Sprout Game - Finished

Today we finally got the Sprout Game finished. I worked on the Unity scenes for the last 2 weeks to bring the game together, adding the dialogue, compiling the backgrounds, making sure the platforms are working properly and that the levels are linked together in the correct formats. There were a lot of things that I had to get help for, such as the dissapearing bit of ground when the player triggers it, the water drop health pickups, and also collecting the Sprouts which add to the score.

There were a lot of things I had to fix up today right before our presentation, such as the video files not working but that was just because I didn't have Quicktime installed. Also one of the backgrounds wasn't showing up in the build but that was because for some reason it had an animation controller on it.

After everything was finished and put together we did our presentation and got some good feedback. There are some things I would like to fix if I get the time in the holidays. I noticed in the play through some of the backgrounds in the parallax didn't match up, so that would have to be fixed. Also I would like to spend some time making the backgrounds blend together much better, because at the moment there are some discrepancies where they don't match up. There are also some issues in some parts of the layers with sorting layers some layers of backgrounds flickering over others.
I would also spend some time changing the dialogue boxes to look nicer, add avatars to the characters that are talking, and some particles to the backgrounds in the scene. I would add ashes or smoke to the dead scene and leaves or flowers blowing in the breeze to make it look nicer.

Overall though I'm happy with how it turned out in the end. There's a lot that could be one to improve it in several ways, but with the time constraint we had this is what we came up with. :)
I had a lot of fun painting the environments for the game and seeing it in the game was really satisfying after working on it and being happy with how it looks.

Yay Team Sprout!

Sprout Game Background Progress

My progress on part 4 of the backgrounds

Had fun painting the leaves and the water.

Making a game without knowing much about scripting is kind of hard

Sprout Game Green Environment Progress

I have been working on the last section of green backgrounds assigned to me and was working on the grandma tree. There's not too much to do, just paint in some more details where the character will be focused and add more plants to make it more alive.

Also this is the first time I've been able to paint tree leaves like below, I haven't been able to do it that nicely before so I'm happy with how it's turning out.

Sprout Game Progress

Here is an update for the progress on Team Sprout's game!! 

I have been working on putting everything together, we have all of the dead backgrounds done, just need to grab the last couple of pieces. 

I have been adding the dialogue pieces for all the npc's (grandpa, grandma tree and the beaver)

Added fires for removing health on contact, water drop place holders that add health, climbable vines, dissappearing ground on trigger, and the transition from the dead level to the alive level once the player finishes talking to the beaver.

I also painted up an alive version of the background to test painting over it with the style and colours of the alive concept I did earlier on in the project. Phoenix and Mikayla are using the picture below to use as reference for translating their sections of BG to alive.

Soon I will be able to add the little Sprout character to the game, Tea has been working hard on it and it's looking really cute. Can't wait to add it.

Jo did a great job on the assets and little sprouts that look like our team members, they look really  cute and I will be adding them soon.

Yay Team Sprout!

I have a list written up on things I need to do for the Sprout Game such as:

• Start/End Splash Screen - Needs pretty artwork
• Add water drops
• Finish adding dialogue for NPC's
• Finish adding all FG elements
• Update Sprout Character
• Customise Dialogue Boxes - Maybe add avatars for character talking
• Add Sprouts as collectables and add scoring system
• Finish adding the assets for both dead and alive levels
• Add moving platform in alive level
• Leaves blowing in background in alive level

Sprout Game - Grandma Tree

I finished creating the environment for part 4 of our level design and this section includes the Grandma tree, the falling log and the section underneath the grandma tree which  the character can walk through. The dried up mushrooms on the tree represent the platforms which will be functioning when the character makes it's way back when the forest is brought back to life.

I painted a twist symbol or 'Pikorua' on the Grandma tree which represents the bond between two people.

 The new age understanding of the pounamu twist design is that it symbolizes the bond between two people, whether founded in friendship, love, or blood. It connects the spirits of friends, family and lovers, bringing them closer together across space and time. It’s said to represent their life path. Like the continuous shape of the greenstone twist, life for both individuals will continue despite many unexpected twists and turns, inevitably bringing them together again as it travels full circle. Its design comes from the piko piko fern whose fronds curl around one another in our native bushscapes. It also resembles the path of life and eternity.

The grandma tree is a Kauri tree and she is very old, probably a lot older than the grandpa tree. She stands tall and strong in the middle of the forest and is always looking out for the grandpa tree.

The symbol on her chin represents the bond between them and that they are tied together for eternity.

Sprout Game Update

Over the past couple of weeks I have been working with my team mates on the level design and the environments for our Sprout Game. Tea made a mock up picture of what our level design is after a team meeting and then I created a Unity Mock up which I will be using for our game. Gradually I will be replacing the assets with our environment paintings, assets and characters. C: 

It's coming along nicely so far, but there is a problem with the character sticking to walls and stuff so i will need to ask the tutors about that.

I painted the grandpa tree at the beginning of the game and made animation for his eyes to blink and his eyebrows are also movable. I also painted the other stuff in the screenshots below.

I need to paint the trees with some black marks or something though to make them look a bit burnt and show a bit more that a forest fire happened/is happening.

Sprout Game - Another Environment Concept tonight

I got carried away tonight and did another concept tonight because I was really inspired by the artwork Tea found.
This time I painted a version of what the forest coming back to life would look like with the river running through it.

I painted everything on separate layers as well so it was easier to paint and navigate through.

Sprout Game - Environment Concept

I painted up some concepts in the last couple days for level design some painting for the environments to test out the art style and colours from a reference image Tea found.
We had a meeting today to talk about level design and discussed the idea of an old tree at the beginning of the game that the sprout encounters. I searched up old trees with faces and painted it into an environment concept for our game. :)

Sprout Game - Reference Images for Assets

For creating the dragonfly I had to research images of dragonflies from various angles to figure out how to draw them. Here are some images I studied.

References:

https://media.mnn.com/assets/images/2016/08/dragonfly-lead.jpg.653x0_q80_crop-smart.jpg

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e1/Emperor-Dragonfly-(8).JPG

https://c1.staticflickr.com/3/2601/4179839029_1be08aeb83_z.jpg?zz=1

http://cdn.pcwallart.com/images/blue-dragonfly-flying-wallpaper-2.jpg

Sprout Game - Environment Scene with Assets

Today I finished up my assets creating the looping idle animations, I decided to just go with the vines and the dragonfly. The animation for the vines is just simple, i did what some of the other team members did and just transformed the picture for animation. With the dragonfly I have each of the parts separate in different layers and folders in a hierarchy so i could animate them separately.

Sprout Game - Environment Painting and Rock Asset/Sprite

Today I did a little painting to play around with the environment for the sprout game. At this point I only did it without colour to play around with lighting and shapes. It's not a fully detailed environment I just mainly focused on having foreground, midground and background objects which are separated by layers for parallax.

I also wanted to paint my rock asset for the game and I think it turned out well, but I hope it's not too detailed. D:

After that I tried out my rock in Unity (yes it's a rock animation but it's not the rock that moves ). 

I had a lot of fun painting today, there's something satisfying about painting rocks..

Sprout Game - Unity 2D Dragonfly Animation

Over the past couple of days I have been testing a 2D sprite I made in Photoshop and how it works in Unity. I managed to figure it out but I think I am missing the mouse click script. It's okay though I don't think we would use that in our game.

I made the Dragonfly in Photoshop using the brushes and animated it using the frames. I used to do a lot of Photoshop animations so it wasn't hard to do. I would like to know what my group members think about this asset. 

Production Interactive: Concepts for Game

Mass upload~

Here are the designs/concepts I did for the assets to our Team Sprout game. I was given the task to do concepts for the dragonfly, rocks with and without moss and hanging vines. I did a couple for each but I could do more variations. I need feedback from our team to decide which designs to polish and for deciding what kind of style to go with.

The other drawings below are some more environmental concepts, there are just a few quick sketches of some layouts, and one environment with three stages, from dead, to in between and then to life.

Creative Studio - Brief

Over the past week I have been writing up the brief for my next assignment. It made me realize something which was discussed in class. The limitations that I am creating for the conversion formulas from baking recipes to character design and animation are something that would help the artist because it gives you specific guidelines to follow, which usually generates more ideas and creativity. Having too much freedom can hinder artists and make them feel stuck or like they have no ideas, like the famous art block. Following the conversion formulas for my assignment should spark good ideas and create some unique character designs.

Creative Studio - Synthesizing

For the last exercise I teamed up with Phoenix for Synthesising. We chose to do embodied thinking and I chose patterning for the last trans disciplinary exercise. We both decided to create a texture in Photoshop which we would then give to each other to find patterns for the topic of "What society looks like when it's working at its best"
So this is my image from the picture that Phoenix gave me. I saw patterns of lots of people within her texture so I created this. I drew kids running around playing to show they are having a fun and happy childhood, and the adults are doing things they love, walking dogs, spending time with loved ones etc. I drew the trees in the scene to show thriving life, also with the birds and the nest.
I think society works at it's best when it's happy, surrounded by the people that love and care about them.

Creative Studio - Exquisite corpse

Here is my animation for exquisite corpse, end frame is Sam's. :)

Creative Studio - Animation Process for Brief

Translating Baking process to Character Design through ingredients list and recipes.

Ingredients:

Base (Race, if multiple combine the races)

Standard Flour- Average Human

Self Rising Flour- Giant

Wholewheat Flour- Robot

Cake Flour- Magical Human

Pastry Flour- Fluffy Animal

Oat Flour- Bug

Bread Flour- Sea Creature

Semolina- Alien

Oats- Goat
Ground biscuits- Reptile

Yeast- Beast

Sugars (Personality Type)

Granulated- Wants to be liked by everyone
Cane Sugar- Natural, the hippy
Light Brown Sugar- Likes to hang out with the cool people
Dark Brown Sugar- The romantic

Raw- Rough

Coconut- Laid Back

Syrup- Intense

Sweeteners- Easy Going
Caster Sugar- Very Social
Confectioners Sugar- Sensitive
Pearl Sugar- Hard edged, strong personality
Sanding Sugar- Super nice
Demerara Sugar- Always wants to have tea and a scone with your grandma

Main liquid (Age)

Water- Young (0-10 yrs)

Buttermilk- Teenage (10-20 years)

Milk- Young Adult (20-30 years)

Soy Milk- Adult (30-40 years)
Almond milk- Middle Aged (40-50 years)

Condensed milk- Elderly (60+)

Coconut milk- Immortal

Fillings (Style, can be mixed if multiple)

Apple- 70's

Orange- 80's

Banana- 90's

Blueberry- Childrens Book Style

Strawberry - Colourful

Raspberry- Pixel Video Game Style

Feijoa - Fantasy Style

Kiwifruit - Vintage Style

Cherry- Romantic/Sweet Style

Lemon - Steampunk

Lime - Cyberpunk

Mandarin - Neon

Pineapple - Tropical/Island Style

Blackberry - Dark/Gothic Style
Other fruits- Grayscale

Chocolate- Cute/sweet Style

Nuts - Horror Style
Sprinkles- Fairy tale style
Coconut- Gangster

Flavour enhancers/essences (Unique Item/Accessory)

Vanilla - Sword

Rum - Flask

Coconut - Wood based weapon (staff, wand, practice sword etc)

Cinnamon - Book

Ginger - Unique Bag

Brandy - Talisman

Lemon - Alien Artifact

Raspberry - Ancient Artifact

Peppermint - Precious Item

Orange - Glowing orb

Strawberry - A piece of technology

Dairy (Purpose)

Whipped cream - To enjoy the world

Heavy cream - To discover/learn

Light cream - To raise a family

Greek Yogurt - To travel

Plain Yogurt - To help others

Butter - To follow their dream/aspirations
Margarine - Doesn't know their purpose

Other (bonus)
Oil - Likes fried foods
Food colouring - Colourful hair (or something else if no hair)
Baking Soda - Wakes up early
Baking Powder - Goes to bed late
Eggs - Has a pet chicken
Cream Cheese - Only eats cheese
Honey - Obsession with honey
Vegetables - Likes gardening
Peanut Butter - Favourite animal is squirrels
Jam - Loves sweet food

Baking Processes - Determining the animation of the character

Mix ingredients together in a bowl - Idle standing animation
Mix wet and dry ingredients separately, then mix together - Pulling a standard pose animation
Place all ingredients in a blender/food processor - Energetic animation
Beat the eggs/cream with a mixer - Dancing animation
Let the dough stand for a certain amount of time - Sitting down/sleeping animation
Melt ingredients - Happy animation
Boil ingredients - Angry animation



Baking the ingredients (background/weather, doesn't have to be detailed)

Preheat oven~

Layer ingredients on top of each other in prepared pan/dish- Home
Place the mixture into a cake/muffin/loaf/slice tin- City
Spoon batter/mixture and place on baking paper- Forest
Shape the dough and place on a baking tray- Sunny
Chill the prepared mixture in the fridge - Rain
Freeze the prepared mixture - Icey wind, snow

Cool the finished baking product on a wire rack- Wrap up the animation, add any finishing touches

Spread icing/topping on the finished product - Add sparkles

Creative Studio Brief

For the brief of my assignment I will be creating a formula which can be used for both character design and animation.
I will be sorting through all the common ingredients used in baking recipes and more and I will be allocating them to different processes in the animation pipeline, and I would also like to do the same for character design. That way, for following the brief of my assignment I will be giving myself the task to pick any baking recipe that I choose, follow the formula I developed and design a character and create an animation by following the recipe.
The animation processes for the ingredients for example will be something like this:
base ingredients such as flour, oats etc will be the base of the animation, could be something like the genre or the theme or style of the animation, the main thing that will happen in the animation.

I will begin writing up the brief shortly and compile my list of ingredients and translate them to processes, and if I think I have enough time I will do it for character design too.

Team Sprout Meeting - Environmental Game Assets

Today we had another team meeting to discuss the next part of our project which involves creating assets for our game. We wrote out many ideas for creatures, plants and other things that can fit into our scene and assigned each team member to their preferences. We need to each do at least 6 rough silhouette studies for our chosen ideas, then we will need to do 2 polished and coloured digital concepts. These polished assets will need to include parts that can be animated.
My chosen assets were:
-dragonfly
-rocks (some with moss etc, some without)
-
I will add the others once I remember them or see the list.

Creative Studio - Abstracting

So our task today was to design a character or a creature that represents our chosen discipline, draw a 3/4 front and back view of the character and have it cleaned it.
I sketched out a few designs in my book ranging from weird looking pokemon type creatures to little fairy things. I decided to go with the last one I sketched and draw it up in PS.

Abilities:
-With the wave of her whisk she can make any number of baked goods appear in the blink of an eye, but it's completely random what will appear.
-If she looks at a recipe she will learn it straight away and it's added to the list of things she can make~

Cleaned up drawing of my baking character:

Initial sketches and ideas:

Creative Studio - Modelling

We were given an exercise to try to show all of history in some kind of image or animation without using numbers, symbols or sounds. The first thing that came to mind was trees, they have been around for a very long time and can be the symbol of life. The rings inside a tree represent their age and trees live for a very long time.
I animated a tree growing and creating a cycle of life.

Sprout Game - Concepts

I drew up some concepts for my teams Sprout game, and redrew some of them digitally. 

I played around with different body shapes for the sprout and face types.

For the environment, I tried redrawing the same scene in a few variations, first from my book then another couple of versions digitally. I tried painting them like some of the examples in my previous blog post, but it will take a lot of practice to get that good...... I would like to be able to paint like that one day. *-*

Game Group Project

We have chosen our groups for our new game project. I am with Phoenix, Mikayla, Jo and Tea and we are going to make a cute, stylised artsy 2D game with underlying messages about inner growth and the environment. We had our first team meeting yesterday and discussed our project and the direction we want to take it in, we came up with a lot of ideas and Jo has complied them all into a document for us. We decided to each come up with some concepts each and to find some images for our own mood boards for the presentation on Tuesday next week.

I found some really nice artwork that I feel could work towards the art style of the game in terms of colour, composition, contrast and lighting.

I really like the colours and the composition of these images, they are really pretty and it would be nice if we could achieve something like this in our game.

Here's some images I gathered for reference on forest fires for environment design

I am still developing character concepts so that's still in development~

Creative Studio - Transdisciplinary Project

After the talk with Dane I have a much better idea of how I want to direct my project. He gave me a lot of good ideas on how I can start to think about translating the process of my chosen discipline into animation.
I wrote down some notes for my planning and ideas:
-Could be something about things of different sizes and shapes combining to create something new.
-Different ingredients could represent different character traits, physical traits that come together to create a new character. Recipes can be formulas for character design.
-Different  processes such as mixing, sifting, chilling, etc can represent different animation principles, storytelling elements or even character traits.

_____________________________________________

Baking Processes versus Character Animation Processes:
-Baking requires following the recipe precisely for the best result
-Preparing and gathering the required ingredients beforehand to make the process smoother
-Measure the correct amounts of each ingredient
-Mix the ingredients together in the way the recipe states it and in the right order
-Use good quality ingredients
-Ensure that it is cooked properly at the right temperature
-Cook before slicing and serving if needed

Character Animation / Design
-What type of character is being designed? Are they a plain human, an intergalactic alien or a talking turtle? The base and foundation of the character lies here.
-What is the world that this character resides in? The ocean, suburbia, jungle etc.
-Personality of the character needs to be thought about, this can determine how they interact with other character and the world they are in.
-The characters purpose and drive in the world, what are they doing and why.

_____________________________________________

I think that the processes of baking can be translated to animation. I will have to write out a big list of possible ingredients for a large variety of recipes, divide them into sections that represent a certain part of the animation process.

_____________________________________________

The main sections I thought of are:

Baking:

~Ingredients: ~
-Base (flours, oats, ground biscuits, etc)
-Sugars (brown, raw, white, coconut, syrup, sweeteners)
-Fruits (fresh, dried, candied)
-Flavour enhancers/essences (vanilla, rum, coconut, cinnamon, ginger)
-Other fillings (chocolate, nuts)
-Main liquid (Milk, soy milk, coconut milk, condensed milk, almond milk, water)
-Creams (whipped, heavy, yogurt, butter)

~Mixing together ingredients~
-dry ingredients together
-wet ingredients together
-blending/processing certain ingredients
-chopping ingredients
-whisking
-melting

~Preparing the pan (different types per recipe)~
-cake pan
-muffin tin
-loaf tin
-slice tin
-mini muffin tin
-baking tray
-cookie cutters

~Oven Temperature
-100 + degrees etc

Animation:

-The world (society in the world, views in the society, social norms, landscape, wildlife, plants)
-The main character (the characters personality, beliefs, temperament, special abilities if any, physical attributes, species/race)
-Side characters (friend of the main character, enemies, family, acquaintances)
-The story (what's happening in the world, evil characters, prophecy, social movement, etc)
_______________________________________________

Animation Practice

Just some practice in my spare time for fun, trying to get back into creating more personal art and animaton.

Unity Basics

Our task was to recreate a photo using simple objects and light the scene to a photo we find online.

I picked an image with a pink and purple hue, I did the lighting quickly with a skybox and changed the hue of the light, but it could be altered further to match the image more.