Weeks Four and Five of Production

Week Four we finally began to finalise the story, myself and the others working on the story started to write up the character bios so that the designing could commence. This was important as the characters were a very important part of the both the game and web-series. I tasked those who wished to design characters with first creating a collection of silhouettes. This was decided so that as a team decisions could be made on what direction we want to see the characters move in. Sadly I feel that most didn't have the confidence in their skills to go away and begin designing. This was made apparent as the following week was spent by most, procrastinating trying to gather inspiration and reference.

Week five came round as we approached mid semester and work seemed behind schedule, the silhouettes were all but few, the story was still being tweaked, models hadn't even been started and everyone seemed to be losing focus. Most of the artist needed some help getting on track, so to help out Dave Ryan one of our amazing art teaches decided to do a small workshop presentation to help those who were struggling get the push they needed. For the most part it worked and everyone began working and come week six we began to see some great designs. Steve Lang was pushing out some fantastic designs and seemed to be working rather we'll so i appointed him to be in charge of the characters design and consistency as he a curtain geometric style that gave it a nice animated feel.

I was confident that the characters would look great but i needed to get onto the modeller to find out why no work was being done. Realising that there was no asset lists created i sat down with Jack Dabrowny and we began to analyse the environmental concepts we had to form an assets list. This ended up taking longer than expected as i was constantly being called away to help someone or give my consultation on something. Eventually Jack took over and got the assets list written up and on pivotal tracker so that the modellers could begin work.

Weeks One to Three of Production

The semester is over and the games prototype was revealed to the public last night during our game showcase night. We got a lot of great feedback, mostly positive but too we got feedback on bugs in the game and improvements we could make which have been very helpful.

I haven't really posted through out the project mainly because of how busy I've been working on it. But now that things are finishing up I thought its time I show you my roll in the project and what I've been working on for the past 12 or so weeks.

The start of the project was mainly spent on developing the story I originally pitch into a working script and storyboard. Over the next 2-3 week we worked it into a usable story for both the game and webisodes to develop from.

Along with developing the story I was appointed Visual Director and worked with the other artists to make sure our art styles were consistent. This was important to ensure the rest of the team could visualise the same things and communicate clearly what the game and webisodes where to look like by the end of development. To keep consistency we created a set of colour palettes for the artist to sample from, this re enforces consistency across designs. I split with artist into groups playing on their strengths but decided not to restrict them to only designing from their strengths.This was so that everyone had the opportunity to develop there skills in other areas as the whole point of this assessment was not to create a final product but was to learn and experience working together and developing new skills.



 As on concept art was in development parallel to development of the story we didn't yet have everything finalised. This caused a lot of confusion as people began to worry that what they where work on at the given time would eventually need to be changed or scrapped. Fortunately no work was scrap due to the changes but there were a few changes but all in all everyone was fairly happy.

Along with the story changes the bios for the characters were unable to be completed until the story was finalised, this meant that characters couldn't be designed until the bios where complete. So to keep everyone on task and the project moving forward I got the artist to work on Environmental designs first, as the location seemed to be the only thing that stayed the same through out the changes made. This meant we could establish the main setting and later begin designing characters to suit as the environment. This would also give a lot of info to the artists on what kind of clothing the characters would be wearing, their skin tones and a list of assets the modellers can start on.

Scroll Of The Fallen

I'd like to introduce you to the latest project I've been working on. This project has been in development for roughly eight weeks and I think its about time I show everyone what's been going on.

The project has been broken up into three Avenues to tell the story in a way that will reaching a broader audience. The Three Avenues that we will be going down are building a Game, writing a Web-series, and constructing an App Book. These three different avenues will be following the same overall Legend but each will show the story from a different perspective to reveal a more in-depth story and allow the audience to become more engaged and introduce them to new mediums that they may not have used much before. An example of this would be someone who only watches videos and has never played a game getting involved in the web series and then choose to buy the game to get a more in-depth view of the world in effect broadening there mediums they get there entertainment from.

The audience will be introduced to Cyrus, an experience blacksmith that has taken on the task of protecting an ancient scroll as a promise to an old friend on his death bed. Containing a dark power that corrupts anyone who opens it, the scroll is sort as and evil relic and only the daring and dark seek its power. The Game will follow Cyrus's story as he fights to keep his promise while saving the world on the side.

The Web-series will be made up of small clips that give insight to the characters in the story like the personality, motivation and history. We plan to make longer single episodes for larger events and characters that have a big impact to reveal back story leading up to the events that occur in the game.

The App Book will be a mystical encyclopaedia containing all kinds of information about the realm of Asradin and its history. Basic information will be accessible but other information will need to be unlocked through codes input through the Codex Page. As the audience plays the game or watches the Web-series they will notice hidden symbols and hieroglyphics scattered through out the world. If they key in these codes into the app books Codex page they will gain access to new pages and unlock hidden extras.