This document summarizes three experiments the author conducted to improve their skills in creating animated games. In the first experiment, the author created a simple nighttime scene with one moving character. They realized movement needed improvement and more elements were needed. The second experiment had daylight, gameplay, and multiple simultaneous movements. It was more complex but still lacked detail. The third experiment featured intricate bird animation and overlapping sun rays and clouds. The author felt this realistic background was their best and would inspire their final product.

1. Experiments
James

2. Process
This is the most basic out of the three different experiments, I wanted it to be set with a nightfall
background, which I think is what stands out the most. In total there’s only 8 layers, including
the text at the end, so the game isn’t that complex having only one thing that actually moves. I
added in a blood splatter at the end just because I wanted more then one thing going on.
I notice that the finished product looks kind of clunky in the way the main character moves, it
look obvious that I skipped over a lot of frames.
I also want to add more to the screen in general, having only 2 things on the ground makes the
screen look empty.
Overall I thought this was an okay start to the experiments, while making this I I knew there
would be a lot to improve on, and now that it’s done I saw what needed the most work and
tried to improve with the other two experiments.

3. Reflection
• What elements of your experiments will you
include in your final product?
– The text at the end screen is going to be included, it’s the best way of
interacting with the player while they’re playing the game, and gives
them the idea that they’re making progress, even if they’re loosing.
– I’m going to have an outside backdrop as well, they work best and are
the easiest to make with detail. Night looks the best but take the
longest to animate if you want detail since you have to animate all the
stars shining.

4. Process
This experiment was more complex then the last, and different in so many ways. I looked at what
needed improving with the last one and tried my best to improve on it. So I changed the time of day,
and made sure to have more then one thing going on at once, as to not make the game boring.
I also featured actual gameplay and just one figure moving around on the screen.
As a result of the experiment being bigger and more ambitious than the last one, there were a lot
more layers and frames, I needed a layer for every enemy and different action. (When the screen
goes all black for example, I needed a single layer for every line that came down.)
I was originally only going to have the player kill the one enemy but I still thought that wouldn’t
have been enough. So I went with an ending that would test me, I put everything I knew into it, and
tried some newer things, with the screen going dark, and the flashing enemies.

5. Reflection
• What elements of your experiments will you
include in your final product?
– Multiple moving things going on at once. Having more then one thing
move at the same time sounds difficult in practise but is actually one
of the easier things to do, as soon as you have the sprites, getting
them to move is only time consuming.
– Something that I thought was lacking was movement with the smaller
things like the cape, or the legs of the main character, it just makes the
product look more immersive, and adds detail that I think is necessary.
– The final product is going to be something similar to this in terms of
length, it’ll just have something more obvious going on, I don’t want
the screen to be too busy either.

6. Process
This is the experiment I tried the most new things with. The bird for example is what I spent the most
time with, I didn’t want it to just be floating while jumping through frames, I wanted it to look
somewhat realistic, so I tried animating the wings going up and down, while the bird is moving. It
doesn’t look perfect but for how much time I had and the limited experience I think it looks as good as
it can.
I didn’t want that to be the only thing that moved though, so I created 2 different layers for the sun
rays and changed them every few frames, to give the effect that the sun is beaming. This is happening
at the same time as the bird is flying.
I wanted to do one more thing though, so I added a cloud that covers the bird, it moves at the same
time as everything else, and covers the bird while it’s flying, I did this to test to see if I could overlap
multiple objects at once and how it would look.

7. Reflection
• What elements of your experiments will you
include in your final product?
• The background that I did for this experiment is my favourite out of the
three. It actually looks alive and well and somewhere you can actually go.
The ground is empty and desolate, which is what I was going for, it also
gives more attention to the sky, which is where everything is happening.
– The movement of the bird is something I really want to include in the
final product, or the movement of anything really, as long as it actually
looks like a realistic and playable game, I don’t want the characters to
be floating around everywhere.
– A realistic set piece like this one will benefit the game a lot as well, I
don’t want the background to look like it was taken from a game from
the 80’s. So I’m going to take inspiration from what I did with this third
experiment