Joe Duffy reflects on his process for creating pixel art characters for his production. On day 1, he established files and guidelines. He struggled with character proportions but managed detailed work on Arwynn, including her coat, sword, and legs. On day 2, he finished Arwynn and began Fletcher, struggling with his complex hair and narrow face. By day 5, he made progress on Fletcher's hair, armor patterns on his chest, belt, and legs, and adjusted colors. He also reworked the design of the third character Celeste. The document provides an in-depth look at Joe's pixel art character creation process and design challenges.

1. Production Reflection
Joe Duffy

2. Process: Day 1
Wednesday 8th May
On Day One, I decided to begin the production by
creating every layer and file I could think of that I
would be making at some point during production.
This is an attempt at avoiding my previous struggles of
knowing where everything is. When actually drawing,
I started with the more simple but seriously important
parts. What I mean by this is that I made the
proportions of the wall, lava and path as accurate to
the size of character and would allow each part to be
visible at all the times. Since the area moves I also had
to produce a long layer, but I will admit I don’t know at
what point in the scroll each story beat will happen.
Based off these area sizes, I drew lines on the page as
guidelines for different parts of the character’s bodies.
Speaking of which, I was having trouble with what I
should do about the characters. As I was working in
the same pixel ratio as my previous project I still
wanted to improve upon their models. I thought
about copying work from a larger pixel sized
document, so I could add more details but then
realised the size of the art would be much too big for
the smaller image, with decreasing the art size
warping it out of clearness. I knew I had to have the
characters models be larger to even attempt more
detail but the most trouble came with the face.

3. Process: Day 1/Day 2
8th Wednesday/9th Thursday May
This was especially true with my first character, being Arwynn since she had large eyes
that had to look clear while not consuming too much space. I am actually impressed with
what I managed to do, having the head face slightly right to show where she is going to
move which also went into the hair, with darker brown representing hair that was layered
on top of the general piece. I had to leave the bottom of the hair so it would drape the
coat later.
With the coat, I first got the general shape (that I would edit later, especially with the
introduction of the legs) and the split where it would be buttoned up. After the colouring,
I went with the arms, having both be different shades to pronounce their position. The
darker being further back as a simple lighting style which would be used with the legs. The
hands were kind of difficult like the face, needing to be clear but small. I think I did a
pretty good job overall and after the major middle parts were implemented, I added the
details like the sort of lines in between the puff like coat, buttons and a pocket, along with
the navy blue jumper. Now I could the remaining hair. The part that I was a bit afraid of
was the sword she wields. From my concept arts, I could tell my level of detail may have
been a little much (and I tried to make it simpler than previous versions) so translating it
would be difficult. I started with the Dragon eye centre, trying to get the size right
comparatively to Arwynn. I took my guess and rolled with it, adding the hilt with its black
and red, tipped with sharp teeth. My lucky estimate fit perfectly which allowed me to put
the fingers going around it. I wasn't intricate with the blade, going with a more general
shape of what I thought its size would be, but with the amount of them I'll have to do for
layers it may have been better to have a proper reference. I only got to begin the leg part
of the model but I was finding difficult to make trousers that were somewhat baggy but
didn't look like they'd fit three Arwynn's into them. Before we finished, I began making
the cuffs of the boots to see if they would change how the trousers would look.

4. Process: Day 3
Friday 10th May
On the next day I finished the legs, managing to
fund the right shape that fit the rest of her. I made
the boots brown as they were originally bit I found
they blended a little too much into the path so I
adjusted them to be more of a reddier colour.
Wrinkles were put on the trouser ends for some
more detail. The sword's colour was slightly altered
too, with a lighter grey sheen to add a kind of depth
on the blade.
As the pose I was working on was the idle pose, I
created two new layers for Arwynn which I slightly
adjusted the hair, arms, legs and eyes as well as the
sheen on the sword for to make her look more
active. I made a document to see how it looked and
it was alright, tweaking parts that seemed a bit too
jumpy.
I began work on my second character, Fletcher.
However the hair seems to be far more complicated
to make than Arwynn's as it has a lot of curls. His
face is also narrower so adding his facial details will
be tricky. Due to this I didn't get very far on his
model.

5. Process: Day 4
Monday 13th May
On Saturday I didn't do much to progress on production, only
working on how I would make the face of Fletcher appear. I worked
on the face shape before the hair as the hair world go around his
head into his beard. I could only guess on how to proportionate so
the hair and facial features would fir well. With hope, I moved onto
the hair. I thought about how I adjusted Arwynn's fringe, trying to
reduce each sticking out part to a few pixels. I had to be a lot more
intricate to convey the curliness without overdoing it. The parts
where this was most difficult was his large central curls and the
curls on his beard. Once I had a decent idea of where these parts
went, I got a darker orange to make the hair layers a bit distinct as
well as give it more vibrancy, especially with the previously
mentioned difficult curls. The face wasn’t as complex as the prior
character, with the eyes being much simpler underneath the mask
and big toothy grin not being as much of a struggle to shape as I
expected. Humorously, on the Sunday I re-checked the design and
realized I wanted to make the hair taller so that was the first task on
Tuesday.
As I mentioned in my Pre-Production I wasn’t satisfied with my
previous design of Celeste, the third character to pixelate. On the
Monday I set out to remake the face, changing it far more than I
expected I would, blending elements from the Princesses, Zelda and
Elsa who funnily enough have magical abilities themselves. I did my
best to keep most of the essential design choices from the previous
look, with slight edits to give her clothes an extra depth.

6. Process: Day 5
Tuesday 14th May
As I mentioned yesterday, the first thing I tweaked on
Fletcher's appearance was by slightly increasing the height of
the hair to give more space for the different colours and
shapes to be distinct.
Using my reference from the previous project, I also changed
the colour of the eyebrows to better stand out from the rest
of the hair.
Using the lines I created to section off portions of the
characters, I had to make the body more controlled than
Arwynn's as there is a lot more going on that cannot be
changed later without a lot of moving about. I estimated
about where the armour and under garment would be, which
I slightly decreased for the latter later, and left it until the arms
were done to make sure it would be all correct.
Again as with the main body segment, Fletcher has a much
more complex set of arms than Arwynn, with different fabrics
overlaying bare skin at parts on both. I tried my best to keep in
proportional with the rest of the character while keeping the
vital segments, with the gloved left side and guard on the
right. I am proud of how clear I managed to make these parts
look but will admit both sets of fingers, with the bow holding
one coming later, look a little less succinct but I did my best
with the limitations of the art style.

7. Process: Day 5
Tuesday 14th May
After these parts were completed, I was confident to begin crafting the patterns of the chest guard. I first tried to make the centre line of
triangles larger to fit the larger model but realised a smaller version would give space to other patterns and allowed to give the middle a
longer line of triangles. The swirls were pretty difficult to do as I had to show the curling in a small area but with enough shuffling
around I was satisfied with the result. I added triangles slightly to the side to show the character was at a slight tilt toward the right.
The belt was more of a struggle than I expected as I didn't know how best to represent the metal segments going around it. I first made
them all bulky but on the right side there wasn't enough space so I did the opposite and made them all skinny single lines. This left a lot
of unused space however so I tried to find a middle ground, bulking the centre part and on the right hand side, only doing it on one half.
This turned out successfully which was nice! As I mentioned before, a part of the body felt a little too long so I used the magic wand tool
to drag the belt up to shorten it, make the process efficient. As with Arwynn, the legs were quite a struggle. The shaping wasn't as bad
as the former but colouring them took some time. This is best shown through the boots as they faces the same fate as Arwynn, with the
original colours blending too much into the path. However I didn't want the legs, boot cuffs and boots to be similar greens so I took
some inspiration from what my bow would be and fashioned the boots tonve more toward an aqua colour than mostly just green. This
was done for the soles as well and the effect doesn't lookout of place. The shape of the boots to the legs needed constant adjustment to
look like they flow well but I managed it eventually. I almost forgot to implement the dagger and it's sheaf onto his leg for extra style
points! As the original design seemed somewhat bland, I made the hilt of the dagger circular to make its design little more interesting
and had the sheaf run further out than the leg to look like it properly circuled it.
As I implemented all of these various greens, I decided that the mask didn't match the tone that well as it was much lighter which also
didn't make it stand out from the lighter face. I slightly changed the mask's colour to be darker which solved both of the issues
mentioned previously.
I had to wait to create my quiver as it hung behind mostly his body but a little of his legs would be hitting the bottom side. I kept to the
green aesthetic, with some yellow patterns along the top and bottom. I put different, vividly coloured arrows at the top to show the kind
of elemental fire power he has. The bow was a little more difficult and it has three curves that I needed to represent. My first attempt
was a little too long so I cut the bow down from the top so I knew where the bow ended. I eventually figured out the right proportions
and since it also went behind Fletcher, I took a guess ar where about the other end would be as an exact opposite.
The last piece for the design was the Cape as it was behind every other article of clothing. As it was only made up of two colours, that
being yellow and green, it wasn't too difficult to proportion correctly the first time, but keeping it in around the centre of the character
required some tweaking by shuffling the green edges.

8. Process: Day 6
Wednesday 15th May
As I had done previously, a couple of slightly different
duplicates were made to create an idle pose. As there
are more seperate pieces, like the cape and quiver, I had
a little more moving to do than Arwynn. I added little
bits of hair, both on the outside shape and patterns
within and moving the arms. The moving of the right
arm was a struggle to adjust. This is because the process
was tedious to do as, since all the colours had a similar
tone of green, the magic wand tool picked up parts I
didn't want to move so I had to go manually around the
shape of the arm. While this was a struggle, with the
polygonal lasso sometimes not being responsive, I did
eventually get to shuffle the arm and bow. The other
arm wasn't as difficult, with me only needing to replace
parts with the background colour, but it still took quite a
bit if time to manoeuvre it. The Cape didn't require too
much complexity as it doesn't have a solid shape to stick
by. The legs were the same as the left arm, only
requiring some slight movement for the cape to be in
between. With the cape, since parts in front moved, I
had some spots to fill in which got kind of difficult to
follow but I am pretty sure I've made it all... hopefully!!

9. Process: Day 6
Wednesday 15th May
As I had recently redesigned Celeste, I had very little time to think
I about how exactly I would translate that look into the pixel form.
This was evident from the initial struggle I had with the face. My
first attempt was much too wide, especially compared to the
other characters. This was probably due to the fact that the fringe
had a lot of complex details gone into it, therefore necessitating a
wider work area. This evidently became an issue once I began
trying to implement the eyes as they were clearly too wide. With
a little moment to think about how to proceed, I decided the best
course would be to restart since the face would be the main point
to base the rest of the body on and I shouldn't rush it despite the
hard time crunch. I kept the former face as a slight reference, with
the colours being the key part to retain. I took greater focus on
how the other characters designs worked, first and foremost
making the fringe far less detailed to keep the size in touch with
the other characters. I didn't get much further today, with the end
of the lesson being spent to make sure the jaw was mostly the
same shaping as the drawing I made was.

10. Process: Day 7
Thursday 16th May
Today I properly cracked on with Celeste, so I could move on to the more advanced
moving processes.
I followed the same principles as before, keeping the hair within a certain amount
to keep a proportional body. I left the lower parts of the hair so I could overlay any
clothing with it. I added lines to the main hair curves to represent the hair as less
blocky. I spent a lot of time on the eyes as they were by far the most complex set I
had done before. I also had to contain them in the face I made along with fitting
with the hair placement. As well as this, I had my pencil drawing to go off so the
task was difficult to fully complete. I slightly changed the black of the pupil to make
it distinct against the eye lines. The beetroot coloured part also needed to be
placed without consuming the whites. Considering all of this, I think I did really well
in controlling the size of them. The nose I drew would also seem difficult as the
nostril area wasn't as clear as other ones I made with different shades giving
depth. As with the eyes however, I accomplished the look well, using two darker
shades of pink to give the before mentioned depth. I attempted adding the actual
nostrils but they appeared enormous on her face. The lips were more curved when
drawn, which I thought would be difficult to portray with the pixel art style.
However, with a few edits on the lips sizes, I think the product ended up looking
good. A key part from the original design I wanted to keep were the freckles which
fortunately placed nicely under the eyes. With the lighter skin tone, they even look
more vivid than in my Video Game project.

11. Process: Day 7
Thursday 16th May
I then moved on the collar after adding her neck. I didn't have much space to do anything sophisticated
with it but I tried to show stripes with different coloured lines. I had also given Celeste a hood and made
it so the piece of clothing wrapped from in front of the collar and as with the eyes I made the hood two
different blacks, in for the outer part and the inside. I also had the hood appear throught the hair,
speaking of which I also finished off the hairs ends at this time.
I naturally progressed onto the shirt, with a pretty larger estimate for size since it would be covered by
the coat. Speaking of which, to get the length of the coat, I drew out the rims that would also hit against
the shirt serving the dough the purpose of the shirt width and coat length. To begin detailing the shirt, I
made what was once a broach in the original design, a necklace with the swirled emerald to add more
colour and a more magical sense to the character. I put the black line for the split and then proceeded to
add the stripes to the design. Finally I produced the blue triangle buttons to finish the shirt.
The coat wasn't as planned as the previous characters clothes, with a pess controlled shape as it went
around the mentioned yellow rim. The arms would be the same colour but to show their actual shape I
replicated what I did with the eyes, by making the black slightly lighter. The hands look a little odd but I
actually like them quite a bit since they have little colour changes to show more seperate fingers, and red
nails make them stand out from the black coat. The other hand holds a red book as her main tool, and I
tried to represent the hand holding it. I think I did pretty well, with my guess that most people could see
it.
In my new interaction of Celeste I made it so she had two belts, just to make her already far more
detailed design even more so! They are coloured purple and a darker green to bring more unique colours
to the already pretty colourful design. The legs share the beetroot shade of the eyes but I didn't progress
much further than that during College time.
As I didn't finish her feet in College, I decided to push on to the end at home. As with a lot of the design,
her boots had a fresh take, with their backs going further up the leg that the rest. It was difficult to
achieve this but I did the best I could. I decided the dotted motif on the arms should be carried onto the
boots and the yellow really stood out from the blue.
I am much happier with this new design than the previous one and I really tried to keep it proportionally
correct but when completed, I will admit that perhaps her legs are slightly shorter than the rest of the
cast and her head appears slightly larger. On the whole however, I am very happy with how its turned out.

12. Process: Day 8
Friday 17th May
As with the previous characters, I made a couple more
frames that made up the idle animation. With this I slightly
moved the arms, legs and moved parts of the coat with its
looser physics while moving the blue lines. The eyes have
three parts that move from left to right. Speaking of the
eyes, the default was changed to look more toward the right
as I felt she was staring more so toward the screen. The
mouth and nose were minutely changed to make her face
look more lively. The shirts stripes also moved a bit to show
the fabric's more flexible build.
Once all the characters and the idle animations were done, I
moved onto the walking movements. To achieve this, I
followed an image reference that played out the first five
points of movement. However I had to implement three
more as the frames had to be done in reverse to make a
loop. I began with Arwynn, originally planning to create an
entirely new model for all eight frames. When I said this in
my head I realised how ridiculous that sounded so I decided
to base all the frames off my original!

13. Process: Day 8
Friday 17th May
I kept my approach simple to cut some time, by
mostly focusing on the arms and legs. Throughout
I did change parts like the lines on the coat and
slightly moving the mouth but that was mostly it. I
had to make new assets for the legs on every part
but only had to use two arm parts, for behind and
in front of her. With each frame I duplicated the
arm and added or took away parts that would fit
the frame which cut time. To follow the template
of sorts, I also slightly elevated or decreased the
height of her which will carry through to the other
characters to show a vot if a natural bobbing
movement as they walk. The process was
decently tedious despite Arwynn probably being
the easiest to animate but after testing it, the
walk looked relatively smooth. I appreciate this as
in my Video Game project, the characters
movement was limited to a small shuffle.
Hopefully the rest don't give me a really hard time
but I am not optimistic about what's next.

14. Process: Day 9
Monday 20th MayAs Monday was a day off College I tried to use some time to work on
my production with as minimal procrastination as possible!
As I had made my walking frames for Arwynn in a seperate document
to avoid cluttering my page, I first had to copy the frames into the
main piece and place them in the right file.
A part of my product will hopefully have the characters looking at a
huge skeleton in awe. This means I had to create a couple of frames
that were the back of the characters. It was somewhat difficult to
proportion Arwynn's design, even with the idea I used for the original
character design by using lines to place each part. I started with the
feet and legs which look simple but took quite a long time to get the
shape right so it wasn't too wide or slim. Thankfully I could just
reference my other model for colour so that part was taken care of.
The issues I had with the legs carried through to the body, head, with
the hair, and arms but I did try to get it close to the right shape. I did a
second frame with slightly shifted hair and coat lines as well as the
arms.
I also drew an overworld design to generate a clearer image of how
the key elements would be positioned and more significantly,
detailed. Obviously this drawing isn't a one to one in what parts will
be put where and if even some of the features don't make it in as the
shape of the paper and layer in Photoshop are very different and it's
much simpler to draw out the layout with pencil rather than a mouse.
I like to think of it as a basis to loosely translate onto the computer
without trying too hard to copy it completely.

15. Process: Day 10
Tuesday 21st May
As I had just made a walking animation, I decided to use this
newly learnt skill soon after so the process could be easier. This
lead to me designing the walk for Fletcher.
The same basic processes were the same, with the legs and
arms being mostly the only changes. However as the
introduction of the cape meant Fletcher had more layers to his
design then Arwynn, I had to account for more objects. I came
to realise this when adjusting the arms, as I saw how the arm
holding the bow clashed with the quiver set behind it. These
parts also overplayed the Cape so I had to think about the most
effective way to move the three parts without using up too
much time. I decided that I would take out the cape for all the
frames so that it didn't obstruct the smaller, more intricate
moving parts. Speaking of which, I created entirely new models
for the arms and quiver that could be pasted into each frames
so they remained consistent in shape but shuffle their
positioning slightly. The back arm was a little tedious to make as
I wanted it to be as close to the original as possible but the
shape isn't the easiest to pull off. I think I did well but I had to
re-add the fingers as with the first version I forgot to do so.

16. Process: Day 10
Tuesday 21st May
A part of the movement I remember that I struggled
with on Arwynn is when the arm in the foreground
stretches forwards. This is because the body remained
mostly the same in shaping so the arm would be hard
to fully go outwards. This problem was far more
apparent when considering Fletcher, as his chest area
is more solid than Arwynn's more free flowing coat. In
order to reduce the bizarre arm movement of keeping
the shoulder very far left, I moved all the details of the
chest plate further over so the arm wouldn't have to
travel a lot of distance. The arm still looked a little
stretched but all together the slight movement of the
chest worked effectively.
After the College day ended, I decided to stay for
around 45 minutes so that I could touch up on all the
frames of animation. This was mostly through the
reinstalling of the cape which wasn't too much of a
chore considering its intentionally inconsistent shape.
Using the pencil and paint bucket tool, each colouring
was simple but sometimes making sure the cape's
edges were not too thick took a bit of time to fix up.

17. Process: Day 11
Wednesday 22nd May
To keep in the same rhythm as Arwynn, before the College day actually began
I decided to make the back sprite for Fletcher at home. I began making some
detailing to the belt area until I realised his cape would cover his entire body.
This was a kind of relief as I hadn't really thought of what the back of
Fletchers armour would look like! To make the cape more visually interesting,
I tried to add creases where it may be baggier near the neck. I also
implemented some shadow effect to make the creases appear more real. The
head was difficult to shape as I had to think about the head, hair and their
curls. On top of all this, the ears also had to fit correctly so a lot of trial and
error lead to an alright size in my opinion. As I mentioned with the Arwynn
sprite, I did another layer where the arms, hair and lines of the cape were
slightly moved.
As I had created this pattern, I knew the next step would be to make a Celeste
walking animation. From analysing the original character art, I realised I had
to modify the basic body a lot more than the prior designs since the coat
wouldn't permit the foreground arm to stretch forward as much in a realistic
way. The legs would also benefit from this change as their motion would be
far apart if the first coat placement was used. During the development I had a
realisation that in both the frames of walking and the idle stances, Celeste
didn't have a colour to represent the back of her coat. I had to pause on the
current work to make sure the previous interactions had this detail and them
continued with the new segment added with each new frame.

18. Process: Day 11
Wednesday 22nd May
I learned from my experience with Fletcher that
making layers seperate from rack key frame
would make the process easier, so I did make an
arm that would extend backwards that could be
re-used and altered to fit the specific motion it
was linked with. Another part I made a seperate
layer were the legs. This was because the coat
wrapped around the limbs so having the legs full
scope in front of the coat was a lot easier to
work with. I copied the legs from the previous
frame and moved it above the next part and
moved parts from there. If there was something
I would have liked to improve upon, it would be
moving the belt along with the coat as
admittedly, it is far too to the left than is
realistically should be. Small changes like the
differing lines in the fringe, increased length of
hair and slight width increase of the smile were
also added to give the whole body complete
movement. I then transferred the frames as
with the rest of the heroes into the main
document.

19. Process: Day 12
Thursday 23rd MayAs a part of the scene where the other characters stare at an
interesting part if the area, Celeste insists they carry on. I
wasn't sure if I should be consistent and perhaps save a lot of
time by having her also face backwards but decided to give
her appearence more flare. I tried to reduce the amount of
time I spent recreating her model by instead focusing on the
key parts that had to change to express her emotions. This, of
course, started with the face. I had my worries as the original
look was tough enough to present but my first face came out
very well. I only changed the left eye to squint a little and I
realised this made her look sceptical and ticked off. To
embellish on this, I had her eyebrow raise and reversed the
mouth to be a frown. From this I decided the animation
would be four frames, so that I could share two faces
between all the movement to reduce my stress of a lot of
faces to make up. I knew how I would use the four frames by
having three be used to elevate the foot from the ground and
have the left arm go up and down. I decided to have the left
foot stay stagnant to keep focus on the tapping and the right
arm was placed in her hip to show frustration with no
movement. The moving arm had new limb models but I was
able to use the same hand for each part which served two
purposes, to shorten development time and keep a
consistency of movement.

20. Process: Day 12
Thursday 23rd May
I decided to take a break from character design to focus on my very neglected environment. I
chose to start this task with the only segment I didn't set up from the start, that being foreground
stallecmites. These weren't implemented before as I needed character reference for their height
but now it was possible. The rough look was easy to do as they didn't have an obvious look other
than their pointy tops. I carried on doing the shapes, with the path as a guide for the correct
length. I also made sure there was space for lava to be visible between the path and foreground.
Speaking of which, I then went on to make the lava effect. I wanted to portray a kind of ripple but
had honestly not made a solid plan of what I would do. I thought to make the basics first, giving
the lava peaks and troughs to show the inconsistent shape of it. I knew orange and yellow would
be added and decided to add them as streaks over the red. I filled in the colour with the paint
bucket tool as it was faster but discovered multiple presses gave the strips a bit of an ambient
glow which was very useful. These parts shuffle between frames but the most movement would
be in the bubbles. It was at this point that I chose that each part of the environment would have
three frames of movement, so the bubbles were made up of small size, about to burst and
exploded. I realised I could make my job easier by putting the bubble parts as their own layers to
re-use through the length of the lava. This was so helpful and their darker colour made them more
prominent. I finished my lava work at home and had a lot of stress when touching my screen
flipped the work upside down for a little bit. With patience I fixed it but I was very worried. I
practised the foot tapping Celeste and it worked successfully, and I also went for the walking in
the overworld. I used Arwynn as a start and chose to have her walk into the centre of the screen,
proceeding with her staying central while the rest of the landscape moves backwards. I produced
the whole cast and it worked great. Hopefully I can continue the success with the rest of the
movement to do.

21. Process: Day 13
Friday 24th May
After the lava was made, I focused on the foreground
details with cracks and streams of lava being added first to
match the environment overall. This was pretty simple to
do although I had to replicate the lines for the two extra
layers without being too similar so the piece looks like its
moving a bit as it goes across the screen. However after
doing two worthy of this repeating process, I realised I
could quick select the part in screen and translate that
specific part onto another layer without taking the entire
layer's details with it which was lucky! A feature I was sure
would make it in to the final product would be glimmering
diamonds to make the area look a lot more vibrant. I
followed my idea from the lava bubbles and created each
one individually to be merged with the foreground
whenever needed. Red, blue and green were the most
prominent colours in my opinion so I created two sets of
small and larger diamonds, each with a bigger shimmer as
they progressed. I pasted them onto the part I wanted and
with each consecutive layer I changed the diamond's
appearence to the next stage. I followed the rule of three
layers as the lava so the movement looped nicely. The
foreground was fairly fast to do so I had a start at the path,
giving it it's bumpier surface and even added a skull into the
path to show some personality. As the path was slightly
adjusted in its shape, I decided to slightly shuffle the
character upwards so that they weren't dangerously close
to the edge!

22. Process: Day 14
Tuesday 28th MayToday I continued to complete the path. I
began with the most simple aspect of
sporadic lines to represent the rough
ground as with the foreground. I did this
also for the side of the path in smaller dots
and lines. Speaking of the side, I further
made the path more visually interesting by
introducing stalectites to contrast with the
stalecmites in front of them. After the
"ground work" was finished, it was time to
further elaborate. As I had made a skull
yesterday, I added more bones and tried to
be a different with each, if just subtly with a
different angle, or broken up across the
path. I decided that reusing the diamonds
from before would be time efficient and
keep the area consistent and as with the
running theme, the path had three
alternating options, with the lines, lava
streams and diamond changing form
between.

23. Process: Day 15
Wednesday 29th May
Now I had to begin the most visually appealing part of the entire project, other than perhaps the characters,
that being the back wall. Right from the very beginning, I knew the wall would feature a dragon skeleton but as I
mentioned in my Day 9 review, I really didn't know how the proportions would be. As I had set lines for the
amount of pages the wall was made of right at the start, I decided to start the skull around two and a half pages
in, giving more space for the walking section and any skeleton parts I wanted to fill in. The skull is the key
attraction and the point where the characters stop to look at the wall so I spent a lot of time tweaking the
shape, with the snout blending more with the head, and the back of it being more pronounced. To help guide
the shaping, I put the main eye socket in place and afterwards, put the second smaller socket that appeared in
prehistoric creatures. The teeth were all different shapes to show the organic side of the piece and then cracks
of different shades were put in to show the age of the skull along with the nostril. I then moved onto the claws
that were placed slightly awkwardly behind the skull as they would barely be seen under the lava. I wanted to
show a large, menacing size and to further that threat, I added dark red to the ends as well as the teeth as a
permanent blood stain. I could only add one arm bone to fit in with the claws which looks a little weird but I was
content with it, as I could show an easy comparison between that bone and the ones on the floor. The wing
portion was a nice surprise for me to do. Originally I was going to have just the bone part but that was barely in
shot so I decided in the moment that I would have a slightly transparent, torn up wing remnant fill a lot of
empty space. It worked out really well, with the only issue being difficult find the transparent colour again if I
de-selected it. I had ribs go in front of the wing, with only four so as to avoid blocking the wings shape too
much. I even had to tweak the shoe of eack and move them to a spot that would be less obtrusive. It also
showed that the Dragon had been there a long time so it didn't have all its parts. In the space between the large
and small ribs, I put the start of the leg bone that dipped into the lava. Looking back on it, I could probably have
made the bone even bigger!! I wanted to make the tail but wasn't sure how to go about it. I decided to find an
image of a T-Rex as a reference and that ended the back of the Dragon but I thought to fill in the neck area also
using the dinosaur as inspiration.

24. Process: Day 15
Wednesday 29th May

25. Process: Day 15
Wednesday 29th MayAfter this goliath of a skeleton was built, I wanted to further express
its size by putting a set of human skeletons close by it. The first
human was obviously less detailed but I did put faker parts on it as a
way to show a charred affect, perhaps by the Dragon in front of it. I
duplicated the skeleton and changed the direction it faced. While it's
usually not a good thing that the new image is fuzzy, in this case it
gave the skeleton more texture and tones of colour while keeping its
shape well. I ended up with three skeletons, all with slightly different
body parts and all looking very good. I realised, even after the
skeletons put in place, there was still a lot of space just for cracks to
fill. Once again, unplanned, I decided to add a waterfall of fire, or as I
call it, a "Firefall". I primarily used the colours from the lava as it
would flow into that segment and put a type of frothy bottom where
it hit the lava. I put yellow and orange waves in the firefall, that with
each duplicate would cross paths. To fill in any empty space, I simply
added red squiggles, put bright red sides and spits off the top of the
froth. With layers section, this needed to be with the background to
stay in the right spot as it moves side to side. However it has to be in
front of the lava during the animation also, so I have to remember to
move the firefall during the animation part of the project. Once again
I reused the diamonds for the wall but realised even the larger ones
were pretty small on this section. I ended the night by producing a
new set of diamonds for each colour that were even bigger, better
fitting in spacier parts of the wall.

26. Process: Day 16
Thursday 30th May
One of my original ideas was to add lighting to each character
to make them feel more involved in the environment.
However, due to time restraints I realised there would be no
way to add a glow to each layer of each character. Despite
this, I still wanted to show some form of the lighting,
especially considering my experiment was based off this idea.
I put reds, oranges and yellows, with a decreasing
transparency on key parts of the skeleton to give it an extra
flare. The lighting was slightly altered between each frame to
make it look like it's flickering from the lava. After this aspect
was taken care of, it was finally time to finish off the
environmental part of the project. I added the new, larger
diamonds in spots that would appear empty with the other
forms and with those smaller versions, spread them in areas
that didn't feel too cramped. The cracks in the wall were also
placed at the same time, with me adding darker browns in
crevices to give simple shadow effects. When the cracks,
diamonds and firefall were made, I also changed them a little
with each version of the wall. The cracks were extended or
shortened, the diamonds shimmer changed liked in the other
sections of the cave, and the firefall's curved streams
swapped paths.

27. Process: Day 16
Thursday 30th May
Once I had made the overworld, I
progressed onto the main characters again,
starting with Arwynn's run. Using an image
of the same type to the walking drawing, I
knew I had to make an entirely new model
for the running position. I still used
measurements from my original work for
consistency but curved the body to stretch
the legs. Her head was based off
exaggerated Japanese art to show her more
expressive abilities. To conserve time, I
seperated the body to be used continuously
and made the arms the same that could be
shuffled to a different position on each
frame. This meant that later on I could focus
primarily on the legs.

28. Process: Day 17
Friday 31st May
When using the body piece, I altered it by it's
height to give her a natural bounce as she
moves. I also tried to replicate the bounciness
with the hair, especially the top part that goes
downwards as her body raises up. The legs were
done on seperate layers that were placed under
the body parts to accurately shape them while
making the top part more lenient as it was
hidden. The most important part about the legs
seperate layers was that I could duplicate them
and reverse the colours, and therefore depth for
the second half of the running animation. While
this made the first part of the production pretty
slow, the end became more of a jigsaw puzzle,
with me slotting each part with her body
together and merging them together. I then
transferred these into the main piece and put
them progressively from the main standing
version.

29. Process: Day 18
Saturday 1st June
Even though I think Arwynn's running animation had a lot more
forward thinking it its process than all my walking parts, I still
thought I could improve my efficiency, and this would need to be
the case as my next character was quite a bit more complex than
Arywnn.
Fletcher's layers each had folders to contain seperate parts instead
of having everything look cluttered and confusing. I made each layer
even more sectioned off, for an even bigger jigsaw like completion
at the end. For the body and head I made four versions with slightly
altered hair. The eyes are widened and the frown is very
pronounced in its dismay! I knew as I had to make the body from
scratch, I wanted to make the angle have a bigger direction to the
right with the top being a solid material so couldn't move like
Arwynn. It ends at the belt so the leg layers don't have to have that
level of complexity re-drawn again and again. The legs repeat the
same process as Arwynn, perhaps with a bit more tedium with its
added level of detail. I had his arms stretch out and flail so show he
isn't completely brave as he says he is and made a new layer for the
quiver for that to be moved by momentum. I used the same image
reference as for Arwynn, but also took each of her frames as my
own personal reference. The overall modeling of Fletcher took a
long while so I only completed a third of the frames but played the
foundation to make the rest simple to make.

30. Process: Day 19
Sunday 2nd June
Unfortunately today I didn't shift as much work as I probably wished I could since me and my parents
was visiting Liverpool to pick up my Sister and go to the Parade to celebrate the Football Club.
However, despite all of this, I was correct in my assumption that making the rest of the characters
would be much faster. I woke early to work a little before we travelled and after we returned by
placing all the body parts in the correct height as well as finishing the legs. The only duplicate that
didn't help speed up the progress was the cape which I left until last, with it being the most back
object. It was a slight hindrance due to it not having different forms, so last the original frame I has to
slightly add or erase parts to make it look a little like its moving around. To make the frame, I took
each part labelled with a number in the layer order that made the most sense, the left arm being at
the front and the cape at the back. The layers were merged, out in the frames folder and once they
were all completed, I did as I did with Arwynn and transferred them into the main product after a play
through fo see its smoothness.

31. Process: Day 20
Monday 3rd June
A significant part of the end product I had been ignoring was the audio side. As I had a day off College, I chose
to focus on producing this part, especially considering that I could have the music out loud as opposed to just
in my earphones. I used the BeepBox website to create the music as it expresses a retro style from games
found in the 70's and 80's. As my Sister had returned for the Summer, she wanted to know how the website
worked so I made a tune to show her. When I played it however, I found the way each part of the song hit beats
that linked so well into each other so I ended up using it without a single edit. I wanted to use more tools from
the site and decided to increase the reverb. The added echo-like sound really suited the cave atmosphere and
so that was a much appreciated tweak to the beat. While the music was really good in my opinion, I felt like
adding a different, fairly altered version of the tune after a some repeats of the original song, to make the
sound more dynamic. This part would be a faster piece but would keep the same basic premise as the original
as to avoid being too jarring for the player/watcher. Slight differences included the increased pitch of the same
bar as well as adding beats next to the older part to give it a faster sound. As the piece is used for the
characters walking segments, Indecided to name it "Strutting" for that very reason.
The second major song would be introduced during the earth shaking segment of the animation, set as a high
stress and energy track to signify the danger, which happens to be the song's name, the characters find
themselves in. To immediately throw the player into a feeling of panic, the song begins with only an alarm
sound, signifying the dangerous predicament that the heroes are in. This is swiftly followed by a steady but fast
and up-beat drum that has a piercing high pitch at its end to become clear and almost nauseous to the player
as it slowly gets into their head as a form of panic. The sound also sticks out, especially with the rest of the
sound to show the rhythm far more vigorously. The tune then adds a simple yet somewhat haunting base line
that doesn't stand out so much as it adds an ominous sense to the player. The final layer that is put in adds to
the high pitch drum in it's much more dominant role compared to the other parts of the track. The sound is fast
and feels so different to the rest yet gives the same feeling of urgency by having an alarm sound to it's own.
"Danger" didn't have a beat change as I didn't believe the song would be used as long as the previously
described music, and so it wouldn't have time to build toward the alteration.

32. Process: Day 20
Monday 3rd June
As the song that would accompany the hazardous portion of the
game had been made, it only made sense to create the danger that
would initiate this song. Thankfully the boulders were not difficult
to make, with them being brown jagged circles with cracks and
molten cracks on top. I didn't really know how to size them, with a
few increases to the rocks. I had four variants, each going up in size
and having two copies for each. As I learned from the wall
skeletons, changing their angle, making them less clear was very
effective in look. I thought it could give a more textured
appearance and perhaps look a little like motion blur for their drop.
Sound effects were pretty important to make the atmosphere feel
more genuine. The menu sounds were just simple beats they
obviously couldn't last too long, but I made each beep go down in
pitch as they went further down the menu. I thought this would
make the game feel connected between the visual and audible
parts. The boulder attack also has to have a small amount of build
up so I was thinking of making an earthquake event to set the
mood something bad was going to happen. To make the sound
effect for this I simply used the drums on BeepBox although
unintentionally I did make a pretty good beat for it!

33. Once again, like the boulders, I did have to make the menu to use
the sounds for it. Maybe with more time I might have made
something a bit more complex, but the simple sky blue rectangle
was decent in its clarity to the player. I made it transparent so it
wasn't too obtrusive to look at and made all the parts of it seperate
layers so that can flow out separately during animation instead of
just appearing. This layers were the lines to seperate the options,
CHARACTERS, BAG, SAVE and EXIT as they were what I thought to
be the essential elements of any game menu. The dialogue boxes
were also made at the same time as they carried the idea of
inobtrusivity as the menu. They were transparent but unlike the
menu, each boxes colour co-insided with the major colour of the
character who is speaking at the time. While I was planning on
making face shots to give more emotion during these dialogue
scenes, I wanted to subtly show the audience the change in
character. For the character profiles I made a clear white box to the
left side of the dialogue box so that the face would have a clear
area to be shown in. I decided to make Arwynn's face first as it felt
like the least complex one to me personally. I chose to have the top
part of her hair go out of the frame as it is a prominent part of her
design and looks interesting to do so. Just as I was about to start
doing the facial features, I decided to keep this face as a base for all
other emotional states to be placed on so I can avoid the hassle of
fixing up the face for another layer.
Process: Day 20
Monday 3rd June

34. Process: Day 21
Tuesday 4th JuneContinuing on from the Arwynn profile Indid yesterday, I continued with
the second character Fletcher. This piece was nice to make as I could have a
lot more freedom in how his curls came out, with the most significant being
the large curl in the centre of the fringe. The lines of the hair used two
different colours, a lighter one to show the wavy curls of the hair and a
darker one to show the pronounced hair parts and how they clash into the
main hair piece. This was the first time I had done Fletcher completely face
forward so the placement of the ears was kind of difficult to adjust to as
well as how the beard connected to each side. I believe I did a good job
despite this new layout. To keep consistent with Arwyyn, I had his wild hair
expand above the frame as well as his beard since that is also a key feature
of the character.
Celeste was the final one and the one I was most looking forward to as,
with the new design, I wanted to properly show how she appeared in
detail. Since the face was quite a bit more realistic in shape, it took a lot
more time to make sure it was accurate. This of course had an effect on the
hair as it needed enough space to be detailed a little but not wide enough
so the face is stretched. After tweaking the fringe, mostly making it a bit
narrower, along with beginning the downward hair, I found a very good
match between the face and hair. The hair also had a case of being more
elaborate due to more space and I could really replicate the drawing
successfully. I realised I couldnt just leave her neck hovering so added the
collar and to further elaborate, her hood which filled in the back of her
head. With the level of accuracy and detail, Celeste does have my favourite
profile. With the others, her large fringe does pop out of the frame.

35. One thing I chose to do out of the usual order was Celeste's running cycle as I had other
major parts like the music and parts of the environment that took priority. I was also a
little worried about how her coat and lower half would come out, considering the tight
time limit I had. I did as with the first two, setting the proportion lines for consistency,
and then made sure that unlike the walking cycle, her coat had far direction forward. For
her head, I widen her eyes and gritted her teeth to empathise her shock and panic. I
decided to have this model remain near identical for all the frames except for the hair
having two variants on top of the original and being placed at different heights for the
realistic motion. This was to cut time and made, say changing the coat, no where near as
tedious as it could have been. Celeste's legs were the most complex of the three, with
the more detailed boots and type of baggy trousers she wears. I had to be quite a bit less
neat in their overall proportions so some became pretty squashed compared to others
but its shouldn't be too noticable. I carried over the ideas of Fletcher's legs by putting
them on seperate layers from below the belt line, so the coat wasn't an obstacle when
drawing as it could go underneath. I didn't have to worry about every detail thankfully,
since I knew what would show. Right after the first version was made, it was pasted and,
using a larger pencil size, I reversed the leg colours for the next set of running frames. A
positive was that, unlike Fletcher, her boots were the same colour on both sides so they
didn't need to be altered. The arms went backwards and had a lot more space to move
with her coat being wider. I made them go backwards as she seems like the type of
person to be quite dramatic in dangerous situations. They also work as an opposite to
Fletcher, representing their polar opposites. After all the parts were "jigsawed" together
like Fletcher, I remembered a pint I discovered while making the walking animation in
that I had to make the back of the coat. Using the paint bucket tool made this easy to
complete, and this was the most time efficient running animation of them all which I am
very happy about.
Process: Day 21
Tuesday 4th June

36. Process: Day 21
Tuesday 4th JuneI only had one more animation to make for the characters, that being their reaction to the quake before
the boulder attack. I was originally just going to only change the arms to wave around on all the original
models. However after completing Celeste's, I realised that wasn't happening! Like with the sighing
movement, her right arm doesn't move as it holds her prized possession of the magical book close to her
chest. Her left arm is out and little sparks of different elements are being projected. Her face is given a
serious expression as she stands guard, more focused that the other two.
After I gave a lot of effort, I knew I couldn't be too simple with the rest. I had to portray Fletcher's hidden,
less confident side so I exaggerated all his moving parts. His face had a large frown as opposed to the
usual big grin, as with his running expression, and his arms flail in the air. I was a lot more free flowing
with the bow to shorten the time and it kind of surprised me how well it looks! Later, I decided that
Fletcher should have some more movement, so I had his legs hop from one foot to the other to even
emphasise the panic he is in.
I decided to take full advantage of the Japanese angle I had taken with Arwynn by having large teary eyes
and blush feature on her already frightened looking face. To hammer home the use of her heritage,
sweat beads are set around her head, an obviously unrealistic style to portray the stress she feels but still
keeps in character of Arwynn. More subtly, I had her arms to show her lowering her guard, and how
inexperienced she is in moments of serious threat.

37. Process: Day 22
Wednesday 5th JuneThe following morning I wrote my script, very loosely following the same
interactions as the original game. As I knew how these characters acted
since I had been working with them for a long time, the dialogue was
fairly fast to produce. I split the conversations into three segments,
looking at the skeleton as the calmer part, the panic attack to, as the
name suggests, to portray the characters response to danger, and the
final part where the characters respond to the danger of the past. I
attempted to keep the main personality traits of the characters in their
words by having Arwynn be excitable but flustered, Fletcher give a sense
of arrogance, but danger can shatter his ego. Finally Celeste had to show
how she could be calm and focused, but occasionally slip up and act
impatient and even be pushed into panic despite the overall appearance
of omniscience. My Sister decided to help in the recording of the voices,
as from previous experience, while I think my voices are great, her
higher range may be helpful! After telling her Arwynn's Wlsh origin, she
attempted the accent on her. However, after her many tries, she instead
chose a Scottish accent. This worked pretty well in character although
perhaps in hindsight the voice could have been a little higher. I did the
other two accents, with Fletcher and Celeste retaining their voices from
the last project, of brash American and sophisticated English. Maybe my
voice wasn't particularly adept for Celeste but I wished to perform a
majority and I quite liked getting out of my comfort zone. We did a
couple of takes for some of the tougher lines for me to select later on
for modifying.

38. Process: Day 22
Wednesday 5th June
I arrived at College to make the face plates to go over each of the
"base faces" as I call them. Each emotion would have three frames
that would go back and forth to make it look like the mouth was
talking. The emotions I had put down at the start of the project were
based off the original game, so a few of them were tweaked using the
new script.
As always, Arwynn was first up. The first emotion was being excited at
seeing the Dragon skeleton, so I started work on her eyes, with the
ability to make them more detailed. After I completed the left eye, I
realised to should just use this layer as a base to edit for all future
motions and emotions, carrying through other characters. This would
make the position of parts consistent and so wouldn't have to redo
more complex bits of the face like said eyes. The mouth was simple,
being the more triangular shape as I put to be her normal variant. The
other frames raised the cheeks by the lines on her face and made her
mouth bigger, even adding a tongue. The other emotions of "stern"
and "panic" added different sized and positioned blush for the former
and tears for the latter. The mouths also reflected the different scenes
with an upside down smile for the serious expression and a large
frown for the worry. I nearly forgot a key part to show emotion were
the eyebrows. The different frames with all the characters were to
have one set, but it moved up down as to not remain static.

39. Fletcher's expressions were interesting to make as the mask
had to be flexible to properly show the emotions. Since I knew
the mask was the key part, and the most likely to move
around, to keep a level of consistency I made a layer to set out
dots of the furthest reaches of the mask so different layers
could follow. In my cocky level, the mask remained mostly the
regular shape, only being slightly tweaked when his eyes
rolled up. The mask squinted along with the pupils in his
annoyed varient. Finally, his surprised face expands the mask
along with the rest of the cast's eyes to show his panicked
state.
With Celeste, as her general face was, in my opinion quite a bit
more sophisticated to the others, to begin with I did the more
neutral face directly off the drawing so I knew where things
should be to begin with. I was very happy with how the eyes
and especially nose came out as the colours made her
appearence clear despite its further complexity. As her sprite
was probably the most expressive throughout the models I
have done, I tried to match her profile with these scenes. This
can be seen with her exasperated raised eyebrows being
identical and her open mouth as they run from the boulders.
Process: Day 22
Wednesday 5th June

40. Process: Day 23
Thursday 6th June
With the script and voices completed, I had to write it out in the product.
Last time I made the dialogue, I made it by hand so each letter was definitely
inconsistent. To combat this struggle, I used the website DaFont to look for a
pixel like font. I found one called "Pixellari" that I really liked as, while it had
a pixel aesthetic, the letters were clear and easy to read. When I came back
to Photoshop, using my script I constructed an easy to understand and
access filing system for all the dialogue so I didn't get confused. Each
character had a folder for their lines and each of the lines were cut into
sentence folders. Once I started writing out each word to be scrolled
through, I moved the word into the right folder and had the sentences go
downwards so I could just go through the list when I started animating. Once
the line was completed, I hid the layers as to avoid the hassle I faced in the
last project where I had to remove a lot of layers I didn't bother with,
making the process tedious.
I then went on to adjust the voice lines so they sounded a little more
pixelated. I had previously used GarageBand so I kept to it. However the
"Atari" style I used last time wasn't to be found so I went for a "Robot Vocal"
style instead. It is functional but I would have liked to see how it compared
to the previously mentioned style. I didn't make the voices as warped as last
time so the words could properly heard and, as with the music, added a little
but of reverb as a way for them to interact audibly with the environment.

41. Process: Day 23
Thursday 6th June
Now that everything was set, it was finally time to start animating. I set everything to 0.15
seconds per frame timing to make the experience if swapping layers much simpler, instead of
trying to track at what specific time an individual thing would move that could lead to far
more errors as with the last project. The time was altered was with dialogue, expanding to
0.25 seconds per frame just in case the voices took a little longer to finish. This is further
expanded on with me leaving several frames at the end of each line as a precautionary
measure for the flow of the vocals. I tried to be a little dynamic with how the camera
followed the characters, waiting for the Arwynn to move in the centre of the screen before
the landscape moved while she remained in the same place while moving. This kept her as
the "centre of attention" and as the frames were in the exact same spot, it wasn't difficult to
alternate. As they draw near to the Dragon skull, I slowed the movement of the cave and
increased the distance of each stride by the characters. This gave the illusion that the camera
was centralising on the skull while everything else remained at the same appeared at the
same speed. To move from the scene, I had the background move considerably more with
each frame while while also moving the characters backwards as if they were stagnant in the
same spot until Arwynn was back in the centre. I used the same technique as the skull for the
shaking sequence, getting them even dispersed in the middle. I continued for a little bit at
home, trying to make the quake by having the entire screen go up and down, having to add
to empty spaces on the wall and foreground. I did change the time to 0.1 seconds per frames
for this shaking sequence to make it feel faster and stronger than anything seen before.

42. Process: Day 23
Thursday 6th June

43. Process: Day 24
Friday 7th June
Today I just continued from the point I left, being the dialogue of panic. I
realised as I transitioned Arwynn's dialogue out, I had accidentally made
two different versions, one where the face goes out before the white box
and one where they both go at the same time. However this minor
inconsistency shouldn't make any major impact on the end product,
considering the former version was the more common one to happen. I
couldn't realistically change it anyway, as adding a layer for the transition
would create a frustrating domino effect on the changes to all the latter
frames.
The boulders were pretty difficult to follow with each frame, as I wanted
to have the layer alternate and fall so it looked like it was spinning. As
there were so many layers and they had to be reused, I didn't know how
to properly rotate them all. To nullify this struggle a decent amount, with
each frame I cleared all the boulders away so I could go between the last
frame and the new one and know which boulder should go where any
clutter. I made a dust cloud during this time as I realised how odd it would
look if the boulders just disappeared once they "hit" the floor. During the
running, I had Celeste shout out "QUICK!!!", and decided to make this the
only large piece of text to really emphasise the true danger they were in.
To make Fletcher run in front of Arwynn, showing his athletic ability and
want to avoid danger without much thought to help his companions, I
moved his running folder above all of Arwynn's stuff so his model
overtook Arwynn more clearly.
Annoyingly I couldn't finish the animation as I wished because on Fridays,
the time on College computers was cut shorter than expected.

44. Process: Day 25
Saturday 8th June
I finally finished my animation today at home, although adding the sound will have to wait until
Monday as I don't have Premiere. The process wasn't as difficult as previous parts, with the only
things I had to change much were producing a new folder for the firefall's introduction so its
above the lava and making sure the characters didn't get too close to the edge of the cave's
end. I continued the dialogue but discovered I hadn't actually thought about how I would end
the animation. I didn't want to just cut out so I decided to reuse the menu I showed at the start
and had it so the player selected "EXIT". I may have made the arrow move a little faster that it
should be but I'll have to wait until the sound is incorporated. Along with the dust clouds, the
only other two layers I made during the animation process were a white and black screen as a
sort of leaving the screen motion. A humourous thing Inthiught of is, as the player didn't select
"SAVE", when replaying the animation the person is just replaying this part of the game.

45. Process: Day 26
Monday 10th June
After arriving in College, I opened Photoshop to make an enlarged version of my
animation so when exported as a video, it would be much higher quality. After I saved
this big version, I deleted all frames after the first 50 as if I exported all of it at once, the
computer wouldn't be able to handle the quantity. After I exported this chunk, I went
back to the saved file and repeated the process, going forward by 50 frames each time
until the final part at 68 frames. Once I put the videos into Premiere, I realised I had to
redo some parts as the font hadn't been converted properly on the new computer,
having not been downloaded at the specific PC.
When I first added the music, for no apparent reason the volume wasn't coming out,
despite the volune bar showing its loudness. I spent quite a bit of time trying to figure
out if it was the file type and how to fix the problem, only to come back to Premiere and
music work as normal. It is indeed mysterious... Anyway, to begin with, I thought I had to
cut some of the opening build up to fit better with the visuals but after realising one of
the chunks wasn't in the Premiere document, it gave enough time to bring back the
entirety of the song. I actually needed a little more music before the earthquake, so I had
to tweak a bar of the song to flow with the rest of the track.

46. I didn't know how to manually lower the volume for the
"Shaken" sound effect, so I had to compromise by cutting
the end part into several pieces, and gradually lower the
volume of each. To make a clear transition between the
sound effect and the "Danger" music, I had a small pause
which felt like a pause for breath before the disaster
happens. To blend the panicked music into the original
song, I used the default transition tool to fade into it which
in turn faded as the black screen came up at the end.
The beeps for the menu were thankfully short enough to
keep in time with the quick arrow movement and after the
first couple of voices were placed, I made a new tune to
make it seem like the player pressed a button to go onto
the next line. Speaking of the voices, I was genuinely
surprised by how accurately the timing was between them
and the visuals, something I am very happy about.
I exported the video which I first put on the "Cloud" just in
case the computer's file got corrupted. I then went on to
upload the video to YouTube where I could get the embed
for a Blogger post.
That's all of the production from start to end.
Process: Day 26
Monday 10th June