Development Diary FMP

1. Development Diary

2. Week 1

3. Day 1
• Today I began researching into video game designers and video game artists. I researched into
these people to find out about their approaches to work so that I can be inspired by this. I also
researched into that person for example where they were educated so I can see everything
leading up to how they developed/designed their game. This is a useful part of my research
because I need to learn how the professionals do it but it was really hard to find any information
on some of the people as they aren’t very famous. This hindered a lot of my time that I could have
spent working on my document because I had to use a lot of different sources to get a small piece
of information.

4. Day 2
• I have begun my proposal today. I have further developed the basic ideas that I
had from my pre-proposal. I feel that my proposal is somewhat detailed, but the
word limit prevented me from clearly getting my ideas across in a highly
informative way. I have not yet finished my proposal as I need to finish my
schedule The schedule will be a fairly easy task to complete because it wont be
set in stone and I can always adapt to any changes that I make. I went a bit over
my word count on the rationale because I found it hard to explain 2 years worth
of work in 150 words. I think that I explained my concept well despite only having
200 words to explain it. I can definitely work on my bibliography more by finding
more sources. I think that I need more original sources instead of having lots of
websites.

5. Day 3
• I have finished my proposal today. I focused heavily on the schedule, carefully
planning out each day with each task. To be really specific, I talked about what I
would try and accomplish each lesson. I will not follow the schedule exactly in
case I finish something early or take longer than expected to finish something. I
have around 8 weeks of production so if I finish something early, I always have a
bit of extra time to improve it. I feel that I have enough production to occupy 8
weeks with and I think I may be able to fit more in. I do not want to overwhelm
myself though and have loads of products that aren’t good quality.

6. Week 2

7. Day 4
• Today I have started doing primary, secondary and audience research. I started
off by doing secondary research. This included researching into existing products.
I have decided to analyse around 5 existing products that include merchandise,
game covers and possibly an animation. All the products I research need to have
some sort of relevance to my production. The first product I analsysed was “Call
Of Duty: Modern Warfare 2”. I chose this product because I liked the colours and
the way it was structured. I managed to analyse this product heavily and ended
up writing 3 slides on just the front cover. I am happy with how in depth I
managed to go with this product.
• I also began analysing another product which was a game called “Spec Ops The
Line”.

8. Day 5
• I have continued with my existing products today. I wrote less for my second product than I did for
my first but they were quite similar in some respects. To improve on this next time, I will choose
some products that aren’t of the same genre to make sure my research is varied and covers all
bases.
• I also began analysing my third existing product today as well. This product was another game,
called “Mafia III”. I wrote the least for this game as I had other areas of my research to focus on as
well. I probably could have spread out my time for this a little bit better but I wanted to make all
my areas of research strong and not just concentrate on one area of research.
• For each product I analysed, I also looked at the context to give me more information about the
product. Context also means that I can look into the minds of the creators and see how they
design games and how they release a game at a certain time to increase sales.

9. Day 6
• I have conducted a survey today using SurveyMonkey.com. I used this website
because it is free and extremely easy to use. It also makes it easy to share your
created survey to other people. When making my survey, I had to make sure that
the questions would benefit my research or production, or both. The questions
were all multiple choice so that it was less time consuming and easy for the
audience to use. I had to review the questions after I wrote them and this was a
good use of my time as I actually ended up changing a couple of them. I also
reorganised the order of the questions as it was really erratic. When I had the
questions written, I sent them off through email and put the survey link on my
social media. This meant that I was reaching out to all sorts of age ranges which
narrows down what I need to do for my audience during production.

10. Week 3

11. Day 7
• I have continued with the exiting products today. I have structured it slightly
different this time however, by doing a mini comparison between a standard and
special edition of a game. I have decided to structure this differently because it
will help me more in production if I can pick out what makes a special edition
game cover different to a standard edition game cover. Analysing more content
would not have been a good use of my time as I have already done this three
times. The game covers that I compared were “Battlefield 3” and “Battlefield 3:
Limited Edition”. I chose this particular game because during the theories
research stage, I found the “Battlefield” art to be really interesting so I decided to
look further into it. I have gained some new knowledge about how to structure a
different version of the same product. I will most likely analyse some
merchandise either tomorrow or by the end of this week.

12. Day 8
• Today I have focused on doing production research. Production research involves looking
into what I will need to do during production and what is out there that can influence me
for my production. For example, I first looked at what tutorials on YouTube I could
potentially follow. I looked at an ice hand and a fire hand tutorial. I have explained why I
chose these in my research PowerPoint. Secondly, I looked at how I would structure my
products. To do this, I looked at my previous production and discussed what I could
improve and how I would change the structure of existing games to make my game stand
out. I then discussed the pros and cons of different production methods such as
photography. This really helped me generate ideas about what I would do differently this
time. The last section of production research I looked at today was the photography
settings for the camera. To do this, I looked at various websites that gave tips on how to
get the “perfect” photo. This included camera settings, lighting and background. I also
looked into the type of camera that we are going to use so I can make the quality better
than previous products.

13. Day 9
• Today I have finished off my existing products. I focused my work today on
analysing my primary research. I asked 10 questions and received 26 answers. I
feel that this amount of answers probably isn’t sufficient enough. However, the
answers I received were enough to understand my audience and make educated
guesses at the type of content they liked. I have never found primary research
that useful in the past because I can only reach out to a small audience and this
small audience may only contain a few people that are actually really interested
in my product. I shared my survey amongst 4 different social media apps and also
emailed it out to a few people. I am surprised at how many responses I got as I
expected to get a lot more. This has not hindered anything, it just means that I
will have to rely on other types of research such as exisiting products. I find this
more helpful anyway because I am looking at a professional product that has sold
millions of copies worldwide. If I can learn something from this then this is much
more of an advantage than my audience survey.

14. Week 4

15. Day 10
• Today I have started problem solving. This will help me to pick out the main problems that I may potentially come across,
and then find a solution. I split the types of problems into theoretical and practical problems. This was so I could avoid
confusion. When listing out the sorts of problems I had in the past, it was also important to list problems that I may have
so that I have all grounds covered. I think that I have listed all the problems that can effect my production and this makes
me feel more confident because I can have a solution instantly if I should come across any problem.
• Practical problems focused mainly on the actual production side so I had to think about equipment, storage and software
etc. The area that I had most problems for was issues with equipment. This was because it is such a vast area so there was
obviously going to be more problems. The solutions were fairly self explanatory but it was useful to note down what I
would have to do. I feel that I covered most of the practical problems fairly well and also fairly in depth, by coming up with
multiple solutions for each problem.
• Theoretical problems focused mainly on the preparation for my production such as finance and scouting out a location for
photography. I have looked up certain locations to see if they are privately owned and I have given my self a budget that I
will spend for clothing, costume and props. Doing this is extremely helpful to me because it means I am not doing
everything randomly and it means I can buy the items efficiently because I have it planned out.
• I also took some photos today so I could prepare some photos for doing some experiments.

16. Day 11
• Today I have begun my experiments. I am experimenting with various different technique and
effect tutorials because they act as a solution to the practical problems that I came up with. The
first tutorial I followed was a skin crack effect. I chose this effect because I can replace the crack
texture with something else that fits the theme of my product. The product turned out fairly good
but I had one issue with the blending of two images to make the product look realistic.. This is an
area that I can work on before I start production. I feel that this is a necessary step to take
because it is not just blending in this situation that may effect the quality of my products. If I learn
a certain technique for blending then I can apply this to all my products or the ones that need it
to make them look as aesthetic as possible.
• Another technique that I did today was an effect that showed someone's face turning into fire. I
liked the look of this effect but I feel that it did not test my skills. There were very few steps to this
effect however it does have nice aesthetics. I can vary this effect to apply most images. The fire
technique also fits a major theme within my products so it will useful to take this effect further.
• Overall, the effects that I have completed so far I am fairly happy with. I think that there is
definitely room for improvement but it was good to experiment with new tools and effects.

17. Day 12
• Today I have continued with my experiments. I started off by making a glitch style effect from
memory. The effect does not really relate to anything within my project but I wanted to test my
skills. I think this was a good idea because it will improve my Photoshop skills as a whole and it
will also help me become more efficient when using the software. The glitch effect does not look
as professional as the ones I have created in the past but I am happy that I have a decent looking
product that I have created from memory.
• An improvement to make with this product is to perhaps consider learning other methods that
would be useful. For example, the steps to creating this glitch effect are specific to that effect and
cant be manipulated to fit another effect. It would be more useful to find effects that can fit most
themes.

18. Week 5

19. Day 13
• I am close to finishing off my experiments. I have made cartoon looking experiment so that I can see what
the cartoon effects I have planned to use look like.
• This was an extremely basic attempt at making something in a cartoon style and I think that with a lot of
time and effort I can make something a lot better than this.
• This was really simple to do. Firstly I placed the dry brush filter over the model and then a used the brush
tool to draw the background. I think this hand drawn effect looks very basic and I will find a way to massively
improve this when it comes to production as I am not very happy with it.

20. Day 14
• The penultimate experiment I have made is a really effective and simple experiment. I traced round a photo
of the model so it looks like a drawing. I got the outline using a thick brush and then did the details with a
slightly thinner brush.
• I really like this effect despite how simplistic it is. I don’t think I’ll be able to use this too much in my actual
products as it doesn’t really match any themes of the designs I’m planning.
• To improve on this experiment, I could maybe add some colour to it to make it more exciting.

21. Day 15
• This was the final day of my problem solving. I made one last experiment and then moved onto writing
about potential problems with the camera.
• The last experiment I made was a logo for a game developer studio. I am very happy with this experiment
because I think it has a professional look to it. I like the way I have made the letter “S” match up as well. I
think that the underline is maybe a little bit unnecessary but it looked a bit empty without it.
• The potential problems I talked about with the camera are a reflection of how I used the camera effectively
and also how I used the camera not to its full potential. For example, most of the photos I took were taken in
auto mode instead of manual mode.
• Next week I begin the planning stage of my project.

22. Week 6

23. Day 16
• This week I have started the planning stage of my FMP. This will last 2 weeks. I have been given a list of the main areas that
I will need to cover. I can and will expand on this list to give the most detailed planning I can. I started off with the colour
scheme because I had the most ideas for this. I selected a range of colour palettes from Google and then talked about how
I would use these particular colours alongside each other.
• I then talked about the facilities and what I will be needing to use. I first talked about the camera and how I plan to use it
and how I will need to book it out so that it fist my schedule. It is important that I do manage to book it out in time for
when production starts because the main effects and techniques will be applied to the images that I take. Next, I talked
about the backdrop, tripod and lights. I talked about how the backdrop needs to be green as the colours of the costume
will contrast best with the green backdrop. This is a major priority that I take pictures with a green backdrop because it
could determine the quality of my whole work. The tripod and lights were the least two important objects, but still
important enough to talk about because I can always use editing on Photoshop to create lighting and then I can rotate the
images if they haven't been taken at the right angle. Next I talked about the iMac that I would use for production. I stated
how it was an old model and how this could affect its reliability. I don’t have any doubts about using the iMac for
production because it has held up in previous projects.
• Tomorrow I will aim to get the finance, material and fonts section sorted as these will require the most research so I need
more time on them.

24. Day 17
• Today I have continued with my planning. I have researched into some fonts. The first two fonts I looked at
were fonts that I could potentially use as the main font for the title of my game. I picked out some weaknesses
and strong points of each font because I think that for my product to be effective, I need it to stand out. For my
product to stand out, I need it to choose an appropriate font that not only fits the theme of my game, but also
has a look that isn't too generic.
• The last font I have picked out is for use on the back cover and the DLC cards that I plan to make. This font is
really nice and I think that its modern edge will fit the theme of my game well. This font does contrast the
other fonts though. For example, this font is better structured and doesn’t look as rough which could
contradict peoples views on the connotations of a gang.
• I have also talked about the materials that I will need to construct my products. This was me talking about the
costume, props and anything else that I will need to consider to use within my production. I found this section
to be fairly similar to the finance section but I managed to write a fair amount that can easily be distinguished
from that particular section. I haven’t started on the finance like I planned but I will start this next week.
• I have also done some experiments using these fonts. This helped me to see what the fonts look like so that I
don’t plan too much with them and then decide I don’t like it. The experiments were extremely basic versions
of what I actually plan to do with them, but I wasn’t interested in the quality of the experiment, only the
general look of what it would actually be on a product.

25. Day 18
• This is the third day of my planning. I think I have mad appropriate progress over the last three days. I am
happy with my progress as well because I know that my work is detailed and it also isn’t rushed.
• Today I have concentrated on planning the locations. I realised that this may take up a fair chunk of my time
so it seemed best to get it out the way. I began by declaring which locations I would most likely, or would at
least try to use. The first location I am planning on using is an alley way that is near my house. I listed the
advantages and disadvantages of this location and in summary, it seems like a good spot to use due to the
main factor that it is quiet so there will be no interference. I am confident with the amount of detail I went
into.
• The second location I listed was the studio. I followed the same structure of listing the advantages and
disadvantages as I feel that this is a good way to plan something because it helps me to come to a
conclusion. I think that I put less amount of detail into talking about the studio but this was because I had
talked about it in previous slides.
• Next week, I have a lot of slides and topics to work through so I need to make sure that I am working at a
progressive level.

26. Week 7

27. Day 19
• This week is the last week that I will get on planning before I start production next week.
• Today I have started on the layout plans. To me, I think that this is one of the most important stages of
planning because it where I start to put my brainstormed ideas into some sort of structured visualisation.
• I have made a layout plan for all the products that I planned to make from my schedule. During production, I
may choose to make more products if I have enough time. I have made a basic layout and then a layout that
replaces the basic shapes with images. The layouts do not look like a finished product at all but that was not
the aim of making these products. The aim was to provide a template of where the images and text should
go, roughly.
• For me, a visual learner, this turned out to be a really useful process as I could see my ideas coming together.
II am more confident to start production with these basic plans than I would be if was starting production
with just style sheets and colour schemes etc. I can still see how these other areas of planning would be
useful, but I would say that layout plans are the most useful.
• Tomorrow, I will focus on finishing the layout plans and then finish the remaining sections of my planning.

28. Day 20
• This is the second day of the week that I am aiming my focus towards the layout plans. I think that these are
the most useful parts of planning because it helps me when I am making my products.
• I have made multiple concepts for each layout plan I made. For example, I made the standard layout plan
and then made an alternative layout for the same product.
• All together, I have made 15 layout plans. I think that this is enough plans to make me feel comfortable when
I am making my products as I have enough plans to refer to so I don’t start improvising due to a lack of plans.
• I am happy with the amount of progress that I have made today and I have one more day to check through
my planning so I can add anything I may have missed.

29. Day 21
• This is the last day of my planning stage of the project.
• I have added a slide into my pro forma where I have discussed the dimensions of all the products that I plan
to make.
• I think that this is a necessary part of my planning because if I went into production without planning the
size of my documents then I could have potentially wasted some valuable time that I could have spent on
production.
• Next week I begin the production stage of my project and I think I am fully prepared.