.

1. Experiments
Thomas Battams

2. Process
For this experiment, what I ended up doing
was taking an old sprite from one of my
previous projects, and altering it in order to try
and add some new animations involving a
sword, this is because some of the features
that I want to include within my final project
includes new power ups, and they would
require new animations for the sprite in order
to be utilised properly. What I ended up doing
was erasing any pixels that weren’t needed,
and slowly replacing them with the new
sprites by using the pencil tool, because of this
I was able to get more comfortable with
creating some new animations for the
character, adding something fresh to what was
otherwise a quite simplistic design. I also
ended up using the timeline feature as this
enabled me to animate the sprites so that I
could see how it would look in a gif format.

3. Reflection
• What elements of your experiments will you
include in your final product?
– The character will be staying in the final product, as the
main reason that they were used for this experiment
was so I could test the animations using the base
sprite, helping for when I create the final product.
However if I do decide to let them use a sword in the
final product then I will create better and more fluid
animations for them, as well as this I would also need
to create some animations for them attacking with the
sword, as well as any other potential items used in the
final product.

4. Process
For this experiment, I had actually split the
animation into two separate parts, the charge up
sequence and the Beam itself, as seen in the
images to the left, the charge up sequence was left
quite simplistic, consisting of small pixels slowly
moving closer to the centre pixel, I repeated this in
order for it to look like it was actually charging up
some energy for the blast. This was created using
the pencil tool, and it was patterned in order to
look like energy was being collected and charged
inwards towards where the beam would be fired
from. Afterwards I had it rapidly expand outwards
in order for it to actually look like an actual Beam,
which was made using the paint tool. After a
couple seconds it’d slowly fade away until only the
singular pixel remained, allowing the animation to
be repeated. I had created this in order to try
something that I hadn’t made before, as this was
something that I was hoping to add into the final
product if I could get it right the first time.

5. Reflection
• What elements of your experiments will you include in
your final product?
– I am unsure as to if I should include any element of this in my
final product, as whilst I do believe that it turned out ok, I
don’t know how I could fit something like that into my game
without it either having to be shrunken down or changed
dramatically in order to be included with the actual final
product. If it was to be included I will keep the idea of it
intact, however as to what I’ve made in these experiments
that will probably be drastically different for the final
product, most likely with it being small blasts similar to the
fire from Mario. Unfortunately I feel quite bad about not
being able to include this in my final product, as I would’ve
changed some of my plans for the level had I been able to
add something like this into the game.

6. Process
For this experiment, what I ended up doing was
cycling through a couple of layers, changing
them out in order to give off the effect that the
light was flickering. In order to simulate the
effect of the light shining, I edited the opacity of
the 3 Layers, as this let it keep its colour, whilst
simultaneously reducing how much is actually
visible, I made each layer be at around 10%
opacity as it helps to give off the effect of there
actually being light coming from the lamppost,
rather than it just being part of the background
like everything else is. I ended up messing
around with the times of each frame, as it
helped to make the flickering effect look slightly
more realistic, as it normally would be flickering
off at random intervals instead of being set to
go off at certain points and at a certain speed.

7. Reflection
• What elements of your experiments will you
include in your final product?
– I may potentially end up creating something that has
the same concept as this within my final project,
however it is more likely going to be something
smaller that could use the effect a lot better than if it
were the lamppost. For example something like a lamp
in a room flickering on and off, periodically sending the
room into darkness, something quite simple like this
would be good to add into the game because it would
add some visual effects into the game, as well as
breathing some life into the backgrounds.

8. Strengths and Weaknesses
Strengths
- Some of these showed some promise at the end, in particular the Light
Experiment, as the ‘light bulb’ effect ended up looking quite good and
helped to add some detail into the background.
- The animation of the Sword Experiment was quite fluid, going through the
main part of the animation in seconds.
- The transition from charging up to firing the beam was quite smooth.
Weaknesses
- Some of the experiments weren’t really up to a standard that I needed for
my final product, however at the same time it helped me to find out what
couldn’t be used in the game, this was shown in particular with the Beam
Experiment.
- Some frames in the Sword Experiment don’t look as good as others, for
example in one of the frames, the characters arm is a lot longer than it
should be.
- A couple of the animations were too fast at times, such as the Beam
Experiment and the Sword Experiment.