on its quickness and tough hands to bludgeon its prey. It then regurgitates a foul-smelling digestive acid onto its victim and then slurps the remains using its tongue. This creature is considered an extreme threat to any who encounter it, and you are warned to take heed of the screeching noise its 'wings' make, which will indicate the presence of an esperus."

The Message- Maya Animation Update

I've pretty much finished my Maya animation, and I'm now in the process of selecting a soundtrack and audio to go with the finished piece. I found that after a lot of work and practice, the Maya program definitely is easy once you know how to do it. You just have to be really persistent and 'grind' in a way. Although I found that Maya tends to crash a lot, so I'd save really often (more often than not) and it's definitely a program that will seem extremely difficult to beginners because of its precise workings.

One problem I had was rendering a walk with my Koya character because you can only render 24 frames each time you do a batch render (I think) and when I went to do the next step, his legs were very jerky and it didn't look convincing at all.

It seems that saving the frame on the IK Handles wasn't working too well. I think the problem was that I deleted the 24th frame, which should be the 1st frame of the next animation and so when I repositioned the IK Handle it wasn't in the same position as the previous walk and so it 'jerks' to the wrong position. I re-rendered this part recently in order to fix it, so I copied and pasted the 24th frame to the first frame in order to ensure that in the next cycle, Koya's foot is in the same space to make the walk more natural.

Another problem was that original walk was far too slow (even when sped up) and made Koya look as if he was floating along, exacerbated by the fact that his body wasn't moving at all, giving him a rigid walk. I also countered this in the re-rendering by moving his tail and having him nod his head slightly as he walks. I also filmed using two cameras instead of just one for a more dynamic effect and as a result, I feel it was much better.