Game Project - Team Sprout 07

Week 31 - Day 4

This week has been quite relaxing. Phew! A nice change of pace from the couple of weeks previously that have been nothing but HECTIC. Anyway, I drew up some more concepts for additional NPCs but I don't think we'll be needing them since Taylor's done a bang-up job of putting the game together and the backgrounds Taylor, Mikayla and Phoenix have done look awesome, too. I'm worried about over-cluttering it so I'm just gonna put these here and leave it as is...

Concepts for a Lily character living on the "water section" of the map. Glow-worms and scared bunny included on the page.

Stick insect concepts...

Huhu grubs, snails, praying mantises and more lily pad concepts.

Refined version of a praying mantis, veined slug and MOREPORK!!

Extra snail concepts, soldier bugs and another MOREPORK!

 In terms of concept work I think I've done quite a good amount. In terms of actual game development, maybe not so much. I'm very happy with the sprite PNGs that I was able to do with the non-playable characters as well as our own sprout character designs and animations but the rest is...eh...

Anyway, this is it from me for now. Adios amigos.

Game Project - Team Sprout 06

Week 30 - Day 3

I decided to add a transition forward for the character to go from sprout form into flower form!! Here's what they look like going forward.

There won't be a transition backwards because...they don't work like that. XD Their final form will stay as their new idle loop~

Now that's all nice and done I'll be working on extra assets. I'm thinking of doing some huhu grubs, snails, lilypads, praying mantis and stick insects? We'll see. With the exception of the huhu grubs which will remain static, everything else will have a small movement to them so that they don't end up taking away too much of the attention. I'm still unsure about whether to have them as an interactive asset or leave them on an idle loop animation. I guess depending on the movement it can go either way. Like I said...WE SHALL SEE...

Game Project - Team Sprout 05

Week 29 - Day 2

I am very tired. It's been a struggle trying to keep up with so many assessments going on at the same time. I hope this isn't a reflection of real life because if it is then it sucks. Anyway, I've been working on our characters but I've yet to animate the part where the little sprout transitions into our character sprites. I'll work on that this week, hopefully...

So, apart from our character sprites I think we could be with another few sprites of insects, a lilypad, maybe a still of a birds' nest, maybe a leaf fluttering on the stalk still attached to a tree branch...? I don't want too many assets, that might be overkill especially if they're all moving in the background. I could make the leaves an interactive bit of background; it doesn't have to be moving until it's clicked on.

Before I forget, here's a snapshot of our characters in-game. I've yet to sort out the timing of the animation and make their proper transitions but we'll get there...I have a few more weeks to work on this so...I could take it easy for a while...

I need to sort out my assets' folder. I'll work on it later...

Game Project - Team Sprout 04

Week 28 - Day 3

I got distracted by Dane's assessment that I kind of forgot about the group project. Opps. DX But, I was able to catch up with making up some more sprites so in addition to the fire animation and the bunny animation I've also got 4 pieces of ember animation, spiderweb animation, glowworms, fireflies and swaying sprout and a scared bunny animation.

I'm also doing our character designs which I will be drawing up this week and also a lilypad and frog to put somewhere in the level. I'm still a little unsure on how to animate our characters but I think a simple swaying of their flower dresses will be nice to try. I think I'll have them pop out of the ground in a shower of the flower petals they represent.

That's my update for now~ I'll add more later.

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I has a cute frog! My initial sketches were more towards realism but I changed my mind and did a cartoony version instead. It looks good. It fits much nicer with the overall look of the game, I feel. The head moves from side to side. Look at it so happy~

Game Project - Team Sprout 03

Week 27 - Day 3

We had a meeting yesterday to discuss what our level is going to look like and we've managed to get a basic idea down. Tea took what we talked about and got a basic illustration up to better show and clarify exactly what it is we're aiming for in our level design. This includes a tutorial section as well as "secrets" and a "final boss". This is what Tea's done for us:

Taylor and Phoenix are going to be blocking out the level in Unity together using the diagram as shown above.

We also decided to insert ourselves as NPCs in the game via the sprouts the main character will be collecting on the way back to the beginning in the second stage. I've drawn us some concepts using the template of the character Tea previously drew:

I drew Taylor as a lily, Mikayla as a lavender, Phoenix as the phern (fern), myself as a sunflower and Tea as a fuchsia! I'm happy with how these turned out. We so cute~

Game Project - Team Sprout 02

Week 25 - Day 2

SPRITES!! ARE!! Cute but also very finicky and it made me angry for a little bit because NEW PROGRAM! Yay!

Anyway, here's a picture of what the animation looks like. I have no video to show because I don't have the program to record from the screen so yay~

I have more sprites to do but ugh, just for the submission this is enough. I'll do more as the week progresses but for now...SUBMISSION FOLDER!

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We had "meetings" throughout our holidays via Facebook group chat which was nice to be able to know where everybody is at in terms of progress. I think we all went a little bit overboard with our assets but it's better to be over-prepared than under.

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Also, I figured that I CAN ACTUALLY KEEP THE FIRE GOING ON A CONSTANT LOOP!! HUZZAH!!!

Here's a screenshot.

Bunny, get away from that fire. Fire bad for you. FIRE BAD.

Anyway, these are the two assets I'm keen on putting in our unity project. =D WHEE~~ I'll package them tomorrow for easy import/export because honestly, Git confuzzles me. DX

Game Project - Team Sprout 01

Week 25 - Day 1 (Holiday? What is that word?)

So, I pretty much spent the entirety of the holiday preparing for the Overload Convention, and writing up the Literature Review and drawing up some sprites and concepts for the gaming project for Team Sprout. YAY! RELAXATION!! MUCH FUN. SUCH HAPPY.

Anyway...so, I made up some sprites for fireflies (x3) to be dotted all over the place, some ember pieces (x4) of varying shapes, a spiderweb, a fire animation, and A BUNNY!!!! <3 Bunnies~~ <3 That's 10 pieces total because...there can't feasibly only be one piece of ember or one group of fireflies. The bunny can be re-painted into different colors to add more variety but I'll do that later now that I've got a basic animation of the bunny. I also made a rough background concept but it's not the best so I'm not keen on using it. Everything else is top notch, though! Whoop~

I'll add the gifs and the background concepts when I get home BECAUSE I only brought the sprites and I'd rather show the whole thing.

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TA-DA! I AM NOW HOME TO UPDATE THE BLOG ONCE MORE!

Here is the background concept. It's a bit yeecghkdjfs...

As for the rough concepts, I pretty much stuck with my initial ideas but I had to draw a few bunnies and a couple of spiderwebs just to figure out which way I was going to go. It wasn't until I was done with these that I decided, oh, a semi-realistic but "casual" approach would be nice.

Everything else after that was sussed out enough for a clean-up, color and animation. Whoo-hoo!!

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And here are all of the animated frames I've done so far. I may or may not add more as we go on with the project but for now this will work as a basic guide for the interactive background pieces.

Initially, I didn't have a "sleeping state" for the bunny but I changed my mind and decided to draw a couple more frames to make sure it'll loop nicely around and around until I click out of it again. I had 3 bunnies of slightly different styles altogether but this was the one that tugged my heartstrings the most.

I struggled a little bit with embers but I wanted fairly organic shapes as well as "sharp" edges despite using the waterbrushes. I tried to go for grey embers and then really dark embers to have a clearer glowing effect. It's supposed to loop continuously and I'm assuming that that will be the "idle" state so it's just constantly glowing in the background. Whoop!

FIREFLIES! I actually had a lot of them all over the screen but I asked Tea and we decided to cut it back by 30%. There are actually 3 layers currently visible but those layers can be split and independently animated to add a little bit more variety in the scenery.

PHEW. Also, animating fire using waterbrushes IS HARD. LIKE. I DON'T KNOW IF I CAN DO THAT AGAIN! But if need be I will. Just know that I was tear my hair out, lose a bit of sanity, probably shout at my tablet a lot...but I'll get there. X'D

In saying that, this was probably, by far, the worst of the entire lot. Not just fire animation on its' own but also for the fact that I was using a waterbrush to draw everything with. I'm quite...happy with how it turned out. I mean, the reception it received from the rest of the group was awesome so it helped boost my confidence a lot about how it would fit in the scene. I can always alter the colours a little bit if we needed to add a bunch of them together in the same area.

Spiderwebs! This will animate with a nice swaying motion that'll make it look like the wind is moving it. I had 2 concepts, 1 which I refined a little bit more while the other one was a bit too simple. I looked at a few more pictures for some ideas and I really liked this one the best simply because of the weight I could see in the lines behind it. I like that it looks like it "breathes" a little bit when it's animated so that's awesome, too.

I've got all of my sprites converted into PNG format so all that's really left to do is to turn them into animated assets in the Unity Program.