Gamer Camp (the briefer than I would've liked version)

Yeah, about the 4 week Gamer Camp dooflip mentioned before? Well it turned out to be just the one week for me. Apparently I lack a bit of focus and sticking me on a game development team would be too risky. Laaame. =( That's not to say the week was a total waste mind, and for the interests of student blogging, I may as well post about it.

The training week for the Gamer Camp (which I had managed to get into thanks to one of the previous members dropping out last minute) was held at the NTI in Birmingham. We had a couple of tutors from the games industry, including one guy (I think his name was Guy as well) who had worked on the Colin McRae and Sega Rally series, and another who made a fair few iPhone games, including one involving Santa shooting elves.

The course was revolved around the development of apps for the iPhone/iPod Touch, with the hope of getting a finished product on the App Store (and I was gonna make a real cheesy trailer for it too =(.) I'm not sure if I was particularly gonna head towards iPhone development, since I have an affinity towards Macs, but I was keen to look at how these kind of games are made and what restrictions were involved.

The first two days mostly involved reviewing various iPhone games, such as Jelly Car, Edge, Geo Defense and, most reoccuringly, Flight Control. I think it was quite evil that they also had Peggle installed on their Touches, so damn distracting. We also got an insight into the development cycle of how this stuff gets on the App Store, going real deep with icons and screenshots and stuff. I was kinda accused of looking disinterested during these sessions, but that was mainly because I had suddenly shifted from a late morning, late night routine to a 6:30 wake up and a 9 to 5 straight working, which took its toll on the ol' body.

The third and fourth days were focused on the art aspect of the stuff, and there were quite a few things to learn from this, such as the Actions and Animation uses in Photoshop, which I'm sure will come in handy. During Wednesday though, one thing was clear.
Macs + Flash CS4 + Drawing with a mouse = FAIL
One of the tasks involved drawing graphics of a road that could be repeated. It was only after I had gotten a good deal through a hot piece of secks road at a sort of Excitebike kind of angle, did I turn my head and notice everyone else was doing top-down roads. This was one of the apparently fatal reasons according to the course dude.

Thursday was focused on drawing animations to be packed for the software. Thankfully, I had managed to get the tutor to lend me his Graphire, though it was still a little hard to draw due to its small size versus massive Mac resolution. I made a semi-decent Cap'n Zappy walk cycle, followed by a pretty neat arm cannon blaster, which looked neat, but again it was used as critique cos I wasn't focusing on one thing. We were introduced to a packing thing, where we get to see where all those Sonic Sprite sheets come from. There was much internal sniggering everytime someone mentioned the word 'p-list'. The second task involved drawing a character doing idle, walking and death animations. I originally planned to do the thing in Flash, but I was too self critical about my drawings to go with it. Instead, I did what everyone else was doing and tried making my animation in Photoshop. The character I used is an assassin named Hitmantis, from one of my personal projects. Using the sprites from Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth as a guideline for height, I gave the stuff a go, with flapping cape and scarf and everything, and the end result was pretty neat.

Despite this, come Friday, they stuck me in the awkward room and said they don't think they should take me on for the next few weeks. They did mention that I did pretty well to get this far, considering most of the people on the course were postgraduates and stuff (evident by the fact I could not understand anything they were talking about). The rest of the day involved looking over Flight Control and listing all the assets including in it, which turned out to be lots. These things tend to look much easier when you just wing it. There was apparently a chance to talk it over at lunch, but I was very hungry at lunch, and at the end of the day, it was pretty much broadcast that I wouldn't be staying. Would you like some wound with that salt?

So yeah, much suckage, but at least it frees up my daily schedule to concentrate on getting Date for One done. I get the feeling my head would've exploded trying to juggle both that and the Camp, and it probably would've definitely exploded if Weebl randomly decided to throw me some work in the midst of it. I'll still take to heart the stuff I did manage to learn, in case someone approaches me for this kind of work in the future.

Back in action

K, well I'm done sulking over the earlier mishaps and I'm slowly getting back to working on this. Which is probably a good idea, since I'm also currently participating in a 4 week Gamer Camp thingy, so yeah, best make the most of my free time.

I more or less finished up the storyboard (which may eventually get scanned...I don't have a scanner hooked up to this laptop so er.... yeah). I've revised some bits, such as the debate over whether the 'girlfriend' should have a plate of dinner at her table or not. I've also cut out a good chunk at the start, since I'm running short on time. Initially I had this whole 'preparation' build up thing, that also doubled as a title sequence, with credits imprinted on shampoo bottles and the title coming out of the drawer (think something along the lines of those mysteriously appearing text in games such as Grand Theft Auto IV or Splinter Cell Conviction.) A simple title card, however, will suffice the audience.


Right now I'm drawing up the characters digitally in Flash, to get their final look down. Starting with my still currently nameless dude right here. There I drew his body, 3 views of his head, a zoomed up head with some features and shading added to it, and another one using lineart and gradient fills, which I probably won't use since it'd take too long to animate, but it makes for good comparison. I then garnished it with a few oddbod poses and expressions, just to get a feel for how he'd be acting.

I decided to give the guy this curly hair look (see below posts for other haircuts) since I felt it would stand out more compared to all your generic scruffy people (one of my habits being I tend to draw stuff with lots of corners, etc.) and would look nice in animation. Since it's a rather modern day romcom, I decided to forgoe your typical tuxedo/bowtie combo and go with a nice shiny purple shirt. Namely cos my Dad used to wear a purple shirt and it kinda fit the dork nature. As for the eyes, as a change of pace from my usual Cartoon Network sized monstrosities, I'd go with nice small circular ones. A recent example of me using this would be my September animation, "Arrgh Idol".

Watch Arrgh Idol here.

The main question is the type of animation style I should use. Frame by frame (traditional) or motion tweening. Personally, I want this to look good, and want to go for that fbf look, but again, it's one of those things that are time permitting. Then there's the matter of how to go about the backgrounds. May need to get myself a decent camera and get some shots that I can trace over in Photoshop or Art Rage or something. As for music, I've got a fair few contacts I can ask around for some musical accompaniment. Who I ask depends on how the animation (or at least the animatic) looks. Oh yeah, and apparently I need to write a script or something. >_>