Proposal

Final Major Project Proposal EDEXCEL Level 3 BTEC Extended Diploma in Interactive Media with Game Design
Learner Name: Robin Claassens
City of Bristol College School Media & Art College Green Centre, St Georges Road Bristol BS1 5UA
Specialist Area: Interactive Media/Game Design
Date:  05/03/14
Section 1 Working title: Space Trek Wars What you will work towards producing: (Detailed description of your proposal) My final project will be a user interactive animation produced on Adobe Flash. I'm also going to make use of basic code and audio editing software to provide myself with an at least partially interactive soundtrack. The audience will be able to choose a weapon to attempt to destroy an enemy ship.
Section 2      Influences, starting points and contextual references: My starting influences are the game Kerbal Space Program and a youtube animator called Gonzo, I'm going to try and replicate as similar an art style to him as possible whilst using Kerbal Space Program's spaceship design capabilities to build myself an aesthetically pleasing craft.        Early ideas research and sources:  (What are your sources for contextual and personal research?) As I mentioned above, I'm going to be drawing on the art style of GonzoSSM, I just generally find his style of rendering very aesthetically pleasing and I'd love to try and replicate it. As far as personal research goes, it's going to be watching his streams and asking him some relevant questions as well as designing  ships on Kerbal Space Program and building on what I think looks good with each design I make. GonzoSSM: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCoFEvb-8o_ONb8pFlZkz64g (view at your own risk) Kerbal Space Program: https://kerbalspaceprogram.com
Section 3 Intended techniques, non digital and digital processes: I'm going to use a number of different techniques when planning out and developing my animation. I'll be building a storyboard on Flash using my graphics tablet so I can easily map out what I plan on doing for each scene. Doing this digitally as apposed to on paper also allows me to add in frames where I feel a certain scene could last for longer. The final product will then be drawn on top of the storyboard and rendered to keep it true to my concept and help me replicate precisely my plan. I'm going to design my ships on Kerbal Space Program and import screenshots to trace around as this will allow me to animate without being constricted by my lack of artistic consistency. I'll also be using Audacity to record and alter sound effects and songs to fit in my animation.          Timescales: (Please insert a week by week           timetable of each activity) 1              Do Proposal 2 & 3       Research and ideas 4, 5 & 6   Ideas Development 7              Penultimate week. Create the final project. 8              Final week. Evaluate.
Section 4      Proposed methods of evaluation: (How will you document your final major project evaluation?) I'm going to be self evaluating this project as I've done with previous projects. I'll more than likely be incredibly familiar with each frame by the time I'm finished and thus will know what I like and why I like it as well as what I don't like and why. I'll then write this evaluation up and post it alongside the finished product on Blogger.

Design and Development

Below you'll find some annotated screenshots of my flash project file. I'm doing initial designs on Flash with a graphics tablet rather than on paper as I find it easier to get my ideas down digitally and this way I can roughly animate and add in frames when I feel a section is too short and just generally build the layout for my animation with real ease.

My plan is to first draw out each scene then record myself using a screen cap software flying my ship designs made on Kerbal Space Program, mimicking each required shot. I'll then take screenshots of the video at appropriate times and fade them in Flash to create more detailed drawings than I would otherwise be able to do.

As you can see above this is just a basic flash animation outlining to help me map out which angles camera angles I should use when recording Kerbal Space Program. I've mapped out the entire animation this way but I'll keep screenshots minimal as to not spam pictures all over the blog.

I've put notes under my background to dictate when I want certain noises or music etc. I find it helpful to do this as it helps me visualise what the final product will come out as so I can mildly critique and subsequently alter my plans as I go along.

As you can see I can easily add dictations on the side to show which camera shots I plan on using to progress from one scene to the next.

For this particular shot, which shows a screen flashing up with a warning, I've added both a sound effect as well as some dialogue in speech marks before. This particular shot I had to lengthen substantially to make it feel like it had enough length to get the dialogue out and be on the screen for long enough to make an impact.

This screen shows an interactive segment for my animation wherein you choose what weapon you want to use. 3 of which are real and the final is a troll weapon that doesn't really do much. Depending on which weapon you choose you'll be allocated a certain number of points towards your overall score.

Here's the final score screen, ultimately the score is pointless but it could act as a reason to replay the game in an attempt to get maximum points.

The above image shows how I've taken in game screenshots and simply outlined with the flash pen tool. I find that the irregular lines give the ship a cartoony look which I find pretty aesthetically pleasing. It was also around this point that I realised by leaving the default colour of the ship intact I'd be able to come up with a much better looking final product as, realistically speaking, no matter how much effort I put in my skills will limit how decent the final render will be.

Here I've shown how I turned a screenshot with an outline into a standalone symbol. I've simply used the eraser tool to delete all unnecessary background so I can quickly and easily use the lasso tool to select the plane whilst not getting any of the background. I set up the picture so the outline layer was above the screenshot layer, this allowed me to get a much neater erase as I was able to go slightly into the outline without deleting it and making it seem jagged.

Here you can see what the ship looks like with all eraser work down, I increased the eraser size and zoomed out so I could get more of a margin between the plane that I want to select and the background that I want to leave out.

 Here you can see just how many screenshots I've used for a simple rotate shot. Each one of these screenshots was put into the timeline and carefully outlined.

Whilst trying to script my animation I realised I'd done it all on Actionscript 3.0 rather than the Actionscript 2.0 I've used in the past. This filled me with a deep sense of dread but I soon realised that it's a designed to be a lot simpler for implementing simple commands such as scripting a button to lead you to a certain frame and play on from there. This convenience did of course leave me with a slightly sour taste in my mouth as I soon realised even with the help of online tutorials I lack the skill to put sounds to my animation and one of my buttons, no matter how hard I tried, would not cooperate. Hopefully I'll manage to sort these issues out but failing that I hope my endless hours of toiling on this godforsaken project earn me the pass that I'm after anyway (wink wink).

Above are some images I'm including as they're hopefully a good indication of how useful my earlier sketches were when planning the whole layout for my animation. I was able to put things together efficiently as I could just use onion layers to produce out a neater version of my rough sketches in next to no time. Onion layers really were, and always are when animating on flash,  invaluable as even with my lacking skill when it comes to drawing I could easily sketch out flailing limbs or arrange the various angles of my spaceships without having to skip between slides and faff about with trial and error.

This screen grab shows the mess that is my timeline. This is after I deleted another 20 odd unnamed layers which I'd used to sketch notes and roughly arrange how I wanted things to look. As you can see I've used quite a lot of motion tweens, I used them in a couple of ways, one being to add a slight bit of filler when I didn't really produce enough screenshots of my ships to make everything flow seamlessly. I'm not too fussed with this though, I'm really a fairly poor animator when it comes down to it and using tools such as the motion tween helped me keep a small amount of my sanity. I also used the motion tween tool when sliding things across the screen, such as that very handsome boot above.

I did also make a fair bit of use of royalty free sound effects and songs which I had planned to and hopefully will still be able to implement into the animation. I was slightly frightened that it'd be tough to find the sound effects I needed without having to troll through countless websites but it didn't take me much more than about 15 minutes to find a site that I agreed with.

After a bit of searching I found it was an incredibly easy fix to convert back to Actionscript 2.0 which I swiftly did so I could add sounds to my animation. Ontop of the previously mentioned royalty-free sounds I used I also created quite a few of my own, just where the sounds I was able to find weren't really similar enough to what I was looking for. I did this through recording my voice with Audacity and cutting/pasting where appropriate. I also made use of a number of other tools audacity has such as fade in/outs, distortions and volume levels.

Below is a screenshot showing how I've taken a sound byte from a website and cut it to fit in with the scene I've animated. I had to do this a number of times for most sound effects.

I'm unable to really show this in any way through screenshots but in my animation I've included songs for a certain reason, the opening one is cheery and conveys a sort of upbeat montage feel. I believe this is a decent way to start the animation leading up to the title. The second song, however, is a whole lot more tense as it's put in just after an alarm is sounded to alert of an approaching enemy fleet. I think it builds tension well and the fact that I could let it play fully and have the end point dictated by a mouse click is very effective.

Above I've included a screenshot of some code for a button. As you'll see the code is basic (lucky for me) but entirely effective for what I needed it to do. I simply need it to navigate to a certain frame and play on, whilst also stopping any sounds that may be active. I had to input this code, or one very similar to it at least, for all my buttons.

This is a final screenshot of my project library, if you'll ignore the sheer lack of organisation you'll see just how many different sounds, buttons and symbols I ended up with. It all really did take a massively long time to get together, despite how budget it looks.

Research

Through this research I'm gonna explain some of my choices when it comes to why my animation will be based around what it is based around, and also why it looks the way it does. Certain aspects have had more thought put into them at the current moment in time so there's a slight chance that they'll be more in depth. Bare with me.

When it comes to the question of why I've decided to go for an interactive space ship animation the answer is pretty simple, I just thought it was cool and would be halfway achievable, that being said I am able to do a wide variety of research when it comes to games that are set in space just due to the sheer amount of games that I've personally played that fall under that category.

Space Ship Design

I'm blessed when it comes to the subject of ship designs as I have a copy, a slightly outdated copy admittedly, but a copy nonetheless of Kerbal Space Program. If you're unfamiliar, in KSP you control the space program on the planet of Kerbal. As main man/lady it's your job to build and launch whatever you can in hopes of reaching far off planets. As a result I can design the ships for my animation in an easy to use 3D hanger and launch them to see if my farfetched designs will actually take wings and fly under their own merits. It's not a big deal, in reality I could design a giant turd for the animation and no one would tell me that it shouldn't fly but I'm hoping that this extra effort goes noticed and makes the animation that bit less bad.

Design 1 - 

I find this design to be distinctly average, it's not awful but it doesn't really stand out either. From testing I found that it was air-worthy which is something but the design was more of a stepping stone in that it reacquainted me with the game and how to design things properly. I did like the wing configuration on this craft as well as the air intakes in front of the engine. I feel that the use of the canards in front of the wings gives it a sci-fi-esque feel which is ultimately what I'm going for with this animation.

Design 2 -

With this design I tried to make a more farfetched looking craft which I think I certainly achieved. It's so farfetched that it's practically impossible to fly as well, I think the configuration of the rockets and the wings doesn't really work, however, so I don't think this design will see any further development. 

Design 3 - 

The third design is hands down my favourite and one that I plan on furthering for my animation. I enjoy the way the rockets are strapped to the wings as well as the design of the wings themselves. I also think the spoiler configuration looks really great, regardless of whether or not spoilers are entirely useless in the vacuum of space. The large cockpit and front windscreen would allow for an easy shot of the pilots inside which is pretty integral to my animation.


One thing that I can't add to the ships through the use of KSP is weaponry, which I plan to have a lot of in my final animation. I've got a rough idea of how I want the weapons to look, however, so I'm going to draw on other examples for further inspiration.

I think something along the lines of these 2 designs would work well, they're pretty simple yet could fire over-the-top huge shells or something like that. Due to the compact design they could fit easily on the wings or fuselage itself.


Environment Design

When thinking about how I could design the background for my animation there's not too much to really think about, it's gonna just be distant stars and some closer planets. To show that I've put slightly more than just the bare minimum into thinking about this though I'll include some images that I'll take inspiration from when creating my animation.

The above images are from a mission in Halo: Reach where you pilot a space ship and attack an alien fleet. I think more than anything these pictures showcase decent lighting, especially when there's an explosion, such as on the second picture, or when a ship flies across screen and the trail it leaves, such as on the first picture. It's not too easy to show with a still image but the final picture shows the ship boosting and the surroundings blur as a result, I think this would be a decent inclusion to my animation as it adds an element of depth and goes some way to make you feel as if the ship is actually speeding up rather than just moving slightly faster across the screen.

These two pictures are from Kerbal Space Program again and I feel are very fitting when it comes to showcasing a space background, in essence it's just a bunch of dots for stars and a sun but the way that the sun highlights the contours of the planet is rather beautiful, if I could manage to recreate something half this good looking I'd be very pleased indeed.

Art Direction

When it comes to the topic of art direction I've got a pretty set idea of what I'm going to do. I've always really liked the style of a particular youtube animator that I'm subscribed to called GonzoSSM, as I'm going to show in the following pictures he uses pastel colours at varying levels of brightness to highlight his drawings and the outcomes are always incredibly aesthetically pleasing. I'm lucky enough that the particular animator that I plan to base my art style off is a fairly frequent streamer on Twitch.tv. If you're not familiar, Twitch.tv is a streaming website where people can stream primarily games for an audience. Gonzo's stream consists of him playing the odd video game as well as him doing art for donators and occasionally showing his production of animations.

The above pictures show Gonzo's progressions towards filling in his already completed line art. As you can see he makes great use of highlighting using different shades of the original fill colour. I find his technique to be incredibly aesthetically pleasing and will be trying my best to make my animation stand up to this, though undoubtedly his years of practice will cause his finished product to be leagues above my own.

The above pictures showcase slightly more in depth the stages of how Gonzo colours his drawings. You're able to see better how he picks ones shade at a time and just draws thin lines along the contours of the line art to add layers of depth and make everything look a lot less flat.

There are a couple of pictures taken out of full-screen mode which go to show how I can easily go about interacting with Gonzo live on stream and ask questions which is incredibly useful for my progression through this animation's research and design stages.