Last Post!

This will be my last post to this blog! I hand in my work tomorrow, and then its all over. I haven't used this blog as much in my second year of the project, mostly because my personal website became the dominant place to post things. I've also had another project to work on this year (with a website in the making) which I will be posting to from now, if you are interested.

So, in closing, this project has formed the majority of my degree work over the past 2 years, and I am satisfied with the outcomes I have achieved. The showreel/trailer will be up on my personal website by the end of the week, and should be on NUCA's iTunesU account very shortly after.

Thank you to everyone who gave me feedback and followed this project, I hope you enjoy the showreel.

Title Sequence

I have been working on a title sequence for the trailer showreel recently, which featured the title of the game against a period wallpaper.

Then I was browsing Channel 4 programmes and was shocked to see the similarity between my title shot and the title image of the topical Meet the Middletons. Uncanny.

My title appears after a paper radio, which plays music of the era to accompany the trailer, and fades into darkness as the first scene is revealed. Today I also watched several training videos on After Effects about animating text, and other useful tricks. I may choose to animate the text if I find an appropriate way. As for now I like the effect it gives as static text.

Shop Font

I finally made a front to the paper shop, including cutting out all of the tiny windows (twice! Digitally afterwards).

I wanted the interior visible from outside and the front to lift like a curtain. After trying this digitally it might look better if it were to part in the middle like a curtain. At the moment I am undecided and need to play with it more in After Effects, but I am pleased with the shop front overall and hope it fits nicely into my showreel.

Tape on The Windows

One of the many faults with the rough cut showreel is that the pink-tinted shop looks as though it is the sweet shop. To change this I have done some research into the practice of taping up windows so they don't blow out with nearby explosions. This is a common occurrence in wartime for homes and shops, and a sinister reminder of danger while people go about their day.

Showreel: Rough Cut

Yesterday I made a rough cut of a showreel in order to spot any gaps so I can fill them now. I was quite amazed at how well some of it fit together, especially with the music I had chosen. Even with everything sort of shoved together it came to 1:30! Because of this I am inclined to plan another, possibly shorter, development showreel. This will take a lower priority at the moment while I iron out the kinks in the main one. I am aiming for more of a 'playthrough'/teaser-trailer kind of thing with it.

So far I have been using photoshop to make high resolution files, but used quicktime image capture and imovie editing for convienience. The image quality is very low as you may imagine, and I am not even going to export it in its current state as it is simply for experimentation purposes.

What's Next?

This week I am going home, which means I have access to paints etc, and I'm taking my camera. I hope to film some shots of paint, marbling inks and other things to use in compositions in After Effects when I get back. Lots of other important things are happening at the moment, but this project is always on my mind. Working on the showreel should be satisfying.

Playthrough Video

I have spent all day making my prototype in Gamesalad Creator, before today I had a rough skeleton but now I have fleshed it all out except for the levels. That means I have a working menu system! I have recorded a play-through in Camtasia, and put it on my portfolio site. It is the first video on this page...

http://www.rosieball.com/Site/Showreels.html

Showreel

Today I finished putting together my showreel, based on the shelf design I was experimenting with in a previous post. I decided to painstakingly animate the drips in flash frame by frame and then put the rest together in iMovie...

I used music by Kevin MacLeod, you can see the full showreel on my portfolio site rosieball.com