Jake Greenwood created four initial video game ideas and additional box art concepts for his final major project (FMP). He conducted research on existing video games and box art designs, including gameplay analyses, surveys, and interviews. Greenwood experimented with animation effects in Photoshop to improve his skills. For pre-production, he designed layouts and selected colors and fonts for the video game and box art. Greenwood created backgrounds and characters for his animated video game using Photoshop before adding sound effects and music in Premiere Pro and GarageBand. Finishing the audio portion took longer than expected but Greenwood was pleased with the 8-bit sound effects created using BeepBox, an online tool he had not used before.

1. Production Reflection
Jake Greenwood

2. Process
In the first week I did my initial plans where I thought
about what I want to do for my FMP, I came up with four
different video game ideas, usually I would have done
three but because the is FMP I decided to do four instead. I
wrote about the features the games and about there style,
however I didn’t go too in-depth because I still wasn’t
completely sure about my ideas, meaning I hadn’t thought
of everything that would be in them. I didn’t just do a mind
map for a video game, I also planned to do an extra project
which would be box art for the game I picked, so I did a
mind map for that. Once I picked the game and box art I
wanted to do I then did another two mind maps describing
them more in depth. In my opinion the strengths of my
initial plans are my ideas, there very different to each other
and very unique compared to other existing products, and I
think there all very good ideas. Also I think my mood board
is very good because of the amount of images I showed,
and in my opinion it defiantly expresses what my products
will be like. However I do think there are some negatives to
my initial plan, first of all I don’t I wrote enough for my
initial reaction, and I think I should have explained it more,
and if I get more time I’ll write more.

3. Process
On week two I did my research where I researched five different video
game products, I analysed each one and wrote about the gameplay, the
graphics and there narratives, the strengths of doing this is because in my
opinion there the most important qualities of a video game, however the
weaknesses of doing this are, your not going to have enough time to
analyse other important features of video games like tone or theme. I had
played most of the games I researched so there wasn’t much need to go on
the internet. As well as doing research on video games I also did research
on there box art, because I plan to do a video game and box art for my
FMP. When analysing the box art I mainly focus on what layout they had
and how it effects the audience, this is good because I could then replicate
that for my products, however the negatives of doing that means its not
my idea, and I prefer making my ideas. In my opinion doing research
helped to give me more ideas on how to improve my products. In my
research I also did a audience survey, where I made a survey on
surveymonkey.com and got people to 18 people to complete it, after that I
reviewed the statistics. I think doing this survey is helpful because it helped
me to get to know my audience, as well as see what I need to add to my
products. Finally for my research I did two interviews to get more in-depth
answers from my audience, I think this was helpful because I got to see
some options from my audience, what they think would look good and
what they think won’t look good.

4. Process
On this week I did my experiments, I only experimented
with stuff that I thought I needed practice in. so I went on
Photoshop to practice animation effects. This was
probably the most helpful stage of production, because
after completing the experiments I felt more confident
with my skills to create my final product. My experiment
was ten seconds and it shows four different power. After I
finished the experiment I reviewed it and wrote about the
process of making it, this was helpful because it allowed
me to see what went well and what didn’t go so well. I
also started my proposal where I basically gave an
overview about the products that I was going to create, I
wrote about my audience, my experience when making
video game, the concept of my products and an evaluation
of it, I think this is good because it puts your whole idea on
to one page, and lets me see what I’ve got so far. The
strengths of focusing on effects for the experiments allows
me to work on effects easily on FMP, because I’ve had that
extra training, which in my opinion is super helpful.
However the negatives of focusing on effects were, I
wasn’t able to practice anything else, but I did have
knowledge on the other aspects because of past work, it
just would have been good to update my knowledge.

5. Process
This week I started and finished my pre production,
where I wrote about what features I’ll use in my video
game and box art, such as font, colours and the
meaning behind why I’m using those certain things. Also
in the pre production I did layout plan where I designed
two layouts for video game and two for box art. I think
this part of the planning is good because you get an
idea of what your project might look like. Some
strengths of my research were, I explained in detail
about what colours I will use in the video game and box
art and I explained why I used them. I think this is good
because it helps me and the audience visualise what my
products will look like, and I’m pleased with how I
explained it. Another strength to my pre-production is
the layouts, once again it helps me and the audience
visualise what the products will look like, and in my
opinion they look quite good. A weakness to my pre-
production would be my health and safety plan, in my
opinion I defiantly didn’t write enough, and it defiantly
doesn't show the best of my abilities.

6. Process
This week I started my production on my video game, I
used Photoshop to create the animation. First of all I
started by creating the background, I had to do three of
them, and out of everything I had to do for the video
game making the backgrounds was the most time
consuming thing because of the amount of detail I
wanted to put in, However this did leave me a bit burnt
out. After completing the backgrounds I start making
the characters this was defiantly the most challenging
part of the video game product, as I tried to make them
and there animations look perfect, and it became trial
and error trying to make them look good. In the second
week I finished of the animation, I had to export it as 5
different videos because I had done so much, which was
a bit of a hassle, but not to much of a problem. After
doing that I imported all the videos into premier pro so I
could put them together and add in sound effects and
music, this wasn’t my favourite part of production as I’m
not the greatest with music however I think I did a
pretty good job with the sound effects, I used beep box
to make them.

7. Process
In the final week before half term I focused on finishing
my video games audio and completing that part of
production, Finishing off the audio did take a bit longer
that I thought it would it didn’t put me too far behind
schedule because I finished my animation sooner that
expected, I defiantly think I did better in animation than
audio, because I have had way more experience in it. To
make the sound effects for my video game I used Beep
Box and to make the soundtracks I used Garage Band,
and to put it all together I used Premier pro. I am familiar
with using premier pro and garage band, but I had never
used beep box before, so I was a bit sceptical about
using it, however a negative of doing this was I might of
taken too long trying to figure it out. It sort of work out
in the end, however I did get a bit frustrated with beep
box at some points, so if I could do it again I would
practice using beep box more. Over all I think my sound
effects from beep box came out really well, to say that
I’ve never used the site before, in my opinion the sound
effects fit perfectly with the 8-bit theme, however a
negative to making 8-bit music is that a lot of people find
it annoying.