Major Project 1
03.2.2025 - 21.3.2025
Johnny Lam Wee Zhe
(0363436)
Bachelor of Design in Creative Media
INSTRUCTIONS
TASK 1 - PROPOSAL DEVELOPMENT
TASK 2 - DESIGN PROPOSITION
PERSONAL ASSIGNMENT PROCESS
Our group has three ideas to do in our project: an animation, a visual novel
and a table top roleplaying game. The visual novel is immediately discourage
due to the lack of project potential and it's not really enough. The animation
does have potential but there a few problems with idea as members aren't as
excited about the prospect as much and another member don't really have much
to do as she is from immersive design. Ultimately, table top role playing gets
picked.
There are few problem we have faced, two of the members are inexperienced with
ttrpg and among those member, I am one of them. In order to rectify this, I
went out to play a round of ttrpg with a more experience member.
During the discussion process, our first initial idea for our first ttrpg is a
single location battle royale. The first idea is to have four faction of a
single location fighting one another in a competition. The location is in an
abandoned hospital, and the four groups are: the staff, the patients, the
monsters and the explorers. This when my first task comes in: drawing a quick
sketch of the hospital environment base on reference images. This is the
supposed first draft of the hospital I made:
Fig 1. Hospital Exterior
Fig 2. Hospital Interior
Over time, though, our concepts have slowly evolved to something else.
Instead, the hospital is no longer the sole battleground for the battle
royale and other location are supposedly selected. The specificity is
unclear, but both the director and art director replies that it's still a
hospital, but other time they say it isn't. The factions do change, though.
It now changed to something based on aesthetics. The gothic group, the
steampunk group, the cyberpunk group and the fantasy group. Each of the
group will have their own motives to win the group.
In this stage, I am task with drawing the locations again. This is what I
have got.
Fig 3. Steampunk Town Draft
The idea behind my sketch is that each of the faction is assigned with their
own shape. The desert people are represented by a triangle, hospital staff
as the blob like shape, cyberpunk people would be squares and the fantasy
would be using the round shape. In hindsight, I have no idea why I drew this
sketches without using any perspective line even if I already know that
perspective is a must, especially when I use it on my previous drawing.
Therefore, the first draft is no longer viable.
Our idea continues to change, and we decide to add one more group, the
superiority group. The group that controls the game itself and the game
leans into the oppressive regime narrative. They will be considered the
fifth faction, and we were originally planning them as the unique card, and
they will be represented as a star shape. From the reference gathered, it
seems that this faction is inspired by religion. During consultation, we
receive feedback that the faction does not correlate with one another, and
they need to have something that connect each other. So we change the idea
further.
We made major changes on the gothic faction and the cyberpunk faction.
Gothic faction now focuses on the general necromancy and death, while
cyberpunk is removed and replaced by a police like faction call Sentinels.
The game as a whole also changes. It is no longer a battle royale, but a
role-playing game instead. We also added firepower to the desert tribe and
name them fire smiths. During this time, we asked to test out some animation
process for the character. So here are my attempts:
Fig 5. Testing Character turn heads
This is not what the lecturer is looking for however and actions has been
asked and to provide something more. So I start to draw the storyboard of
what the character could do.
Then, I begin to do the animatic of the storyboard I have drawn. It remains unfinished to this day. Here is its current progress:
Fig 6. Animatic Progress
In the final week before the presentation begin, I am tasked with creating a map and the environment for the location. I was unable to finish every location in time, but I was able to make three of them and I still haven't yet to draw the map since I have not decided what every location looks like. The first location I draw is 'The Luminarian Circle' which is where the sentinel and other privilege people live. As square is the shape language of the sentinel, I decide that the building would blocky and due to it's proximity to where the Asteli (the dictator faction) live, I would show it towering over the town as well.
Fig 7. The Luminerian Circle
Once I have done this drawing, another week arrived, but I was able to make some time to do two more locations before the final presentation. So I drew the Firesmith town as I feel that this a crucial location since one of the character, Freya is from this very town and maybe important to incorporate in animation. Just like my previous attempt, I want to use the original shape language of the town. There is also another sketch that the art director did of a town located in a canyon, a concept that I like so I personally in corporate that to my drawing too. Here is the result:
The final location is something that has me lost of inspiration, as I have no idea what it could be like. As the art director suggestion of making the Necrologist hideout. We have an existing lore where the necrologist has secret tunnel all around the city, and they live mostly underground. The also associated with death. Then an inspiration hit, I decide to draw the living space as something related to the catacombs. I also incorporated the blob look into the drawing to the best of my ability. Here is the result:
Upcoming Plans
There are numerous problems and challenges when it comes to certain parts of the project. An example would be mostly animation related. The anatomy of the character would be wrong or off, as students who specialize in animation haven't learned character anatomy. The art director, who happens to come from entertainment design would teach me and the other animator (the director) about anatomy during the break. We will also have to participate in playing card based ttrpg in order to get an idea on how the game mechanic works for our game.
As for my personal goal, I will try to find out how to match the character design with the environment design in order to achieve a more cohesive look.
FEEDBACKS
Week 7
Physical mock up require. Make sure you have enough information for the
booklets. The character design is nice. The environment has match the style of
the character. Explore more potential interaction on AR. Card design need to
be more polish. Look at the project in a big picture and look at every design
in the concept. There are no sense of connectivity with one another. Have to
test it by gathering or designs into one illustration. The break down is good
but needs to flash out entirely together. Design is not solid enough. Put it
reference side by side and compare. Project needs to be high quality. Figure
out how books are designed. Animation need to much more better and current
state of animation is a big no no. Careful about using gradient in the card as
this could be reduce quality in vector based graphics. Apply some hand drawn
strokes to the card design. If you draw, it will give it personal touch, maybe
add shadow beneath the character etc. Card style currently looks childish.
Experience and gather card based games/ttrpg communities to get the feel of
how the game works. Need more test. Anatomy is good for character design but
not animation.
Week 6
The anatomy of the feet is off. Just have a minor adjustment. (I try to ask
again for specific but he says Jessica will know if I bring up the feet).
Character seems to be 'floating'. Maybe add in a drop shadow, either soft or
sharp and maybe even a vignette. Ensure the readability of the qr code is
readable. Maybe place it below card instead. Add in the placeholder text to
get the feel of the card design. Make variations of card design and not just a
square border. Not much of a contrast in terms of colour. Download the model
instead of making from scratch. Determine the interaction you want. Break down
what interaction you want. Tweak the downloaded model a little bit. Where are
the actions? This is just a character turnaround. Didn't I ask for character
action last week? Where is the story? Animation does not have to be polished
as long as it's clearly plan out and ready to sell on the idea. (Pretty sure
when he says testing, he doesn't mean just minor actions like character
rotating and head turn). Determine the problem and find solution in animation
or interaction etc. Show what you can do? What your next step? Forecast what
will be done in major project 2. Define problem, find solution. Communicate
often (more than once per week).
Week 5
Make the mock-up first. Doesn't have to be that detailed. Start testing. The
faster you fail, the better you grow. Make one set of cards. How illustration
will set inside card frame. Make mock up. Short snippets of animation
REFLECTIONS
Major project is perhaps one of the more challenging modules to be taken. Not
because the individual task are difficult, but the task can get overwhelming
pretty quick. It is also one of those module where there are no fixed ways of
doing thing because it is open-ended. I must admit that the feedback given can
be rather intimidating in some ways, but I have learned to appreciate them as
the feedback make sense and they were rather clear, actually. Despite that, I
have noticed that we have received the same certain feedback as previously and
still misunderstood some intent behind the feedback. What I could gather from
this experience is that we have to ask the lecturers the right questions in
order to have more clarity on what the actual intent of the feedback.
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