Nov. 21 - 25

My Assignment

This week our team worked in a "pipeline" to create a guard character. Leif drew it, Drew colored it, and I animated it. The animation took longer than I thought it would and I had to redo it several times, but finally I ended up with something that looked good! Overall, I thought the process was a success, except that there were delays during the pipeline that put us all behind and Alice didn't get to do her part because she was the last one (fortunately she worked on other tasks instead). It was a good experience and we will know how to do the pipeline better in the future.

Extra
I learned how to create quick and easy sprite sheets using a program Leif gave me. It will save us so much time!

Next Week:
Design a level

Nov. 14 - 18

My Assignment
This week I helped Leif to create a demo video to show how the basic game play will look in our game. I drew four quick Japanese buildings to use as stand in concept art. Also, I drew a statue for a puzzle. I animated one scene for the demo, which was the most time consuming part of the assignment. Finally, I experimented with two styles for the shadow mode. I was able to fully complete my assignment and show the demo video today in class.

Extra
I have been playing the game Braid as inspiration for our game. The art style is beautiful and the backgrounds have a painted look similar to what we are going for in our game. The music is stunning and puzzles are unique and creative. The main draw is the concept of time manipulation. Overall, it is one of the most pleasant puzzle games I have ever played and I recommended that everyone in our team play it this week. I really like this game. :)


Next Week:
We are going to try an experiment with working as a "pipeline" to create a guard.

Nov. 7-11

My Assignment
This week I had the team collect screen shots to inspire the look of the game. I mainly focused on finding screen shots for the world and platforms to give to Drew (our environment artist.) I also set up a drop box account so we could all share the work we've done and screen shots we collected, which has proven to be very useful. Finally, I typed the story outline and put it up on google doc. I feel that I achieved my goal for the week.


Extra
I played a lot of video games to get a sense of the art style for our game. In particular, I played Marumasa: the Demon Blade, which had a beautiful art style and was also set in Japan. The main thing that I liked was the platforms, the way that the characters run around on building roof tops. I'd like to emulate these platforms for our game.


We've run into some problems with design, particularly because no one seems to have a clear idea of how the game will work. I suggested to Russel (our team lead) that we put a few people in a design team to come up with levels and puzzles.

Next Week:
Help with demo video. Research games. Get the design team rolling.

Nov.1 - 8

For last weeks sprint, I've been working on finalizing the story. Unfortunately, I didn't quite get it done so this will end up going into next week.

This weeks sprint:
1. Finalize Story
2. Play a platformer
3. Get screen shots