2. Project Overview
In this section you will outline the aim of the project/task and give an
overview of the activates you undertook to complete it.
3. What was the theme of your project and
what attracted you to it?
One of the themes of my game is female empowerment, I mentioned in my contextual research
and statement that one of the critical points in my game was to make the main characters female
as men and in my opinion, because, more often than not, the main characters in games are male
and if they are female they look a certain way, and those design choices are not made for female
and other audiences. Basically, the demographic I'm trying to reach is mainly male and there
needs to be a more representation for normal looking women that aren’t made from anyone but
themselves. By making my main characters female and having designed them in certain way
would it have hopefully deterred people from sexualizing them and making them into something
they're not.
I'm passionate about this topic and more people should be, as a woman that plays videogames,
I'm appalled by how women are treated not only in videogames but in the videogames industry
and community. There needs to be change and I think by creating empowering characters that
women feel they can relate to we can empower ourselves, like for example Ellie from the Last Of
Us 2, she goes around not caring what others think of her and strives only to complete her
objective, she has other things she has to think about but its way she is that drives her to what
she want, I think if more people saw characters like her as the powerful women they are they’d
be scared to talk down to us and sexualize us. It’s a contrast from male centric games, there isn't
insane amounts of violence, and it focuses on the relationship of the two characters rather than
what they might look like or what their wearing.
4. What research did you undertake and how did
it help develop your project?
Over the course of the first few weeks of the project I did around 5 pieces of research, contextual, production, market, topic and audience.
They all had a massive impact on the outcome of my project, for example the audience research was an integral part of the development
process. I wanted my audience to choose everything that would be included in the design from the characters to the location of the levels. I
thought the best way to do this would be by creating a survey that gave the audience a choice of designs and options to choose from. I
started by mocking up a few designs for the characters hairstyles and enemies that I thought would be appropriate and I also came up with a
few locations that I thought would work with the concept like an alley way and a train station. The from there I made a survey asking which
ones they liked best. From the survey I got a mix of expected results and some that I didn’t expect, like for example the hair design that won
was a ponytail when I expected a long hair design to win. I wasn’t too fazed but, I was worried I might have to change it as wasn’t that
experienced at animation as I am now but fortunately when it came to it, I forgot I was worried that I wouldn’t be able to do it and was able
to integrated it into my project well.
Another piece of research that I did that was really important to my project was the production research, this taught me the main animations
I need to do to create the project to a good standard. I focused on what I didn’t already know and needed to refresh my memory on, for
example I research a running animation, I have done this in a previous project I just thought it would be useful to look at it from a different
source and see if that made any improvements and also just to restore my memory of how to do it. In order to research this, I looked a video
on YouTube and took screenshots of each of the keyframes so when I did my experiments, I could refer back to them and create the
animation. This would then be used in my actual animation. I did this for the other 2 animations I wanted to do. A jumping sequence and a
fighting sequence, they all followed the same sort of principle and contained the same content. Overall, this research was really important as
I didn’t want to throw myself in the deep end when it came to production, I would already have enough stress with keeping to a schedule, I
didn’t need learning a new set movements on my plate as well. It also helped with keeping my production on track as I used what I had made
in experiments in the actual animation to save time, I'm really glad I did this in the end as I ended up going over the time we were given and
having to do the animations again would’ve meant id probably still be doing it during evaluation. The fighting sequence featured in the
experiments wasn’t actually included in the final piece as I had a change of heart with the concept of the clip it was supposed to be in, nether
the less it was useful to have in my back pocket if I got desperate and what I changed it to didn’t work out.
5. The market research also had a major role in my project, each of the games I researched had their own reason to
be on the PowerPoint, for example Stardew Valley helped inspire the art style, Thomas Was Alone helped inspire
the level design and Unravel 2 helped with character interaction. Firstly I want to talk about the art style. Stardew
Valley’s art style really spoke to me, its not only helped with backgrounds but with character design and
animation. For example, when I was designing the background for the sewer scene I wasn’t sure what to do, I
knew that Stardew Valley had a sewer so for inspiration I looked it up and it wasn’t exactly what I was looking for
but it solidified the design choice to make the walls brick along with a few more reference images of real life
sewers. Also when I started the mock ups of the designs for the survey the games art style was a main inspiration,
from there it influenced character designs and then the whole project for the better. Thomas Was Alone also
helped with showing me how to make good level design, its not directly shown in my work but it really helped with
the direction I took with the alley scene and jumping from point to point like they do in the game. The final product
I researched was Unravel Two, this was a quite an important part of my research as it inspired me to add in the
small interactions between the two characters. In the game itself the developers made the decision to instead of
the characters talking they have small interactions, this made me want to include it in my own work as I thought it
was really sweet, would flesh out the characters and make them more relatable.
The last piece of research that had a massive impact on my overall project and final product was the contextual
research. It was really useful to research what I did because it gave me a base layer to work from, for example I
started looking into Stardew Valley as a major player in my work because I looked at Eric Barone and his journey to
making the game and the way he made the game from nothing. It was really inspiring and interesting to see how a
game so popular came from someone who didn’t really know what he was doing when it came to making video
games. The last section of my contextual research is about the male gaze in videogames. As I mentioned earlier
this was a massive part of the character choices and the base of the game overall, I wanted to make a game that
showed off female power and showed that men aren’t needed to make a great game. This research was taken
from my essay work, I had already done extensive research into the topic so there wouldn't really be anything
more to add it.
What research did you undertake and how did it help
develop your project?
6. How did you develop and improve
your ideas throughout the project?
One of the major developments I had was when I decided to scrap the final frames that I had
planned for on my storyboard, after finishing the boss fight animation I realized that id didn’t like
how the next few frames looked, I thought they didn’t fit the rest of animation and they just felt
weird to me. I ended up deciding on having the two characters in a supermarket isle and Ari
running down the aisle and tripping on an item that had been left on the floor, I didn’t get to that
conclusion very quickly though, I originally drew the outside of the supermarket with a window
looking in but after adding in the characters I realized that the background was too big and that I
would have to redo it, I was able to salvage the shelves through the window thankfully. Then
using what I had, I created isle that I talked about earlier, it was then that I thought of adding in
item on the floor for her to trip over. It was at this point I saw my second mistake, there wasn’t a
way for me to integrate Ira into the scene, I then spent another hour making the shelves into
freezers. It was a long-winded process to get to that point, but I glad I made the decisions I did
because it looks a lot better than it would’ve done if I kept to my original concept.
There were also minor developments like the final title screen, I went through a couple ideas of
what it could look like and ended up choosing the one you see in the animation. Another
example of small developments was with the boss fight scene. When it came to designing most
of this scene I had trouble, whether it was drawing one the main characters too big and having
to redraw her or having to constantly tweak the wallpaper as it didn’t look right. In the end
though I prevailed and came out with a finished animation that I'm really happy with and in my
opinion is one of the better clips I’ve.
7. What was the outcome of the
project/task?
The end product consists of a 1-minute animated trailer for a game concept
called Other/Side.
It features a cutscene style introduction that show the main character Ari
washing her hands and bending down, as she bends down a face appears in
the mirror, her reflection but I stays in place. Her reflection has become its
own person/sentient. Here we introduce Ira the second character, she blinks
a few times suggesting she’s just woken up, she spots Ari and says ‘Hi!’ Ari
shocked as she should be, stands up immediately and says ‘What?’ she looks
into the mirror and the shot changes to and then leads into a side angle
showing the two face to face, Ira’s side a lot more decrepit looking that Ari’s
side. Ari screams and the frame cuts to black, Ultimatum by AGST plays. The
rest of the trailer continues showing off the different levels you can play on
in the actual game, you get to see what one of the boss fights in action and
also get a feel for what the game is and how it would possibly play. Then the
end card plays, the name Other/Side in white lettering, the slash appears as
red line cracking in-between the words other and side. Then the final scene
plays, the sewer from earlier only there's the date of the games release and
the light is flickering, the scene fade and black and the music fades out.
8. Personal Response
This section will explore your thoughts and feelings about the
experience. This will help gain a understand of how your personal
feelings may have impacted the final outcome.
9. How did you feel about the project before you
started?
I was really excited; I’ve had loads of game ideas some good and some bad, but I
think this one has real potential. I've never seen or heard of anything like it before
and think it could make a successful game series.
I remember I had all these character concepts in my head of what the enemies
would look like, how the animation would look for example. I wanted to get to
designing straight away so I was a bit disheartened when I found out that in had to
do research first. I’m glad I had to do this first however because it helped with
realizing my vision and made it, so I was more confident in what I doing going
forewords.
Overall, I was ready to get started and couldn’t wait to draw all these characters I
had in my head, I was also a bit scared, this project will dictate whether or not I get
into university, so basically the rest of my life, it's an incredibly important project
that I would really like to be good, and have it be something I can be proud of now
and then when I look back at it.
10. What do you think about your
project development and how did
it help you to refine your idea?
Over the course of production there were a few times where I cut content out and
replaced it with something better, for example the boss fight animation. I had originally
wanted to make them actually fight and animate a whole fight sequence but when it
came down to it, I realized that that plan was not feasible at my skill level, also it would’ve
been to long and wouldn’t have fit with the time frame. I also wouldn’t have been able to
finish my production as it would’ve taken up too much time in my schedule. In the end I
animated them about to fight, Ari moving in one place with her fists out and Melina with
her moving up and down slightly with her rings hovering around her arms and the end of
the clip the word “fight!” Appears letter by letter over the screen. I did want this to look a
bit more like something out of street fighter but again due to time constraints and my
own ability I wasn’t able to do so and plus having it in my own style is better rather than
going with what someone else has done.
But overall, I think being able to look at things and think this could be better has been a
staple in my project, there have been many times when I thought I can do better than this
and edited thing to make it better, like as an example with backgrounds, I could’ve left
them without details like in the train station I added different details that I hadn’t
planned, the plant pot on the window rather than the floor, a timetable sheet, not
including the roof of the train station like I had planned. All these ideas changed at the last
moment, and I think that’s what's really great about planning, you have an idea and write
it down but when it comes to it you can expand on that and make it something greater
than it was before.
11. How did you feel when the project was completed
and why?
I was relieved, id put so much work into this project and there was so much pressure to do well and
for it finally to be done was a weight lifted off my shoulders, I no longer had to worry about whether
or not I had enough time to complete part of an animation or stress about whether or not a
background looked like what it was supposed to. Also being told that I am on target to get the grade I
wanted really let me see the light at the end of the tunnel, I had been really worried that I would be
stuck at one grade and wouldn’t have been able to get any higher, I had a lot of pressure to do well
from home, seeing what friends had done and seeing that it was better than mine and my own self
doubt was really getting in my head telling me it wasn’t good enough. I tend to self doubt a lot and am
quite critical of the things I make. This was a big problem throughout the project, I was constantly
comparing myself to others and people that had done the project in the past, I wanted to do well so
badly and I suffered mentally because of that so to be told it was better than I thought it was a real
sigh of relief.
I’m overall just really glad I’m done with it, I can look forward to summer and then going to university,
its another step in the right direction to my future and that really excites me, I’m finally on my way to
what I want most. I think in the future I need to keep to myself when working and not look at how
other people are doing because its damaging to myself and how well I think I'm doing, I need to focus
on what I'm capable and not others.
Now all that’s left to do is wait for the results which will be nerve-racking but if I’m at the grade I think
I'm at I don’t really have anything to worry about.
12. Evaluating the project
In the previous sections, you have been commenting upon the project development. The
evaluation may include some similar information, but it will also include critical comment.
An evaluation must include information about the good and bad points of the project and it
is important to be honest. Finally, you should make a judgment about the effectiveness of
the success of the project
13. What were the good points about the
project/task and what did you learn from them?
[try and think of at least 3, more if possible]
The first good point was designing the art for the surveys. This was the first time I got to draw in
the art style id chosen and was the first time I had drawn my character, seeing her come to life on
a page finally was a good feeling and made more confident in what I was doing and how it was
going to look overall. I really enjoyed getting to produce all the hairstyles, I had to rack my brain a
little bit to produce each one, there’s only so many hairstyles that would’ve worked for my
animation and I think despite that I created a good array of options for the audience to pick from.
One of the things I enjoyed most what producing the enemy designs, I was able to have some
creative freedom with these because they could be literally anything as long as they looked
intimating. The designs that I came up consisted of: A ghost, a dark sprite, a wizard/cultist looking
creature, a guy that has black particles around him, a long-legged creature with weird teeth and a
blob that has a long face. Whilst I was designing them, I did take a bit of inspiration from my
classmates, they were suggesting ideas for what I could include, and I thought some of their ideas
were amazing and couldn’t help but include them in my own designs.
I didn’t really learn anything from this as I already draw a lot, but it did give me a newfound love
for creating weird looking creatures and monsters or to put it simply it broadened my
creativeness and I realized what I'm able to produce when I'm put on the spot with no real idea of
what I'm creating. This will be of use in the future for both university and my career, you need to
be creative to work in my chosen field and being able to do this has really helped me to advance
this skill. (I am going into game design.)
14. What were the good points about the project/task
and what did you learn from them? [try and think
of at least 3, more if possible]
The second good point was watching the final edit of the trailer. I've been doing this project since the start of February, I've
spent so many hours and put so much effort into researching products, the audience, the topic and production. Doing the
amount of research that I did allow me to get to a point where I was able to know what art style id be drawing in, what
animations I'd need to do to prepare, what my competition was in terms of other games on the market and what my
chosen style of game was really about and how the genre shaped the games we play today. Planning was also an integral
part of the process, it allowed me to prepare the animations id need for the trailer ahead of time, I was able make a
schedule and a storyboard so that I wouldn’t get overwhelmed by work, it also gave me a baseline to develop my ideas
from because by planning everything out, and during production I was able to see and then edit certain ideas that I didn’t
feel fit anymore.
All of this led me to a point where I could confidently create my animation and then be able to see and edit anything that I
felt wasn’t right and needed fixing. I think seeing my friends, families and tutors' reaction to it was the best part, it made
me feel like I'd done a really good job and that the grade that I want would be achievable. Before I showed my peers my
animation, I honestly wasn’t feeling good about it but after they saw it, they said it was really good and assured me of
that. I think one of my major flaws is being self-critical and its something I really need to work on.
From this I've learnt that you need a system and a time frame to create something great because when I've had concepts
before I've constantly come up with new additions and that’s fine if its in your own time but going into a professional
setting there are deadlines and there isn't time to be constantly changing things. Overall, this has trained me to be more
professional with how I create things and to not judge your work until someone else has.
15. What were the good points about the
project/task and what did you learn from them?
[try and think of at least 3, more if possible]
The final good point was picking the music to go along with my animation. I used a royalty free music website called
Epidemic Sound, I've used them in the past for the animation I did for The Grid project, they had a wide range of
music and sound effects which I also used in this project. (The scream used at the end of the intro was taken from
the site.) To start the search for the music, I typed in the genre I was originally looking for, 8 Bit and I happened upon
a playlist that included a wide range of songs that would all fit with what I had. Then to narrow down the songs I
listened to all of them until I had found around 6 that I liked, and thought would be a great addition to the trailer.
From there I narrowed it down again to 2, Ultimatum by AGST and Message Between by William Benckert, both of
these songs had elements I really liked and would fit seamlessly to what id created. To decide I relistened to them
and thought that out of the two Ultimatum by AGST was best, it wasn’t the exact genre I was looking for, but I don’t
think that really matters when it comes down to how it fits with my trailer.
I found this really fun as I love music and being able to take a break from all the heavy work for 30 minutes and also
be able choose some music that I liked was a really needed and was also an important decision to be made. Aside
from that, I found the perfect music for my game, and I think it overall brings the trailer to a whole new level.
From this I learnt that music is a surprisingly important step in when doing a production, it can either make or break
a piece. For the future I'm going to try and learn more about audio and its effects of both how it effects the
audience and how it can change a project for the better.
16. What challenges did you face and how did you
respond to them? Try and think of at least 3...
There were a few challenges that I faced while doing this project:
• Because I did all my production on an iPad I had a few issues with trying to export the animations, I had tried several times to
export them through Procreate using, Animated GIF, PNG, HVEC and MP4 to no avail and I was honestly stuck for what to do, I
thought that I was going to fail because I wouldn't be put the animation together and therefore not be able to present my work
which I had spent over 5 weeks creating, I was honestly crushed and lost for what to do, but thankfully my friend Aaron suggested I
screen record it, at the time I had an app on my iPad that would do just that, but again there were issues, it recorded the screen but
it was awful quality, it was too blurry and just wasn’t good enough, I then realized that I could screen record directly through my
iPad, so for good measure I tried it and when I watched back, thankfully it looked a lot better than all the other attempts I had
made to record it. I was so relieved to see this, I didn’t know what I would've done if that hadn't had worked, so in the future I'm
going to make sure that whatever platform I'm using to draw or create content on I have way of exporting the product.
• The next problems was a minor one and didn’t really cause that much of an issue, but I think it's important to remember so im
prepared for it in the future. In the start of my animation there isn't any sound but there are things that happen that would suggest
that sound would be there so, I decided that sound effects would be a good way to fill the space and at the same time make the
project better. To find these effects I went through a few websites and when I'd go on them, I'd find the sound that I needed only to
find that I needed to either pay for them or sign up to a website id never heard of before and didn’t want to risk my personal
information for a sound effect, eventually I did find a website that didn’t have all these extra things you had to do, this is where I
found the running water effect. Then to find the screaming effect I did essentially the same thing, I would keep finding sound effects
that would work only to realize they weren't free. In decided to look at the website id found the music I used on, Epidemic Sound, I
had tried this website first and realized my free trail had ended so, this meant I had to create a whole new account, and only
then did I find the sound effect I was looking for. In the future I think I need to set up a member ship with this website as it's really
useful or just make sure I have a free email to make a new account with.
• The last problem was again a small problem, it was not being able add a fade out at the end of title sequence. As this animation
wasn’t long enough, I had to add a extra frame to the end, this meant it classed as an image. I didn’t realize this straight away and
couldn’t figure out when I added the effect onto the sequence why it faded out so quickly. Unfortunaltly there wasn’t really a way
around this and given the time that I had I couldn’t re-record the animation. I instead had to opt for it fading out quickly, its not that
big of mistake at the end of day, it doesn’t ruin the trailer thankfully, I just have to remember for the future to make sure to leave
time for that kind of thing.
17. What were the negative points about the experience,
and what could you have done to improve them?
There wasn’t really anything negative about the experience, it was overall actually quite
enjoyable, I got to basically watch an idea of mine to come to life (to the extent of my skills)
that’s not something I generally do, I draw charaters here and there and write down my
ideas and concept, but they’ve never really gone as far as that. It was honestly really fun,
and it's made me really excited for the future and my career. It's my dream to be able to do
what I've done here but on a larger scale and then actually have a playable product at the
end. Not only did I see my own idea become something that I love I also saw my friends
progress, learn and make something that’s going to be start of a something greater for
them, it made me really happy to see how successful they were being and to see how much
potential they have. We're all going onto being successful at what we do, and this is just the
starting point.
18. How would you rate the final piece? [think along the lines
of poor, satisfactory, good or excellent...justify your rating]
The project as whole I would rate it a good. To start it has a strong pre-proposal that outlines the concept to a good extent, I
also has a good proposal that goes into more detail about the game and its content. Next is the contextual research, there is
a lot of well researched text that includes relevant topics and people. The contextual statement is really detailed and shows
exactly what the story is and how it's going to be made.
It has a satisfactory amount of research in each of the category's, market, audience, topic and production. It goes into detail
about what it is and why it being researched which is an important step otherwise why are you researching it in the first
place. There could be maybe another existing product but there is quite a lot of information about the 3 that have been
mentioned.
Afterwards we move onto the problem solving, in this PowerPoint there is a good mind map that illustrates potential
problems, this then leads into in a detailed table of 5 problems with resolutions that are to do with practical and technical
problems and then afterwards the same thing but for theoretical and creative problems. The problems each have quite a
detailed response to them which indicates that it's been thought on quite a bit. Then the problems that came up during
production, there is only one, but it does talk a lot about that one problem, there could be more added here from
production logs. Next onto experiments, there are 3 experiments and an initial write up before the explanation of each of
them, it talk about why I chose these specific experiments and how I plan to execute them. Each of the experiment
explanations talk about what happened during each of them and how they came out and whether or not I was happy with
them.
Next there is pre-production. There is only one slide about the initial pre-production as there isn't any need for any other
preparation other than the equipment which has a write up that talks a little bit about what equipment I'll need. After that
there's the visual planning, which firstly talks quite extensively about the storyboard, there is an introduction that explains
the important of the storyboard and how things may change from the storyboard. The next slide talk about what's
happening in the storyboard, it basically describes the pictures that follow, which are screenshots taken from the storyboard
seen below these slides. Next, the featured characters, here is a list of all the characters you can expect to see in the game,
unfortunately 2 of the mentioned characters didn’t make it in due to some design changes, there wasn’t really any room for
them, and they didn’t fit with the storyboard I had already created. To solidify the characters, I drew a few pieces of concept
art for each of them and wrote a description of who they are, and they are involved in the story.
19. How would you rate the final piece?
[think along the lines of poor, satisfactory,
good or excellent...justify your rating]
Then there's the music, I did around 4 slides for this detailed how I
found the music, what my options were and why I chose what I did I
the end. Finally, the production schedule, this is set out in a table
and shows how I plan to execute the production, it's quite detailed
and definitely helped me when I was doing production.
The final part of this is the product. Its 1 minutes and 6-second-long
animation with the song Ultimatum by AGST that displays the basic
premise of my game concept, at the start it shows a
brief introduction to the characters and how they meet, next it
shows a sample of levels/locations you'll experience as player and
the interactions you'll have. It also introduces some of the enemies
like Melina one of the many bosses in the game. In the last scenes it
features a title screen that says the title of the game with a crack
going down the screen to mimic a mirror breaking, then it shows
the sewer that was featured earlier in the trailer but instead it has
the release date on the wall and the light is flickering.
20. What is your opinion of your final piece? What
elements do you think are successful and why?
My personal opinion is that I don’t think it's very good. I think there are so many things wrong with it and
there a lot I would change if I could, for example the intro, I don’t like how it looks overall, especially the
frames where she bends down, for some reason the frame jolts outwards, I'm not sure why it does this
and I don’t know how to fix it, it really annoys me, and I really wish I could change it as I think it just
makes the whole thing off. Also, the general art in this section is not my best work, I would've loved the
opportunity to have gone back and redo it, I only realized after id finished everything else that it didn't
look as good as the rest of the animation. Another thing I don’t like is the way the music comes in, I think
it's kind of jolting and sudden, the only problem is, is that there isn't really any other way for it appear so I
kind of just had to deal with it unfortunately. The final thing that I don’t like about it is that there's a long
pause between the supermarket scene and the title scene, I don’t think it’s the worst part, but I think it's
kind of weird that it's just there, I didn’t have anything to fill it with as id ran out of time and I wanted to
ending to watch up with the ending of the music.
Now onto things that I did like, I loved the way the gameplay sections turned, out I think I actually did a
really good job with those, and I'm especially proud of the jumping and tripping animations, they look
really fluid, and I surprised myself when I did them as I just didn’t expect them to come out so good.
Another thing I liked was the music choice, I talked a bit about it earlier but it's quite a substantial part of
the product. I've had a few my friends say they like the music and I agree, it really fits with the game and
overall concept, I'm glad I managed to find it as it really adds a new level to the piece that it didn’t have
before. The last thing that I think really elevated my work was the ending, I think it’s a perfect conclusion
to the trailer, I matched the animation up to the music so they be in sync and hopeful give the impact I
was looking for and thankfully it did, it's probably my favorite part of the trailer and I'm glad there
something I can be proud of in this project.
21. How did you design appeal to
your target audience?
The whole design of the project was based off of a survey I did to determine what the characters would like (hair and outfit colors),
what enemies would be best, what name would be best and finally what locations interested people most.
For the character design the audience had a choice of 6 hairstyles and 9 color options for her outfit, the hairstyles consisted of a
straight long hairstyle, a bob, a ponytail with a long fringe, a low bun, a pixie cut and top knot. From this survey the audience
determined that the ponytail was best, I wasn’t really expecting this and had hoped that the 1st style would win as that’s what oi saw
her in at that time, I had originally said in my write up of this that I might have to change this due to the difficulty of animating
something like that but, I decided to stick with what was said and went onwards with said style. Next was the colours for her outfit, the
audience had a choice of red, yellow, orange, light blue, blue, purple, green, brown and pink. I asked for 3 colours when I did the survey
as I thought I'd need 3 but I ended up using 2 instead to make it a bit simpler for myself. From this the audience decided red and blue.
Having let the audience make their decisions I made a design of the character that was just supposed to be a draft but actually ended
up being used in the final piece.
Moving on from character design I went to enemy design, this was one of my favorites and I wasn’t really bothered about the results of
this as I liked them all. On the right you can see an image of all the characters I created, and after the survey, the audience determined
that C was the best. This is where the magic aspect starts to emerge, the character kind of looks like a wizard cult person so I took that
and ran with it and created the characters you can see the on the pre-production a page.
Next was the names, I had my biases again, this time towards the name I See You or You, the other were sort of made up on the spot to
add more options and to my surprise one of them won, Other Side, to be honest wasn’t happy about this and didn’t want to use it, but
the audience decided on it so I had to stick with it, and I'm glad I did because otherwise I wouldn’t have produced the idea to make the
title sequence.
Finally, the locations, I produced a few places that in thought would be interesting to have as level locations, put them in the survey and
waited for people to vote. The contenders were, a street, haunted woods, a shop, a back alley, the sewers, a train station and an
abandoned warehouse. I ended up choosing the top 5 which were an abandoned warehouse, the sewers, a back alley, the beach and a
train station. If I'm honest I'm not sure what happened to the warehouse and the beach, I think I must have gotten carried away with
some of the designs and forgot was people had voted for unfortunately, I did however stay true to the other 3 locations. In the future
when I'm planning, I need to go over and review whatever the audience has voted as this mistake could be quite detrimental in some
cases.
22. Analysis
In this section, you will focus on the details of the project and make
sense of what happened in the project. You should demonstrate how
your decisions informed the project development and the success of the
outcome.
23. In what ways was the overall project a success?
It was successful because I have a finished product that follows the proposal I've created. I took
time to make sure everything was as good as I could have made ii in the time frame we were
given. Although I think it has its flaws im really proud of what ive done and I think I call this
project a success, hopefully it will be the catalyst to my future.
I've done extensive research into products that have similar elements to my own, so I know my
market, what's already been done and how to create a successful project. You can see my
research in my planning and final product, the most prominent influence being the art style from
Stardew Valley, I talked quite extensively about how it inspired me and how I took the art style
Eric Barone made and transferred it and made it into own styel and work. I also wanted the
design to reflect the auidence so I made a survey and asked people to give their honset opinions
about the questions ive asked. I ended up with some really good results and some more
unexpected, but I wanted to honor what they'd said so I stuck to it and made a product that they
would like rather than something only I might like. This was quite an important thing to do as it's
not something I've really done before and a quite an important part of what I'll be doing in the
future, making something that’s for an audience is what sells things so I'm glad to have this
experience now than later.
It was successful because I was able to plan out exactly what I wanted and also leave room to
expand on it if I needed to like for example with the storyboard, I made a plan for what it would
look like, but I left room for myself to be creative in the moment, something that was a good idea
in that moment, might not be a good idea now so I'm glad I was able to give myself that freedom.
This project for me is going to be a baseline example for what to do in the future.
24. What elements did not go well and why?
One of the main things that didn’t go well was the issues I had with my iPad not exporting
my work. I tried to export it from the app Procreate quite a few times and it would always
be blurry and terrible quality, at this point I was panicking because I didn’t think I'd be
able to present it and id just have to show it segments on my iPad, which isn't ideal given
the severity of the importance of my grade. To combat this, I ended up screen recording it
through my iPad, it came out a lot better than my previous attempts thankfully and I was
able to then edit it together. I think the reason this happened was due to what I using to
do the animation, the canvas I was drawing was only a few pixels large so when I tried to
export it, it would try and enlarge it but because it's made of large pixels it didn’t work
right, so for the future I need to make sure whatever I'm using to create something
actually work properly, the best way to do this is by making a draft and the seeing if it
exports.
Another thing that didn’t go well was the editing process, it was honsetly really stressful,
it was one thing after another, the music was too long, realising that 2 of the animations
would zoom in randomly and there wasn’t anything I could do about it, the black screen
between the end of the supermarket scene and the title clip and finally the fact I
couldnt get the title scene to fade out how I wanted it to. Some of these have
explanations but some of them I couldn’t resolve like the title frame fading out and the
black screen between the shop clip and the title. Other things like the 2 clips zooming in
randomly was I think down the screen recording, I wasn’t sure how to fix it and couldn't
just leave out an important part of the intro.
25. How did your skills develop during the portfolio?
[remember, skills aren't just technical, remember things
like organisation, time management, communication]
One of the main things I noticed was my time management improved significantly, usually id be doing everything at the last
minute but this time around I've been really good at keeping on schedule surprisingly. I think that’s mainly down to me writing
out an extensive production and main work schedule, I've found that by keeping to what I said I've actually managed to get
everything in on time just about, the only things that needs completing is this evaluation and then I'm done, which as I've said is
unusual for me, I'd usually still be doing production alongside improvements and evaluation. I think this also due to the fact
that’s there's a lot of pressure to do well this time around, I have my whole future resting on getting a good grade, so it was
really important I stayed on task and didn’t get distracted.
Another thing that I managed to keep on top of was organization, again in the past I've been awful at keeping things in allocated
folders I would just save it to my one drive and call it day, but I think this time I need to be more organised, I have a lot more
images, screenshots and PowerPoints that maybe I didn’t need to think about as much before, I also think I've just grown up a
little bit, I've realised that it's better to know where things are in the long run rather than saving something somewhere
random and then having to hunt for it a month later, I know this from personal experience and I can say it's so much easier to
know where everything is and be able to access it quickly and get the work done that you need to.
I also think my art skills have developed a lot, I've realized I might actually be good at pixel art, I know I'm not amazing but where
I'm at is a start, I think in the future I'd like to explore this medium of digital art again because I find it quite easy to be able to
draw and animate things using it. Aside from that my skills as a artist have improved immensely and I'm proud of how some of
the stuff I've drawn has come out, I tend to get artists block a lot and don’t draw as much as I used to, but I think doing this
project has made me want to get back into it again and start drawing more characters from my concepts. Leading on from that,
I've also really improved with my background compostion, ive done things like that in the past but doing the art for this project
has really opened my eye to my potential at location art.
Animation is something I talked about briefly in the last paragraph, and I think it's something that I've really developed over this
project. I'm really proud of how far I've come from when I started this project, when I first started, I was scared of having to
animate a ponytail and now I've freehanded a person falling over without using references, I think my skills have really come
along and will continue to grow through university and my career.
26. What meaning and messages did you want
to convey and were you successful?
I talked a little bit about this in an earlier slide about the theme of my project but
overall, the main message I want people to hear was that women don’t have to dress a
certain way or act a certain way videogames, they also shouldn’t be perceived in any way,
women are women, they not are objects for you look at, objectify and sexualize, they are
real people who don’t deserve the amount of criticism and disrespect people (mainly
men) given them. My projects main intention is to show that female characters can just
exist and don’t have to be seen as objects as they usually are. I also made the conscious
effort to not include male characters as I wanted to prove that male characters aren't
needed to create a good story. (I also want to make a point that I don’t hate
male characters, they have their place but I think it's been done time and time again and
it's time for a change, I don’t think we should completely remove men from games I just
think that people should realise that women need to have a place as well and they should
have proper representation) The idea behind this message is make it kind of subtle, I
don’t want to point out that its only female characters, I want people to play it and see its
only females and realise that sometimes male characters aren't really that necessary and
females can lead games and do it well. The idea itself contrasts from other stereotypical
games, like for example Valorant, it is a male dominated game, it has guns, extreme
violence and the female characters presented as they usually are in video games, over
sexualized and made for the men/ the male gaze
27. What feedback did you get from your peers and viewings?
• Aaron Scott – "The art style in 'Other Side' is consistent to its theme and each fame looks as though it has been carefully
hand animated to perfection. You've shown an immense knowledge of the genre and definitely know your community in it,
this comes across in pacing and your design. Your concept for the game is unique and unlike any game I've played or heard
of before, yet the concept, idea and mechanisms come across perfectly in the trailer."
• Fred Clayton - "I thought the trailer did especially well at being a facsimile of a game trailer. Mixing cutscenes, gameplay, ui,
etc. The pixel art is all great quality and animated really nicely. I particularly enjoyed the character animations reminding me
of the old cinematic platformers like Oddworld and Flashback. The title drop and release date screens had a lot of character
and tone for being as quick and simple as they are. My only issues would be the consistency of some audio elements. The
sound was mixed a bit weird in some areas that took me out of the experience. the music was a good choice given the
aesthetic and pace of the trailer, but the long fade-in felt a bit janky and artificial given the bombastic style of the music. I
feel like a smash cut would really sell the reveal of gameplay and the sense of adventure. Some of the sound effects
(screaming and tap running) felt really out of place given the retro-inspired art style and music. a mild bitcrusher effect and
some echoey bathroom ambience would help hide some of the slightly awkward silence and give a bit more juxtaposition
between the relatively ordinary intro and the exciting second half. Overall, I think it looks really really solid and shows a lot
of talent and passion for the medium and this idea."
• Kieran Johnson - "The first thing that jumped out at me was how excellent in detail it was for the pixelated art style. The
facial features and expressions in the opening segment appear quite professional, from the widening of the eyes to the
eyebrows raising - I can get a good sense of expressionless shock out of it. Continuing on, the animations progress very
smoothly throughout the trailer, making movement look fluid - I can only imagine how much effort would have been placed
into every frame. I also think the storyline dynamic is pretty innovative, of you and your reflection somewhat being different
entities, and I like the degree of thought you've put into what kinds of situations would come out of it - such as the scene
where they're traveling through a sewer and the reflection coming through the water (and the colour of this scenario is very
well done too). It makes me wonder what more could be explored out of the story. I also like the grandiose design for the
boss, the concept for the logo at the close of the trailer is clever too, and the music used sounds like the right kind of bouncy
for a game with this kind of theme. The only thing I would like to question is if the game would have any HUD on the screen
(such as a health bar), as I could only see one during the boss fight. Other than that, this is really impressive"
28. What would you do differently in the future and why?
I think if I had the chance to redo the project I would do a few things differently, to start I
would redraw and reanimate the intro, I'd keep the concept the same just clean it up and
make it the same standard as the rest of the piece. As I said in a previous slide it’s a bit
messy for my taste and for what I expect of myself, I do like the bit where she washing her
hands, I think that bit is good it's just afterwards it just doesn’t look very good in
my opinion.
Another thing I'd change is the way the introduction transitions into the rest of the video,
I think it's kind of abrupt and doesn’t really fit well. I assumed that it would it just work
together I'd just be able to put the clips together. However, I don’t really know what I'd
put in the gap if I'm honest, I don’t think there really is anything that would work, so
maybe in the future I could plan a bit more and figure out a plan to edit together further
ahead of time, an example of how I could do this is by choosing how long it should be and
then sticking to it, that way I know how it'll all fit together in the end.
The last thing that I wish I'd done is write more about my problem solving, I ended up
writing about the main problem I faced, it is really detailed and at a standard I'm happy
with I just wish I had more time to talk about all the issues and problems I had and how I
overcame them. I think it would also have highlighted my progression more over the
project as a whole.
29. Action Plan
This section will identify what you would do differently in the future and
identify ways you could develop.
30. How could you develop your skills for future projects?
Please identify the appropriate resources and courses. For
example, webpages, tutorials, books, short courses and
qualifications.
To plan for the future, I'm going to go to univeristy to learn how to make computer games, the course I'm
taking is called Computer Gameplay Design and Production at Staffordshire University. The course is 3
years long and will teach me things like coding/scripting in Unity, narratology and Unreal Engine. I'll be
given opportunities like managing a group project, working in a group to plan and execute a game. The
course is also more theory based so it will be more technical which I think I'll benefit from in long run. Ill
also be able to take optional modules, some examples that I thought would be useful to me are, Military
Games Design, Narrative in Games, Indie Game Development in Unity and Game Interface Design. Doing
this course is probably the best next step for me, the university has ties to the games industry and will
probably help me get my dream after I finish the course.
Other things that I could do to improve me skill set to be ready for univeristy is by using SkillShare, ive
seen it advertised all over YouTube and it seems like a good platform to be able learn from, the courses I'd
probably want to take to get ready are, drawing and aniamtion, basic stripting and an introduction to
Unreal Engine and Unity.
I think even though Im not going to be doing much art anymore academically, id like to still keep my skill
in drawing, I really enjoy it and think it could be an asset to my work, especially if im creating concepts
and I need to draw something to explain part of it.
31. What personal attributes could you develop to
ensure you are working at a professional level?
I think one of the main things I can develop is my animation skills, I think im at a level
where im ok, but I have a lot of room for improvement. To do this I could use the method
ive been doing throughout this project, either using a tutorial or just using my intuition,
that way I can improve my skills on my own time and terms. It's also free if I watch
tutorials on YouTube which is a big factor for me, I'm not really the type to spend money
on things like subscriptions unless I use it every day. It would also be useful I think to
maybe explore the services that provide a more in-depth look at animation as I think it
would be really beneficial if I plan to carry on animating.
I also think I've really improved with time management, in previous projects ive always
been behind and have had to do things at the last second, I think this has been one
reasons for my bad grades in the past, I would rush through things just to get them done,
it would be quanity over quality. Fortunatly though over this project ive been mostly on
time with everything. This is due to two things, the need for a good grade and also being
on a tight schedule for both production and the other elements of the project.
