Project 4 – Week 11 – Games Design Y2

Following the final days of this project as it comes to a close, I created a skills audit to compare my previous skills to my current.

Before starting this FMP, I was advised to record a skills audit. This is how I had previously envisioned my skills, during January 2022.

After completing this project, I remade the skills audit to fit my current confidence with these topics and areas in Games Design.

My FMP did not include any coding or programming, along with any Unity or Blender, and therefore I wasn’t able to brush up on those specific skills. I did, however, feel as though I significantly improved on my research. My primary research lacked greatly due to the fact that there is very little about Japanese culture where I am currently that I can outwardly obtain information through. I was able to get opinions from people in specific fields about design elements, but for the most part, it was severely lacking.

As we have not presented yet, I cannot confirm nor deny if I have gotten better or worse at this topic.

Overall, I am satisfied at the progress I have made throughout this project.

23. FMP: Final Production and Reflection (FMP Problem Solving)

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1XlYtD9Nwa0NL6d-vycqXYQ_0XABlEqex/view?usp=sharing

In the link above is my final animatic for this project.

Using Clip Studio Paint to work on my transition tweening between panels, along with the creation of each frame, I produced a 15 second long animatic following the storyboard I had created previously and honing in design elements using the concepts I designed beforehand.

I was able to portray my Oni character in the way I was aiming for- innocent looking and mischievous- but I had issues with the artistic aspect of doing this in an animated manner (ie. maintaining the energy I was aiming for throughout panels) and as a result of this, the final piece is more flat than I had expected.

Another issue I encountered during final production was layer clipping for colour on my characters. Unfortunately, I was not able to fix this issue, and my final piece remained uncoloured. In more simple terms, I *had* coloured each frame, but the clipping tool that carried my colour would not respond when I went to merge my layers together, and completely evaporate from my drawing. As I had already merged the base white with my line art layer to allow my character to be visible during the creation process of the animatic (something I hadn’t used on my last project that I wanted to try), my colour layers were set on ‘multiply’, and when I merged the multiply with the white layer, the colour failed to show. I could not set the layer back to normal as it would overtake the lines, and so I was left with only a white/grey base colour on my animation. To avoid this mistake again, I would create a separate folder for each individual frame (which although would take up copious amounts of storage, would save me the hassle of fighting against my horrendously-organised layers).

I did manage to hone in with a skill technique of squash and stretch in a small portion of my animatic, allowing my character to bounce slightly, and pairing it with a key frame where she attempts to look like an innocent child to obtain free food from the vendor, which gives off the exact energy I was attempting to go for in my final product.

I went onto YouTube to obtain free-to-use audio clips with a bustling crowd as ambience for the final piece, and I screen recorded a couple of sound effects from my copy of Minecraft to use as well. These were the sounds of my character walking on cobblestone, placing stone in Minecraft (for the sound effect of the Oni putting the miscellaneous lint on the table as payment and the sound of them taking the eho-maki roll), and the eating sound effect. I chose these effects due to the silent nature of the animatic, and felt as though I needed something going on in the background.

Finally, I used a very simplified art style for this animatic. My reasoning behind this choice was that I could not choose a canvas size that would be suitable for the type of brush I use in my normal linework, and as all of my lines started appearing pixelly when I attempted to draw normally (storage issue on my part- would have increased canvas size if I could have), I decided to go for something simpler that would look charming using what brushes I had. Hand-in-hand with the unique nature of my main style and how my original style makes my Oni character look far older than I had intended, I went for the chibi (small and round) style seen in the animatic.

In conclusion, although not entirely happy with how this piece turned out, I am satisfied with the outcome. The choppiness of the art and transitions give it a unique charm which I appreciate, and I have broadened my skills for animatics in the process. This is only my third ever attempt at an animatic, and for what it’s worth, I believe it turned out better than I expected it to initially.

Problem Solving (FMP in General)

Practical
For practical problems, I had trouble deciding on a colour for the Oni’s kimono. I came up with a few different colours that I liked but couldn’t decide which suited her the best so I asked for feedback from a few friends with backgrounds in art to guide my choice.

Another practical problem I found myself facing was the construction of the scene where the animation takes place. I needed to save time while also making something that would be culturally accurate to Japanese furniture. My solution to this was Genshin Impact’s Serenitea Pot, a function in the game that allows players to create their own scenes using items from the games world. I used furniture from Inazuma, a region heavily inspired by older japan. This allowed me to very quickly produce an inspired setting as well as get the angles I need to fulfil the animation. I edited the frames from these screenshots to clear out space on the stall, in order to have space for my characters to place down their items (buttons for the Oni girl and the eho-maki roll the vendor gave to her.)

I repeated this process in the last two screenshots in order to keep the items on the stall consistent throughout scenes.

My biggest problem was my time management when it came to the animation. After beginning the animation I realized that it would take a lot longer than I had originally planned for to create the full animation. I made the last minute decision to cut my work down into an animatic to save on time and to make sure I would finish it on time while keeping the animations length and main content.

Theoretical
For theoretical problems, I had trouble finding reliable sources of information that didn’t contradict each other so I took extra time making sure all my sources were genuine, checking for authors and dates. I found Oni’s a particularly difficult topic to get consistent information on as many different folklore tales depict Oni in different ways. I decided to look into a couple of the most well known Oni tales to get a better image of how they behave. For their appearance I compiled a Pinterest board with many different Oni designs before coming to a general conclusion of common features.