Rebecca Edwards created a pixel animation experiment to practice animation techniques for a future game project. She used pencil and eraser tools to draw frames of blinking eyes in an anime style, adding color and shading over multiple frames. She adjusted the timing of each frame to make the blinking look realistic. For her game, she created a grid for a match-3 puzzle scenario and duplicated image tiles to fill the board. She plans to add background, icons, animation, and music in future iterations. Through testing her animation, she found errors to correct by duplicating and hiding assets between slides. For her final project, she will focus on asset size, thorough testing, and ensuring theme consistency between visuals and music.

1. Experiments
Rebecca Edwards

2. Process
• For this experiment, I mainly focused
on using the Pencil tool and the Block
Eraser Tool as I was creating the
animation design in a pixel format. In
order to create this design, I mainly
referenced various sources from the
internet in order to better replicate the
anime style I wanted. After creating a
basic outline for each frame, I added
more detail to the drawings, such as
colour and shape and made sure to
shade the main part of my animation
(being the eyes). Lastly, I looked at all
my frames playing and altered how
much time is spent on each frame in
order to make the blinking more
realistic.

3. Reflection
• I think I would like to include some elements of this experiment in my final
product, such as my drawing technique, the timing effects used on the slides and
how the slides can be duplicated multiple times in order to create a more
smoother transition. However, the final game may not contain such detailed facial
features, so this art style and animation techniques will most likely be applied to a
characters movement, interaction with an object etc. I also want to take the
shaded colour effect into my final video game as it will add more depth and
shadows to the colours of objects and character(s) so to make the final product
look more polished.

4. Process
For the beginning of my game concept, I
managed to complete the basic grid layout for
my game’s swipe-matching scenario. After
attempting multiple ways of creating a grid, I
eventually decided to create a new layer with
one square and then proceeded to duplicate this
layer multiple times, placed the separate layers
in the correct place and merged all the layers
together. Additionally, I also started to create all
the icons that will appear in the grid, due to this
game being a dark, goth style game, I wanted to
create icons like a skull, sword or other
associated symbols or images. Tomorrow, I plan
to add the background to my game setting, this
being along the lines of a graveyard/gothic night
setting and finishing the creation of all my icons
that will be used in the grid before moving onto
assets like animation and music.

5. Process
I managed to complete the rest of my
experiment assets that would be placed in the
grid. I also began the animation process of the
match 3 game scenario as well as adding in other
features, such as the tube 'point counter' to the
left of the grid. I have also created and exported
a short piece of music that could be played
alongside the animation to create a more
realistic game playing atmosphere. However, I do
need to compile the song and animation into a
final concept clip so they can be viewed together,
as well as look over my animation and fix any
errors that may be there, having already noticed
one before writing this process post.

6. Process
I went back through my current animation to
successfully correct my animation as I had
noticed previously that one or two of my match 3
blocks were empty and were missing an asset. I
managed to correct this by duplicating certain
assets to some of my slides, making them
visible/non-visible on specific slides of the
animation. However, in the final product, I will
make sure to check before creating more slides
for animation as it can be noticed in my
experiment animation that due to some of the
placed assets appearing in different places or
glitching out of the position they're supposed to
be in. I also tried to make the match 3 gameplay
near the same length as my gameplay music

7. Reflection
• For my final product, I need to keep in mind the size of the assets I will include in
my final game as it seems that when I added the images into the grid, they were
too big and shrinking the images down seemed to distort most of the artwork. I
also should remember to check each scene/slide carefully before continuing the
animation process as faults in the animation will be carried through and therefore
will take more time correcting. Furthermore, I should also remember my game's
overall theme when creating the music as a mismatched piece of music would
affect the whole gameplay and confuse the player. Additionally, I will mainly keep
in mind the imagery and the themes I have used as they both seem to be areas I
may have excelled in during the production of these products. I will also try to
improve upon my music creation for the final production process.