tiafernandes

In order to prepare for the presentation in which I would get feedback, I created a logo for the game to use in presentations and on character illustrations and the like as a tie-in to make sure that all aspects of the work would be presented neatly.

 I started off by experimenting with typefaces and the position of the quill pen (which I wanted to use in the UI as well as the logo) before making a clean copy that was visible on both light and dark backgrounds.

 I started off by making silhouettes and then moved on to test colours and add a few details by using layer settings and clipping masks.
Once I had decided which of these backgrounds I liked the look of best, I started to draw it up neatly. I went through roughly the same process as the previous background in order to retain the style.

After some feedback from tutors, it was suggested that the colours be brightened and some texture be added, so I added a paper texture in order to continue the writing theme that I had made for the character; I also added this texture to the previous background I had created in order to retain consistency. I think this subtle texture really helps the background feel less flat, and the background colours have brightened up nicely.

Before drawing up the background, I quickly tested a few options for details within the castle's silhouette. However, these ended up becoming cluttered very quickly, so I stuck with a relatively simple, blocky castle design to match the bright & solid style I'd been using so far.

After determining the character's weapon and design, I started to draw them up neatly. Since this character would be a recruitable character, I wanted the weapon to feature in her final illustration. I tried to keep the style of this consistent with the protagonist's character illustration, although they are stylised in slightly different ways, similar to Nagano Takuzo's character art for various Level-5 games (Professor Layton, Inazuma Eleven, Snack World, etc). I have always found the way Nagano's characters have varied anatomy and features yet all look like they are part of one consistent universe appealing, and although I want to develop my own style and not overlap with Nagano's, this kind of variation in character is something that I would like to be able to portray in my own art.

Following two illustrations for Professor Layton and Inazuma Eleven series' promotional materials, art by Nagano Takuzo 








I began to work on my own character illustration.

Moving on from my protagonist, I started to create my second character; I wanted an accompanying character who would be with the protagonist from the beginning, helping them begin their quest and acting as a tutorial of sorts; they would also be the first 'recruited' character, although the player would not have to clear anything to recruit them. Since this character would symbol a beginning of sorts, I decided to have their theme be 'dawn'.

I started with a few simple silhouettes to see if I could get a basic shape down. I wanted them to be bouncy and athletic, but still decidedly feminine.

 After this, I began to work on clothing and hair, and giving the character a feminine look without creating any impractical or movement-hindering clothing.
 Once I had a design I was happy with, I began to play around with colours. I wanted their clothing to be bright and vivid, and also wanted to incorporate some of the bright accents I'd used on the protagonist's design. As such, I thought the top right colour palette was the best one for her, as it incorporated a bright green (similar to how I'd used bright orange with the protagonist), but the character still looks fairly normal, friendly, and approachable, which is helpful for an initial recruit character.
From here, I started on her weapon. I wanted her to be a physical fighter rather than magical, and definitely an offensive character rather than a support character, to allow the player to attack right off the bat. I thought a lance would be a fitting weapon for her, and began to silhouette some ideas out. As with my character designs, I then moved on to line and colour iteration for the lance.

After proposing my project, I began thinking more in-depth about the game I wanted to create. I wanted it to be a simple puzzle game with story aspects, and to be able to recruit characters by playing special courses. I decided that the setting would be light fantasy, but I wanted to give the protagonist character a unique skill in order to set them apart from the recruitable characters.
 After picking which silhouette I liked best (second from top left), I started working into them further, adding details like clothes. I went through many iterations for this design, as I felt it was important to create a striking and unique protagonist design; one aspect of mobile games (particularly those aimed at female players) I don't particularly like is the protagonist's face never being shown. Because of this, I wanted to create an exciting protagonist design.

 Even at this point, I couldn't decide which design I liked best as I had created quite a few designs. I brought two designs into the colour stage to play with colour iterations, to see which I liked better. I had also decided that I wanted each character to be based on one of four attributes, for which I picked out Dawn, Day, Dusk, and Night. I wanted the Protagonist to follow the theme of 'dusk', so I used lots of purples and blues when working through colour iteration.
 I had recently been watching tokusatsu series Kamen Rider Ex-Aid, a live-action TV show featuring lots of special effects, which is where the Japanese genre name ”特撮” tokusatsu (SFX) comes from. (Although this isn't a video game, the plotline is ironically about doctors fighting against 'game illness'.) The characters are bright and vivid, working a lot of unusual or neon colours into their designs. I think the inspiration for this is apparent in the second set of designs, as a lot more weird or bright colours started making their way into the designs; (bright orange-red, gold-yellow, purple and brighter greens). I was really drawn to the bright orange-red accents on the protagonist, and decided that they would recur in future designs for this project.


At this point, I had finally decided which design I wanted to keep for my protagonist. After playing around with the design of the quill pen a little more (as I thought the pale pen seemed like it blended in to pale backgrounds too much), I drew up the design of my now-complete protagonist.

I did not want to overestimate the amount I would be able to achieve during the span of this project, so I planned to create 2 Characters, 2 Weapons and 2 Environments. By doing so, I hoped that this would give me time to expand on the project in its late stages.

During the easter holiday, I finished up the death sprites for the player character.



During week 5, a few of the members began to get worried about the progress of the game. Our original plan for the formation of the team (2 maining blueprint, 2 maining art, 1 doing both) had fallen apart and the one member of the team who was supposed to help out both groups had ended up doing all of the blueprinting up until this point. We had not heard much from the two who were intended to help with the blueprinting apart from being given a level layout from one member during the third week, which we were told needed revamping at the start of the fifth week.

This made it quite difficult for the other team members as we now had an issue with the level layout which should have been sorted out quite early needing redoing quite late into the project, and since we had a difficult time contacting the other members I decided to pick up this job and make a draft layout that other members could add to to help speed things up. This also included the concept of a 'sprint zone' before the endpoint, where the player would have to run away from advancing corruption, though this idea was later scrapped.


Since the member we had assigned the job of finding audio had not done this since the start of the project by this point, I also found some audio and sound effects on free-use music sites such as maoudamashii and presence of music, and put them in the group's dropbox so that people could give feedback on which audio they liked and which they didn't.

However my actions here were not really welcome and I was scolded by the members whose jobs these originally were for taking over their jobs. Although I agree that it would have been better for me to have talked to them more before working on things that had originally been assigned to them, these were short tasks that we'd had negative feedback on for not being complete, and neither of the members who these tasks were originally assigned to were at the meeting we scheduled in the media labs during this session. Since it had taken so long to get them organised in the first place I agreed with the present members that it would be easier to get them out of the way while we had time together to discuss, though I left them open for feedback so the other members could adjust and change them as necessary.

Despite this, the level layout draft was mostly disregarded and the member whose job it originally was created a new level layout without using the draft.


I also created simple idle sprites for the player character during this week. This is just a simple loop of the cat's ears twitching and coat moving so they are not completely still while the player is not moving.




I also created a fake BSOD background to be used as a screen that flashed in during the player's low stamina time in order to warn them that they were approaching a loss. I tried to make this resemble an actual blue screen of death in order to panic the player a little.
After sharing this with the other members, it was suggested by Marisa who was in charge of most of the blueprinting that we split the level into two and have one above ground and one under ground to avoid cluttering up the level to the point it may lag. After confirming that this was plausible within the time limit, I readjusted the layouts to create two levels, one above ground which is more about learning to utilise jumps and platforms with lower risk, and one underground which contains more drops and difficult platforming.

The last two weeks also meant creating a lot of in-game assets to drop into the game for me. I created static effects utilising the blue screen of death I had created the week before to use for a low stamina warning. These were made up of multiple frames which flicker on-screen, and fade in at higher opacity the lower your in-game stamina is.