The Decission & Work for the Change

[Miles]

Although I still have 2 days left to figure the other script out, I decided after the Rehearsal of our school production, that I would switch to making a scrolling game. Why the fast decision? Well, this is not that hard to explain. Like I said before, I had struggles with the maps. This includes not only the terrain/floor the figure is walking on, it also includes the objects that are placed on the map. Since this script is not even visible in the engine, I decided to switch to the scrolling game, since I can do this one completly alone and from scratch. I even got some kind of inspiration how I want it to look like.

This picture below is a screenshot from one of my favourite handy games, called Super Cat Tales. It is awesome.
I would like to do my game in this kind of style to be honest.


To achieve this solution for my personal project, I will do research on this, redo criteria, the story, the storyboard and make maps for this kind of game, before I take the rest of time to code it. I will be working on the project everyday from now on, but I am determinded get it done.

[Miles]

Since I feel like I am heavily influenced by Super Cat Tales, I would like to change not only the story but also the main-character to a cat.

Storyline:
The Maincharacter will be Miles (a brown cat) that has a very strange dream about all this confusing scientific stuff, that the humans are doing. He will travel around in a platformergame, thinking about all the the technical innovations that will be done to prevent humanity (and cat-ianity) from becoming extinct. He will be guided by informations through a star-cat, that shows him every level. (He might have to fight little 'nightmares' while the game).

If I go for cats, I am already kind of used to drawing cats, I will be able to do the artwork by myself in less amount of time. Since my anatomy is not that good and I still need to improve it, I will spend the drawing time onto learning more about anatomy. Furthermore I am terribly bad at drawing backgrounds or even drawing good compositions! Therefore this will be a good challenge for me as well to improve myself as an artist.

I already practised today, to improve my anatomy before drawing the characters and Backgrounds needed for the game. Since in all tutorials people said you should look at the skeleton and references, I decided to print some references out and to draw the skeleton into the references to get a better understanding of it.

Sheet 1
Sheet 2

[Miles]

Furthermore I looked at my criteria agan. Since I wont do an RPG and since I wont work with an engine, I will change the last point of it (10. Did I not rely to heavy on the engine I am working with? Did I do a lot of things by myself and did not the engine let them do?).

10. Did I not rely to heavy on the tutorials I am working with? Did I do a lot of things by myself and did not copy from the tutorials?

Also I want to add an another point, now that I am drawing the art for the game:
11. Is the art for the game in the same style? Does it fit and is it comfortable to look at (colors)?

Making art is not = making art. I think, it is not only the style that counts - it is also the composition and the idea behind it. Therefore I want to make a criteria for it, since a good game should have a good graphic.

[Miles]

Yesterday I did a simple storyboard, which I will be making more detailed today (design of the levels, what exactly happens as transition like zoom in, zoom out,..) as well as creating the designs for the enemies.

Also I did the character designs for the main characters yesterday, after looking at an very interesting explaination about character designs from Creative Blog. I will also check the libary for a book about character design today, which can maybe help me.
Below you can see, why I chose those designs:

Miles:
red-brown fur: reminds of fire, standing for his determination and curiosity
scarf: its some kind of those, that little kids like wearing, making him look small, naive and cute
big eyes: he should look even more cute and innocent. Also he has big eyes because of his love to exploring (and seeing new things)

Elysa:
grey fur: She's not really special and grey is a color for normal. In digital her fur is maybe bit more darker to show her negative attitudes
tiny wing..things: I liked the idea of simplyfying the wings to make a more simple and cute atmosphere, which does actually not fit her. I just wanted to show the contrast of her being some kind of an angel to her negative personality
big head, small body: And again, this should show the contrast of her personality to her looking. I want the player to grin at this not fitting personality. Maybe Elysa will even have some kind of bad mood all the time and is upset about not being able to sleep.

Storyboard

[Miles]

Since I am doing a completely new solution for my game, I also changed my planning for January.
I now planned to do all the art at once, before I start with coding the actual game (including the cover as well) this weekend. Why? Well, because I need all the artwork for game (without I cant start coding). And when I finish the cover now, I have the advantage, that I am warmed up at drawing this weekend and that it will look better.
Furthermore, if I finish all the artwork earlier than I expected it to, I can spend one more day for programming the actual game.

Furthermore I got less time for coding, because I changed the type of game I am making, but since I am determined to spend time every day for the project, I will be able to do it probably. Also I shortened the time for adding the dialogues a lot. Why did I do this? Since it is a platform game, there will be less dialogues that I need to add and therefore I need less time for that (if I do not add them already while programming).

Also I made changes to the Testing Time, since I remembered, that I would need a survey to get feedback, that I can understand and evaluate next to the other feedback. I will create the survey on 26.1. so that I can send it to the testers on the last day of testing. This will be also a challenge, since I have to decide what to ask, so that I have a feedback that I am able to make use of. On the 31.1. I will reflect on the feedback and make the last changes if needed.

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