Context
Brief Analysis
What is the main purpose of the brief? Why are you doing this?
The main purpose of this brief is to create a piece of work that is both original and to show off my talents as an artist.
What is the intention? What is being asked of you? What are you expected to create?
For this Brief I am expected to create a piece of art that is completely original to me and my characteristics.
What would the client say is the most important features?
The client would most likely say that the most important part of this brief is the originality of the piece and that it does not infringe on any copyright laws.
What would the creative say are the most important features?
The most important features of this project is that I present my strengths as a sort of portfolio piece to really show why I am different.
What does Originality mean to you?
Originality has always been difficult for me to define as there's not any set rules or guidelines for the definition. But from what I can gather, originality is the concept of creating a piece of work that doesn't exist anywhere else. Therefore you can take inspiration from many different places and merge them together with your style to create a brand new peice of art.
How is originality represented in motion graphics
and animation?
There are so many different techniques to use within MGA and you can blend these methods together to create a new way of creating.
There is also the fact that each and every person within a specialised company is going to have their own styles as each person is completely unique.
How can we Make sure we are Original within Our work?
BE wacky and remember that you don't need to follow any rules defined by theories. You can also credit your inspirations as long as you are creating something different and taking inspiration from many different sources not just one person, idea or theme.
Contextual Research.
Parkour Versus Free-running
Parkour came to fruition via Army Assault Courses and was meant to have the philosophy for getting from point A to point B in the quickest possible route. A man named David Belle who created the group "Yamakasi" who specialised in turning the urban landscape around them into their on course like the rooftops of France. this is where the sub-genre of parkour emerged with Sebastien Foucan changing the philosophy of parkour and spinning it on its head. Instead of getting from point A to point B, it was more about how you get there via flips, dives and gainers.
This lead to a divide in the community to the point where they are two completely different art forms with similarities in between. These expressions of motion have inspired numerous amount of media via Video Games and Film with the most famous examples being Mirror's Edge, Casino Royale and World Chase Tag (WCT)
World Chase Tag
World Chase Tag, created by Christian Devaux and his brother Damien, was a show of skill were it was just a simple game of tag with the twist that you had to use the environment around you to give yourself an edge over your opponent. This sport was originally just played in Hyde Park however, thanks to the funding of Cary Glotzer and Gray TV it became World Chase Tag®. Nowadays WCT is a competitive field with three levels of competition with National, Continental and Global competitions. As of today, the WCT5 will be held in London in June of 2022.
References:
Icarus
I already have a lot of knowledge on Icarus and its interpretations during the centuries as I have always really enjoyed Greek Myths and learning about the stories of the past. However, to make sure I don't ramble into my own interpretations of the myth I looked at TED-Ed's video The myth of Icarus and Daedalus - Amy Adkins and Overly Sarcastic Production's video Miscellaneous myths: Icarus.
So what I can gather is that Daedalus created the mae for King Minos to hide and get rid of the Minotaur after its creation. Unfortunately, this Labyrinth was to never be solved and thus the in-genius inventor of the maze had to be dealt with and thus we get Daedalus and Icarus (the inventor's son) stranded in a tower. But this is just the setting up of the myth and it's message of hubris. The rest of the story most people know already, Daedalus creates two sets of wings via feathers and wax and warned icarus that if he goes to close t the sea the wings will stop working and too high and the sun will melt them. And to no-one's surprise Icarus flew to close to the sun, ignoring the words of his father. However, It's a poem solely credited to "Fiona" left untitled but was made popular via Christi Steyn's reading of it on TikTok which flipped the script and the meaning of the myth.
What makes good Level Design
From Dan Taylor's Blog on the Ten Principles of Good Level Design, I'm able to understand the Fundamentals of level design and how it is all about the player. This outsider view of what makes good design is interesting as he talks about what the player wants on a kind of subconscious level. What I can gather from his points, is that I will need to allow the player to explore the environment whilst also using the environment to point them in the right direction. I should also tell the player the plot through the environment and explicit means like written conversations and cutscenes so that the player can fill in the story with their imagination. You should also allow the player to have the illusion of choice so that they feel as though their actions meant something. Another tip given is that the level design should surprise the player via jumpscares, long hallways of intimidation and gameplay after the credits for example. I should also make sure that the player learns and masters the mechanics throughout the game before a boss fight twists the mechanic on its head. Now I'm not sure if I'll include a boss-fight if I include it in my game idea however, if there was time to add a boss fight then I will definitely take this on board.
https://www.gamedeveloper.com/design/ten-principles-of-good-level-design-part-1-
Unity Game Engine
Unity game engine has a convenient template for 2D platformers to help people understand how their project may look and how to manipulate sprites. However, if I used this template then that would take away the originality of my piece and it wouldn't fit the brief. Fortunately for me, Unity also supplies a 2D options so that I can build a game from scratch so that it has custom code, sprites and maps. This would fit the brief as it's all my original work. Now there are two ways at building a game in unity which is through sprites and through tiles. They both have pros and cons with the biggest that tiled games are stuck on a locked grid where as sprites are much easier to create organic looking environments. This is probably the method I'll be using so that I can place my sprites anywhere in the scene. Unity seems to be a fairly simple game engine and is user friendly with a components list that will autofill so that you wont need the specific names to get a component nor attach it to a sprite.
Hollow Knight Analysis - Their attempt on exploration.
Hollow Knight has been described as a 2D platformer in the genre of a Metroid Vania. Metroid Vania is a term created to describe the similarities between two other games, Metroid and Castle Vania. It basically means that the player has the freedom to do what they want when they want and they they may have to backtrack to progress further for example in Hollow Knight you need to gain the mothwing cloak before you can get further in the map. Of course people have found ways around this however the general player will need to get the upgrade to pass and thus will need to beat the Hornet boss before gaining the movement upgrade.
But If it so free and preaches and pressures the player to explore than how do they try and stop people from getting lost? Well Team Cherry thought about this and decided to add multiple upgrades, collectibles and a map to make sure the player was able to follow the lore and small hints of where to go next. However, the developers over at team cherry didn't want to make it too easy for the player at the start of the game so they split the in game map into pieces that you had to buy in game for each section, in fact to even update and see yourself on the map you had to buy two more items. These help the player explore and want to interact more with the map.
Case Study-
Pinni and the Lost Voice
Key Stages of Production
Pinni and the Lost voice has one main production process and one for their animations. They started the project with pre-production where they start to explore what the game setting could be and what the story could be about. They ended up with the idea of a sun and moon that have suddenly stopped moving.
Then they moved on to the player movement and slopes. Player movement is incredibly important as it's a part of the game that is with the player for their entire run through. They programmed a custom physics script so that Pinni could have momentum and speed up to a run animation like in Sonic. They even added a stopping animation and a switch from their walk cycle to their run cycle.
Their next idea was to add some form of combat in which they decided to sketch how the character would attack enemies and they settled on barking and using your voice in combat. This is because one of the main themes of the game is finding your voice. They made sure to add knockback to the enemies and even decided to test the combat system on a box as they hadn't sketched out their enemies yet.
After this, a member of the production team went to Rome to take photos of the architecture to use as a reference. The dev team really wanted to capture the styles of architecture displayed in rome even to the smallest detail. They did in depth research into the doors, window style and the overall look of the brick work. They even went to civita di bagnoregio as a reference for the overall feel of the main hub.
They then went on to create tile maps for the game and added a stamina and confidence bar (instead of a health bar). They wanted a way to encourage players to take their time and to encourage them into attacking enemies as if you hit an enemy with your bark, your stamina wouldn't be taken away and then you can use it later. They also wanted the tilesets to be animated do give the world a feel of being real instead of just static. As it was set mainly outside, the wanted to make sure that you could see the grass move in the wind.
They also added enemy behaviour patterns so that the enemies can think by themselves to catch the player. They created an area for the player to be safe and that whenever the player triggered the enemy, you would need to get out of a certain area before the enemy went back to it's idle movement pattern.
When animating the sprites of the game their production pipeline was rather simple. First they had started with thumbnails of what the character was going to look like and what the graphic style should look like and what they wanted the main character of their game to be. This would set the art style for the rest of the game as it would all need to conform to the style of the character. Next they started creating mock ups of the scenery and setting the character may be in so that it is clear what the game could look like. They decided to make two mock ups of the hub area and all the details they wanted within it. After this, they imported it into Unity and created a rough pass of the character so that they knew it would work with unity's software and how the timing of the characters animations would need to be tweaked. To polish this animation, they did a clean up by starting with the key frames and then filling in the mid frames and inbetweeners to really make this character feel as though they could really be the protagonist in this game. This would finalise the graphic style officially and helped get an idea of what the cleaned up look of the game would feel like.
Research
For their main bulk of research they went on a trip to Rome to look at the buildings and the take photos of the architecture around. They also went to an enormous field, which they used as reference for the level design, hub area, and all the small details in between. they also wanted to get the main feel of this city on top of a hill for the hub area, so they also decided to visit civita di bagnoregio. A small town in Italy. Next they decided to look on Pinterest for images that they liked the graphic style of and images / references of the surrounding area so that they could create a mood board for each element they needed drawn e.g. windows, plants, doors , buildings and other elements. They also added the references they took on their trip to Rome. mood boards are a great way to do this as it complies all of your images on one page which allows you to use it as a reference but also so that you can take a step back and see the similarities between them to really understand what elements they like from each image and combine them into an original concept art of the buildings. They also took inspiration from many different game titles including Yoshi's Island which they wanted to get the feel of childhood wonder and adventure to come through in there game. They named a list of games that allowed them to find the elements they enjoyed from each game and focus on them for their own game like an incredible level of detail displayed in the backgrounds of Owlboy. They also chose Donkey Kong Country series to be one of their references in order to see how they could add floating platforms but have them look organic and integrated into the background as well.
Problems during production
Most issues seen through out their production were rather simple. For example the character didn't seem to fully stand out from the background, so instead of a murky grey colour, they instead chose to colour Pinni the dog a nice shade of blue so that there is enough contrast between him and the scenery. However, they didn't want the character to seem "radioactive" and over saturated. The team were also struggling with sloped platforms as their momentum based movement script seemed to not like slopes. Their initial solution was to change the physics material on the player every time they collide with the slope's BoxCollider2D. Unfortunately this solution was incredibly janky and not polished enough for their game, so they decided to write a new physics script in order for the player to keep their momentum during slopes. Another problem they were having was the confusing range of the player's melee combat as there was no visualisation of the attack at the time. To solve this they did numerous thumbnails of what it could look like and then started to add objects like bones, paws and fists inside the sfx to see how they looked. This will help contextualise sound within the game's world which may also help when creating boss battles and their attacks. For example, if voices become objects then maybe a boss could scream bombs that have a delayed explosion. If sound becomes physical then suddenly you have created a infinite number of possibilities within the world. Another smaller issue the team ran into was when they were adding the animated tile maps and how they found that you couldn't really tell where the player could stand and where they couldn't. To solve the issue the changed the lighting in a very simplistic rectangular lighting path.
Feedback
As they were uploading Dev Logs throughout their production, the Pinni Team had constant feedback from YouTube, Twitch and their Discord server. Their feedback helped them decide between concept arts and textures for characters such as tambourine bat and the character's dad. On of these examples is a discord poll that decided how the main hub should look like. The community decided that the main piece of the hub should be a god-like Chicken instead of a sunflower or a ___ which then led the team into a brainstorming session as to how this idea links to their game and its world building. They ended up making the chicken the controller of the sun and moon but they could only control them through its voice. Therefore they made the chicken have a sore throat to create a reason for the player's journey. Now the game has a plot and theme as the chicken lost its voice and the player has to go around the world to collect ingredients for a cure. This lead the team to base the game around the theme of confidence, finding your voice and sounds in general. One comment also suggested that one of the bosses should be the switched colour palette of an enemy as the first colour pallette stood out from the background and the other fit in with the environment.
Main Themes of the Game
The two main themes of the game is finding your voice and a sense of progression. These two themes are communicated visually through out the game in numerous ways. The simpler theme of progression is very simple to see as the sun and moon are frozen in place which also means that the lighting for these levels are set in stone and can't change. This gives the player more incentive to continue as they can see how far they how come based off of the general time (twilight, noon, sunset) the level is set in, which is showed via the level's colour schemes with warmer colours indicating the start and end of the game with cool colours being the middle. However, the main theme of the game is trying to find your own voice. This is represented through a number of things from the player's controls to the health system, to the enemy's and the main hub. When it comes to the health system, the game trades the system of one based in health, for one based in confidence vis-à-vis a confidence bar. The bar refuels when you hit an enemy and it will decrease when you are hit by an enemy as the player would also lose confidence in their ability. Speaking of enemies, most enemies in the game are related to sound in some way for example, there is a tambourine bat enemy that follows the player.This is a clear visualisation of sound and expression as it's form in made from a musical instrument. The main story of the game also shows the theme of gaining your voice as the player has to gather ingredients to make a medicine for the god-like chicken to gain its voice after a sore throat in order to move the sun and moon again. This is literally the player giving a voice to the chicken in order to finish the game. The final way I saw voices and sound used within the game, was the combat . The player's combat is a simple expression of sound, with the main character being a dog they decided to present the combat bark. However, the team designing the effect for the attack decided to add a fist in the texture of the bark to show it's a combat tool. The player character can also use this combat as a bark jump allowing the character to navigate the world via their voice.
Resources
For this case study I looked at Andrew & Giacomo | Pinnical the creators of Tadpole Tales who did a dev log series on YouTube of how they are creating their new game "Pinni and the lost voice".
Unfortunately, the game isn't officially released yet but it is on Steam's wishlist system.
Link for Game's wishlist:
Link for Dev Log series:
Key Takeaways
My first takeaway from this case study is that I should get feedback on my textures during the production stages so that I can improve the textures later on. By gaining this feedback I'll be able to gain an outsider's perspective on how the game looks and what people generally think needs to be improved. It will also allow me to see what is more appealing to the public when publishing my own game.
My second takeaway is that I should look at my past ideas so that I can improve on the content of the game and it's worldbuilding. This will force me to think about why I am adding something to the game so that the player feels more invested in the game itself.
The last thing I took away from this case study is that I should focus on the main theme throughout the game. This is so that I can refer back to it throughout the project to make sure it is clearly apart of the game and that it is translated clearly to the audience so that they then take something with them after they have played my game.