The Rest

Last Post!

Things I learned:

• Backgrounds take a surprisingly long time to draw
• ActionScript 3 is not as straight forward as ActionScript 2
• I get distracted too easily
• Making a temple look good in illustrator is not easy. Either all straight lines or all rounded... they don't mix well.
• ActionScript 3 in general
• Some key concepts to game design
• Flash and Illustrator art don't go together, but illustrator art takes a lot longer to make than flash. I think next time I'll do it in flash. (The reason I did the illustrator art for this assignment is because I was lazy and didn't want to redraw him for the walk cycle... that came to bite me in the ass didn't it?) 
• Backup my backups! I lost all my backgrounds at once stage (redid the main background, temple interior background and the cave background because I lost my USB stick and the backup got corrupted... =[ )
• Having a textured floor is nice... but it highlights the sliding in the walk cycle too much.

Things I still don't know:

• How to animate a robot crawling into a temple.
• How to make a horizon look interesting. Anything other than flat looked weird
• I should have tried inserting the background I made in illustrator before dismissing it as terrible.
• The meaning of life. (42?)
• How to make global variables and use them in AS3
• How to stop my robot going off the left hand side of the screen before the staff is picked up.

The promised PDF 

Final Words:

Interactive Concepts

The concepts for my interactive animation were relatively simple (compared to Tarns initial idea O.O).

I wanted him to have a staff at some point since I thought it would suite his character, so I took it from there. If you look at the PDF in the last post (getting there!) You will see a few storyboards which you may or may not be able to interpret, depending on your proficiency in reading scribble and being able to decipher the scanner-coded blur.

But basically my concept was for a major overarching story, with small interactive pieces spread throughout. Most of these fell through in the final, as I misjudged the amount of work it (and the other 4 assignments due that week) would require.

Regardless, I did get some of the interaction done, such as the broken down robot on the first 'scene', which plays a sound on click.

Animation Development

Walk Cycle v9 is what we're up to now.

After getting some feedback, I returned to my stage and fixed some of his glaring issues.

His background got more depth through the addition of variation in the trees, the texture on the ground was removed to take away the sliding effect and a horizon was added. The horizon was surprisingly important in making it look better instead of just a steep hill.



Hmmm, youtube does not like my videos.... I'll try and get it to work but no promises...

Walk Cycle

I never got around to posting this:



The original walk cycle!

Multiple things are wrong with this. The background is terrible, there's a black line on the floor I used as my guide and forgot to take out and the amount of stuff in there makes it lag.

I made it by rigging the basic structure together using the bones tool (taking the art from the character design sheet from illustrator), then after doing most of the animation using the bones fine tuning it to remove the slide and make it look... better by hand (frame by frame).

(As a note, all my sketches and working will be uploaded in the last post as a PDF)

Character Sketches and Research

Some sketches and research, pretty self explanatory.

These sketches were my first proper development sketches. I decided against this robot because he seemed too stiff for a crazy robot.

This sketch is what I'm basing my character on. Its a relatively simple design, but it seems to allow for more emotion in the face and fluidity in the body than the previous design.

I was mainly using steampunk as my references, mainly from here. A few examples:

Character Development part 1

2 Ideas to decide between - 1 T Bot and 1 Junk Bot.

The World Maintainer (T Bot)

The world maintainer is a Tech Bot. It's an advanced robot left behind by the Aliens to maintain the machinery in the world during their absence. It has control over the automated procedures of the world, and has the ability to interface with the Alien technology.

It has the archetype of an outcast hero. It keeps itself separate from other robots, both junk and tech. It's attitude is serious and level headed, maintaining a calm and collected air at all times.  It is a quiet and confident robot, with authority. It is the first Tech Bot to activate.

The Mad Scientist (Junk Bot)


The mad scientist is one of few robots with the knowledge of how to maintain and create their race. The character starts as an ordinary scientist robot, before having a leak of Space Water drench him, sending his circuitry in disarray. This has had the side effect of giving him the ability to interface and communicate with the Alien technology and robots, but has led to his status as an outcast.

He is an erratic and 'mad' character, who generally fixes other robots if they approach him.

Game World Design

Some things I've been looking at with regards to the game world and creatures within it.

Deviant Art
Since this thing isn't letting me write in between pictures, I'll do it all here.
1) The colors make it seem really lifeless and broken - dispirited. This is probably too recent of an "apocalypse" for our setting.
2) The vivid colors make it seem as if nature has slowly been consuming the old civilization, still not old enough though.
3) An example of how nature grows over old ruins.

Overgrown - RathmianDeath

Shanghai Ruins - Jenovah-Art

Overgrown ruins - TheRenART

World of Warcraft - Cataclysm
Same deal as above
1) Some ruins - rather charred landscape and a really big tree.
2/3) How could the creatures look like? Not necessarily cute fluffy bunnies.

Ruins (Mt Hyjal)

Volcanoth

Shale Spider