Tuesday, March 15, 2011
Friday, March 11, 2011
Week 9A Game Design Reflection
Sadly, I missed the presentation for this lab because I was throwing up but.... I can talk about actually designing the video game. I was in the group for the video game, High Life. I really enjoyed working with my group; we were all really understanding of each other's creative ideas and were willing to be flexible and listen to others suggestions. I thought our overall product was very convincing and good. I also liked how we all met and did all the work together. No one worked on the project separately so it made the entire thing feel like a real group effort. Usually, in these group projects, I always feel like one person is working harder than someone else and I get paranoid that that person isn't me so I try to help as much as possible, but this time around I felt the work was divvied up as evenly as possible.
The goal for our game was to reach the top dog status, or to deal coke. Our boy wanted to get out of the ghetto and work his way to the highest ranking and to do that, you have to avoid cops and work your way through various other drugs.
The mechanics for the game were as simple as possible. WASD for the camera, point and click for any action, and escape for the menu options. We wanted to keep it as simple as possible because our original idea was to make the game like Lemonade Stand. After planning for a bit, we realized that that might be a little tooooo simple, so we threw in the point and click action options to make the game more like the Sims and less like a simple Flash animation.
Objectives are the small advances you make within a game, such as making $1,000 so you can sell pills. It is not the overall goal, just little steps you take in the game, little objectives. A good one would be to sell all your weed in one day or to double your profit in three days. Objectives can be set by the game designers but in our game, you basically can go about the bigger goal anyway you want.
The rules for the game are simple. You must avoid the cops. That's number one. If you get caught, you first get a warning, then your stash gets taken away, and then you get a fine. If you run out of money or drugs, you must return to the ghetto. You can only sell what you can buy, so players must beware and play the game with a sense of strategy. The other rules are about moving on to the next level of drugs. The levels go marijuana, hallucinogenics, pills, and then finally coke.
That's basically the entire game. Like I said, working on this project was a lot of fun because my group worked so well together. I would say the only issue we had was deciding how complicated to make the workings; if it should have more levels, more obstacles. We decided to keep it simple enough because that's where our inspiration came.
The goal for our game was to reach the top dog status, or to deal coke. Our boy wanted to get out of the ghetto and work his way to the highest ranking and to do that, you have to avoid cops and work your way through various other drugs.
The mechanics for the game were as simple as possible. WASD for the camera, point and click for any action, and escape for the menu options. We wanted to keep it as simple as possible because our original idea was to make the game like Lemonade Stand. After planning for a bit, we realized that that might be a little tooooo simple, so we threw in the point and click action options to make the game more like the Sims and less like a simple Flash animation.
Objectives are the small advances you make within a game, such as making $1,000 so you can sell pills. It is not the overall goal, just little steps you take in the game, little objectives. A good one would be to sell all your weed in one day or to double your profit in three days. Objectives can be set by the game designers but in our game, you basically can go about the bigger goal anyway you want.
The rules for the game are simple. You must avoid the cops. That's number one. If you get caught, you first get a warning, then your stash gets taken away, and then you get a fine. If you run out of money or drugs, you must return to the ghetto. You can only sell what you can buy, so players must beware and play the game with a sense of strategy. The other rules are about moving on to the next level of drugs. The levels go marijuana, hallucinogenics, pills, and then finally coke.
That's basically the entire game. Like I said, working on this project was a lot of fun because my group worked so well together. I would say the only issue we had was deciding how complicated to make the workings; if it should have more levels, more obstacles. We decided to keep it simple enough because that's where our inspiration came.
Week 8B Reflection on Hero / Villain
One: Michael Mytnick
Okay, for Mike and Amanda’s hero and villain project, I really liked how they played with light and shadow… literally. Their hero was based on light and named “Icarus”, which is a character from Greek mythology (I know this thanks to my mythology class). The myth is about Icarus, with wings crafted from feathers and wax, is told not to fly too close to the sun, but he does anyway and his wings melt causing him to fall to his death. Though I liked that they referenced Greek myths, I was unsure how this applied to their theme of light. Maybe the whole “sun” thing applied, I’m not sure. Other than that, I really liked the concept. Obviously, they use color and symbolism. Their hero is yellow and uses light in the animation as a defense. The yellow is a warm color and brings about positive emotions. The villain is colored purple, which is a dark color and could stir some darker emotions. Obviously, they also use shadow; that’s the entire concept of their characters. My only complaint for their project is that Icarus’ animation is slightly hard to see, but I think that could’ve happened when they formatted their video from Pencil to Youtube. They use movement in their animation, especially the one where the hero and villain are having a show down. I thought it was interesting how they made the villain win and the hero be dissolved by the shadow puppet. Overall, I think the combination worked very well for them.
Two: Chris Page
Chris’ two characters were called Hotspot and Spark. This may sound stupid, but because I was absent for the presentations, I did not get to see which one was the hero and which one was the villain. I am going to make an educated guess and say that Hotspot was the hero and Spark was the villain. I made this assumption due to the colors that Chris and his partner used. Spark is done in a drab scheme, grey and light blue. His background is dark and his eyes are slanted in an evil-looking way. Hotspot is quite the opposite, featuring brighter and warmer colors like reds and yellows. Spark appears to use storms and lightening as a defense, and his costume was designed to reference that, while Hotspot uses fire and his outfit corresponds with that as well. Whoever designed Hotspot used shadows to emphasize space and give his character depth. I did not get to see the animation so I didn’t see how the characters reacted to one another. However, it’s easy to imagine. Their characters were very cut and dry—this is good, this is bad. Their color choice was obvious and, without knowing any of the back-story, I was able to effetely identify which character was which.
Three: Emily Zink
The last Hero and Villain reflection I did was Emily Zink’s. Her’s was on of my favorite because I thought both her characters were very creative as well as the animations and drawings were really well done. So, the first character, the villain, is named Brandi il Mondo. I liked how the character did not seem like a villain, i.e. didn’t look evil, however, to hipsters, she’s the worst. Emily described the character as, “a corporate tightwad who tries to thwart the hipsters in any way using her Olympics level gymnastic skills and pen-throwing precision.” The villain wears a dark black suit and grey tie. She also wears an eye patch and has pinkish hair. The look of the villain is very obviously dark and shadowed; she is dressed in monochromatic colors. I thought the animation for the villain was extremely well-done. You can tell a lot of time was spent on it, and I like how they added background music. The hero is Hipster Man, who I also thought was equally creative. I like how he is described as, “willing to give up his time in coffee shops to fight crime and protect his fellow innocent hipsters”. Obviously, there is an affinity between the characters and it was nice to see such good projects.
Thursday, March 10, 2011
Week 7 Joke Reflection
Joke Videos:
First, let me establish that I did NOT want to do this joke, because I hate potty humor. Yeah, I’m that girl, whatever… so, when my group suggested it, I immediately told them I probably wouldn’t be any good at writing or directing. When it came time to write the script, I decided to do it as simply as possible, following the original joke and only straying when I felt it was necessary. My group liked the fact that my script was so simple and would be easy to do in the limited time, considering that we wanted to spend more time and effort on the more complicated script.
Personally, I was very shocked when the Beans video, the one with my script, seemed to work better than the other. The camera angles may have been better in A Wonderful Escape, but I do think the humor felt more natural in the first video. A Wonderful Escape has a lot more planned shots than Beans, which is evident from the very first shot with the main character hunched between dumpsters. It was hard to create movement within the shots without actually moving the camera, but I think both videos achieved this as well as possible within the editing process. There are a lot of visual concepts that are the same for both videos. We used lines in Beans when the main character is sitting at the dinner. The window perfectly frames him and the vertical window frames from the building beside the diner directs the viewer’s eye right where we wanted. A lot of the shots look very nice. The only improvement we could have made would be to line them up more, and to create a better sense of space. For most of the film, the shots feel confined and closed because we were filming them in a dark alley, in a closed diner, in the library of a dorm—if we had more time or better resources, I think we could have made both films stronger.
In all, I am not sure why the first video worked better than the other. Maybe it’s opinion, because I know a lot of the group members liked A Wonderful Escape more.
Why is Ke$ha so amazing?
Ke$ha is amazing because I love her. And she would never hack someone's blog and post blasphemy!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)