Very LAST sprint

Accomplished:
I created 3 animations for the guard character.  Walking, Alerted to Thief's Presence, and Sprinting.  I had a lot of fun making these animations too.

Quality:
Cristine liked my animations.  And Roger and Bob said the walking animation was good when they saw it in class.  Sounds like it was good to me.

Example:
Here are some spritesheets.

EXTRA?
I did 3 animations and only one ended up in alpha.  I'm counting the other 2 as EXTRA work done.  Cristine only really asked me to have a walking and running animation done.  So at the very least, the Alert animation (which was the longest), was extra work.

NEXT SPRINT:
Winter break, baby. See ya later.

Onto the Last Sprint for the semester

TASK COMPLETED:
I was tasked to get more finalized version of the story, flesh out backstories for the main character, and decided what story events will occur in each level of our game.  I did all of this and shared my writing with Cristine via google docs.

QUALITY:
Cristine seemed to like the work I did.  The story may change in the future as we discuss what I wrote, but for now, it works and should help to move the game along and keep the players invested in the character.

EXTRA:
I helped Cristine with the level design.  She's been designing puzzles for the level that will be featured in our alpha game.  I helped her think of new puzzles, helped to improve her existing puzzles, and helped her lay them out in a way that makes sense in the progression of the level (I hope).

NEXT SPRINT:
For this next (and last) sprint, Cristine wants me to finish the animations for the Guard character for alpha.

Getting close to the end

TASK COMPLETED:
I drew finalized art for the guard character so that we could test our our art pipeline. Drew was in charge of inking and coloring.  Cristine was in charge of animating.  And Alice was in charge of putting the animations into the spritesheet.

QUALITY OF WORK:
The work done seemed pretty good to me.  I like the way the guard looks.  And we were able to streamline our pipeline a little and work out any kinks.  It turns out that it only takes about two seconds for the animator to put the animation into a spritesheet.  So having Cristine send it to Alice for her to put it into a spritesheet would have been wasted time.  Also, Drew has a lot of work to do with backgrounds, and Alice is very good with inking and coloring in illustrator, so we figured out that for next sprint it would be better for Cristine to do the spritesheets in a addition to animating, and Alice can do the inking and coloring instead of Drew.


EXAMPLES OF WORK DONE:

This is the final character design for the Guard.  In the second picture all his body parts are drawn separately to make him easier to animate.

ANYTHING EXTRA:
I taught Cristine a lot of tips and tricks for animating in After Effects.  Also I taught her a very easy and quick way to get animations from After Effects into a sprite sheet.

NEXT SPRINT:
Cristine wants me to come up with story events that will occur at the beginning and end of each level.  She also wants me to finish creating character bios for all of the main characters in our game.  Also, if I have time I can help her do more animations for the guard.

Before Thanksgiving

TASK COMPLETED:

I completed work on the concept art for a basic guard enemy.  I completed work on the back-story for all the main characters.   We created a pipeline for creating art assets and animations for the game.

QUALITY OF WORK:
I think the work I did was of good quality.  Not much else to report on that.

ANYTHING EXTRA:
I did do some more work on another little demo vid, but I didn't get it done, so I don't have anything to show for that.  I am trying to help Cristine out in figuring out who would be best to do the various jobs in the pipeline.

NEXT SPRINT:
For our next sprint, we are testing out the pipeline so that we can get it working efficiently.  My job is to draw the actual art for a guard character.  Drew will digitally ink the character and color it.  Cristine and I will animate the character, and Alice will put the animation into a sprite sheet.

Demo Vids Done

TASK COMPLETED:

For this sprint, Cristine and I wanted to try to hammer down some of the gameplay concepts that we've all been struggling to envision.  We created little demonstration animations to show conceptually how most of the game should play.  Hopefully these videos will help all of us to be on the same page when imagining how our game should work.

I think that we may end up revising and doing a little more for these videos in the upcoming sprint.  We didn't really get much time to show these vids to the team or discuss how we should change them so that they match what we all want.

Also, just a random note: In the future, if we are going to be presenting our games to guests in our class, it would be nice to know about that in advance.  Sending out an email 2 hours before class isn't really enough time to have anything prepared.

QUALITY OF WORK:

I hope the quality of the work was good since I spent most of my time this week working on those animations.  The timing was a little too fast in all of my animations, but I needed to pause the vids to explain anyway, so that wasn't much of a problem.  I think my vids did a pretty good job of showing what they needed to show.

DID I DO ANYTHING EXTRA:
I also spent much of my time coaching Cristine.  I've been helping her get organized as a team lead.  I've been director or team lead on every project I've ever done, so hopefully I have a few tips to give her.  I've also been helping her out with getting the story hammered down.  We now have the basic arc out and need to start working on the specifics like what happens on each level and backstories of the main characters.

EXAMPLES OF WORK:

NEXT SPRINT:
For my next sprint Cristine has asked that I write a script for the game.  She also wants me to make an outline for the art pipeline that we intend to use.  And she wants me to have some concept art done for the guards.  So I've got lots to do.

More Sprints

TASK COMPLETED:

For this sprint we were following Roger's advice and gathering existing screenshots to help us come up with good concept art that we like.  I was supposed to collect screenshots for the main villain and the guards.  I ended up collecting some concept art of the game Disgaea because the cool mischievous look of their characters is something that Cristine wanted for our Shadow Thief.

QUALITY OF WORK:
Cristine only told us to find like 15 screenshots.  But I found over thirty.  I think I did good work finding different styles and lighting that I like, and I think it will help us in coming up with concept art for the characters.

DID I DO ANYTHING EXTRA?
We decided that it would be a good idea for us to make a visual animation of the gameplay aspects of our game.  This way artists can always look back at the video and say "Okay, we need these assets for the game."  And programmers can look back at the video and say "Okay, this is how it's supposed to work."  Hopefully this will help eliminate any confusion about the gameplay elements of our game.   I started making this video and created some mock-ups for our title screen and level select screen.

EXAMPLES OF MY WORK:

NEXT SPRINT:
For my next sprint, Cristine wants me to work more on getting this demo video done.  We both think it will be a great help to our group.  So she and I will be making short videos of all the gamplay elements in the game for the upcoming sprint.

Placeholder Sprites

I forgot to post pictures of the colored placeholder sprites I made for the programmers.  She may be subject to some change, but here she is for now.

A sprint finished and a new one coming up

TASK COMPLETED:

My job was to come up with more concept art for the main character so that we could get to a more finalized look.  That is what I did (see picture below).

QUALITY OF WORK:

I believe the quality of my work was good. Cristine seemed pleased with the concept art for our main character.  I did less drawings this time around, but instead just tried to focus on getting one good character design that combined all of the elements that Cristine liked from previous iterations of the design.  I'm pleased with our final design.  I think I will have to simplify her a little bit for the actual in-game sprites, but this is a good concept for what she will look like.

DID I DO ANYTHING EXTRA?

Yes.  The first extra thing I did was create a still sprite from the concept art to give to the programmers so that they can just use it as a quick stand-in for the main character.

I did one other extra thing. I may have mentioned this before on the blog, but I am producing and directing a short independent animation project over the next two semester.  In order to complete this animation I am using a pipeline to get the work done.  I have about 3 other people working with me on this project.  Someone designs that characters, then someone draws the keyframes, then someone draws the tweens, someone inks the frames, someone scans all the images in, and someone colors them on the computer. The extra thing I did this week was discuss my animation pipeline with Cristine so that we can try to adapt it to work with our process for creating art assets for this game.  Because we are using different methods of animation for this game project, our pipeline will be slightly different, but we can at least use a similar method to what I'm using in my other animation project.

EXAMPLES OF WORK DONE

---NEW TASK---

After talking to Roger, Cristine has decided to change the way we are doing sprints (this is probably a good thing).  First we will collect examples of what we want our game to look like (using the internet, and playing similar games, etc).  Next we will use the gathered art to create our concept art for the game.  Then we will finally come up with some sort of finalized concept art for the game.

That means that for this next sprint, I am working on gathering ideas for what all of the NPC characters will look like (this includes: guards, civilians, the main villain, sub-villains etc).  If I want to do something extra I can start on actually drawing some concept for these NPCs.

Second Sprint

TASK COMPLETED:

I did my task and provided the art team with an ample number of possible character designs.

QUALITY OF WORK

I think the work I did turned out pretty well.  I tried a few different styles (all of which were still firmly grounded in anime style, I figure anime should fit the japanese flavor we're going for).  And ended up with 12 different character designs (plus a random mud monster!).  I'm satisfied with the work that I did.

DID I DO ANYTHING EXTRA?

Yes, I helped Cristine come up with ideas for the game's story and the main character's back story.  We are going to continue working on that as time goes on.

EXAMPLES OF WORK DONE

---NEW TASK---

Draw concept art for a finalized character design and draw her in different poses to get ideas of how she will look in action.

That's all for now.  I should get back to work.

Oh one more thing.  Bob made it sound like he wanted us to post the blog posts BEFORE class on Tuesdays.  He seemed pretty disappointed that nobody did that, but I don't recall him ever telling us that we were supposed to post before class.  I had always intended to post on Tuesday night, as there really isn't any reason to post Tuesday morning, since I haven't gotten my new task yet.  If you want us to post before class, I can do so, but that should be made clear.

First sprint

So the first sprint has started.  My new format for posts is going to be this:

Every tuesday I will first review how my last task went by saying what the task was, if I completed it and completed it well, and if I did anything extra.  Then I will state what my task for the next sprint is.

Since I don't have a task from last week, I will state what my upcoming task for this sprint is.

Task: Create concept art for the main character in our game.  By Thursday have some various ideas and different styles for her design.  By next Tuesday hopefully have a design picked out that will become the permanent character design.

That's all for now, next tuesday you can expect more as I will need to post how this task went, post some images, and post what my next task will be.

Character Design

Cristine asked me to do the character design for the main protagonist.  Should be fun. I can't wait to get started.

ShadowThief

So Cristine's idea for Shadow Thief is very intriguing.  I'm interested in figuring out more about how this game is going to work and what all of our roles will be.  Shadow Thief was the only game (besides mine) that I was actually interested in, so I'm glad that I ended up on that team.

Before the pitch

We are now just an hour before we have to pitch.

It does make me a little nervous, but at least we already did it once before.

Our prototype is looking a lot better and actually seems to work pretty well.

I added a few short scenes to our animation that show what happens if you fail to rip an enemy apart, as well as a few little puzzles.  Not much left to do but wait and then pitch.

Are you kidding me?

Come on, Roger. "Princess on the Rag?" I bet less than 1% of the class have even heard of that saying.  You old people and your weird sayings, ruining my title =)

But seriously, I had heard the term "on the rag" before (but only from older generations), however I'd never heard the saying with the "princess" at the beginning.  Now--unless I want to make it a coming of age story =)--I guess I have to change the name. But the question is, what else do I call it?

I liked the title "The Rag Princess" because of its simplicity. The first two words are only one syllable each, and the word "Princess" kinda gives it a fairytale feel.

I don't want to use Roger's suggestion of "The Patchwork Princess" because the word "Rag" is kind of important thematically for the story I want to tell (I've been working on this story for years).

I could just call it "The Ragdoll Princess" but that extra syllable takes away from the simplicity of the title. If I want simplicity, I could just call it "Rags" or something. But then I'd lose the "princess" and possibly some of the fairytale feel.

It might be good for me to give a quick synopsis of the story.  On the surface, the story is about a new girl (Ana) at an orphanage (back in the early 1900s) who gets bullied by all of the other kids.  The meanest and oldest of the girls at the orphanage locks Ana in the cellar.  Ana's only real friend, her ragdoll, comes to life and then has to search through rooms in the orphanage to find clues about where the key to the cellar is hidden.  Each room is like a level in the game (with puzzles, enemies, and a boss), and each room leads the Ragdoll closer to where the key is hidden.

Another interesting thing to note is that all of the orphans call themselves princesses, they all own one doll, and they have a sort of pecking order.  The leader of the orphans owns a porcelain doll, and because she owns the best doll, she outranks everyone else. Whoever has the worst doll is the lowest in their hierarchy.  That's why Ana is bullied so much because of her Ragdoll.

Each room/level (there'll be like 3 or 4--whatever we have time for) has a theme based on which princess owns that room.  The boss of the Paper Princess's room is a paper doll, the boss of the Puppet Princess's room is a marionette, etc. Upon beating the boss, that princess will tell you a vital piece of information about where they think the key is hidden and let you progress to the next room.  Each room allows you to learn a little bit about that orphan's troubled past (this is done in a way that won't interrupt gameplay, similar to the game Psychonauts, where you can learn about each character's past while your inside their brain). Ultimately you learn much more about Ana's traumatic past.

My favorite games (like the Silent Hill series, Rule of Rose, or Fatal Frame) have ambiguous stories that can be interpreted in different ways.  I want this game to be similar.  You can take the story at face value, that Ana's Ragdoll really does magically come to life and save her.  Or everything could be imagined up by Ana as a type of fairytale fantasy, and as a way for her to at least mentally escape a bad situation.

Right now, I guess I'm leaning toward "The Ragdoll Princess" hopefully that's different enough that older generations won't start giggling hysterically.

The programmers are working on the prototype, and it seems to be coming along pretty well.  They're having lots of issues (that I can't really help them solve) but I hope we have something rudimentary by next tuesday.


I've been supplying them with art assets as needed, but they haven't gotten stuff working well enough yet to really worry about putting actual art in. Also, we didn't really want to have too much art in there so as not to distract from the actual core concept of gameplay.  So in the mean time I have been working on things we could show for our pitch (like if we have a powerpoint presentation).


I've created an animation that features the core concept that I want to be present in our game.  I was thinking we could use this video in our pitch.  And even if we don't, I think it's a good aid to help the other members of the team visualize who this game could work when finished.


Here's the video:

Work on prototype

Work is continuing on our Prototype.  Things seem to be going well on the programming side (though to be honest I don't understand much of what the programmers are doing).

I'm working on art for the prototype along with some images and possibly animations to use in the next pitch.  Here's hoping we get everything done in time.

Got Picked

I am glad my game made the cut.  Now onto making the prototype.

The hardest part is going to be getting that string to work.

For art assets, obviously I don't want to go all out since it's a prototype, and much of this art will be thrown out. I liked both of Roger's methods for doing art.  The one method where you use just placeholder concept stuff, but on one or two parts you do have some good art to show what the game will look like.  I also like the other method too where you just try out lots of different styles to try to get a style that you like.   I might do the second one just cuz I think that the style will be important to this game, and I'd like to be able to figure out what kind of look will work best.

Game voting

I just did the voting thingy for homework three.

I can't remember all the ones I voted for, but I just wanted to write down some of them here.

1. My Rag Princesss game
2. Cristine's Shadow Thief games
3. Alice's Beer Pong Challenge (not really my type of game, but her pitch was good, so she get's spot 3)
4. The Cat with a Squirrel on top game
5. The Hat game

I don't remember the rest. Oh well. I do hope mine makes it considering I spent a lot of the summer making assets for it and planning out a lot of the gameplay aspects of it.  Either way though, it'll be fun to see how these next two semesters go.

Unique games and pitches

I got busy with school and never posted my 3 ideas, but I think the one I picked was the best of the 3 anyway. I hope that my Rag Princess idea makes it through to the end.  I think my pitch went fairly well.  I really didn't want to run out of time though, so I rushed through the first part of the pitch and maybe got to the questions part a little too soon. I'm not sure if I gave people all that good an idea of what I imagine for this game idea.

I was a little disappointed with all the pitches though (not that I'm saying mine was the best or anything).  One of the best things about student games and independent games is that they can at least try to be unique, innovative, or new in some way.  But most of the pitches today seemed like games that I've already played a million times.  None seemed very original, and none really caught my attention.  I think of all the games pitched, Sarah's and Rielly's were the most original.  I also sort of liked the Cat Burglar game, but that's just cuz I like stealth games, not cuz it seemed all that unique.

Anyway, one of the things I was looking forward to most about hearing pitches was hearing people's cool ideas for games.  I mean, they're just pitches right? We should be a little bit experimental and daring in college.  Nothing bad can happen from pitching a crazy off the wall idea.  College is the perfect time to be experimental cuz if we ever actually get jobs in the industry, we may not get the chance again (at least that's what we film majors learn).  I just felt like all the games pitched today were just people ripping of previously made games (my own game was also guilty of this).

Of course, I'm kind of a niche gamer, and I don't really like mainstream games.  My problem is, whenever I hear the words "platformer," or "shooter," or "this game is like _______ combined with _________" I tend to lose interest.

That's the end of my whining for now.

First day of class

So we had our first day of class today.  It kinda makes me tired just thinking about how much work this will be. Especially with the animation project I'm doing over the next two semesters.

But on the other had, it'll be fun too.  Now all I have to do is pick which of my ideas I will choose to pitch for the capstone project. I have 3 ideas right now, I'll blog post about them later.

And that's all for my first post.