Posters

Posters! I have been working on posters to advertise our game.
I had a lot of trouble thinking of ideas for the posters however I checked with some teachers asked opinions of my team mates and put some things together. I'm pretty happy with what I came up with.

Josh's design 

DA DA!! :P well that's the posters. The middle one is actually Josh's poster. I asked him for some help and he had a mess around with photoshop and came up with that :)

I'm happy with our poster making.

Backgrounds!!

Cave - Parallax/static

Flower field - Parallax

These are all the current backgrounds we're using in our game at the moment.

A mix between static and parallax. I explained in a previous post why we have static and parallax backgrounds.
I designed almost all of the backgrounds, Josh has been helping me with the art, he's been great. He did all the GUI while I focused on the backgrounds.

Josh did however design the lave world and I simple edited the bones to break them up and a bit as requested by Peter and also adding more of a 3D look to them as suggested by teachers.

Forest - parallax

Josh is happy with the change to his background, I made sure that he was okay with it because it was his art in the first place and I didn't want to disagree with him over it.

Some of the backgrounds are made as gifs because I animated them for a bit of extra awesome. :) I'm really quite pleased with the animated ones.

The not animated backgrounds have particle effects on the in game. The cave has water drips falling from the stalactite.

The flower fields has petals blowing gently across the field.

Temple - static

and the Forest has leaves falling from the trees.

All the static backgrounds have transitions images that overlay the start and end of the background to smoothly transition one background to the next.

Josh did a really good job on the temple and lave world transitions. I just couldn't think of how to transition the temple so I left the job to Josh and he did really well.

Lava world - static

I think I've covered most of the informations on the backgrounds, umm how we got the ideas for each one was we'd discuss what kind of backgrounds we thought would look cool, Josh would draw up some thumbnails and I would take it from there and sketch it up in photoshop.

So that's pretty much everything about our backgrounds.

Waterfall - static

The game is based a lot on the art., because it's such a simple game play we wanted really interesting backgrounds to stand out.

 I think we've done well :)

Soul pit - static

Updatinggggggg

Persephone crashing animation!

yayay so that's her crashing into a 2 stack of blocks. There are a few extra details I need to add to the animation yet, such as flowers falling from her hair, however thats not major.

uuuh my brain's not working >.< umm what to say!

I also finished the 1 block crash. 
So I made two different crash animations because I thought it would look funny having Steph crash and not fall over when she hit a one block and if I have a one block animation I obviously need a two block crash too.

I'm going to now explain some jazz about my drawing process of Steph.
I found it rather hard coming up with a character design for Steph, as she doesn't have a exact image, she and her story change from person to person.
I googled a lot of different versions of Persephones story and image to get a feel for who she was. I then started sketching pictures of what I thought she'd look like.

Sketches

 once I thought about it for a few weeks and sketched out a couple of idea I came up with little chibi Steph :D

I wanted a more cartoon character for the game. I thought it would make the game more fun and light rather than realistic.

Once I had the idea for what I wanted her to look like I started sketching out a run animation.

 Josh found a good run animation online that we used as reference for Steph running.

Run animation reference

My first attempt at animating wasn't so great.... it was scruffy and nooby. I found it really had to draw he same thing over and over.... I have much more respect for animators now.

First attempt 

Third and final

Second attempt

So you can see it get better the more work I put into it. I used the same process for the other sets of animation (walk, idle, crash)

So that I think is my Persephones story so far.

If I remember more I will add another post.

Oh my glob

oh oh I forgot I had a blog to blog on. my bad.

well so it's been a while, ummmmmm I finished one of the crashing animations, I decided we needed 2 because it would look funny having Persephone crash into a block only half her size exactly the same way as she'd crash into a 2 or 3 block stack.

I've not been well for about a week so I haven't really gotten anything done hmmm I finished the souls background and the transitions. hmmm

I was also doodling on a few background ideas but I'm going to run them by my team before I work too much on them.

I think that's all.

Underworld

Update on the underworld. I'm still not having much luck coming up with creative ideas for this background :/
But it has improved since yesterday. I'm liking how it's going I just want more umm wow in it I guess... hmmm
 however here is the updated background.

I want to add green fire some where to add shadows to the bridge and just give a creepy feeling to the scene.

I like the chains but I'm not too sure how well it fits with the wooden bridge.. hmm

Oh and the roof looks better now :) I like that.


I'll be working on animating the fog and creepy grabbing hands tomorrow I think.

Other than that I have to draw the transitions for this and possibly the temple if Josh didn't finish them. He's so helpful :3

I have one more animation to finish. The crashing animation, we're thinking something really Wile E coyote style. really Smoosh kinda thing.

 I think that will be really rather funny. :) Poor Steph :P

end of update.

Quick update

Okay so quickly before bed I'm posting just a catch up on what I've been doing.

I finished the Idle to walk animation and the walk to run. I haven't got gif's at the moment but I'll put them up later.

I'm working now on a underworld themed background. I'm having trouble focusing though :S I'm tired and run out of creative ideas..... so tomorrow I will be working hard on that, staying focused and figuring it out.
The underworld we decided would look good as a kind of soul pit, or underground soul river type thing...

.... okay so while I was drawing the underworld I didn't like it.... but looking at it now from a distance it's looking kinda good. I will talking it over with my team tomorrow.

There is lots to do in the next week and my minds gone blank! D:

Things will work out. We're all working hard to get our game done. It's something we all want to be proud of.

alrighty, good night.

putting her face on

Sooo my last update was the idle animation.
I have added more frames to the animation to make it look smoother as requested by Peter and I have to say, he's right, it looks much better now. ^_^ .

I also went through the walk and run animations to add make up to Steph's face to match the detail of the idle.

I think the make up looks really nice on Steph, she looks young and nice. :)

I'm really happy with how the walk has worked out, however my favourite has to be the idle. Her tapping foot is rather funny, she looks really annoyed :P as she should be.

I need to work on how I will get her to change from idle to walk and how walk will change to run :S

I have some ideas for the walk to run animation, nothing big maybe 2 frames as I tried to get the walk and run pretty close in movements to prepare myself for this day.... (thank you past me).

I need to make a crashing into block animation too..... D: so much to do! hmmm

So, I'm going back to work now.....

Idle

Idle hmmm now this could be referring to me or Persephone...... :v

:P I'm finding rather hard to motivate myself to actually work on these animations... I know what I have to draw I just can't bring myself to draw it.... D: my drawing has run dry! but I'll live, I am slowley getting there, slooooooooowley but surely.

I have been working on Steph's (Persephone) idle animation. This will be used before the game has started, the animation will be just standing on screen tapping her foot for now, if I have time/motivation later on I will hopefully ad more to her idle movements. However for now, we will stick with the basics.

On the idle I really focused on the face to give her character. The eyes I tried to make simple but pretty, and I tried to go for an innocent youthful look. I think I have achieved pretty close to what I wanted her to look like. As when I started designing her I really had no idea what I wanted her to look like I'm happy with what I have now.

I will most likely go through and add more to her later in the term but for now it's nice :) .
I must now go and add the same detail to the walk and run animations too.

More updates later.

4 weeks left!!

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

so, with only 3-4 weeks to go I have moved into GETITALLDONE mode. Today I worked on Persephone's walk animation. I have to say I'm really quite happy with it :) . I will however keep going back and fixing up anything that I missed first time round BUT now I need to work on fixing my old run animation... oh joy... :P

Old run cycle

There is quite a bit to fix up as the run was my first attempt at drawing Persephone moving and since drawing it I have refined her character and design to be more dainty and florally.  

new walk cycle

I worked on adding more detail to the dress and hair. I also added eyes and flowers in her hair. I slimmed down her arms and feet to make her look dainty.

I changed her skin colour, before she had more of a pale look however my team mates and I felt she would look more Greek and goddess like with olive skin colour.




Tomorrow I plan on adding all the missing details from the old run cycle. She needs her face shaped and her feet made smoother and smaller. 

After I've finished putting all the details on her dress I will have to work out how well the run blends with the walk and weather I need a new transition animation or not. 

But that's for tomorrrow... 

just a quick update

Well I had a great not-very-tafie Easter weekend :).

*sigh*

back to work -___- .... :P nah it's not too bad, I quite enjoy my work but it was awesome having a break. Well today I worked on the walk animation for Persephone. It's coming along nicely but I do wish to get my team mates opinion on how it's going tomorrow. It's hard to get the walk to blend with the run but I'm working on it.

Well that's just a quick update for now, more tomorrow I guess.

Transition

Finishing up/starting the end transition for my waterfall scene. These transitions have proved challenging to blend rocks into flat land again.... that is one reason why I'm going back and adding more detail to the foreground of the other backgrounds, the more detail in the foreground the better it looks next too the waterfall.

I'm not 100% sure about the bridge where it joins with the land :/ but hmmm..... Never mind, I just fixed that then... I also finished the end transition. I'm quite happy with the way it looks, it blends well with it's transition :) . Alright, well time to move onto something else, probably animation..... :S yay.... :P

Fixie upie stuffs

today I'm working on fixing up the foreground of all my backgrounds. I'm just adding more detail to make it easier to blend with the transitions better.

The example I've put is just a rough sketch and I will be working more to improve the detail in the scene. More updates later.

      

Waterfaaaaall

Ooooook soo so far we have 5 different backgrounds made.

I just finished the waterfall themed backdrop. I have to say I'm pretty pleased with this one, it's animated and I worked pretty hard on it. I like the way it's scruffy and cartoony but still fits the nice style of our game.

When I first deemed the background finished I showed my team mates and they weren't so happy with the bridge. The bridge was very plain looking and straight. Peter commented saying he'd rather have more of a falling down bridge because in ancient Greece they wouldn't have clean cut wood. I worked on that and I'm quite happy with the way it turned out.

< that is a picture of the original bridge. I really like the moss and rope edges on the new bridge.

I really like getting peoples opinion on my work to improve it to the best that I can.

Now that I've finished the waterfall I will be making the transition images that will layer over the sharp edge on the image and blend it into the next background.

Bricks and other jazz

 < Brick
Hades is placing bricks in Persephones path to try to stop her leaving the underworld.
these are the brinks. I designed them at the beginning of term 1.
Close up the blocks are not anything fancy, however in the game they will be much smaller and the colours and pictures show nicely.

We have matching button images on the bottom of the phone screen to match the blocks. These buttons are what you press to destroy each colour block to free up the path for Persephone.

Each block can only be destroyed by pressing the matching button. Each button activates a different god power. Such as, the blot is Zeus, the water is Poseidon, the rock is Artemis and the fire is Apollo.

Backgrounds

Alright, soooo backgrounds! yay fun fun fun :)

I explained in the previous post a little bit about how our game has parallax background and now in this post I'm going to be explaining how I design backgrounds, what style of art our game has and why and how the parallax backgrounds work.

Ok to start off I think I will explain my process for background making.

Deciding on a backdrop scene:
Josh and I meet up at TAFE and discuss what environments we want for our backgrounds and how we wish to display the landscape in the best way. We talk over what we like and don't like or what sort of things we especially want and so on. We then take the ideas to Jamie and Peter to get there opinions on what we have brainstormed.
Once we have decided on a background we all think will look good one of us will work on it at home and come back to show the team the work we have done, then we talk about what we like and don't like about it. That is our process for creating a background.

Style:
The style we went for in our backgrounds is a sort of hand painted. We really wanted a nice unique style for our game and as Josh and I are quite skilled artists we decided it would be good to have a hand drawn game. We thought about using vector art however we all agreed we wanted really unique art for our game.

Alllllright now moving onto how I actually create a background:
First I find pictures of what I'm drawing, such as caves.

Then I sketch out an outline for what I want in photoshop

Sketch

After I've sketch out something that I like I then start filling it in with colour. There is 4 layers to this background, the background caves, then the stalic tights, then the rocks down the bottom and finally on top is the pathway.

Background

Stalic tights

Rocks

Pathway

Each layer of the background will move at a different speed to make the foreground seem closer and the caves seem further back. 

I'll explain more about the backgrounds parallax and not parallax reasoning in another post. 

That's all for now.