This week, I began working on the protagonist's slide animation. This would be used when avoiding obstacles that have a small gap underneath them. I started out by roughing out the animation, intending on having it pause at the 4th frame.
However, after talking to my team, we realised that using four frames to get on the ground and four to stand back up may make it feel 'off-beat', and so we decided to create a simple slide animation and work on in-betweens at a later date. This animation was made up of four simple frames, and included minor movement such as the waving of the scarf and subtle movement of the leg, so that it was not just a static frame.
After this animation was complete, we did the presentation we had created the week before. We received useful feedback from tutors, which was placed onto our Trello for reference;
We thought about moving the game to portrait mode, but decided that the sidescrolling aspect worked better with a landscape phone; most mobile rhythm games we had looked at for reference (Idolish7, Love Live, etc) also ran in landscape, so we figured that it would work as a landscape game played with both hands.
I began working on UI concepts as per the feedback, creating simple greyscale versions of possible button orientations for the UI during gameplay. The team had already come up with an idea for the UI between us, so this was more focused on cleaning that up.
I then began to work on concepts for the pause screen. These ranged from simple with curved buttons to concepts revolving around the musical and Greek-inspired parts of the game, and were given to the rest of the team for feedback.
However, after talking to my team, we realised that using four frames to get on the ground and four to stand back up may make it feel 'off-beat', and so we decided to create a simple slide animation and work on in-betweens at a later date. This animation was made up of four simple frames, and included minor movement such as the waving of the scarf and subtle movement of the leg, so that it was not just a static frame.
After this animation was complete, we did the presentation we had created the week before. We received useful feedback from tutors, which was placed onto our Trello for reference;
I began working on UI concepts as per the feedback, creating simple greyscale versions of possible button orientations for the UI during gameplay. The team had already come up with an idea for the UI between us, so this was more focused on cleaning that up.
The overall favourite of the team was the vinyl-themed pause menu.
To finish up with this week, I began concepting colours for the deity of our first proper level. The basis of the god for the level was the titan Helios, which was transformed into a relatively buff humanoid body with a disco ball in place of a face as per Finn's concept art. After iterating each stage, I went back to the team for feedback.
Skintone & Disco Ball Colour Iteration
Cape colour iteration, after team voted on their favourite skintone & disco ball colour
Jewellery iteration, after team voted on favourite cape colour
Once this was complete, I could start working on a death assist animation; the idea was that, should a player fall into a pit, instead of the level restarting, the player would lose some of their combo multiplier and the god of the level would help the player character back into the play area. Since Helios appears extremely large, the only part of them visible would be their hand in the death assist; as such, I started drawing out possible poses for Helios and the protagonist.
The team was quite fond of the hand picking up the protagonist by the scarf, with the arm extending long enough to reach the edge of the screen (rather than a detatched hand); I began pixelling this (using my own hand as reference, which resulted in a lot of weird looks as I posed at my computer screen while drawing.)
With this done, I could add a gentle animation to it so that the protagonist would swing to and fro gently as they were picked up.
I feel that this animation is humorous and effective, and works well as an alternative to interrupting the rhythm of the game as the player falls.