Process – RALPHY GETS ANIMATED..?

Week 5.1 – 24th February. 2021

Research

I have been researching Olaf Storm – with his photoshop tutorials, his method uses video layers, which is what I am now using. He looks at frame rates, characters on 2’s and the other small movements like feet and and hand movements on 1’s.

He showed the smooth transition when using an onion skin, which I believe to be like a sketch over your original character, for you to redraw over, each time slightly adjusting your angle, to where you want your character to move.
I haven’t used the onion skin yet…but it is next on my list.
The effect you get afterwards is amazing, and makes the object or character movement a lot more fluid, but takes a lot more time.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=KDCEvJvAX0w%3Fversion%3D3%26rel%3D1%26showsearch%3D0%26showinfo%3D1%26iv_load_policy%3D1%26fs%3D1%26hl%3Den%26autohide%3D2%26wmode%3Dtransparent

Method Olaf uses;

Draw very rough to begin with
Then draws more detail
More detail – until character or objects have shape and definition
Finally he adds a colour layer

This process takes a lot of time, which I don’t have for this rapid ideation session.

My Process

Draw my background with enough detail to set the scene – convert to regular layer.
Draw my character with detail from the start -Focusing on my 6 points, I had specified from the last part of the rapid ideation brainstorm session.(Artboard 4)
Then copy the original character layer, and place above
Select and manipulate, the arms, tail and head in the first few frames, then start moving the wings and mouth, for the frames remaining.
As you are doing so, you only need to draw in occasional areas of colour, on that next layer you are working on. (shadow maybe left from last movement, this will need to be erased.)
Add music – researched humorous theme tunes for animations, or a start of a game.

Result

Here is the background for Ickle, I created it in Photoshop, paying close attention to the detail, and transferring one of the themes from the headline: colours are very important, so everything must be vibrant.

Combining SpongeBobs character; bright, fun, and friendly.

Plus the theme of loosing a friend; that is where the main character Ickle, will have to find fairy’s/ elf like creatures, in order to grant him his original wish. He is hoping to be small again.

He will need help from all; to find out where the creature is, from all those years ago.

Figure 1: Norton 2021 Background for Ickle

The story behind Ickle;

When Ickle was born, it was neither Little or Insy, but was rather Ickle.

One day, on his 3rd birthday, Ickle made a wish, that he could be a ‘tinsy, winsy bit bigger ‘

From that day, he has been searching for the fairy/elf creature, what ever it was to revisit that wish, and undo it.

Please see below, my first animation ever…

Ickle Waking Up

Week 5.2 – 1st March. 2021

Holistic Reflection – The Five Key Skill Domains

This week are asked to look into the five domains, which are important, when writing reflectively.

Dispositional Domain – time management/ motivation/ general behaviour/ discipline
Affective Domain – experiences/ feelings/ emotions
Interpersonal Domain – communication/ listening/ problem solving/ decision making
Cognitive Domain – strengths/ weaknesses/ approach to new skills/ how to excel
Procedural Domain – assessing current skills/ how to improve

Below is the points of how I presume I write, learn, and develop my ideas.

My focus always starts with dispositional domain; motivation to learn something new, begin a brainstorm and see where it leads.

Next, after the initial concept, would be the procedural domain; assess what skills I would need, or I have, and how to put them into action and look at what I need to improve.

Which leads to the cognitive domain; if I need to learn something new, I go straight to LinkedIn Learning, and start immediately, and making notes.

As for the next part of my process, to put what I had learnt to the test. However the affective domain takes over; with excitement leading the path to a new creation, because of a recent skill I just learnt, the Interpersonal domain; assertiveness in particular is pushed to the side.

Results of how I have used the Five Domain’s so far;

After looking through my posts, these are the results for each domain;

Dispositonal – 5
Affective – 5
Interpersonal – 4
Cognitive – 3
Procedural – 6

I have generally tried to always include the Disposition domain; especially my motivation behind an idea, but not necessarily time management.

I always include Affective domain; how I feel, and any experience I have or want the gamer to have. I think this is very important, it helps tell the story behind, what you are trying to achieve, or why you want to look into that particular area.

As for the Interpersonal domain; This is slightly lower, I think its due to me making a decision, getting excited about it, but then thinking about alternative pathways, which then halts my progress.

Cognitive domain; this is the lowest , and I know why because when I am learning a new skill, like 2D Animation Principles, I sit and do all the learning at once, even if its hours on end…and write continuous notes, thinking I am going to take it all in. . .but its not possible.

Finally for the Procedural domain; This is what I am trying to do consistently, though too much at once.

Nature of Reflection

Throughout the start of this course, I have tried to reflect in a way that allows the viewer to see from all angles, how I feel about the start of a project, the initial concept, what my development process is, and the end result. However, I personally feel some areas are out of my control, to be clear, its when we receive a new assignment. I focus too much on how amazing the artefact/ project could be in the end, rather than focusing on one area at a time.

This hinders my progress, and now after looking further into SMART goals, I feel more at ease and in control.

S M A R T (goals)

S – Specific – the 5 W’s (what, where, when, why, who) think about How?
M – Measurable –
A – Achievable – Push yourself, but not so much that it is unachievable.- Think about – can you achieve it within the set time? have you got the money? or have you got the skill, or will learning a new skill set you back from putting your concept into action?
R – Relevant – Are you the best person on the team to do what is required, or is there some one else, who has more skill that particular area?
T – Time – bound, specify length of time to do course, how many hours you will commit to train each week?

From this analysis of the five domains used throughout my critical reflective journal, it has automatically helped me to create my SMART goals, as I can see my flaws very clearly,.

1) Dispositional domain: time management, I need to do an equal amount of each: Reading, Writing, LinkedIn learning, Practicing, Creating, this is achievable if I do an hour of each, every day.

2) Interpersonal domain; Must make a decision and stick with it, work out initial plan, that I can do whilst at home, in a day by myself, to help towards the current project that I am working on.

3) Cognitive domain; Must study an hour at time, when learning a new skill. Must have a break, and practice what I have learnt first, before jumping to the next stage. Once the new skill is in practice, I can get a better Idea of the length of time to complete this task.

The three SMART goals are just what I need to speed up my rapid ideation processes, to keep focused, but relaxed, knowing I am hitting my targets, and have time to spare, if I need it.

If I was in a creative role now, I know these would already be in place.

References

STORM, Olof. 2020. ‘2D Animated Walking Cycle’. Available at : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KDCEvJvAX0w [accessed 25 Feb 2021]

PARKER, Alcwyn. 2021. ‘Holistic Reflection: The Five Key Skill Domains’. Available at : https://flex.falmouth.ac.uk/courses/911/pages/week-5-the-five-reflective-domains?module_item_id=49171 [accessed 1 March 2021]

Fulll List of Figures

Figure 1: Norton 2021 Background for Ickle

sleepy-ickle_1-1 Download

Week 3.1– 8th February. 2021

When I think of how games are made, I now understand why ‘rapid ideation‘ is vital.

The amount of time it takes to test and implement new ideas and check off what works or not, what key features are going to be included and why, what emotion, or atmosphere you are trying to create for your audience, and knowing who your audience is aimed at.

The development process, could take a lot longer if this approach was not put into action. However when working on a prototype, you follow a loose theme, which I understand to be, any part of a game, eg. a particular level, where you take part in game jam’s, where you only have a limited time to get your ideas noted down, tested and re-tested in different ways.

The aim is to fail, and to do so fast! By keeping this in mind, everything you create should be a rough prototype that can be developed continuously in numerous amount of ways.

Brain storms, and body storms is what I already do. But now I am experimenting with new things and its getting really exciting!

Some of my peers recently used ; White boxing. I am temped to give it a trial run, but I am trying to keep my direction focused with the Kanban method, I must apply my steps of development in order to learn any other prototype techniques later on. But this is not important for now.

Week 3.2 – 10th February. 2021

Challenge activity

Choose one or two different methods of prototyping
Identify any interesting characteristics you like about it

Legend of Zelda; Breath of the Wild

by Nintendo.

The methods I have experimented with are; Game Prototyping – Photoshop Sketch Prototping – Photoshop

I knew we needed to be quick with this rapid ideation process, thats why I used photoshop, due to still learning how to use Blender.

I wanted to work on one of the scenic backgrounds, with a concept in mind about creating a new level.

Although this game has got beautiful scenery throughout, I wanted to experiment with effects and decided on this scenic view below.

Concept

With this in mind – The aim is to take the image apart, by transforming it into tiles, or jigsaw pieces. Then as you entered the new level you would have to piece the picture together before you could even start.

Problem

The reason why it took so long was due to a plugin called Comic kit, (originally was going to be used on my third picture below) I thought it would help with the speediness needed for this approach, however the download took a long time and would not open in photoshop.

Solution

I therefore had to do the rest by hand, but in doing so… I crafted something more unusual than planned.

I am very pleased with it, and wish I had not hesitated to draw by hand from the beginning.

First part of process

Add gradient map to the original art work – clicked reverse

This gave me more shadow definition – then converted it to a smart object – toggled with a few different effects, (once again I have never use these before.)

But the one I chose is called crystallize – cell size 20 – this was the closest thing I could get with an outcome similar to a tile effect.

Second part of process

I played around with another filter called noise – dust and scratches – adjusted the radius and threshold many times until I chose to stick with radius 18 and threshold 28.

This time around, the effect was more fluffy and light, and then I started to imagine Zelda entering this level, as though he was dreaming.

**Comic kit Plugin; As I mentioned earlier, the idea was to make the level into a jigsaw – Thats why I was downloading the comic kit plugin, to add to my 3rd picture of the development process, it should have gave me access to line patterns / shapes, and then selected each one, within a cartoon style. This was going to be a quick way of making a puzzle, by extracting the highlighted shapes from it.

Final part of process

Next as the cartoon effect was not an option, I traced over every line I could see, concentrating on the jigsaw idea. From here I discovered that by tracing all the lines, I had traced the shadows to, which then altered my original notion of creating a new level which you can only enter, when you have completed the jigsaw, but not just a normal jigsaw piece, but the shape of the shadows to, as you can see…it would be quick difficult.

I personal would like to try this, and I know it would keep me engaged…knowing you can’t start the level until the whole jigsaw is complete.

(**Figure 1: Reddit Inc. 2020 Satori Mountain** at sunset)

Testing

To test this jigsaw out, I would have liked to place it onto Blender or Unity, and picked the pieces off individually, by timing myself to see how long it would take to put back together, and find out if their were any issues.

Plus to develop even further, you could make the levels start with numerous jigsaws throughout, and to complete each one, by using different textured puzzles.