Game documentation

My last minute visual for game documentation to make everything look more polished (better than a word documentation, right?) Chris write the documentation, I just put it into a visual format. I think it came out good though.

Updated background and ship

Coloured the ship in and made the space background a little less white/bright. Rendered out the animation also. I'm happy with the results, I think the space station looks cute hovering. It's also cool to see the back story coming to life now. 

Making the trailer animation

 I made this background in photoshop from scratch. It didn't look very good at first but once I kept adding detail to it, it actually came out looking half decent which I'm happy with. I was worried it wouldn't look convincing enough or have a 'hand made' feel to it. The planet was pretty easy to make too. I went for blue colours to add to the "sci-fi" theme.
The animation is for the trailer which at the beginning will give some backstory to the game. It will talk about how the space station is broken and heading towards a sun. So my animation is of the space station hovering, stuck in the one place which I animated in premiere pro.

 First concept for the space station

Second, uncoloured concept.

Added details to looks pretty

Just added in the final details for that last little touch. The custom made drop shadows really make everything look like they're inside the environment. It was challenging painting more smoother, 3d details onto a 2d/pixel style level. But once I got started it became much easier and less daunting. 

Adding nature

Enter the second level 'biodome' themed. We slowly introduce elements of nature here, suggesting some scientific experiments have been done and neglected, leaving the plant life to go wild. I bought a new tablet and was excited to try it so painting foliage was surprisingly exciting for me. Some rooms have some scientific experiments such as jars with flowers and chemistry sets while others have complete overgrowth with brown walls, cracks, vines and moss.

I made black foregrounds with vines and plant life. Some of the foregrounds in the earlier rooms have wines intertwining with the vines to suggest the plant life is beginning to take over.

The plug in console animation I made. The character had to line up exactly 50 pixels away from the console for this to work. 

The new and improved dialogue box. During the tutorial these boxes will appear with text, prompting the player on the controls and hints to solving the puzzles. I made the new dialogue box with more shape as to make it more interesting. 

Bits and pieces I've been working on

 A capture of me having difficulty rendering out the frames. i figured it out in the end.

 My attempt at making the dialogue box. The first one was too "steampunk". Unintentional but typical of my style so I had to make it more minimalist.  

Trying to make a drop shadow for the character currently but it's just not looking right. It needs to be detached from the player so it doesn't look strange when he jumps.

And the animated dialogue box. I'm proud of how smooththe animation came out even though it's simple.

Idle animation

My many attempts at the idle animation....
(it was really time consuming and difficult to draw the legs bending. I'm terrible at perspective and anatomy) 

And for the final one

Background + new character walk

I've drawn a background for one of the rooms on the first tutorial level. It's sort of a 'wind down and take a breath' room where not much action is happening, to wind down from the other rooms. I think I'll still add some details to it though like an oil can on the floor and maybe a wall light. This is supposed to be a broken down robot.



New walk cycle! I've added the red, bobbing head and flashing light. He's look much better and more lively I feel. Chris said that when you animate the body moving during the walk it looks strange but I think the bobbing head compensates for that. 

Work update

I've drawn the tileset for the second level which is introducing a foliage/jungle aesthetic. I drew over the existing tileset adding vines, branches, cracks, grass and faded colours. 

My task for this week is to draw a background for one of the rooms in the tutorial in 'smooth style'. This is just a rough sketch of ideas. I'm thinking a giant sleeping/broken down robot chained up may be interesting.

A good tutorial for drawing vines (for the tileset, 2nd level)

http://www.wikihow.com/Draw-a-Jungle-Vine

Energy Bolt

I redesigned the energy bolt. At first I had one with yellow that had halo like shapes in it. It didn't look right so I changed it to be like this. Not sure about it yet though.

Storyboard Final!

I have so much footage so I didn't include every frame/shot that will be in my film. But this gives a basic idea of the narrative and style. It's also a good guide for me to start editing.

Editing stills from the footage.

I've already filmed my footage as my friend came over to Wellington for the weekend so I took that as the perfect opportunity. For my storyboard I'm using stills from the footage. I'm touching them up in lightroom a bit. It's good because it's giving a feel for what the footage is going to look like at it's best. I took so much footage it's ridiculous. Editing will take a long time so it's good I've got the filming out of the way now.

Music!

I got permission to use the track I was really hoping to have! I emailed the producer but they're a well established band so I wasn't expecting to get the rights for it. So happy as I have my heart set on using this for the interview. It has the right fibe and the music builds up perfectly at the right moments.

http://thenewdivision.bandcamp.com/

Inspiration 211

I'm not fond of the over editing style or the interview in the begin. I'm inspired by the close up make up shots which match the music. I will try to replicate this in my own work.

Trying to get the walking animation right

Well these are my attempts at colouring in and fixing up the walking animation. A very time consuming and tedious job. Had it done before the Monday interim hand in which is good. I'm glad the shading turned out good.

Interim and other happenings

Thought I better mention that for the interim I was working on some other minor things also such as replacing the gears so that they can be animated and redrawing with wire in my 'smooth style'. Here are a couple of screen shots.

 I started drawing this a long time ago in the first break for the second level. Just thought I'd post this here to remind myself to revisit this.

For the Monday hand in I need to have the character's walk cycle coloured with a drop shadow and a possible jump animation depending on how I go for time.

The main feedback at our presentation from tutors:
 - Bring the scene to life such as

•  sign lighting up
• wires swinging
• music reacting to low power
• visual cues
• lights on the characters
• character shadows

This was the main constructive feed back. We also got a lot of good feed back which was reassuring of our work so far. Looks like I'm going to be having a very busy weekend.

Evil robot character concepts

 My original concepts which I presented to my group. We liked number 8 best. I tried rendering him a couple of times but just wasn't sure what to do for his shape/form so I couldn't understand the perspective.

So I went for number 2 instead and blocked out his colours and put basic gradients on him. He's inspired by Wheatly from Portal2.

After shading him I presented him to Chris who suggested I add bolts and show the "T lines" on the edge of him to suggest symmetry. 

This is the final result. He's very clean, clinical feeling which adds to his evil vibe I feel. His red light eye and lines also show this. I already have a few ideas on animating him. 

Project 3

Need to start blogging for this project. I'm in Chris' group and the basic game design concept is a space station, the player is a robot and the core mechanic is giving and taking away power from things while the player's energy itself goes down (recourse management).

The image above is a painting of Chris' character that I redrew as the resolution was too large and when shrunk down to the games size became very low quality. Close up my drawing looks very pixelated because of the low resolution but once shrunk down it looks nice and smooth.

The next step is to download a program called Spine to animate a walk cycle and turn it into a sprite for Stencyl.

I'm currently designing enemy robot characters and thinking of concepts for the next level.
Chris and I's art styles are a bit different. Mine is more of a smooth style while he incorporates pixel art aesthetics into certain elements. Luckily he's open to the idea of different art styles for this project and is encouraging me to bring my own style into it. I did get him to teach me some of his techniques on photoshop so the style can stay consistent if need be.