This week, I am working with the momentum I had built during the Thanksgiving break. “THANKFULLY,” I was able to keep the flow state of work going.
Character Design:
At the start of the break, I had finalized the first flowchart of my narrative. So I picked up from there, and the very first thing I did was to change the tone of the Grim Reaper’s dialogues so they weren’t exactly like the main character’s. A good catch from Alex, which gave a nice little variation to distinguish between the nature of the two characters. After doing that, since I had been working on the narrative continuously for a while, I decided to take a break from that and work on refining the character design. So, keeping my idea of having the “antagonists (but not really)” characters somewhat similar, like a reflection of the main character as a symbol of learning through our own experiences and living life ourselves, I started by taking some reference photos of myself. I wanted the outfit to be recognizable, with some character, and not just super solid and plain. So, I went with a light-colored denim, a plain white T-shirt, and a zip-up hoodie, with the hoodie pulled over his head to make it just a tad like the typical Grim Reaper cloak. For the scythe, as I did in the sketch, I gave him an electric guitar. I sketched it out in rough, and then I decided to add some rips and tears in his clothing to give it some more distinct characteristics. After the colors, I decided to give it a crosshatch rendering that would do the same thing and distinguish his character’s personality. I tried giving it some lighting highlights as well, but that did not work out, since the scene did not have any additional lighting, it was a vast surrounding of nothingness, and it was becoming too much. I am happy with how it turned out, and I am looking forward to getting more feedback on it from my peers.
Text-Only Prototype:
As I finalized the flow and made the necessary edits to it, I decided to make a tabular (text-only) version of the story prototype. The purpose here is to test the flow of the story on a very basic level without any visuals. I chose to do that on Figma. I could have done it on Twine as I did earlier in the semester, but it was taking longer than I would have liked. Also, I am not using a game engine that would use Twine integration. So I set sail and got that out of the way. After testing it myself, I sent it to all my committee members for feedback.
Flowchart Edits:
So, after changing the tone of the Grim Reaper’s dialogue, I started dividing chunks of the narrative from the flowchart into frames. Meaning: I started visualizing the frames for the actual final game, so I could make storyboards from it. Initially, my idea was to just sketch out storyboard thumbnails as we do for film and video production, but then I thought it would be smart to make it into a low-fidelity prototype as well, so I can add another layer of demo-prototype-testing. The more testing, the better. As I work on the storyboards, I am focusing less on the details and more on the composition and the user flow. Another interesting thing that I guess was expected was the little things I had to change and fix in the story flowchart for the flow to make sense. For instance, the part where the Grim Reaper mentions the song “Welcome To My Life” by Simple Plan, I integrated a choice there for the user to listen to the song if they haven’t heard of it before. I am about 75% done with the storyboards. My goal is to get those done by the final presentation, so I can have a comprehensive prototype to show in my presentation, hoping it will give a better idea to everyone as to where my project is headed.
Potential Hurdles and Pitfalls:
As I work on all of these things, I am taking notes on the things I will be discussing with my committee:
- I was wondering if I should have the dialogues as text-based compositions that are visually “designed” within the composition, or if I should have them as audible voice-overs (with/without subtitles). I was talking with Austin, and he raised a good point: it would be nice if it were designed for text, so people can play the game anywhere without having to worry about audio.
- Is there a way to tackle the background music issue with Figma, not being able to play it seamlessly throughout the game?
- I am thinking of a way to incorporate instances within the game where the main character could try and grab the guitar from the Grim Reaper. What would be the best way to visually entice the user to click on the guitar?
Coming up next…
- Up next, I will finish up the storyboards and make them into a prototype.
- Other than that, I will schedule a meeting with Alex and discuss the most recent concerns I have regarding my project.