Planning an Animation

Burndown chart

Updated burn-down chart

Dada artwork is abstract, outlandish and doesn't make much sense. 
Sophie Henriette Gertrude Taeuber-Arp made Dada style artwork such as fabrics and puppets.
We will be using these puppets as inspiration for our animations.

https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhb5Hhr7yfCUxgsHo3vjOf9anq-1Bn1cwPjgwJl5oE5yMcSFJF4aX4LupxkY5Lv2i5xJMM3QA6LqEruBypgo_9lfVQoHhD6l4JTutLBCbYIozdICbVlh_PakH7_YBy-3z8Su6JT6-wDmHY/s640/15.jpg

Animations in vidio games
By studying other peoples animations it will help me improve my own.
animations help add immersion to improve the feel of the game, some examples of reloading animations include this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q7HGmUBQOHM&list=PLPjqp8O5Qe9kF9eprzmw7UkhzJSSJ9Sf5&index=12
The animations in this video are rare reload animations that act as random easter eggs and also add a bit of humour.
Some other games have special easter egg animations, like in the newest DOOM game, doom-guy plays with toys hidden throughout the map.
According to Craig Chapple "Ensuring seamless animations to your game characters is essential to creating an immersive experience."
http://www.develop-online.net/tools-and-tech/12-animation-tools-to-bring-your-game-characters-to-life/0197015

I made a puppet of my own. Here is the creation stages.

I made a body out of a large cylinder and the tops of legs out of smaller cylinders

I added lower legs with slightly longer cylinders, with the front ones at a bit of an angle

I added feet by using spheres and cutting them in half in edit mode

I added a neck and head using two cylinders, with the head being a bit shorter

I added antlers/horns by cutting a chunk out of a torus (doughnut shape) and pointing the ends.

And then I did the skeleton.

I Added some materials, made an alternate version and added a basic skeleton

This is where I parented the mesh to the skeleton

I did some skinning to fix rigging issues (bits not moving with the rest)
To do this, I edited the mesh using vertex groups and assigned bones to the correct parts of the mesh

A basic idea of how the puppet would move

I have created a risk assessment form.

Hazard	Rating	Responsibility	Methods to avoid hazard	Action complete?
Computer crash – lose work	5	3D Modeller	Save work often	yes
Copy right materials used	4	3D modeller	Create original models. Check copyright status	yes
Back pain	2	3D modeller	Sit properly	yes
Eye strain	2	3D modeller	Balance brightness and distance from screen	yes
Server failure – work inaccessible	5	College IT team	Keep servers maintained, investigate all problems.	Yes?

I simple created a story board

Robot stacks boxes, boxes fall over, robot falls over

The story has been updated, this is now no longer relevent

I made another simple and rough storyboard for the ship being infected and whats happening inside.

Mood-board for updated work

This mood-board and animation work is also now out of date.



Week 1

I came up with 3 different ideas with genre, who the protagonist is, what the disaster is and what the foreshadowing is. 

Option 1:
Infestation

Prisoner

Zombies

Mysterious illness Option 2:
Action

Guard

Prison break

Shifty behaviorOption 3:
Lovecraftian

Prisoner

SPACE CTHULHU

Whispers from nowhere


I chose option 1 because it sounded easier, and I also have some assets already.

After the planning I have decided that I will make a cut-scene to show what the game is about.

The plan for the cut-scene, the protagonist will be running from zombies on a space station.

Target audience

I looked around at how target audiences are displayed and this is how Quantic Foundry does theirs.

My results would likely have different levels as the audiences for strategy and zombie games can be quite different, with higher levels in excitement and fantasy than strategy.

My game would likely cater to fans of the horror, action and survival genres.

The target audience would likely be those of 18+ years of age and a higher proportion of males than females.

https://tiga.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/4257-TIGA-Genre-Report-2016_v3.pdf

This chart by Tiga shows how action is the most popular with horror being least.

This means I could use the popularity of action to get it noticed, and the lower amount of horror use to avoid an over saturated genre.

Ethical and legal

I must be careful to avoid infringing on any other zombie games too heavily, but due to the large number of them, some overlap will likely occur.

Ethically, the game will probably be banned in Germany for violence.

Due to previously mentioned violence, the game will likely be rated around a 18+ PEGI rating.

As this is a college cutscene, i won't bother with an the legal stuff of making an IP, because if someone bothers to take it all the way through, they could probably make it better than me.

There likely not be anything that could cause problems gender/ethnicity wise, besides one really intolerable person to kill off for laughs.

Contract

My minimum product will be of a cut-scene showing the incident on the ship.

I will need to model the characters and environment and then apply basic textures to them, with a mix of image and generated textures.

Smart target

For the remainder of the lesson I will start work on assets for the animation.

Smart target 2

Continue making assets for the remainder of the lesson.

Smart target 3

Continue with materials/assets without murdering the client