10 things to be Graded on

1: Environmental Sketches

Drawing isn’t something I specialize in. During this part of the lesson, as I was drawing the environment for my game, ideas bounced from left to right. I didn’t realize that so many ideas on how I wanted my background to look like. Questions such as: “Would I want this here? Oh but what if I added this? Or maybe this? Or both?!” It made me excited to continue improving my background art, I made multiple sketches and started to combine them. Even though there were a couple of scrapped pieces, those environment sketches really expanded my mind and made me think more on the tone and the feel of the environment.

2: Character Sketches

Sketching my character was no easy task. I had to come up with a character, an original character as best as I could. We were told we can use other characters’ designs as references, I used character designs and feelings as references. Feelings can  make the player feel either comfortable or curious about the character that they’re playing. So when I started to sketch my character “Cazador” (spanish for Hunter), I wanted to give off the “I’m going to do some tough shit”. I switched his attire from time to time, seeing which fitted his attitude most. From being a bullfighter to an outlaw, and finally wearing diesel punk attire. I enjoyed making a character come to life (sort of).

3: Piskel Art

After our sketches, we learned about Piskel. I’ve always been interested in 2D pixel art since there are many games that I’ve played that design their characters in pixels rather than 3D models (not to say that it’s bad). I loved using multiple colors and shadings to make my art feel smooth and cartoony. I’ve seen what my peers have produced and I’m impressed by their art in 2D. I like seeing other people’s work because it makes me want to improve more and ask for advice from my peers. 

4: Piskel Animations

Continuing with the Piskel art, animating using the Piskel app was a very smooth process because you are able to drag the entire image and not mess it up.  My character went through some  visual changes  when I began to animate him using Piskel. While I used multiple frames, my animations turned out smooth. Like the ball we animated when we were in class, it turned out really nice when it hits all 4 corners and it changes colors. I feel like this can be useful later down the road. A perfect example would be someone needing help animating or needing something to animate on, there I can introduce them to Piskel and teach them what I know (thanks to you).

Idle animation (stretching) and Walking animation:

5: Logo + Mood/Vision Board

Our second assignment, this is where our themes impact our games. When I was coming up with the idea for my game, I started to think back on video games I’ve played before, studying how their themes impacted me (both success and failure). I don’t want to mis-lead my audience into thinking the game is based on “this” them instead of the theme I intended to use. The logo part was also a big part because you want the title/design to let you know what’s the mood or feeling throughout the game. Coming up with the mood I wanted to set in with the player was the biggest task I set on myself while balancing everything else (enemies, items, etc). Thinking back on this assignment, I’d love to perhaps one day instead of programming, I would like to come up with themes and ideas for a game.

Pictures are not made by me and are from google search:

6: 3D Modeling 

The assignment I was most curious about. There are many things that I want to learn and 3D modeling was one of those topics. Of course I knew that creating a 3D model is no easy task for a beginner, ever since we started to dive into that topic I began watching guides and videos on how to model. While I did watch these videos thinking that this would be a great help (even though it is), sometimes I would stumble across an issue like the model missing some limbs for some unknown reason, the model wouldn’t be shaped the way I wanted it to, and texturing the model (we’ll get into that soon). It is difficult to model these figures and design them, but I enjoyed learning a topic that I wanted to learn for some time now. 

7: Prop Modeling

I enjoyed modeling my own items into 3D models. It took me quite a while to manage the tools that blender had, I’m not that great at modeling but I was expected to try my best at this. Playing around with each setting, I found out which one I liked and disliked. Figuring out how to make my own items using Blender was really helpful because I could basically create anything that I wanted. To add on, there are many helpful tutorials that people could use and improve on their work.

This is a healing station:

8: Texturing and Materials

Having a colorless and unfinished product can’t bring any feeling to the player. Texturing and fixing my creation was really fun because I got to learn that it isn’t like Photoshop where you click and color where you want it to be at. It’s more shape based, like how many sides does your object have, what image will you be using to texture it, etc. I used to think that texturing was Photoshop based and you had to color in the voids and improve on it. But it requires more time and effort to be put into or else your model won’t come out the way you want it to look like. 

9: UI/UX Wireframes

The UI was a good assignment for me because I already knew what I wanted my UI to look like. I wanted to make my UI not complicated or have too much information. Using different colors to see which fitted best for my UI was interesting. Hope it looks simple and has important information.

10: Logo

Ah, without the logo, how can people tell what the game is about? I loved making the logo and tried to make it scream out the theme of the game. I have nothing else to say about the logo since I tried to make it look exciting.

Extra: 3D Characters and Animations

When I was using blender, I had to practice over and over again to use its functions at the best of my ability.  At the start of this mission, I began to think that it would be similar to using the puppet tool from Photoshop. Once I got my model (zombie) and opened up Blender, I was glad to find out that it is similar to using the puppet tool but had a couple of other steps to do when making the animation (such as the fingers,  shoes, etc). Once I finished the animation I was proud of my work because not only did I make an animation but I learned a bit more on how to animate using Blender.

https://gyazo.com/9d72d8dd125498b2e34700bbb984f72b

(Couldn't upload the gif or .mp4 file here, itch wouldn't allow me to)