Jas Lindon

Interactive Media and Games Level 3 Student

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Characters Concept Art

Comparing first drawing to final design.

Alohi

Allura

Wyatt 

Sakari 

Art Style + Why I chose this?: 

I chose to use a chibi like art style because it is my favourite art style, and is easier to draw. But because I used FaceQ (miantanteam, 2017) as a heavy influence, you could say the art style is also “FaceQ.” I also chose simplistic designs for their clothes because it would be easy to duplicate for each page of the novel, and not every duplicate is always the same, and that would play with the perfectionist side of me, so I chose to have simplistic designs to calm this down. 

Colours (Connotations): 

Alohi: Her shirt is plain white because white connotes innocence, and perfection, which ties in smoothly with Alohi as she is a perfectionist. In the novel, she is also quite cautious of her surroundings, which also is another connotation of white. White is often associated with angels, and “white knights” and this is what Alohi does a lot (saving people) in the novel, as she often will have decisions to go and check on the others because of the white knight instinct. 

Allura: She is the flirtatious one of the group, and is the total opposite of her twin sister. She has a high sex appeal (hence her low cut shirt.) Even though red is the colour that connotes sexual interest and lust, and she strongly has this. I have chosen to go with a baby pink instead as Wyatt strongly uses red, and I didn’t want two characters to use the same colour, and since pink is seen as a very feminine colour, I chose this instead as she is the girly character. 

Wyatt: He wears the typical high school varsity jacket, like those shown in Glee (Glee, 2009 - 2015) , and this is to portray that he is from a high school, and loves sports, like his character profile states. As in horror films, the “jock” tends to be killed quite early on in films, and I’m using this to my advantage as I do not reveal whether he can easily get killed off. His jacket is red because red connotes the strong will to survive, and in the novel, he is the one that strives to survive more than the others (possibly because he is in the most difficult situation than the others!) but also because he is the most sporty and strives to be the fittest (survival of the fittest.) Red is also a strong colour that oozes sexual interest, and lust, which he does as he strongly has these feelings towards Allura.

(Glee, 2009 - 2015)

Sakari: He is seen as the “nerd” of the group, but doesn’t have the typical glasses stereotype. But he wears mainly blue because blue connotes a higher level of intelligence than others. It also connotes trust, and security which will play a part in the novel as Sakari is the one who leads the way, and makes most of the decisions. The others put their full trust in him when they cannot trust themselves. Similar to white, blue also connotes being the “helper” or “rescuer” per-say, and this is key because if Alohi is unable to help, Sakari is the back up. 

Why have they got no face?

In the character selection screen, I have purposely not given them faces, this is because I want you (the audience) to choose them based on their art style, and how they’re portrayed. I feel like, if they had facial features, it would ruin the “vibe” that I am trying to give off. 

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Researching into an existing Interactive Graphic Novel

Decisions that Matter 

Decisions that Matter is a Interactive Graphic Novel made by students at Carnegie Mellon University who go by the name of “Team Patronus.” Other than being an Interactive Novel, it also teaches people how to prevent sexual assault at college campuses and in general. 

The first thing it asks you for is your name because further on in the novel, you are addressed by name, and I found this a really good feature to include because instead of you having a set name and putting yourself in somebody elses shoes, you’re playing as yourself and being addressed as yourself. 

You get to choose what you type, which I find is a really cool feature of the graphic novel, as you really do get to play as yourself! 

I like this idea of what you choose matters half way down the story line, so urges the reader to choose wisely. This also seems like it uses the butterfly effect, and this is the mechanic I would love to include in my novel, but I just don’t have the time nor the creative writing skills to be able to do so. But as inspiration, I will definitely use the choosing what to write on your phone feature as it is really effective. Along with this, I like the idea of coding it to use your name, instead of a given characters name, and even though my characters you play as, have set names, I would like to be able to do this in a future project, maybe. 

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Audio Inspiration

Run or Hide

Until Dawn, 2015

With this soundtrack, tension is being built up here; and there is creepy music to accompany this, I thought about using creepy music in my work for when the Hallucinations start to get worse and I thought this would go very well, and I want to use creepy music and the tension building in my audio, too. 

Eddie Gluskin’s Chase

Outlast: Whistleblower DLC, 2014

Tension is built up here; by building up layers of different sounds and sounds repeat more frequently to represent things getting closer and closer to you in the game.  I will use this as inspiration for my graphic novel, as I could use the idea of putting multiple layers of sound together to build up more tension as the Hallucinations get progressively harder to control for the characters. 

Alessa's Harmony

Silent Hill, 2006 

I could use this as inspiration for the music when the characters die, and when you get the screen of “you died.” The music is quite sinister and chilling but also gives you a little bit of emotion as it has a slow piano and this often pulls at heartstrings, but could also be used as mockery because you couldn’t make your character survive. 

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Making of the Graphic Novel

Production Diary 7

Software Used: Adobe Animate CC (Flash)

My Interactive Graphic Novel took many steps to get to where it is now. I was completely new to flash, as I hadn’t been present for any of the other lessons prior to making the novel on flash. So I had to sit down and learn how to use flash, from the teacher’s help, but also from figuring it out myself.

At first, I created three layers; Content, text and Actions, these are pretty self explantory but I’ll explain it for the production diary’s sake.

Text Layer: This is where all the text from all the frames will sit on, including the character profiles, and the text for each option you choose from. 

Content Layer: This is where all the content from all the frames will go on, excluding the text, things such as the pictures, title of the novel, and title of all the characters. 

Action Layer: This is where all the actions for each button will be on. 

For each page of the graphic novel, there is one frame, each frame itself is a keyframe. All these frames are created on the content layer. The black dot indicates a keyframe. 

At the start, I added plain text into each page telling me which page was what, whilst I still prepared the final artwork to go into the novel. 

Frame 1: Title

Frame 2: Backstory 

Frame 3: Character Selection 

Frame 4: Alohi character profile 

Frame 5: Allura character profile

Frame 6: Wyatt character profile

Frame 7: Sakari character profile

Frame 8: GAMEPLAY START 

Instead of adding another layer for the buttons, I just added them to my content layer - which was silly of me to do because looking back on it, I should have made another layer to save hassle. 

I added buttons to each of these pages, and tested whether they went back and forth between the pages I needed them to go to. Before I go anywhere else, to make a button, you have to right click on image you would like to be a button, and click “convert to symbol” and go down the drop down list to button. 

Code: 

There is only one button on the title page and that is the start button. If you right click on the button (once it has been converted into one) it should have the option of actions. If you click on it, it pulls up a pop up menu as shown in the next lot of screeshots. The two brackets (<>) means “code snippets” and i needed to click on this to bring up another list of options to click on, and I clicked timeline navigation. After this, I clicked on “Click to go to frame and Stop.” The only bit of code i needed to change after this, was the number in the bracket. And because the next page was the backstory and was on frame 2, so the number in the bracket is the frame number you would like it to jump to, when you click on that certain button. 

Adding Art work: 

Adding the art work was the easiest part of making this graphic novel, because all i had to do was import the photos from photoshop, scale them down into the right size for each of the profiles on the character selection screen. And this was done because the text were the buttons, not the images. 

Sound: 

If you double click on a button you would like to add sound to, it comes up with this (as shown in the picture.) 

Because I wanted the sound to occur when you click on the button, I added a keyframe in the “down” column. Before this, I imported the sounds I wanted for my novel into the library. 

On the right hand corner of the screen should be “button properties” and another sub heading saying “sound” I clicked on this, and selected the sound I would like to sound every time I clicked that button. 

I have to do this for every button, I would like to have sound. Some of the have different sounds, so with every button that has a different sound, all I did was have to repeat the process I stated above, but add the other sounds. 

I have three layers that have sound, because it isn’t wise to overlap sound on the same layers, so adding different layers makes it easier to add sounds that you have added. Sound 1 has the main ambience sound that goes throughout the whole of the novel. Sound 2 has the whispering that is heard from frame 3. And Sound 3 has the knocking sound when you are dared to enter the mansion on frame 8. 

2 hours before the final deadline, two of my frames decided to delete itself, putting me in a very unhappy mood as I was just about to export the novel,and it went back on itself. I managed to still submit on time, and fix the problem very quickly. Both Alohi and Allura’s paged had somehow been wiped of all the content and luckily because the two guy characters pages were set out the same, all i did was have to copy and paste their content into the girls, and just change the names to theirs, and the profile information to theirs, and also changing their photos. The buttons also had stopped working, so I had to go and recode these, which took some time as the actions panel kept closing itself, and disappearing. But in the end, I managed to code everything and make all the buttons work on time. 

What have I learnt from doing so?

From doing this, I have learnt how to use Flash to a basic level, how to code from frame to frame. This will be helpful if I ever want to continue or make a new Interactive Graphic Novel in the future. Before joining this course, I had no prior skills in any of the adobe products except fireworks. 

What will I do next?

After doing this, I have completed the practical side of my project, and wil go onto doing my self reflection (Evaluation.) 

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Gracebourne Manor Map

Even though, my project was a novel, I still thought it was ideal for me to draw out floor maps of the mansion as I could the physically picture the mansion layout, and help me place where the deaths are in the house.

I have highlighted in different colours the different rooms in which the deaths occur. Doing a map of the house also made me plan out routes for the characters to take. As you can see from the map, the library isn’t accessible unless you go through the ballroom, so the choice to go to the library cannot be the first choice when they walk into the mansion because you would have to go to the ballroom first. It would be accessible by Grand Foyer - Ballroom - Library. 

I also did another plan of all the doors, and rough deaths in the house. The doors are circled, pointing out all the doors helped me when deciding the walkthroughs of the house because it showed me what rooms could be accessed and what couldn’t be without entering another room. It also shows those who are looking at my work, that I took this into account this type of planning. 

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Creating Characters - Sakari

Production Diary 6 Software used: Adobe Photoshop

The first thing I did was draw the outlines for the characters, and after I drew them, I scanned them into the computer. Which I then converted from a PDF file to a JPEG.

I then used the selection tool to select only Sakari’s outline. I copied and pasted this into a new photoshop file. 

I set the new photoshop file to be roughly a square size, because each character is displayed in a square like manor in the character selection page of the novel. 

After pasting it into a new file, I filled the grey outline with the colour black to make a sharper and more pristine outline.

Because the background of my novel is black, and the background of the character is white. I needed to make the background white, so I used the magic wand tool and selected the background I needed to delete, and it is as simple as selecting the background I wanted to remove and pressing backspace.

I started off with the skin colour, which Sakari is stated to be tanned, so I simply googled “Tanned Skin Colour Hex” hoping that it would give me a hex code for something similar to a tanned skin colour. 

I chose the third colour in on the colour palette but it still didn’t fit my taste, so I played around with the colour, eventually finding the colour that I wanted to be for his skin colour. 

Even though I stated his hair to be black, I chose to have his hair a dark brown because I didn’t want his hair to be jet black because it would mix in with the outline, and I didn’t like how it looked when that happened. So I chose to have a brown instead of a black. And it worked well. 

Because I wanted a darker blue for the main part of the shirt, I decided to use a lighter blue for the collar because I didn’t want the same colour for both the collar and the main part of the shirt. 

I chose blue for the shirt because blue connotes a higher level of intelligence than others, and Sakari is the smart character in the novel. Blue is also the colour I assigned to Sakari, so a blue shirt would fit just perfectly. 

To then make the character seem less flat, and unrealistic. I decided to add shading because it gave the character more life, and a lot more depth to the character. Which looks so much more appealing than without the shading. 

To create the shading, I made another layer, locked the original layer with the character on. Changed the layer for the shading to overlay so that the brush would not come out a harsh black on the skin. I also Changed the pen tool to the opacity of 25% and the hardness of the brush to 30%. 

How well did this go? 

I feel like this drawing went really successful; I managed to complete the drawing without having to overcome any different hurdle along the way as I knew how to use Photoshop. The only thing I struggled on was the shading aspect of the drawing as I didn’t really know where and how to add shading, so I had to ask for help, and I look at how natural light hits your face in order to do the shading. 

How has this impacted the project? 

In doing these drawings, I can know let the audience visually image the characters without them having to have an image in their head. The characters also fill in empty space in both the character selection and character profile screens.

What have I learnt from doing so?

With doing this, I have learnt to shade more accurately, and I have also learnt to use photoshop a little bit more; I have learnt how to use the magic wand tool properly, instead of guessing what the tool does. I have also learnt how to use the different blending modes such as Overlay and Multiply - in order to complete my shading. 

What will I do next? 

I will add these to my character selection profiles on my Interactive Graphic Novel in Flash. I will then draw the full body drawings of my characters and add them to the character profiling screen. 

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Creating Characters - Wyatt

Production Diary 5 Software used: Adobe Photoshop

The first thing I did was draw the outlines for the characters, and after I drew them, I scanned them into the computer. Which I then converted from a PDF file to a JPEG.

I then used the selection tool to select only Wyatt’s outline. I copied and pasted this into a new photoshop file.

I set the new photoshop file to be roughly a square size, because each character is displayed in a square like manor in the character selection page of the novel.

After pasting it into a new file, I filled the grey outline with the colour black to make a sharper and more pristine outline.

Because the background of my novel is black, and the background of the character is white. I needed to make the background white, so I used the magic wand tool and selected the background I needed to delete, and it is as simple as selecting the background I wanted to remove and pressing backspace.

I wanted Wyatt to have quite fair skin because he is the only one who is fully Caucasian, so I googled “Caucasian Skin Hex” hoping that it would give me a hex code for something similar to a Caucasian Skin tone. 

I chose the first colour in the palette, and again because the skin tone didn’t exactly fit my liking, I decided to play around with the slider, and look at the different colours I could get. And I ended up with a quite yellowy looking skin tone but it still worked for me. 

Because his hair is blonde, I needed to find a colour that was similar to blonde as I could possibly get it, but also the colour could not be the exact same as Alohi or Allura’s because nobody has exactly the same hair colour. So I decided to again to look at the blonde hair colour palette that I had found on http://www.colourlovers.com/. 

And again the colour still didn’t fit to my taste. So I played around with the colour until I found the colour I was most satisfied with. 

I chose to have his varsity jacket to be red and white, the typical high school sport nerds jackets, similar to those on Glee, and in many films that are set in high schools. I started with filling in the white parts of the jacket because it was  the most simple part because I didn’t need to mess around with any of the colours.

I also added a black line, the same size as the outline of the rest of the character, at the bottom because if I hadn’t have created this line, the white would have filled across the whole of the background as it is an incomplete shape. Instead of using the line tool, I decided to click the left point at the bottom of jacket, hold down shift and click the right point at the bottom of the jacket, which instantly creates a straight line. This then lets me fill in all parts of the jacket that needs to be white without sending the entire background white, too. 

Because his jacket isn’t done up, I had to choose a colour for his shirt underneath, and I chose to use a plain black because black connotes the sense of mystery, and strength. And Wyatt is the stronger one out of the two boys in the novel. The mystery side of things is that all of them have a sense of mystery about them because you don’t know what could happen in the house. 

I then filled in the rest of the jacket with red as this is the most popular colour for varsity jackets, and is also the colour in which he is most associated with in the novel (every character is assigned a different colour) But also because red connotes the strong will to survive, and in the novel, he is the one that strives to survive more than the others.

To then make the character seem less flat, and unrealistic. I decided to add shading because it gave the character more life, and a lot more depth to the character. Which looks so much more appealing than without the shading.

To create the shading, I made another layer, locked the original layer with the character on. Changed the layer for the shading to overlay so that the brush would not come out a harsh black on the skin. I also Changed the pen tool to the opacity of 25% and the hardness of the brush to 30%.

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Creating Characters - Alohi

Production Diary 4 Software used: Adobe Photoshop

The first thing I did was draw the outlines for the characters, and after I drew them, I scanned them into the computer. Which I then converted from a PDF file to a JPEG.

I then used the selection tool to select only Wyatt’s outline. I copied and pasted this into a new photoshop file.

I set the new photoshop file to be roughly a square size, because each character is displayed in a square like manor in the character selection page of the novel.

After pasting it into a new file, I filled the grey outline with the colour black to make a sharper and more pristine outline.

Because the background of my novel is black, and the background of the character is white. I needed to make the background white, so I used the magic wand tool and selected the background I needed to delete, and it is as simple as selecting the background I wanted to remove and pressing backspace.

Because Alohi has more of a Hawaiian side to her rather than her sister, her skin has got to be quite tanned, just like Sakari, so I googled “Tanned Skin Hex” hoping that it would give me a hex code for something similar to a tanned Skin tone too.  I chose the first colour in the palette, and again because the skin tone didn’t exactly fit my liking, I decided to play around with the slider, and look at the different colours I could get. I ended up with a slight tan in the skin colour and I feel like it works really well.

Both Allura and Alohi have the same hair colour. So it was easy to duplicate the same hair colour, all I did was open up the colour properties, copy the hex code and paste it into the colour properties on Alohi’s file.

I also added a black line, the same size as the outline of the rest of the character, at the bottom because if I hadn’t have created this line, the white would have filled across the whole of the background as it is an incomplete shape. Instead of using the line tool, I decided to click the left point at the bottom of shirt, hold down shift and click the right point at the bottom of the shirt, which instantly creates a straight line. This then lets me fill in all parts of the shirt that needs to be white without sending the entire background white, too.

To then make the character seem less flat, and unrealistic. I decided to add shading because it gave the character more life, and a lot more depth to the character. Which looks so much more appealing than without the shading.

I made her plain white because white connotes innocence, and perfection, which ties in smoothly with Alohi as she is a perfectionist. 

To create the shading, I made another layer, locked the original layer with the character on. Changed the layer for the shading to overlay so that the brush would not come out a harsh black on the skin. I also Changed the pen tool to the opacity of 25% and the hardness of the brush to 30%.

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Creating Characters - Allura

Production Diary 3 

Software used: Adobe Photoshop 

I used an app called FaceQ as a heavy influence on my characters, as I use this app quite often.

The first thing I did was draw the outlines for the characters, and after I drew them, I scanned them into the computer. Which I then converted from a PDF file to a JPEG.

I set the new photoshop file to be roughly a square size, because each character is displayed in a square like manor in the character selection page of the novel.

After pasting it into a new file, I filled the grey outline with the colour black to make a sharper and more pristine outline.

Because the background of my novel is black, and the background of the character is white. I needed to make the background white, so I used the magic wand tool and selected the background I needed to delete, and it is as simple as selecting the background I wanted to remove and pressing backspace.  

I also added a black line, the same size as the outline of the rest of the character, at the bottom because if I hadn’t have created this line, the white would have filled across the whole of the background as it is an incomplete shape. Instead of using the line tool, I decided to click the left point at the bottom of jacket, hold down shift and click the right point at the bottom of the jacket, which instantly creates a straight line. This then lets me fill in all parts of the jacket that needs to be green without sending the entire background green, too.

Because Allura has more of a French side to her rather than her sister, her skin has got to be quite fair, just like Wyatt, so I googled “Caucasian Skin Hex” hoping that it would give me a hex code for something similar to a Caucasian Skin tone too.  I chose the second colour in the palette, and again because the skin tone didn’t exactly fit my liking, I decided to play around with the slider, and look at the different colours I could get. I ended up with a slight tan in the skin colour but I feel like it works really well. 

I chose to make her top a light pink, at first I went with a red coloured top but because I had already assigned the colour to Wyatt who strongly uses that colour, so I decided to go with a more girlish colour which was baby pink because pink is a very feminine colour and she is very feminine. 

Both Allura and Alohi have the same hair colour. So it was easy to duplicate the same hair colour, all I did was open up the colour properties, copy the hex code and paste it into the colour properties on Allura’s file. 

I didn’t want her to keep the jacket over her, white because it symbolises purity and innocence and she is the character who is far from this. So I decided to google “opposite colours to baby pink” and I found a colour scheme that I really liked and decided to use the the colour next to the baby pink as I believe that these two colours suit each other very well. 

I decided to use a hex from image website to help me find the colour that I wanted to use as the jacket. 

After finding this colour, I put the hex code in the colour properties and filled in the jacket that colour. 

To then make the character seem less flat, and unrealistic. I decided to add shading because it gave the character more life, and a lot more depth to the character. Which looks so much more appealing than without the shading.

To create the shading, I made another layer, locked the original layer with the character on. Changed the layer for the shading to overlay so that the brush would not come out a harsh black on the skin. I also Changed the pen tool to the opacity of 25% and the hardness of the brush to 30%.

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Play Test for Delusional

Play tests are put in place to allow us to see where we are in terms of game making and where we can improve. Due to leaving it a day before the deadline to do my play test (as I had forgotten about doing one) I have only had 4 people give me feedback on my Interactive Graphic Novel.  But I feel as if this is still enough to see how my novel is going, and to do any improvements if there is any needed to be done. I am going to use this feedback to improve my novel as much as I can in the little amount of time we have left.

Aesthetics:

Colour Scheme:

Gameplay / Interactivity:

How well does the novel suit the target audience of 18+?

How difficult is the novel to navigate?

Sound: (How well does the sound compliment the novel?)

Character Design:

How could the novel be improved?

Let me exit

I didn’t know how to make that when you click the end button that it exits out of the novel, so I left it until after the play test, and as it was expected, it was picked up that the exit button didn’t work. To find a solution, I turned to google for this. I tried many solutions, but when I tried each one, it kept coming up with an error code. So, I needed to find another solution because the deadline was nearing. I decided to go with a button that takes you back to the beginning of the novel, because then the player has a choice of playing again with a different character, or they can manually exit after going back to the main screen, instead of being stuck on an incomplete page.

Add more pictures

With this feedback, I cannot possibly create more art for my game now. But this would be my number one if I had more time, or if I had an opportunity in the future, to improve my novel. I feel like too many pictures will ruin the beginning of the novel as it focuses more on the story, and the character section, but each character has their own art and portrays my characters perfectly. But I feel like if I had a few extra days, I would have drawn their full bodies to create more of a character profile, and I would have also drawn the actual mansion the novel is set in, to create more setting to the game.

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Final Evaluation

If you compare my original idea to my final product, it has changed considerably. Even though it is natural for you to change your idea as you progress, the product still keeps the original story, and backstory, whereas my actual making of the novel has changed, along with the actual gameplay. It has changed in the sense that my original plan was to make a graphic novel with minimal interactivity, and loads of drawing, but I now have made a Graphic Novel which has a lot of Interactivity with minimal drawing.

Research:

Most of my research was based around horror, and psychological aspects of products, this was because my theme for my game was Japanese Horror.  Originally, I had a huge list of research in which I wanted to make myself do, but towards the end of the project, I realised that this was far too much for me to do, and it included many games and films, and I realised that researching into 5 different films (including watching them) and playing 5 different games in the same timeframe, was going to be too much for me to do because I would then have to individually analyse them, and this would take time away from me that I could be doing for my production, so I decided to reduce the amount of films, and games that I would research into.

I did a lot of primary research such as going to the library, and giving out and analysing surveys; and I feel like this was very successful. Going to the library and getting books out that helped me with creating the graphic novel, and another book that helped me learn to draw Manga and Chibi (the style I chose to draw.) As for the surveys, I had 54 people answer my survey, so I had a very successful outcome with this, and my survey was sent out to help me with my concept art, character profiling and the ending of the game. Whilst also finding out what my target audience thought about horror – because of this, I could then create media product that my target audience would actually want to play. After collecting the results, I created a survey analysis document and analysed each question in depth, including graphs and a paragraph explaining how I would relate this research to my own work.

 With the second question of the survey, I asked what the target audience thought of the names of the character and to use their imagery skills and tell me what they imagined when they heard the name of the character, from their imagery, I created the characters in the target audience’s eyes. For example; I asked what they thought of the name Allura, and many people said it reminded them of a girl with blonde hair, so I made Allura have blonde hair as I wanted the characters to relate to my target audience. I also asked in the same question what they thought of the personality of the character could be by the name, and I got a few different answers for the feedback. Again, for example, I asked about Sakari, and many of the target audience said that they thought of the name to sound sophisticated and intelligent, so I used this as a trait for the character profiling of Sakari. Last I asked about the outcome of the game, and I asked about what could be the ending to one of the characters, in this I wasn’t looking for good and soft endings, I asked the target audience to think about death, and I got some crazy ideas, in which I used some of these extreme ideas, such as someone said “drowning in a dishwasher” they didn’t give any context but I still used this as an idea, because they had given me the basis of an idea, I finished off the idea. And I felt like this worked very well because I had gone into the target audience’s mind for a split second, and did what they thought would work well.  

Pre-Production:

I made many different pre-production material; such as Proposal, Gantt chart, Navigation Maps, Concept Art, one sheet and the Design Document. The Proposal was done at the beginning to give outline on what I was planning to do; it has three sections – Review, Project Concept and Evaluation. The review section outlines my skill set, and what I feel like needs improving, for example, I put that I was least confident at Flash but I was doing my graphic novel on Flash, even though at first , I thought this seemed stupid of me to do something in a program that I had least confidence in using. But I also did this to boost my skills in using Flash, because in order to make my novel, I would have to overcome problems with the novel, and learn about coding in Flash which I knew nothing about. I also did this because I wanted to give myself a challenge for the Final project, as I didn’t want to just stick to Gamemaker like I had done previously.

 The second part of the proposal was the concept of my project, in this, I communicated clearly to the person who is reading the proposal my concept and what I was intending to do in the project, but in the outline I put that the novel will be heavy on visuals and the outcome of my novel was the complete opposite, it was focused heavily on the sound and the text. I feel as if my One Sheet communicated my idea more visually rather than the text that was placed on the document but I feel like this is really good because the layout of the one sheet catches your eye and makes you want to look more into the idea. Continuing in the same style as the one sheet, the design document communicates my idea very well, and to me, is very thorough and tells the reader everything they need to know about the game that I have decided in the pre-production stage of the novel. Finally, the Gantt Chart, I feel like I did not follow this very well because my time management is poor, the first half of the Gantt Chart was followed very well, but after coming back from the half term, I struggled to keep up with the Gantt Chart, doing things that were meant for later on, in that lesson instead of doing it in the other way around. And I feel like I really need to improve on my time management, and I will continue to try and improve on this by making Gantt charts in the future projects in year two.

Production:

For the production, I made an Interactive Graphic Novel on Adobe Flash. I originally wanted to make it a graphic novel with many panels, with one single button that every time you pressed it, it would reveal panel by panel. But with this, I thought it wouldn’t suit my target audience as much as a multiple choice novel. I thought that doing a multiple choice, choose your own fate novel would be so much better for the audience because it was more adult like, and involved the reader a lot more. Also with the fact that I wanted the novel to affect you psychological and a normal graphic novel would not do so. I also asked in the survey about what the audience thought about the novel being changed the choose your own fate multiple choice novel, and 80% of the audience thought it was a really interesting and good idea, so I decided to go for this in the final production stages. My original idea too was to keep colours at a minimal amount, and I have kept this, I have only used black, white and red throughout the novel, but at the start, there are blues and pinks to indicate the characters genders in the character selection screen.

I could have improved my production 10 times better if I had given myself more than a week and half to create the novel, because this meant that I had to rush the novel,  and fit a lot into one lesson which meant I spent a lot of my lessons stressing and constantly working to my full capabilities. And this soon made me burn out quickly because it was constantly on my mind all the time.

Next time, I would give myself at least 3 to 4 weeks to do the novel, and I would give myself much less time to do concept art, and be stricter on myself. I would also ask for more help when I needed the help with flash instead of spending a lot of time trying to do it myself, but this also improved my own skills in finding my own solutions to my problems.

Conclusion:  

Throughout this project, I have learnt how to use Adobe Flash, and learnt how to use Illustrator and Photoshop to a higher level. Because I didn’t have any knowledge in flash before starting this project, I had to learn from scratch, and use a lot of trial and error. I also learnt how to construct posts more professionally, and more thorough. I have become more confident with my work as all of the projects have progressed which I am very proud of myself for, as I started this course with the smallest amount of confidence in myself. My favourite part of the project was the drawing aspect but also the research side of the project.  I loved researching different themes for my project, because these themes I enjoyed to read about, thus making it enjoyable for me to research. I also enjoyed the drawing aspect because I’ve always used to enjoy drawing, and I’ve improved extremely on my drawing skills, and because there were no drawing guidelines to meet, I could draw however and whatever I wanted.  Although, I enjoyed drawing, I still struggled a lot on drawing as if I couldn’t draw something, I would give up very easily. And again, when I started drawing, I struggled to finish the drawing off, so I came up with a good idea of missing out the face; I missed out the face because of two reasons, one being that I struggled with the actual facial features and two, I thought it would look much better without the facial features.  With all these skills, I will take them along with me up into year two, and continue to improve on these skills, as this will help me achieve a higher grade, and more professional looking products, along with a portfolio full of work that I am proud of.

[jaslindon-blog]

Button Checklist

Because I kept getting confused, and forgetting which buttons I had coded, and which buttons I hadn’t coded. Somebody in my class suggested to me that making a checklist of all the content I intended to do would be a good idea, and every time I had completed a task, to then tick them off. So this is what I did. 

This helped a lot because I could then see clearly which buttons I had done, and which buttons I hadn’t done. This made me get the work done super quick and efficiently. Thank you Lloyd! This also shows what I had originally planned to do, so anything that is added other than this, is more than I planned to do.  

[jaslindon-blog]

Branching Narratives

Simple non-linear stories use a branching narrative to give structure to the story of the game. You start at the beginning and are given a couple of options, and these options lead to new choices, and so forth. Often leading to failure or success.

Branching narratives can seem easy to make at first, but can become harder to make the further you go on. You can start off with 1 option, and then branch out 2 more times, and then 4 more times, and so on. The numbers start to accumulate; the deeper you go into the narrative, the more choices there are to write.

The opposite to this would be Linear narratives which most games use, this is where the player cannot change the storyline nor the ending of the story in any shape or form. Whilst some games do not use this, Non-Linear Gameplay gives more freedom to the player than a linear game.

An example of an interactive non-linear game would be Until Dawn (2015) as you get given choices throughout the story. These choices can affect the past, present and future storyline. And you can play again and again with the other options present.

My Interactive Graphic Novel is Non-Linear, and has multiple endings depending on what choices you make. So using games like Until Dawn as inspiration will really help me because it gives me a physical game that someone else has created to showcase how a branching narrative can be laid out. And all of the possibilities and creative freedom you are given while creating a horror based branching narrative. This will give me some ideas on different ways to keep the reader/ player on edge and wanting to keep playing.

[jaslindon-blog]

Exploring the Butterfly Effect

The Butterfly Effect is a popular concept in which small causes can have catastrophic effects. In Chaos Theory, it is a phenomenon that has been said that “something as small as the flutter of a butterfly’s wings can ultimately cause a typhoon halfway around the world” (Boeing, 2016)

This metaphor originally came from Edward Norton Lorenz (who sadly died in 2008) to emphasis the unpredictable results of a minor change in certain conditions.

This concept is used heavily in today’s culture, as it is included in many films, games and novels.  It also has been believed that the Butterfly Effect is the reason behind some events in History. This is used significantly in games; choices made early in the game affect all that follows. 

An example of some of these Games could be:

Until Dawn (2015)

Beyond: Two Souls (2013) 

Heavy Rain (2010)

Life is Strange (2015)

I will use Until Dawn as an example of the Butterfly Effect in a Game. 

Butterfly Effect in Until Dawn

Until Dawn is an interactive survival horror game developed by Supermassive Games and published by Sony Computer Entertainment, which was originally meant for PlayStation 3, but got rescheduled for PlayStation 4. 

Until Dawn uses this theory as a Gameplay mechanic, which means that the player is forced to make a decision which affects the outcome of the game. Once the player has made their decision, they cannot go, neither can they change their decision once it is made.

In Until Dawn, there are 22 different choices to be made in the game; each choice has multiple decisions in each. Certain butterfly effects will not happen if certain choices are made.

Picking up totem artifacts in the game will unveil a coloured butterfly, and a premonition of the future that could possibly happen. As the tutorial states in the game “A Butterfly Effect appears when your actions have changed the narrative of the game”

I wanted to be able to use the Butterfly Effect in my Interactive Graphic Novel, but I know this is way too hard to be using on a novel, and in the time span we have. The mechanic that Until Dawn uses is a complicated, yet very creative concept. And I wish to use it one day in another project, possibly in University.  My novel is non-linear which tends to be how games with the butterfly effect concept are laid out. I can still use Until Dawn as an inspiration, as well as the butterfly effect, as I was hoping that whichever route you take in the house, and what options you choose, changes your fate at the end of the story, and the butterfly effect is where any small change can make bigger changes, and this is the baseline of my novel’s story.

[jaslindon-blog]

Designing the Floor Plan of Gracebourne Manor (Pt 2)

Production Diary 2

Software used: Adobe Illustrator

FIRST FLOOR

I did each room on a different layer as it would make life easier if I messed up on one of the outlines, or an outline was out of place, I could just delete the layer and try again, so this is why I changed layers for each room (I also named each layer the room, so I knew which layer I was editing)

After every room I did, I locked the layer so that the outline could not move when I created the outline of a room which was joined to it. Which then meant that I wouldn’t get any nasty surprises of deleted walls, etc when I deleted the backing photo.

Master Bedroom

Again, I have started off with the easier outlines of the rooms, and saved the curvier ones till last.

Master Sitting Room

Lift

Bedroom 3

Bedroom 4

Bedroom 5

This is where the curvier looking rooms came into play. This took more precision as they needed to still go smoothly into the other rooms.

Hall

Master Closet

Inner Balcony

Outer Balcony

Storage Room

Master Bathroom

All Rooms

After I did all this, I used the text tool to add the names of each room, so that when I go to make the gameplay, I know which rooms lead to which.

I feel like this floor plan went well as you can clearly see each room, and it is not too complicated of a plan which means that anybody who doesn’t know the graphic novel or much about my project, they can easily see what I’m trying to get across here. It also went well because all the outlines match, and nothing looks (too) out of place.

Doing these floor plans has enabled me to be able to carry on with my gameplay as I needed to do this to visualise the house, I couldn’t just keep everything in my head as I wrote the script. For example, I now know that the library is next to the ballroom which means I can give the option of staying in the ballroom or going to the library. And because I know that the library is the last room, I can also see that I must go back through the ballroom in order to get back into the hallway. So, this helps me to visualise the house, and make it easier for me.

Doing this, has made me learn how to use the pen tool a bit more on Adobe Illustrator, and I have also learnt more about how a floor plan is laid out.

Because I’ve done this, I can now go onto designing the rooms in which the Graphic Novel is set in.

[jaslindon-blog]

Designing the Floor Plan of Gracebourne Manor

Production Diary 1

Software used: Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop

The first thing I did was google “mansion floor plans” and found existing floor plans of mansions, or bigger houses per-say.

I came across a website called Homes of the Rich (HOTR, 2017) and this website has hundreds of floor plans of houses, and mansions, so I had a lot that I could like and take into consideration with my own mansion for my Interactive Graphic Novel.

And I found a floor plan (Stone Mansion estate, Alpine, NJ) which caught my eye instantly, and I wanted to use this as the floor plan for my location. So I took the images into consideration and cut off most of the left half of the floorplan as it looks too modern to be in the floor plan because it’s an old location, and an open motor court is modern.

Before I made it digitally, I printed out the edited floor plans, and because I didn’t need all the rooms that are on the floor plan, I went over in a black permanent marker of the chosen outline of the house, and all the outlines of the rooms, so it would be easier to see the lines when scanned into the computer.

I chose to redo the floor plan on a computer as it would look more professional than if I did it by hand, and scanned it in only.

I then imported the edited floor plan into Adobe Illustrator, and made it fit the canvas (landscape A4)

GROUND FLOOR

I did each room on a different layer as it would make life easier if I messed up on one of the outlines, or an outline was out of place, I could just delete the layer and try again, so this is why I changed layers for each room (I also named each layer the room, so I knew which layer I was editing)

After every room I did, I locked the layer so that the outline could not move when I created the outline of a room which was joined to it. Which then meant that I wouldn’t get any nasty surprises of deleted walls, etc. 

Kitchen

There was no particular reason why I chose the kitchen to be the first drawn, except for the fact that tried to do the outlines of the rooms with the sharper edges and go for the more curvier and circular rooms later on. 

Family Room

Lift

Great Room

Conservatory 

Dining Room

Den

Library

Pantry

Grand Foyer (Main Hallway)

Spiral Staircase

Instead of using the pen tool to do two curved edges, I decided that the Ellipse tool would be so much easier to create the spiral staircase. 

Hallway (Going from stairs) & First Guest Room

This is where the curvier looking rooms came into play. This took more precision as they needed to still go smoothly into the other rooms. 

Ballroom

This and the Terrace were the hardest as they needed to have symmetrical (or at least try to have) curves, they also require the biggest curve out of all of the rooms. 

Terrace

Rear Foyer

All Rooms

After I did all this, I used the text tool to add the names of each room, so that when I go to make the gameplay, I know which rooms lead to which. 

[jaslindon-blog]

Navigation Map

This is my Navigation Map for my game; I have not gone into any detail on what the storyline could be, all that is revealed is there is a route for death, and a route for survive. I have used colour coding to make sure when somebody reads this, they do not get confused - Red is for the death path and green is for the survival path.