My evolution towards the creation of my video game project

1. Evaluation
Samuel Johnson

2. Research
My research consisted of a collection of retro and modern 8-bit stylized games, which
were influential towards the creation of my game. I analysed and broke down the
existing products I collected, as to find the key elements which made them so
enticing, of which I could then rudimentarily weave into my own creation as a means
of attracting a similar demographic; not straight out copy, but take influence from.
This smattering of influences led to me creating experiments which would display
similar art styles and/or gameplay narratives which I wanted to pursue for my final
product rendition. They helped me decide upon what to do and what not to do, how
certain movements should carry a particular pace or weight depending on the
intended notion your game in question wants to provide (realistic or intentionally
cartoonish), as well as what colours and textures best work in a low resolution frame
of animation and how that would alter during the render process. In short, I believe
my research alongside my experimentation worked greatly towards achieving my
wanted outcome, as it provided me with a plethora of ideas of which were enforced
into my own game. Furthermore, ideas which weren’t necessarily founded upon from
my research, but rather by my own independent thinking were further developed on
by the collection of existing qualities found in my researched items, allowing me to
give my game a couple of somewhat unique features rather than just solely plagiarize
a mound of existing titles.

3. Planning
The planning phase was a concise portion of the project, seeing as my research
somewhat predetermined what I was going to create for my final product. It involved
the creation of multiple mind maps, mood boards and a schedule from which I could
plan out my time effectively. However, I was firstly made to analyse the initial brief for
this project, which gave us a target demographic between 16-19 years of age, of
which I was pleased with seeing as I didn’t have to arduously research the interests of
older or younger generations, with the perspective of our audience being within our
frame of understanding. From there, I went on to create a couple of mind maps which
laid out three basic ideas from which I could stem out from, in this case being sport,
adventure and horror. However, as mentioned I was fully aware of the route I wanted
to take beforehand being adventure, yet I wanted to see if I could expand on that idea
through several means and hopefully acquire further inspiration and build up from
that initial blueprint I had in mind. I found this to be helpful in the expansion of my
plan and from that point forwards I further expanded on my adventure idea from 10
separate themes, giving context to each one and trying my upmost to vividly explain
the fundamentals of all of them; with some ideas creeping in from my horror and
sport genres too, which proved to me the necessity of moving out of ones comfort
zone to achieve greater incentive, despite the added time to do so.

4. Planning
Once completed, I went onto create a mood board with an accumulation of
images, which presented a majority of classic adventure games in an 8-bit art
style. They were there to inspire the colour scheme and general gameplay I wished
to create for my own product and I think if they weren’t present during the
process of production, my game would have faltered in both respects. Lastly I
created a schedule which would lay out my time professionally, portion by portion
over a 5 week period, giving me different tasks to achieve during each of the set
time scales. This mostly helped, as it pressured me to complete certain documents
or files in the allotted time, saving me from the inevitable build up of work which
would ultimately arrive if not completed on time. However, some processes
mainly being the production phase altered this schedule drastically, as I didn’t
want to rush the piece I’d spent so much time building up towards and end up
with it appearing like an absolute mess. Therefore I didn’t pressure myself to
complete the work within a soul week, but rather eased off and took my time to
create something I could actually be pleased with, giving reason to why I’m
creating this document past the hand in date.

5. Time Management
As mentioned in my planning evaluation, I created a schedule which laid out
my time professionally, portion by portion over a 5 week period, giving me
different tasks to achieve during each of the set time scales. This mostly
helped, as it pressured me to complete certain documents or files in the
allotted time, saving me from the inevitable build up of work which would
ultimately arrive if not completed on time. However, some processes mainly
being the production phase altered this schedule drastically, as I didn’t want
to rush the piece I’d spent so much time building up towards and end up with
an absolute mess of an animation. Therefore, I didn’t pressure myself to
complete the work within a soul week, but rather eased off and took my time
to create something I could actually be pleased with, giving reason to why I’m
creating this document past the hand in date. My overall analysis for how I
managed my time wouldn’t be one of praise, seeing as I didn’t really take
notice of my schedule over the course of the project. Of course I had mental
targets which I wanted to reach throughout the process of this project, like
time scales I wanted to finish in, but not many times did I take notice of the
physical schedule I had on screen; which I would deem a fault in my time
management skills.

6. Technical Qualities
The animation process was likely the most arduous and repetitive process to be
completed as it consisted of hundreds of frames, over the course of multiple photoshop
timelines. This process was the final stage for each of my photoshop documents once I
had created all of my moving assets, as well as the backgrounds. At the beginning of this
phase, I opened up a timeline at the bottom of the frame and much like a stop-frame
animation, I moved separate assets mere pixels at a time, giving the illusion of clear and
coordinated motion, rather than clunky teleportation from one location to the next, of
which can be seen in conjunction with the displayed frames at the bottom of the
photoshop document. Along with this, I gave each frame specific display times depending
on the length of time I wanted each image to be shown. In this case a majority of frames
were given no delay time at all, meaning the timeline would flow fluidly from left to right,
as to give the appearance of natural movement. On top of this, I made sure to link each
timeline using manual transition effects, of which were made using the same method to
create the rest of the animation. I gradually moved boarders or shapes over the entirety
of the canvas over the course of multiple frames, giving the seamless illusion of moving
from one timeline to the next. Nothing about the animation process was majorly
complex, but rather tiresome at times. Trying to create an animation which flows
smoothly requires more frames, resulting in more work. I didn’t want it to end up feeling
like a classic retro game from the 80s which were known to freeze up and spontaneously
stutter around the screen, so I spent my time moving sprites one pixel per frame which in
turn gives the appearance of neat and precise motion; which I believe worked to great
effect, despite the obvious absurdity of time doing so to get to that point. Which further
explains the reason to why the evaluation is being written past the due date.

7. Aural Qualities
Once I rendered the video in full using Adobe premier to string all of the timelines together,
I needed to add the crucial mix of sound effects and music to bring the animation to its final
perfected rendition and what I imagined during the planning process. To do this, I used a
mixture of pre-made content and newly made sound effects, constructed using the easy to
handle tools on beep box. Firstly, I gathered the pre-existing content off of YouTube
including sound effects such as the bear roar, man screaming and bus engine, as well as the
’little bitty pretty one’ sound track to play throughout the entirety of the animation. As to
transfer the sound files over to adobe premier, I had to copy the YouTube links individually
for each effect onto a YouTube mp3 converter, which would in turn allow me to drag and
drop the converted track into my premier timeline and edit it from there. Now when It
came to adding my self-made effects, the process was far more simple. When I finished
creating a tune or effect, I merely had to download the track off of the beep box website, in
turn saving me the hassle of transferring it over to a dodgy external website like an mp3
converter. From there, once again all I had to do was transfer the download into my premier
timeline, which gave me the tools to cut and match the tracks to the visuals on show. With
my newly implemented sound effects, I went on to cut and modify each one separately, as
to fit the theme of the animation and sync them in time with certain actions on display.
Whilst using dials to change certain volume frequencies on a multitude of sound bites, as to
give particular effects centre stage depending on their importance towards the visuals at
that moment. For example, by the end of the timeline I purposely altered the frequencies
of both the screaming man and groaning bear which take over the entire production, as I
believe it adds an unexpected yet utterly comedic context to a quite brutal ending.

8. Aesthetic Qualities
I believe my game came out looking visually appealing and if I do say so myself, quite
impressive. The array of colours used within the creation of my sprites and backgrounds
was vast and gave the whole animation an enticing value from start to end, beginning
with a light-hearted mixture of primary colours such as blues, reds and greens and
ending on a morbid setting of rouge tones and bleak portions of greys, blacks and
whites. The gradual descent into darkness expresses somewhat of a foreshadowing
before the ultimate demise of Joe, starting off more kid friendly and ending in a
massively dark, yet utterly comedic manner, which keeps the product light hearted
despite the obvious horrors occurring on screen. Unlike the sprites which were drawn
manually pixel by pixel, the backgrounds were accumulated with shapes which were
automatically reduced to a lower quality when implemented into the document, giving
them a less obvious look. From there they were grouped so they could be altered as a
whole and given visual effects, such as colour overlays and textures, to give them the
appearance of earthy terrain, in turn saving me the job of doing the process manually.
Yet despite this, even in there low resolution state, the backgrounds all came out looking
nicely detailed and even partially realistic, of which I was pleased with having not
achieved such a feat beforehand using similar means.

9. Audience Appeal
I believe my game achieves the goal of appealing to my target demographic. Its
not overly violent, meaning it wont repulse any of my more squeamish audience
members and on top of that the light-hearted colour pallet and art style is one
which can appeal to all manner of people, especially those immersed in the
world of gaming with the 8-bit appearance being the fundamental key into their
hearts; due to the induced nostalgia from seeing such familiar gaming art styles.
Furthermore, I kept to my vow and created an adventure like game which
appeals towards my more mature audience, whom of which enjoy the expletory
value my game provides allowing for freedom of choice rather than just a set
path of eventualities. On top of that, the dark humour involved by the the end of
the animation is more likely to be appreciated by an audience of this age range.
With the mash up of multiple screams from both animal and human parties alike
appearing from absolutely nowhere along this pretty tame production and with
this complete surprise brings laughter, simply due to the unexpected nature of
the event.