Megan created animations and scenes for her game over several weeks. She animated walk cycles for the main character and an idle animation for an NPC. Megan designed two game scenes - one with a house and one with additional houses and a cafe. In the final week, Megan pieced together the animations and scenes to create a trailer, adding detail to environments and changing a character design. She created original music for the trailer and uploaded final assets to her website.

1. Production Reflection
Megan Bannister

2. Process

3. Process
For this week, refer to the images in slide 2.
In my first week of production I was still finishing up different PowerPoints and files for
the previous parts of the course so I did not create a lot for this week. With the time I
had left I decided to create some of the items that will be featured in the trailer as
trading items.
I am really glad I started with this idea as I started with a lot smaller pixel box but
realised I could not create anywhere near enough detail. It was important that the
items were distinguishable as the main gameplay is trading these items. I decided on a
16x16 box for items and a 64x64 for the characters.
I fear the size of the characters may be too small for the items but I think I will be able
to make it look stylistically on purpose. I don’t want to make the characters any larger
as I don’t think I will have enough time or ability to give them the level of detail
needed for the size.
I also think that, due to my idea of using an open suitcase to showcase where your
items are held that takes up the full screen, the size of the items may not be an issue
as I can just picture them within the suitcase and not being passed between
characters – just the reaction of the NPC receiving it.
Overall I am really happy with how the items look so far, I think they are all obvious as
to what they represent. I realised between this week and the next week, however,
that I had completely ignored my colour scheme for these items. I do not think it will
be an issue as of now but if, when it comes down to merging everything together, they
look jarring against the colour palette I will have to change this design.

4. Process
Today I worked on my main character for my game. First, I designed the silhouette, using
different colours to establish the limbs and pose. I want the character to seem brave and self-
assured in their pose which I think I have achieved.
Then I filled in the design roughly, I used a white for the skirt and a light light grey for the arms
to distinguish as I was aware that when I do the walk cycle the arms will blend into the body. I
decided on a blue skirt and black shoes to make the character seem studious and classy. I chose
the hair and skin colour based on my colour palette but am unsure at the moment whether they
are the right colours. I would also like to mess around with the colours of the hair and face as I
think there should be more contrast there.
I animated my walk cycle facing right. I realised with the movements of the legs, using a skirt
would not show the animation to the full effect and would perhaps make the walk cycle
awkward to look at. I plan to change the character design to trousers when I come back to this
next week.
I animated the north walk cycle, which was a lot easier than I expected as the main thing to
make it effective is shading on the legs at different poses. I still need to add my character design
onto the bare bone animation for this and the right walk cycle, but I am pleased with how it
looks so far.
For both animations there was a lot of trial and error involved in how the arms and legs moved
in a way that made it effective and natural as this is the most complex animation I have made so
far.

5. Process
This week, I have added my character design onto my walk cycles and created an NPC design
and created an idle animation for her.
I found two problems in adding the character design onto the walk cycles. The first one was
achieving the right movements in the material of the clothes the main character is wearing
as it moves differently to an actual bare bones animation, it also meant I had to change the
shape of the feet and legs to make sure it made sense. The second issue I had was
distinguishing the arms from the body, last week I mentioned I made the arms a darker
colour to differentiate between them and the body. However, this looked bad so I had to
work through different ideas to try and make it look right. I tried to use a lighter grey but it
got to the point where it wasn't distinguishable from the shirt. Then I used a darker grey as
the back arm but that was too dramatic an effect. Eventually, I decided on outlining the arms
with a light grey so they still had white in the middle. This worked well and looks effective. In
the north walking picture I have included how the arms look. I also decided I wasn’t fond of
how her hair looks in the north walking animation so if I have time I’d like to adjust that.
With the NPC design, I had learnt about sub-pixel animation before designing her – this is
the idea of changing colours within the design of the animation without moving any of the
outside of it. I decided to implement this for her as the character designs are not very large
and a one-pixel movement is fairly dr moving any of the outside of it. I decided to implement
this for her as the character designs are not very large and a one-pixel movement is fairly
drastic for an idle animation. I added a design to her dress so that could move up and down
to simulate her breathing and moved her shoulders up into her hair and back down. I
wanted her to have a very gothic look so her colour palette is red white and black, the design
on her dress being a dark grey.
I included the original design on the right of the NPC, I realised after creating the original
design she had no dynamics around her pose and look very stiff in comparison to the main
character. She was also too small. I think the 2.0 model is a lot better and conveys the
character a lot more.

6. Process
This week I created one of the scenes that will be used. I started by
picking out colours from my colour palette for the grass, dirt, forest and
darker grass around the house. I have decided not to add too much
detail to begin with as it would take a while for me to figure out how to
add detail to the nature parts and would be a waste of time for now as I
will need to solve how to add the detail to make it accurate.
Afterwards, I moved onto the house, starting out with a rectangle of
red lined with a brown as the guide for the wall of the house, using the
silhouette of my main character as a size reference, which is the
blue/grey figure next to the house. I then added bricks by drawing the
bottom layer of bricks, copy and pasting it, moving it a line up and
across to be in the middle – then repeating that. I added bricks of
different colours and the grass around the bottom to show that the
house is dilapidated. To further this, I removed some of the lines
between the bricks. I did the windows and doors next, to make the
windows reflective I added diagonal lines of a lighter colour to
emphasise that.
I had to adjust the perspective on the roof multiple times to ensure
that it fit the angle of the 'camera' in the top-down style. At first, the
left most and right most lines of the roof were completely vertical, to
fix the perspective I slanted them inwards bit by bit. I do not have a lot
of practice with perspective as I'm not an artist, so it took a while for
me to be happy with it. I want to come back to this as well if I have time
at the end so I can add detail to the roof as I think compared to the wall
of the house its lacking but, like the nature facets, I need to solve how I
would add detail.

7. Process
This week I created the second scene, I used the layout of the house from the previous scene and recoloured it and changed the
brick layout for both houses. I wanted both houses to look similar so they blend into the background of the scene, and you are
aware that you should focus on the café. In the game you would not be able to go into these buildings until later in the game, if at
all.
I really enjoyed creating the café as I loved the colour scheme I used for the building. As I had spent a lot of time, as previously
described, trying to work on the perspectives of the roofs I decided to design the café so that you would not be able to see the roof
in the scene. I don't think the lack of is noticeable and it sped up the process a lot.
I experimented with different ways to create the grass underneath the paths and houses, eventually choosing to do a detailed multi-
tonal design with small blades of grass. My original idea with using a splatter brush on Photoshop in a lighter colour was interesting
but I found it distracting from the actual gameplay and detracted from the overall effect. The idea I went with is a lot more subtle
but still effective in giving depth to the scene.
The final things I did for this scene were the chairs, the flowers and plants and the pond. I found these fun to design as they were
the little features that have added life to the scene. I created the flowers by copying and pasting layers of more and more until I had
a row of one colour, merging the layers together and then changing the colour of the stems and flowers and putting the rows of
flowers on top of each other.

8. Process
• In the final week, I worked on piecing the animations together to create the trailer. I did
this by exporting my animation files to Premier Pro then adding the clips in and placing
music over the top of the video. I also added detail to the forest and grass and changed
the hair design of the main character's north walk. These refinements took the most
time as I wanted to make my project as aesthetically pleasing and as detailed as
possible. I used the same technique with the grass as I did with the town's grass to
achieve a cohesive effect throughout.
• I struggled with the shading on the trees as I was unable to find a good colour from the
palette to add detail without making it too drastic. I decided on adding a colour to the
palette so I could edit the colour to exactly what shade I required.
• I also created my own music this week on Noteflight,an online music notation software.
I decided this was better for the project than a piece of royalty free music, as I could
create exactly what mood I wanted with my piece. I researched key signatures and
other game music pieces to solidify my idea on what I wanted to create. This took
longer than I expected but was worthwhile for the result. I took inspiration from the
Dragon Quest 9 soundtrack as it was a game I played a lot when I was younger so holds
a lot of nostalgia for me. I also think it evokes the same feeling I want from my game.
• I was unable to remember how to export an animation from Photoshop, so I had to
refer to previous notes from my tutor and ask for assistance to make sure it worked
correctly. Once I had worked that out, I was able to upload it to my website without any
issues.