State of Play

Project Proposal

Action Plan

Week 1 ✦ Research

Inspiration | Before I started my work on FMP, I knew that the focal concept for the project would be similar to concepts/themes I've looked at during the Diagnostic and Developmental units of the Media Production (MP) course. I had looked at themes such as dreams, social anxiety and identity, then developed outcomes inspired by them through the mediums of photography, sound, animation and film. This wide range of work included photography for the Re: Assembly project (left) and animation for the Speculative Futures project (right), both done during the Developmental unit.

(Left) "it's tough, I understand" - A digitally edited photograph that was submitted into a zine. My specific focus for this project was to offer socially-anxious children, young and older adults of our society today comforting words and share my personal experiences with them.

(Right) "Revival: Into the Ecosphere - Eastwater" - A still from my parallax animation of a fictional flooded city, Eastwater, existing in the speculative Sci-Fi world of the Ecosphere, which was translated into a game concept. This animation was presented in a ~2 minute animated cinematic trailer spotlighting the numerous and diverse locations of the Ecosphere.

Generating ideas | Knowing that the main concept of my FMP would follow after ideas I had looked at in my work before (such as identity and dreams), I developed a mindmap to expand on those ideas. To the right is a scan of the mindmap I drew out in my sketchbook. From this, I was able to pick out the keywords of memory and experience and dream interpretation.

As a creative, I strive to use my personal experiences and memories to inform my artwork; I have done this countless times throughout the years I have practiced fine/traditional and digital art. The Developmental unit of the MP course has also given me many opportunities to implement my personal experiences in my work. By doing so, I'm better able to closely connect with my audience, giving both myself and them a platform to speak on their own experiences and share memories.

For these reasons, I was sure that I wanted my FMP to stem from the concepts of dreams and memory - specifically, how one may influence the other.

Exploration | The first week of FMP focused on idea generation and contextualisation. As I had already made a mindmap exploring ideas and concepts the week prior, I simply re-wrote it on a new page and continued to build off it. Additional ideas I considered the second time included responsibility, repetitive dreaming, routine and autonomous behaviour. The words 'nostalgia', 'memory and experience' and 'dream interpretation' are highlighted as they were themes I had looked at in my previous work during the MP course.

Exploring the production process for animation | While developing my action plan, I looked into the animation pipeline and the different stages of animation production. Using an online guide that talks about the animation pipeline, I was able to split up the stages of my FMP into five main stages: planning, pre-production, production, post-production and submission/presentation. These were further broken down into smaller sub-stages, such as conceptualisation, animatic production, rough animation and compositing. Being able to simplify the production process helped me understand the amount of work I needed to do. This would also better prepare me for the next few weeks of FMP and give me a direction of work to keep track of.

I was also beginning to consider the various techniques I was thinking of experimenting with in preparation for my final outcome (such as impact frames, smear frames etc). To inspire the possibilities of my final outcome, I looked at previous animations I've been impressed by in the past: League of Legends' (Riot Games) 'Take Over' Worlds 2020 Music Video (League of Legends, 2020) and more recently, Dreamworks' animated film Puss in Boots: The Last Wish (Puss in Boots: The Last Wish, 2023)

Impact frames in Take Over - LoL Worlds 2020 | In 'Take Over', I was inspired by the visual effects used during the action scenes, especially during the last scene (timestamped - 2:44). In particular, I was interested by the use of impact frames and the small star-like explosions that appear when the blindfolded enemy character lands a hit on the protagonist. Those small explosions appear quite quickly, flashing on the screen for a brief second to represent the speed and impact of the attack that was made. Though I won't be using a similar animated effect for the same reason (ie. landing a punch), I would like to reference this split-second animation to recreate the movement of bright sparkling stars.

Studying the animation style of Puss in Boots: The Last Wish | Having watched Puss in Boots: The Last Wish, I was continuously stunned by the quality of the animation. This drastic change had been such an impressive improvement since the last Puss in Boots movie and I noticed that this painted, hand-drawn style of animation was heavily inspired by the animation style of Spider-Man: Into The Spider-verse - another movie which I thoroughly enjoyed countless times.

Colour in The Last Wish | On the right, I collected four screenshots from the film that I thought presented the best use of colour and hand-drawn 2D effects. In the first screencap, at the moment Death's blade grazes Puss' forehead, all the colour from the environment except for the rich crimson, bright white and silhouette-y black are

drained. This technique made me feel more empathetic towards Puss and experience the same kind of fear he felt at that moment - the fear, represented by this rich contrast of colour, was successfully made to feel more encapsulating, strangling. I also believe that the danger of Death's character was perfectly presented through the intense crimson colour as red is can often be associated with hazard, warning and dominance. It may also incite feelings of aggression, frustration and excitement. This is also why we see vividly burning red and pink flames behind Death in the third screencap (as well as during the rest of the movie). Following on from that, the use of blues and violets to paint Puss' surroundings (as he is on-screen) can be seen as a way to represent the contrast between him and Death. While using complimentary colours (ie. red and green) would've better represented the two key characters' polarity, the use of blues/violets and reds allowed for an opportunity to use the 'middle colour' pink to show Puss and Death's 'convergences'. During the scene near the end of the movie, where all the characters meet in a star-shaped crater, various pink shades appear while Puss and Death are on-screen together. This may represent the clash between them and their characters, personalities and opinions. The Last Wish narrates Puss' ignorance towards death as a part of life and how he hasn't valued any of the past 8 lives that he has thrown away so easily. His confidence and identity as 'the immortal hero' is questioned as the movie takes us through Puss' last life; we are shown his response to finally being on his last life and how he learns to value it alongside his partners, Kitty and Perrito. Death's imposition on Puss, as the character who forces him to learn these lessons, is perfectly represented through the strong clash of red against blue. This frequent use of colour in The Last Wish takes advantage of colour psychology (ie. the emotions that are elicited) to represent the various characters' desires, opinions and goals. I would like to take inspiration from this design aspect of The Last Wish to communicate a variety of emotions and senses; it will help me to decide on colour palettes and therefore support the visual design of my final outcome animation.

Exploring artstyles and techniques | Above is a mindmap I drew out to further explore animation techniques and styles which I have seen before. These included the 2D animated short films 'Last Summer' (Gobelins, 2022) and 'Golden Hour' (GOBELINS, 2021). I considered the artstyle in which I would make my animation with - I wanted to be sure that I wouldn't overcomplicate the visual style of my work as it had to be consistent in quality and appearance throughout the animation. As well as that, I started to establish the scopes and aims I had for this project. I tend to go on a lot of tangents and get carried away while forgetting my original intentions. Making sure I established a few clear goals helped me to stay on track for the first few weeks of the FMP period.

Exploring possibilities of my final outcome | Above is a scan of a mindmap I wrote out to explore various ideas for my final outcome. While I knew I wanted it to be focused around game advertisement (specifically a demo or cinematic trailer), I also wanted to consider additional or alternative outcomes that could accompany my 2D animated trailer. Secondary outcomes such as a physical game case, a mock website (that would detail the playable characters, explorable open-world locations and a primer on the game's lore) and merchandise products (eg. charms and keychains) were considered. On this mindmap, I noted down the software I would use as well as how I planned to visualise the game concept through key art/illustrations and character splash art.

Generating ideas for the game concept | While creating this mindmap, I had the opportunity to consider the primary objective for the game concept. As I was thinking about the form of my final outcome (which I later established would definitely be a 2D-animated cinematic trailer), I had created a written character who the player of the game would use to explore the world with - Nilan. In this stage of idea generation, I wrote that Nilan would be the playable protagonist, who's objective it to find marbles that allow her to travel between the real world and dreamscapes. The concept of dreamscapes simply came from the idea of people's dreams being disfigured and confusing; it would be Nilan's job to navigate through these dreamscapes and break them apart. However, this idea of the game's objective was not set in stone and I would later revisit it.

Nilan - the playable character | As mentioned above, Nilan is a playable character which the players of my game can use to explore the virtual world with. She was mainly inspired by another character 'Nera', who exists as my online persona (screenshot of her on the left, from my Carrd website). As the concept of my FMP followed the idea of personal experience and memory, I thought it would be appropriate to use my persona as direct inspiration for my game concept.

Primary research into dreams | In order to better inform my initial concept of dreams and memory, I wrote up an online questionnaire on Google Forms to collect information and opinions (specifically on dreams and how they are interpreted). This questionnaire did have a few personal questions which I believed other people may feel uncomfortable with answering so I only shared this to close friends who I felt were comfortable with answering them.

I looked into MADRE, the Mannheim Dream Questionnaire, as a basis to understand which questions I could ask in my own questionnaire. Dreams are a completely subjective experience, so I needed to structure my questions carefully - this is whyI used the MADRE Questionnaire as inspiration to help me structure my questions appropriately.

Ethics in question | When building this questionnaire, I tried to mindful of the questions I was asking, ensuring that I remind my participants that they were allowed to withdraw from the questionnaire at any point should they feel uncomfortable. This made sure that I was following an ethical standard for my questionnaire.

To the right is a screenshot from the questionnaire I wrote; these are the warnings and claims I put at the start of the questionnaire, reminding my participants of their rights and that they would remain anonymous unless they shared their information. I also reminded them that I would be using their responses as part of my FMP and that they will be recorded if they agree.

Below are screenshots of the results I received from the questionnaire. I aim to use these answers to inform the visual design of my game concept.

To begin my research for my FMP, I visited the British Library in St Pancras. My intention for this visit was to find any art books (such as The Art of.. or film guides) for movies and shows I've seen in the past as the British Library had just about every book that has been published in the UK. While searching for books, I discovered two that had intriguing titles: "Computer Games and the Social Imaginary" by Graeme Kirkpatrick (2013) and "The Gamification of Learning and Instruction: Game-based Methods and Strategies for Training and Education" by Karl M. Kapp (2013). I decided to take this opportunity to better inform myself of connections between behavioural learning and gaming by understanding the material written in these two books.

Sketchbook notes: Computer Games and the Social Imaginary, Graeme Kirkpatrick (2013)

Sketchbook notes: The Gamification of Learning and Instruction: Game-based Methods and Strategies for Training and Education, M. Kapp (2013)

Problems I was met with | This was the very first time I had visited the British Library, and it was quite a scary experience. The library was massive, which was no surprise, and was difficult to navigate at first. The British Library had a very different process for locating books in their physical collection, and I couldn't tell which books I was or wasn't allowed to pick up. I learned later that visitors were able to use the computers at the library to access their online collection; this is where I was able to browse through their collection for the concept art books I was initially looking for. However, I found out that I needed to order them 24-48 hours in advance and pick them up in person in order to look through those books - this was disappointing to me.

How I was able to combat these problems | Fortunately, I didn't go alone on my visit to the British Library. I went with Allysa Versoza, which made the experience so much easier to get through. We were able to roam the open-access reading rooms together; I probably wouldn't have done this if I went alone... As for the books, I was able to use the library computers to find any books that I could pick up from the open-access shelves in the reading rooms (these were books that were available to the public and could be picked up at any time). In the future, if I were to revisit, I'll order some books ahead of time using their online website.

Random encounter! | Recently this year, I discovered a public installation near Tottenham Court Road station, in a small alleyway off the main road. During research week, I decided to revisit the installation and found that it had recently been re-installed in a new open space much closer to the train station. This installation was part of the Outernet London's open immersive entertainment district and featured a wide range of music videos, short films and performances created by many different artists across the world.

Outernet brings together the "best content and latest immersive technology" to create outstanding immersive experiences available to the public. Inside the Outernet building's open space, there is a multi-screen display, with screen displays covering every inch of all four walls and ceiling. On the floor, there are stone seating which is available for anyone to use. Below, I record two pieces I saw at the Outernet building that evening, in the larger room closest to the main road.

Alice Bloomfield - 'Sister' (TSHA Film) | A multi-screen immersive animated music video directed by Alice Bloomfield for London-based DJ and producer TSHA. I really enjoyed this music video though the music was quite loud and the screens were almost too bright with the vibrant colours. On each of the five screens, five different pictues were shown simultaneously. Occassionally, they would melt together to form a large picture or scenery.

The visuals in the animation were very pretty! I loved the high-contrast scenes, and thought that the combination of bold, black lineart and rich pastel colours worked incredibly well together. I would like to take inspiration from Bloomfield's animation and apply a similar style of illustration in my visual work for my FMP.

The Spaces In-Between - A Step Beyond | An interactive and immersive experience created by Pixel Artworks and visual light artist, Rupert Newman. I found this experience to be quite bright and the scene of fragmented shards of glass reflecting various colours of light was reminiscent of the collapsing multiverses from Marvel's Doctor Strange: Multiverse of Madness.

Allysa and I (we both went to the Outernet Building together) were too stubborn to leave and ended up staying for a little over an hour, thinking it was going to change... However, it was scheduled to run until 10pm - which we didn't know about.

The title of my game concept will closely follow the idea of dreams and memory. As I have not yet written a synopsis for my game concept , I cannot give it an official title. However, I will use 'Dreamseeker' as a placeholder, simply deriving from the idea of the characters of my game concept searching for dreams. In the near future, I hope to give my game concept a new title.

On this page, I will detail the evolution of the contextual foundation behind my FMP and my game concept, Dream Hereafter.

Dreams to nostalgia to behaviour | At the start of FMP, and even during the Developmental unit, I was certain that I wanted to use personal experiences and memories as a foundation for the context behind this project. However, after revisiting my previous work and conducting further research into nostalgia and memory during the research week of FMP, I changed my focus to behaviour (which followed on from a thought about repeatable behaviour and how it becomes a part of the subconscious mind as procedural memory).

Behaviour as a new 'foundation' | With a new focus, I began to look for books that mentioned anything about connections between behaviour and gaming. As I wanted to present my final outcome as an advertisement for a game concept, I thought that it would be appropriate to make a connection between behaviour in humans and video games. During one of the first talking morning sessions of FMP, I discussed during a task that games can help reinforce memory and behaviour. Most games require players to repeat behaviours

Autonomous behaviour | This is the main concepts which my FMP will be built on. I understand the term 'autonomy' as the right for an individual to make their own decisions, while dismissing the interference of others. As an individual with their own free will, they will be held responsible for the consequences that follow their decisions. I want to use this definition to inform the context and ideas behind my FMP; I want to question how people employ their freedom and if their decisions would change should they find that there are no consequences to the decisions they make (either positive or negative).

To make sense of my thought process, I used MIRO to create a small diagram that maps out the various thoughts and questions I had while developing the context of my FMP. Highlighted in blue are the questions and themes I ended up following - I made these my endpoint for context development.

Problems I encountered | For such a large project, I was unsure where to start when establishing the context. My thought process isn't very linear; I tend to just jump from one idea to another. Sometimes, I find it difficult to remember or probably map out my through process - ideas change too quickly and I may forget them. In an attempt to solve or combat this issue, I use a lot of mindmaps to note down most of the relevant thoughts. I find that it is easier to document my findings and thoughts this way, rather than explaining in lengthy paragraphs. Just as I had done above, I plan to use mindmaps to properly map out my ideas and thoughts throughout this project, particularly during the context-heavy parts.

Building onto the theme of autonomy... | In the book "Computer Games and the Social Imaginary" (Kirkpatrick, 2013, page 171), Vanard states that "games are non-essential yet like fine art... games entertain and enrich". With my own understanding of this statement, I would like to use Dream Hereafter as a way to question people's responsibility over freedom. In short, I want to ask how games are used to, in a way, enrich a player's conscious behaviour and response to non-consequential freedom. In short, I want to ask how games are used to, in a way, enrich a player's conscious behaviour and response to non-consequential freedom. In a game setting, I would like to present my questions and theme through an open-world design, with features and systems that follow diegetic design.

Dream Hereafter | I decided to give my game concept this title at it alludes to the endless dreaming of each of the characters as they are unable to make a decision for themselves, and therefore turn to the player for guidance.

To further develop my game concept, I created a mindmap exploring the various features and elements of the story, the playable characters and its context. As this was done quite early in the planning stage, I believe that my ideas will change along the duration of my FMP. My main focus at the moment is the playable characters Nilan, Danielo and Remi and I plan to further explore their designs quite soon.

Primary research | To get a better idea of the content that's typically included in a game trailer, I looked to YouTube for publishing companies' posts for official promotional and teaser trailers for games and products. I focused my research on animated trailers so I could study various techniques and styles of industry-standard work.

Primary research | As a secondary outcome, I would like to design a physical cover for my game concept, as if it were being sold in stores as an official product. Using physical game covers I personally own, I identified and took photos of each of the features of a physical game cover. I looked at game covers from two different consoles: the Nintendo Switch and Playstation. If I were to publish my game in this manner, those are the two main console platforms which I would like to see my product on.

Pokemon Legends: Arceus (Nintendo Switch) 2022 | GameFreak's first open-world game published only on the Nintendo Switch.

My photos of the inside of the game cover. It features an additional illustration of the world map as well as a game manual.

Octopath Traveler (Nintendo Switch) 2018 | Square Enix's role-playing fantasy game, released in collaboration with Acquire.

Final Fantasy XV (Playstation 4) 2016 | Square Enix's 15th Final Fantasy title developed by Square Enix Business Divison 2 and Luminous Productions.

Week 2 ✦ Idea generation

How will you explore different versions of your idea based on your FMP theme this week?

As my FMP theme is focused around dreams and memory, I want to refer to existing studies regarding the creation of dreams - as well as interviewing friends and family

• storyboarding
• alternative character designs
• interviewing
  

Task: Find 3-4 key points in your research. Evaluate why they are useful to your practical outcome for your FMP.

During the first week of research, I visited the British Library to look for books that covered the connection between games and psychology, as well as nostalgic gaming and what makes games memorable. This is relevant to my practical outcome for my FMP as it supports and builds onto my concept/theme of dreams/memory. By understanding how learning behaviours and memory can be reinforced by playing games, I can look further into case studies that have demonstrated relevant findings to inform my context.

I also looked at physical game cases I owned and took photographs. As I hope to recreate a similar product as a secondary outcome for my FMP. My research into these game cases helped me identify components and pieces that were included in a marketable product,

Idea generation for characters | In Dream Hereafter, I would like to use three characters as a way to represent different attitudes towards responsibility. As I had written earlier, while I was establishing the synopsis for my game concept, the three characters Nilan, Danielo and Remi each have opposing personalities that can cause them to have disagreements. Below are screenshots of mindmaps and discussions I've had while building the design of the three characters.

During the first week of FMP, I was able to briefly discuss the characters I wanted to include in my game concept. I had taken my thoughts to my friends, who were quite excited. Since then, I've revised and updated their written designs. For example, at first, Remi was a cartographer but she has since been written as a studying astrologist. However, Danielo (or Danny) has followed the same written design - I am quite fond of the original story I wrote for him.

As I had planned in my previous reflection, I began to sketch out designs for the three key characters. These were mostly impulsive sketches that came to mind spontaneously. These were mostly experimental and test sketches to explore their body types, forms and clothing. I was also able to draw moer indulgent sketches to explore the trio's dynamic.

Nilan's design will be changed drastically, as I have written her to be an islander. She no longer lives in the city (which her blacksmith-y design was drawn from). Danny's design will have a few changes, however his key elements such as the bandana and purple cape will be kept.

Using my previous research into physcial game covers, I would like to thumbnail possible key visual ideas that could appear on my own physical game case for Dream Hereafter. Each sketch features one or more of the key characters of the game concept and their interaction either with each other or a marble (an important item in Dream Hereafter). These will be changed in the future, once my visual design for the game trailer has been properly established.

Using basic shapes in Canva, I blocked out a sketch for my game concept's physical game case/box. The blocks of colours represent various information that could be included on the front and back covers on Nintendo Switch games; I used my previous research on existing game cases to reference the positioning and types of information that could be printed. On the left is the front cover, consisting of a key visual/cover illustration of my game concept as well as the age rating and studio logo on the bottom. On the right is the back cover, featuring previews of the game and important information such as additional ratings/tags, the studio logo etc.

In preparation for digital 2D animation, I undertook shape/volume manipulation exercises to practice shape rotation and perspectives. This helped me practice drawing both regular and irregular shapes in various orientations and positions. I mostly enjoyed drawing the cuboid shapes as they were easier to draw as whole shapes. However, drawing the cylindrical shapes was a lot harder; instead of drawing the full tube shape, I had to split it up into segments and connect the divisions afterwards. I also found drawing the highlighter difficult as I struggled to keep the proportions consistent. Starting the exercise was also quite difficult, however it got easier to draw larger shapes at different orientations as I continued.

Using the online site LineOfAction, I completed various exercises of life drawing to prepare for character animation. Each page was one session, where I completed 30-second and 60-second poses. Completing these exercises helped me to become more expressive and loose with my pencil strokes. I found these tasks easy as I had practiced life drawing a number of times before.

Originally, this trip was internally organised by my tutors at Ravensbourne, however -due to train strikes- the cohort-wide trip was cancelled. Despite that, I was still able to make the trip as I had booked tickets on a 8am coach from London Victoria for myself and a friend.

The journey to Margate was relatively quiet as the coach had left quite early in the morning, however the journey back was quite busy as there were a lot of passengers who wanted to return to London. Even so, the coach trips were relatively peaceful, lasting about 3 and a half hours.

The weather at Margate was expected - not too cloudy with a bit of sunlight but also quite windy.

Our first activity that day was visitng the Turner Contemporary gallery. By the entrance of the gallery was a grand display of a collaborative piece by Sophie von Hellermann and Anne Ryan, titled "Sirens".

On either side of the large full-scale window were surreal, dream-like paintings hung on the wall; these were von Hellermann's work. She uses deep, rich pigments anf washes of colour to paint fleeting and fluid motions of turbulent, swirling bodies of water. Underneath these paintings stood vibrantly coloured cut-outs of what I believed were human figures. Anne Ryan cut out multiple figures from crowds of people to create a strong, seemingly animated scenes of motion. From both artists' work, I would like take the technique of layering and meshing to crate complex backgrounds and scenes to develop strong visuals for my game concept.

What did you play/test with today and how has it impacted your process in your FMP?

While I was on the Margate trip, I wasble to collect natural forms such as seaweed, sand, shells and algae as materials for a lumen photography workshop that was behind held the day after. In a previous workshop I had used completely dry objects, so I was interested in seeing the aftermath of putting wet objects onto contact paper. I ccompleted this exercise/experiment with Allysa, as there was only one large glass sheet. We put two contact sheets under the glass and arranged our own compositions of materials, then crossed over any bits that stuck out between our sheets.

I really enjoyed this experiment with lumen photography. Assembling the materials was a fun process, however was quite messy as sand kept getting displaced and scattered over the table often.

Because we had left our piece in the sunlight for longer than we planned, coming back to it the following week was not a pleasant experience. A foul and bitter salty-sea smell drifted about the piece - the seaweed and algae had been rotting over the time we had left it out. It was difficult to peel the materials off the contact paper, finding that they had stuck to the sheets and were quite sticky to touch. To take the materials off, I ran the entire thing under cold water, which helped the peeling process quite a lot (unfortunately, the smell got stronger too...).

Despite that struggle, both Allysa and I were fasincated by the product of the experiment. The water from the plants and damp sand stained the contact paper in a way that it produced a very interesting swirl-ish purple and lilac pattern. Though vague, the shape of the deep-purple seaweed made a silhouette on the contact paper. Some of the sand would not wash off, which made the print look a bit sparkly. To me, the whole piece looked like a mini galaxy.

Week 3 ✦ problem solving

How will you (or have you already) problem solve(d) any issues either from testing, idea generation or even self-doubt for your FMP?

The biggest problem I've encountered was identified during my idea generation stage. I usually have trouble keeping track of my ideas and will sometimes 'derail'. To combat this problem, I've been recording my thought process using mindmaps on paper and digitally. Additionally, I have been making weekly notes on my changes in ideas on my phone's Notes app.

Alternative Ideas Planning

How could you make your FMP in other ways?

• Card game
  
• Interactive installation
• 3D Models

What mediums could you use?

• Analog - could go traditional route and use analog materials such as card, pastels. crayons etc. to make a collage?
  
• Clay for 3D models

What problems might you encounter within the theory (concept) of your FMP?

The primary concept of my FMP surrounds personal memories and how particular memories affect the behaviours and outlook of people. To inform the content of my FMP, I would use responses from an in-depth questionnaire I provided to close friends and family members

What practical problems might you come up against?

• Hardware Issues - It is unlikely but there is a risk that my laptop may get damaged during the FMP period. There is also a risk that the stylus I use for the laptop (I use a Microsoft Surface Pro 8) may also get damaged - these items are difficult to replace on short notice. However, I do have a small Wacom graphics tablet which can be used in the event that my current equipment are damaged/cannot be used.
  
• Software Issues - As my work will mainly be digital, I will be using digital software such as the Adobe Creative Suite and ClipStudio Paint.
• Analog
  

During week 2, I was able to have a one-on-one tutorial with my tutor Grace. I consulted her about the context behind my FMP as I was still unsure about what I wanted to do. I'm looking back at the notes we have made to track my progress. This is evidence of problem solving, as I have since made steps to expand my context and ideas (eg. writing and sharing a questionnaire, documenting my thoughts).

During an in-person session, I used the New Metaphors card game (by Imaginary Labs) to expand my contextual ideas. Playing New Metaphors gave me the opportunity to explore new game concepts and narrative ideas by connecting two randomly selected cards, one a visual metaphor (large picture card) and a phrase (smaller red card). I played this game in a group of four.

For the animation, I wanted to showcase the location in which the player is first introduced to when they start the game's main story. I was certain that this location was going to be a rural, developing coastal town, inspired by my mum's hometown in Southern Leyte, Philippines. This choice was influenced by my very first idea of using personal experience to inspire the context of my FMP.

To begin my research, I looked to existing coastal towns in the real-world, as well as the types of defences and features of coasts. This included locations such as the Kiribati islands, that I had previously looked at during the Speculative Futures project, and locations I had been to before, such as Blackpool and most recently, Margate.

Using browser sites such as Milanote and MIRO, I began to map out the basic details and features of the region in which the coastal town lies. My first step to this stage of worldbuilding was to establish the main region which I named Aldera. This would be one of the many regions in the explorable world of my game concept.

Aldera is one of the biggest regions in the East of the fictional world of Dream Hereafter, and mostly consists of sprawling mountain ranges and volcanoes. Closer to the sea are low-laying flatlands. The geography of Aldera is inspired by the Philippines and Sri Lanka. Using the browser site Azgaar's Fantasy World Map Generator, I was able to quickly generate a simple land map of Aldera, which I could reference throughout the project to pinpoint various landmarks and locations. With this map, I was able to pick out the location of the coastal town (which I wanted to showcase in my final outcome).

Map Details (below) -I translated a close-up of the map of Aldera into another browser site, Inkarnate - this helped me to add onto the initial map of Aldera, which I believed lacked detail. The first browser site I used was a generator, and did not allow me to draw in my own details. However, Inkarnate had tools which allowed users to freely draw onto a blank canvas and create landforms/maps for their own projects. I had used Inkarnate before, so I was quite familiar with the various tools I had available. Being able to freely draw my own map of Aldera (right) while using the generated map from before (left), I was able to add details which were specific to the lore I had written for the coastal town. This included features such as a silhouette of a whale skeleton and smaller islands that made up the East coasts of Aldera.

Cantero - After establishing the map of Aldera, I used MIRO to plan out and pinpoint the coastal town as well as the whale skeleton. As Aldera is inspired by the Philippines and Sri Lanka, I established a climate type for this fictional region - a Tropical climate, that had two very different seasons throughout the year.

Part of the concept for this fictional location is a fragile, severely eroded skeleton that sticks out from the side of a mountain. As I wanted this skeleton to be of a marine creature, I looked to whale skeletons to be the main inspiration for the structure.

Continuing from one of my earlier mindmaps, I explored the possible architecture of Cantero Island, drawing inspiration from architecture in Sri Lanka and rural Philippines. As the Philippines was my starting inspiration for this fantasy location, I thought it would be appropriate to continue looking at the Philippines for architectural inspiration too.

Whale Skeleton concepts | Using the research I made previously, I produced four different thumbnails while referencing images of whale skeletons. Initially, I had difficulty with drawing the skeletonwith the correct proportions and at first, I struggled with seeing the image of a skeleton-island in my mind. Therefore, my process for making these thumbnails was starting off by drawing the skeleton, then drawing solid shapes over it to represent the land. These thumbnails helped me to estblish the general shape/mounds of Cantero island.

Landscape research | While developing visual concepts for the island, I also looked to existing islets and crater-islands as reference. For the almost-circular formation of land, I also referenced images of caldera volcanoes and the Vila Franca Islet of Portugal.

Painting in CSP | Using my collection of references, I painted a concept of Cantero island. This took me around 40 minutes to an hour. I wanted to include the skeleton of a large creature that's been buried by floating debris however I wasn't sure of the scale quite yet, leading to my first painted concept to look strange...

Redrawing the island | I was not satisfied with the first developed concept of the island, so I decided to redraw the island from a wider and higher perspective. In my first painting, the island looked like a slug and lacked enough contrast to differentiate between the sea, landform and the sky. So hopefully, with this new angle, I can establish the main form of the island using darker shades of grey. I started with a thin sketch first, using a pencil tool, then blocked out shapes and details of the landform with a rectangular brush.

Did your testing today help you with problem solving in your practice? Make a plan for the break once you have tested.

Today, I felt that I needed to further explore the idea I had for the animation during the sessionals on Thursday 23rd March. I had recently established that the gameplay of Dream Hereafter would be focused on world exploration, and the different ways players can interact with the space around them. For my animation, I want to showcase the various methods of exploration players can use during their gameplay of Dream Hereafter.

Plan for the day (Friday 24th March) I want to move my planning forward and produce a few storyboard iterations in preparing for the production stage next week..

Week 4 ✦ mid-point review

Reflect on how you've done so far, what will you like to achieve in the second phase?

In the second phase of the FMP, I'd like to move onto production. During this week, I aim to finalise the concepts for Cantero (the island/town location) as well as the character designs I had began during week 2 and 3.

What do you wish you'd done differently?

Ideally, I would've liked to have established visual ideas much sooner than Week 3. If I had completed that stage of work a week sooner, I'd have more time to focus on my animation comfortably without worrying about running out of time.

How will you change the next steps?

I will aim to finish my animatic as well as any concepts for assets within the next two or three days if I can. I would like to leave as much time as I can for the final animation.

Bell and Charm concepts | For my first set of concepts, I wanted to sketch out visual ideas for the bells or charms that would be collected by players in Dream Hereafter (collecting charms and using them to access various dreamscapes is one of the main exploration systems). As my initial idea followed on from the structure of bells, I began with a spherical shape and drew star-shaped details and flourishes to the base shape. Below is a screenshot of the concepts I made on ClipStudioPaint and my recorded timelapse.

After finishing these concepts (above) I realised that it would be quite difficult to animatie them frame-by-frame, considering their complex shapes. This lead to me creating new concepts on a new sheet of paper, this time focusing my concepts on windchimes instead of just the singular bell. Each of these concepts took me 40 seconds to a minute each, and were quite simple.

Waypoint concepts | As this week's focus was to develop more concepts in preparation for my animatic and final animation, I decided to continue working on concepts for objects such as waypoints, charms and gates. In Dream Hereafter, a method of travelling across the open world is fast travel. This is a common and very popular system in open-world games. Below are concepts I designed for the various waypoints. While drawing concepts, I also considered an alternative idea, where as well as stone structures, waypoints could also exist as lanterns/lamps.

The waypoint system | In my game concept, I want to use stone structures, similar to stone monoliths in the real world, as markers/waypoints for fast travel. To implement diegetic design in my concept, I imagine that players would be able to tie a chord to the stone structure to activate it and receive a unique charm after it has been activated for the first time. To travel between waypoints, the player would raise their hand, revealing the corresponding charms for each of the waypoints. Ringing one of them will start the fast travel sequence.

Alternative ideas II | I drew additional concepts later on a loose sheet of paper, exploring less structured stone waypoints. In these concepts, I imagined waypoints also existing as lumps of rock - these would appear only in open fields/rural areas such as Cantero Island or other coastlines.

Initial concept to new concept | My first sketch of Nilan (with the large gauntlets and blacksmith attire) was completely scrapped due to the face that I had rewritten her character completely. Initially, Nilan was a local blacksmith in a town outside the capital city of Aldera, however I had rewritten her to be fisherwoman living on a small island called Cantero. Because of this big change in character, I had to redraw her design to fit with her occupation.

• In this new concept, Nilan wears looser clothing due to the tropical climate of Cantero island. She also wield a heavy pole (maybe bamboo pole?) as she carries baskets and fish often.
• Below is the timelapse for the first three concepts I made usin ClipStudioPaint.
  

Between week 2 and 3, I had randomly come up with a design for Nilan (left). This was while I was unsure of her occupation. From this design, I carried forward the pole element (which she uses to carry items) as well as the leaf-shaped hairtie. Below are two screenshots of the sketches I made for Nilan's second design iteration.

Sketch > Base > Full Colour stages for the illustration process for Nilan's second design iteration (above).

A problem I encountered | After two days , I decided to return to the character design. I felt that the last design I had sketched for Nilan looked too unsaturated and was lacking character or flair. By redrawing her character design, I would be able to use rounder shapes when drawing her body shape and use softer, more gestural lines to draw the rest of her features. Below is the export for her redesign.

Scripting a storyboard | Throughout the last week, I've written a few ideas for the narrative direction my animatic would take. I used my phone's Notes app as well as Google docs to record my ideas as they come. Below are screenshots I've taken on my phone of the scripts I've written.

This is the most recent script I wrote for the animatic, which ended up being the final script which I plan to use to create my storyboard and animatic. I didn't use the previous scripts as they were too short, and I couldn't extend the narratives further.

Producing the initial storyboard | I used the script I had written previously to draw thumbnails for the storyboard digitally. However, I decided to redraw it on paper as I felt that it was too short and lacking narrative context.

Problems I encountered | Despite having written a lot in my script to follow, I found that I had a lot of empty spaces between the key scenes. At first, I wasn't sure how to fill these spaces in, but after returning to my script and imagining the sequence in my head a few times... I still could not fill in the empty spaces. Instead, I decided to cut out the gaps and use only my key scenes for the second iteration of the storyboard, which I produced digitally (below). I decided to start compiling each of the scenes into an animatic as I went (as soon as I finished one scene, I imported it straight into Adobe Premiere Pro). Once I had put all the key scenes together, and played through the animatic completely, I was able to go back and fill in the empty spaces. Below are all the frames I drew for the animatic.

This week, my main focus of work will be painting the backgrounds for my animation (which are based off what I presented in the animatic) as well as practicing walk cycles for my character animation of Nilan (one of the three protagonists of Dream Hereafter) if I have time. Before painting my backgrounds, I want to experimenting with new brushes that have a chalk-y texture and that blend well together. Below are screenshots of brush tests I made on ClipStudioPaint using two versions of the same brush.

Below are both the timelapses and sketch/paint comparisons for the three backgrounds I painted from the animatic.

Building on front concepts I had made a few days ago, I was quite interested by the sponteous fish/whale charm concept I had sketched. Because I had liked it so much, I decided to take the concept further.

Cantero's Charm | A round, wooden charm carved into the shape of a baby whale. This charm can be found at the peak of Cantero island, beyond a wooden gate decorated with ribbons and rope.

Following the bouncy and rounded style in which I drew Nilan, I made the charm's design much more rounded and used vibrant colours for its variations. In the original sketch (left), there were three metal chimes that would clash together to make a high-pitched 'ping' sound. In my new design for the charm, I altered it so that the whale's body would have a small wooden ball inside. If the charm were to ring, it would made a light 'thunk' sound. Hanging at the bottom of the charm would be a small coloured bead and a tassel.

At this point in planning, I was considering how I wanted my scenes to be animated. As I knew I wouldn't have enough time to animate parts of the backgrounds using frame-by-frame methods, I would instead use a parallax effect - just as I had animated a background scene for my contribution in the Speculative Futures project. Employing the same method of moving different layers separately (adjusting the X-positions) in Premiere Pro, I was able to replicate a parallax animation for three of the key scenes from my animatic:

Before the production stage, I thought it would be the appropriate time to experiment with ClipStudioPaint's animation tools. I was very unfamiliar with these features in particular as I only had been using CSP as an illustration software up until now. In order to learn how to use CSP's animation tools, I had to watch two or three YouTube beginner tutorials to help me understand and navigate the new tabs.

After I had learned the basic tools, such as animation folders and cels, I began to experiment by creating short animation loops.

Having experimented with CSP's animation tools without further guidance made me feel a lot more confident with using the program. Though looking at the tools at first was quite daunting, I am now able to navigate all the new tools on the software. I would like to experiment further and make more animated loops - maybe try using colour in one too.

After becoming familiar with ClipStudioPaint's animation features, I decided to experiment further and create a small loopable animation where I could test using colours in my animations. I chose to do a small wave on a beach as it is relevant to the island theme of my animatic. To create this animation, I referenced videos online of waves on a beach and slowed them down to 0.5x speed to identify key frames positions of a wave. Below is my process of animation.

Writing a script | Just as I had for my intial animation idea, I wrote a script on Google Docs to establish a vague idea of visuals and accompanying sounds. Doing this helped to break down the stages of my animation, which was quite helpful as I needed a clear, coherent idea of what I needed to animate in the time I had left.

Developing a second animatic | To develop my new animation, I planned to use ClipStudioPaint Pro, Adobe Premiere Pro and After Effects. My first step was to create a coherent animatic that would properly visualise the types of movement I wanted to have in the final animation. Using ClipStudioPaint, I sketched out the various frames and objects that would appear in each scene. Then, using Premiere Pro, I would compile these sketches into a short animatic, and use After Effects later to experiment with 3D layers and two-node cameras. This did not take too long as this was a familiar technique which I had experimented with before.

Compositing scenes | I split up both of these key scenes into 5 different layers each - two background, one midground and two foreground layers, then imported them into Premiere Pro. This was where I attempted to mimic a 3D parallax animation, which I achieved by moving each of the layers up or down individually. In Premiere Pro, there is no 3D feature which I can quickly use to make a parallax animation test; I did not use After Effects as it would take quite some time to set up the layers, and I did not want to risk spending too much time just producing a simple animatic.

After I finished the rough animatic, I felt that it was actually quite short - though, that wasn't surprising as I had only two scenes to show. If I stuck with only two scenes, I wouldn't be able to properly show off the concept of 'Dream Hereafter' or the character designs and concepts I had worked on in the two weeks prior. To make my animatic longer, I wanted to fill in the gap between the two scenes and moved back to ClipStudio to quickly sketch another scene.