Sunday, October 31, 2010

Final Entry

For the interactive story, I decided to attempt at making a game for this project. Honestly, I don't really have any action scripting knowledge other than the basic stop(); and gotoandPlay(); . So in order for me to create a game, I would have to use some premade scripting.
Some sites I looked at:

http://www.tutorialized.com/view/tutorial/Sprite-Animation-Tutorial-Complete-Guide-with-Links/14006
http://www.flashkit.com/tutorials/Interactivity/Moving_a-Luke_Kne-1363/index.php
http://www.developingwebs.net/flash/dynamictextboxeschapman.php
http://www.webdesign.org/flash-swish/flash-tutorials/snake-game.11079.html
http://www.strille.net/tutorials/snake/index.php
http://www.flashkit.com/tutorials/Games/Sound_Wi-Jesse-1221/index.php
http://www.flashkit.com/tutorials/Games/HotSpots-CorkySur-1131/index.php
http://www.flashkit.com/tutorials/Games/Boundary-CorkySur-1130/index.php
http://www.flashkit.com/tutorials/Games/How_to_m-MODVDO-969/index.php
http://www.flashkit.com/tutorials/Games/Keeping_-Matthew_-828/index.php
http://www.flashkit.com/tutorials/Games/Simple_K-NPerezVB-819/index.php
http://www.kirupa.com/developer/flash/index.htm
http://www.actionscript.org/resources/articles/52/1/Building-games-in-flash/Page1.html
http://www.emanueleferonato.com/2006/10/29/flash-game-creation-tutorial-part-1/
http://www.developal.com/tutorials/tutorials262.html
http://www.webwasp.co.uk/tutorials/b32-collision-detection/index.php <-- maze http://www.stonewashed.net/sfx.html <---sound effects http://www.kirupa.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&threadid=36325 <-- possible scripting for character move keys http://www.flashkit.com/tutorials/Games/

The one that has been hyperlinked is the one that I ended up choosing for my game. There are different parts to this tutorial, so check page 5.0 for what I followed.
So after choosing what game I wanted, I decided to create a small storyline for this interactive game.




Might be a bit hard to read, but basically my character goes through his walk cycle, stops, where you can see a trolley. Around here, you can also hover to hear some sounds. When ready, you can click on the trolley which will lead you to the game. After playing the game, you can see a little animation of Roco dancing.



As I had a premade action scripting for the game, I mainly had to work with all the graphics and sounds although I did come across some technical issues.
I had to sift through some of the actionscripting to remove some unwanted scenes in the game, and only keeping the very basic part (which was the collecting and the play again menu).

Some problems that became apparent was when I tried to scenes before the game. The game would completely skip the play again menu, which left me really frustrated for a few lessons. Thankfully I received some help from Indae, which was resolved by putting everything into one scene and adding a _root. to various things. After that, everything went fairly well, mainly just a lot of trial and error which I ended up solving. For the sound, I got it from a site called Soundbible.com.

Something I would have liked to improve for my interactive story would have to be improving on the graphics of the trolley, as it obviously looks out of place because I used photoshop to create the image. Reason is because I was trying to get that glowing effect except couldn't achieve it that well in illustrator or flash.
Also perhaps made it obvious that you could click on Roco inside the trolley on the main page of the game. At the time, I thought it would be a cool idea to make it sort of like an easter egg, except because this is meant to be an interactive story, you can't assume people will be looking out for them.

Wednesday, September 22, 2010

Walk Cycle

My final walk cycle:

http://megaswf.com/serve/50303/


Overall, I was pretty happy with it, although I could have done better job for the background.

Sunday, September 5, 2010

Backgrounds (added more images)

So. Backgrounds. Well I found some images which I thought would show a good idea of what I want. I was talking with Tarn during class the other day and found that our ideas were similar again-.-'' So I've decided to change my idea.
Here are some images:







At the moment I'm thinking the second image would be a better option as Tarn's would be set out in the open, so I'll try drawing mine inside the cave. Hopefully it'll turn out alright.

Tuesday, August 31, 2010

Update on animation

So currently I'm working on animating my character in flash. The way I want to approach it is by editing each part and then converting the whole thing as a movie symbol, although at the moment that is proving to be a hassle. But I am making some progress so hopefully things will work out. Excuse the poor quality.

*edit

this is the second version of the whole walk cycle. Honestly, I am thinking of redoing it because it doesn't run as smooth as I hoped, but depending on time constraints I'm not sure if I can.

Wednesday, August 18, 2010

Tuesday, August 17, 2010

Some Videos

Here are some examples of how I want my character to walk. The first video is from the games Kingdom Hearts (one of my all time favourite game!) where Sora turns into a heartless. The overall slouching and how they kind of hobble when they walk is how I pictured Roco to walk.
Skip to around 3:20 to see the example:




Gollum from LotR

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DLvIFRNbqOs



Skip Cycle



Monday, August 9, 2010

Some Research

In developing my character, I've used quite a few references to get an idea of how to go about designing my character. These are just some of them.




The pictures above, I used as references for expressions.



The images above gave me an idea as to how my character could be formed, as there are certain distinct features which resemble my character.

Wednesday, August 4, 2010

Initial Sketches

Here's a scan of what I drew in class, as well as the basic personality description of a cavernic in general. The rest is basically all the info I posted before. Excuse the random cow like drawing.. I was brain storming >.<

Anyway, I was thinking it'll look more like the bottom one, but aim for a slouching pose, to suggest the 'hardworking' and labourous days of working in the mines. Generally he has a semi bored look when neutral, but when feeling any other type of emotion, he's quite animated.

Character Design

Here's my character's profile (basic outline, will also post some sketches later)

Name: Roco

Gender: Male

Height: 0.6m

Personality:Cheeky, strong willed, curious

Species: Carvenic

Favourite Colour: Yellow

Likes: to tease the Florafedel, travel across the lands, showing off and telling jokes.

Dislikes: Fighting, being told what to do

Fears: Being left alone, being hated

Back story: When Roco was still a child, his parents attempted to steal the iron and gold that the other Cavernics worked hard for, which resulted in them being banished.
Roco was left behind, a burden towards his parents leaving him to fend for himself. He has no other siblings, but has a best friend who is a Florafedel.

Goal: Roco aims to be accepted by his own people and rid of the other Cavernics' doubt about him.

Thursday, July 29, 2010

First Post

Hello and welcome to my blog. For those who don't know me, my name's Mei. This will be a blog that will basically have updates of anything and everything that I find interesting, as well as some of my work.
In the meantime, enjoy this video if you have not seen it. It's a short film by french animators Francois Alaux, Herve de Crecy and Ludovic Houplain, which won the 2010 Sundance Film Festival animated short award.Basically they have created this world made up of advertisements that you see everyday and created a rather creative animation. Well I suggest you watch it, it truly is amazing:D