Daniel Thompson reflects on the process of creating an animation for a game. He began by selecting fonts from dafont.com to use in the main menu. He then gathered character and weapon templates to modify for his project. Finally, he created background art for the title screen and main game using Photoshop, adding elements like planets, stars, and a unique planet. He animated the characters using the templates and layers, and added sound effects and music in Premiere before rendering the finished mp4 file.

1. Production Reflection
Daniel Thompson

2. Process
First off, I needed to find the fonts I wanted to use in my animation. To do this,
I went to dafont.com. I had to use the computer’s run mode to enter the font
so I could select it in apps such as Photoshop or word. This font would later be
used in my project as the main menu's font. I feel as if this font helped the
game show off it's space/alternate/unfamiliar theme that it was striving to
achieve.

3. Process
Next, I gathered the templates that I felt would be of use to me in my project.
This would include both character and weapon templates. I would be allowed
to use them as long as I changed them in some shape or form. The mounted
unit's horse, many of the in game menu's icons and the bomb character were
all used. I feel as if the templates that were used have been satisfyingly
changed and now have their own look be it new parts added to them or parts
of the original being taken out.

4. Process
Finally, I could begin creating my background
for my title screen. I used Photoshop for this
and started off by using the pencil tool at
varying sizes to represent the planets and
stars in the background. I also used my
downloaded font to give the game it’s own
unique look. I tried sticking to my game’s
alternate universe vibe and made the planet
that the game took place on look as if it was a
different planet in a totally different part of
space. I used a couple of the templates I
gathered in this part of the animation of the
menu such as a cursor to show the viewer
where the supposed 'player' is thinking of
clicking. I also added a sword to whichever
button that the cursor hovered over to give it
more of an interactive feel and comparable to
other popular and well made flash gams such
as 'Age of War'.

5. Process
The background on my main game was made in
Photoshop too and was created entirely from the
pencil tool and made more detailed as production
went on. Once the background had been created, I
began creating the in game menu and money/exp area
at the top of the screen. The box was created with the
pencil tool and the money/exp amounts were set to a
standard that would disappear as a new unit got
created or an enemy was killed. I needed to create
different layers showing different amounts so that I
could appropriately hide and show the correct amount
for what the ‘player’ was choosing. Each character was
created using the templates that I collected and my
own work using the rectangle shape and pencil tools.
They each had their own two stances: ‘Peaceful’ and
‘attacking’. This meant that I had to play around with
the layers and merge some while also deleting others
to create a clear difference to the templates and a clear
differentiation between unit types.

6. Process
Now I had finished making the animations, I had to render them at 20 fps and
put each frame to 0.2 seconds each. The next program I would use would be
called Premiere. I added the now rendered video to it and I went back to
YouTube and searched for appropriate sound effects and music. Once found, I
converted them to mp3s and then added them to my project. The program
allowed me to efficiently and accurately move the mp3s to the correct places
to bring the experience together. Once I’d finished moving the files into
places, I rendered it into an mp4 as a finished file.