Evaluation

For my evaluation I got some people to test the my project and then I made a questionnaire to see what they thought about the project. The first person I tested it on didn't really have much knowledge of computer games. I thought I needed to test someone who uses computers a lot and someone who doesn't. That way I could see if it was difficult to navigate around the interactive parts of the game. He's the first results. 

How easy did you find it to use?

If found it easy to use and instructions were clear, also the choice of direction made it more interesting.

Did every work as you expected it too?

Yes, with the exception I didn’t realise crossing the river that you had to follow a pattern.

What did you think of the story?

The story had a clear message of strength over adversity

What did you think of the standard of animation?

The animation was good, the sense of coldness, wind and fear were very apparent.

How did you find the characters?

The characters showed their personalities.

Did you like the music and did it fit with the scenes?

Yes.

Overall what was your opinion of the project? 

I found the story intriguing and there was definitely an interactive element instead of just being a passive observer of events.

How easy did you find it to use? 

I found it pretty easy to follow, and the instructions clear at the start.

Did everything work as you expected it too?

Yes. Using the Next keys & choosing which ice blocks to cross the river worked well.

What did you think of the story?

I enjoyed the story and the flashback of the wolf character.  Which helped to broaden the depth of the story and characterisation.

What did you think of the standard of animation?

Very high standard. A good use of movement and drawings of real animals.

How did you find the characters?

I found the characters interesting with the wolf and fox as the main characters with their own story.

Did you like the music and did it fit with the scenes?

Yes I felt it fitted in with the story / backgrounds / feel of the animation very well.

Overall what was your opinion of the project?

I feel the overall project results including the sketch book, research, animation, choice of music to be of a very high standard.

For the final project we could do anything as long as it was interactive. I really wanted to do an animation. But then I saw someones work from last year and they had done an interactive comic. It was lots of nicely drawn stills. I decided I could do something like a comic but also have it animated. When I decided on a story I planned to animate everything apart from when the characters where talking it would be still. We had to give in a proposal brief, at the beginning of the unit, which would be explaining what we would be planning to do.   

What I learnt

I learnt a lot about how to code in flash and about buttons. I didn't really understand coding in Flash before but now I am quite confident about what I am doing. I found it was very simple code to make next buttons. Then I figured out I could use the code in a similar way to make the next buttons. I learnt that if I spend a lot of time working on a project I can get quite a lot done. The animation took a long time to do but I am pleased with the result.

The point
I wanted to improve my animation skills in this project. I decided to go for a more realistic style which gives me good practise in my drawing style. I was quite different to my other animations I had done in college. My other animations the characters walked on two legs but in this project all the character were on four legs. I believe this gave me some more range in animating things in different ways. I found the point of this project was to use all the skills we have learnt over last two years and come up with our own idea for a project. I wanted to do what I enjoy and what I want to be doing in the future.



Unsuccessful

If I had more time I might have been able to have voice actors for the characters. Some people agreed to do it I just never got round to it. The buttons in the game could have been a bit more consistent in style. I could have put more thought into how the interaction was going to look. I wanted to have the map used in the project more but I ran out of time with that too. I wanted to code it so that the mouse was a magnifying glass and when you hovered over places in the map you could click on them. This would take you to a picture of the place you had clicked on. I managed to figure out the codding for this. I got the mouse to turn into a magnifying glass. But then when I added it into the project it didn't work properly. I didn't know how to change it back to a mouse once you clicked off the map. I could have fixed this by just putting dots on the map that you click and it takes you to the picture. I ran out of time though. So I had to leave it out and just have the map on its own. The one other thing that I had planned differently was the ending fight the characters have. I wanted it to be a bit longer but in the end I didn't mind how it turned out and I quite liked it. The biggest problem I had with this project was the file size. I had to split the project into two parts because the files were so big they kept crashing when I tried to put them together. I wasn't expecting this to happen and I was hopping that both the projects would be one big project. I had to end up splitting it into two parts which was annoying at first but then it was fine and I managed to get them both done.    

Successful

I may have had a few unsuccessful things but actually most of the project I found to be a success. I wasn't expecting to finish my sketch book as it was so big. I thought I would never have time to complete the book. But I ended getting to the last page. This was very pleasing and was a big success for the project. I was also pleased to get all the animation done and the whole story finished for the project. I thought the story was going to be to long and I had to keep cutting bits out to make sure I could get the project fininshed. I completed it successfully and I managed to keep the important parts of the story in so I am pleased to have done that. The coding for the buttons was successful. At the start of the project I was worried because I had no idea how to code in Flash. After I had watched a video on Youtube I was surpised at how quick I was able to pick it up. I thought my animation was good in the project as well and I believe I am improving. This has contributed to my development in animation as my skills improve the more an more I practise.    

Journal

Day1

I decided to start by thinking about the characters and plot for the final project. I already knew that an Arctic fox was going to be my main character. When I first heard that we could do anything we wanted for the final project I started trying to come up with ideas for it. Today I will document how I came up with the ideas and what influenced me to do so. After thinking about styles I decided to change my idea to use my realistic styled animals from a cartoony anime type style.I wrote 2 pages on my final project and how I came up with the idea and why I am doing what I’m doing. 

Reference- The final project (sketch book)

Day2

I started to write up how I came up with the plot and what influenced me.I had recently watched lord of the rings and that started to give me inspiration for my own story. I did think about this for quite a few days and trying to develop the story. Eventually I changed it slightly and came up with a slightly shorter story which I believe I can finish. The first one I thought was a bit too long. So I spent today writing up how I came up with the plot and all the ideas I had for it. 

Reference- coming up with the plot (sketch book)

Day3

I began my research into interactive stories. I found these things called motion books on Deviantart. They are like moving comics so I thought they would be good things to look at and do some research on. I also found a comic about wolves. I thought it would be good to look at some of that as there is a wolf in my animation. There was also a snow leopard which is another animal I am planning to have in mine. While I was looking through the comic I found some really nice background paintings of snow and mountains. They way it looked really inspired me to do mine in a similar way I really like they painted snow and how it looked.

Day4

I decided that today I would do the other research. The research that is personal to my project and what inspires me. I thought since I had already come up with the story I would use this research to explore the types of animated films I enjoy. I will be partly looking at the styles of the characters. I know that I would like to do a kind of realistic style but before I decide to do that I want to explore the other art styles of the animators. I will look at Disney and DreamWorks and then compare that to things like watership down which has a very unique and strange style to it. The style I think I will end up with referencing the most is from an anime called wolf’s rain. Although it is an anime I remember watching it and thinking how realistic the animals looked.I know I really liked the style it was done in so I expect after I’ve looked at them all that one will give me the most inspiration for my style.

(refer to influences research posts)

Day4-continued

Today I didn’t finish the styles research I was planning on doing. I started it and have done the first half. I decided to look up and write about animations I had watched on YouTube before. They were all unprofessional animators’ work which I have been very impressed with. I spent the day watching their animations and viewing some of their other work. Two of the channels also put up a “how I animate”video. I watched those to see how they did it. One was done in flash in a similar way to how I plan to animate mine. The other looked very confusing and time consuming. They were animating in Photoshop then putting together in an editing program. After watching those videos it gave me an idea. I could use the screen record at college to show how I animate as part of the final project. 

Day5

Today I wanted to finish the research I started yesterday. I had looked up YouTube animations now I’m going to focus on company produced films that I know have inspired me from a young age. I have already mentioned I would be looking watership down and wolf’s rain but I know that I am also going to look up Spirit a film about a horse and Balto.

(refer to influences research posts)

Day5-continued

I have just finished the research into all those films. I got quite court up in watching clips from the films. They gave me some good ideas about mine own project. But my prediction was right after looking at all the styles I defiantly like wolf’s rain the most. I also really like the animation in the series.

Day6
Toady I added some more research into yesterdays. I looked at wolf''s rain some more. I also got some pictures for all the videos I had researched yesterday and the day before. I now knew that all the research has to be presented in a sketch book so I am trying to find pictures of all the movies and animations I had researched so there will be some visual stuff on those pages and not just the writing. I will also leave up the video links to all of the animations, mentioned in my research, on the Blog.

(refer to influences research posts)


Day7
I looked at some games which have interactive parts in them other than the game play. I couldn't find much so I ended up just righting about some games I already knew about. 

Day8

I decide to quickly sketch up some different styles to see what kind I could do well enough to animate. I took some references from all the videos I had watched. After I have done all the sketches I plan to pick my best style and then I will design my characters.

Day9

After practising all the different styles in the sketch book I’m still not sure about how my characters are going to look. So I decided to start drawing them in flash and see the kind of styles I come out with. I am planning on animating my final project by doing all the drawings straight into flash using the mouse to do them. So I am going to further the character design on the computer.   

Day10

After doing the character design yesterday I feel as I have picked a style to go with. It’s my own take on a slightly realistic style. When I was drawing the characters I was referring to pictures of real animals. Now I know a realistic style and less cartoony is what I going for I need to get the sizes of the animals right. Since it’s rare to see a snow leopard and a wolf and an arctic fox all together I’m not sure how they would all measure up to each other. I can guess the fox is obviously the smallest but I have no idea about the leopard and wolf. I would like my project to look good so I am going to research the animals and find out their heights/sizes. Then I will align my characters up together and re size them to fit my research.     

Day11

I thought now that I know what the characters look like I thought I should try and do some animation. I know this story is going to take a while to do so I need to get started as soon as I can. The one thing I can animate before writing out the scripts and plot is run cycles and walk cycles. I started off with a walk cycle today. I did the fox’s as she is my main character. I started off by doing the outline of the walk and then I added colour. I had to different versions at the end. The first one I did the foxes head was up. I showed my dad and asked for feedback on it he said that the walk was good but he wasn’t sure if foxes walk with their head up like that.





To get my walk cycles correct I had been watching videos of the real animal walking. I looked back at the fox one and realised the head was down. So I kept the legs and body and just changed the head on each drawing to be a lowered one.

(refer to post "animal video clips)

Day12

Now I had the fox walk I decided to do the rabbit. The rabbit would have fewer frames to animate as it only hops along when walking. I watched lots of videos before I started. When I did I found the rabbit very easy and I was done much quicker than I was with the fox. I then had time to do the run cycle for the rabbit to. This would be even fewer frames as running in animation is always fewer frames than walking. In my opinion run cycles are easier to do then walk cycles. I managed to do the rabbits run cycle very quickly too. I then decided to move onto the snow leopard. Which I believe would be the hardest to animate. Mainly because of the spots. So I just started with the outline and by the end of the day I did have the outline for the cycle.

Day13

I decided to add colour to leopard today and add the spots. This took a very long time to do and took me most of the day. I already had an old wolf walk cycle I had animated before. I thought I could use it in this project but looking at it I thought it looked quite different to my wolf character. I may have to redo his walk cycle. I finished the leopard one today.   

Day14

I looked at the old plan for my story that I had made up a while ago. I cut out the parts about the stone and all the bits which were now not in my story. I then wrote out in note form the brief plot of the story. I added in notes where I thought I could add the interactivity into the story. I also had spent money on royalty free music recently mainly for this final project. I didn’t mind spending the money as I really liked the sound tracks I found and thought that I could use them in most things I animate as they are royalty free (meaning no copy write issues unless you try and sell the songs). In my brief plot I also planned out which songs would go with which scenes.  

Day15
I did some more drawings today. When I put them into the sketch book I am going to rip the paper around the drawing to give it a certain look on the page.

Original

Day16

After doing the brief plot I decided to try and do a bit more animation today. I thought I would move onto run cycles and maybe come back to improving the walk cycles later if I felt I needed too. I had an old wolf run cycle too that I had created before this project. I really did like it but I decided to slightly change it. The first thing I did was to move the head on each frame so it was looking up instead of looking down. I liked the way the animation was improving but then I had another idea which I thought could make it flow better.

Head and tail altered

Double frames

 I had 7 drawing for the cycle and each frame played twice. I thought I could delete the second frame of each drawing and replace it with another drawing. I used the onion tool in Flash to draw the frames in between the two drawings. I use the onion skin effect when I am animating all the time as it allows you to see the previous frame.  I then added the eye and colour of my character to each frame. Watching it again I realised I wasn’t happy with the way the back legs were moving so I rubbed out the back part of the wolf on each frame a reanimated it. Now I was very happy with the result.   

Day17
Today I decided to animate the fox run cycle. This one took me a while to get right. The first rough outline I did for the animation I did not like at all. I tried again always referring to the videos I had. But this one didn’t turn out quite right either. So I restarted one more time. I couldn’t really find a good one of an arctic fox running. So I used the knowledge I had of the wolf’s run and tried to think of how the fox would run. This next version I did I much preferred. I wanted to improve it though I then I had the idea to add in those extra drawing like I did with the wolf animation. After I had done that I thought it had improved so I finished it by adding the colour. I then started on the leopard run cycle and got the outline of that one done.   

Day18

I decided I needed to do lots of sketches. Because I have chosen to do a realistic style I thought it would be a good idea to do a few sketches of the animals I have in my story. I spent today finding photographs of arctic foxes, snow leopards, wolves and arctic hares so I could practise drawing them. I started the sketches and did one of each today.

  
Day19

When I looked back on the leopard walk cycle I had done I wasn’t very happy with it at all. Its body didn’t look right and I realised its head was raised. When I looked up pictures of snow leopards their bodies and heads are always very low. I was really annoyed by how mine looked so I decided to try and draw the first frame better. Eventually I got a drawing I was very happy with I then decided I had to redo the whole walk cycle with this new drawing. I managed to get the outline done today.

Day20

I spent the day adding the spots to the leopard walk cycle. It took a very long time as I had to redraw the spots on each frame. When I had finished I was much happier with this walk cycle. I really thought it turned out well. I still had a bit of time left so I decided to do another animal sketch in my book.

Day21
Today I did some more animal sketches for sketch book. I used pencil to draw but I am thinking about buying some more materials to use. Charcoal is one I like to draw with for example.

Day22

I realised that I did have to redo the wolf walk cycle as the old one had a slightly different style to the run cycle. So I did a few drawings until I thought I had got the style right I then started the animation for the walk cycle. I got it done fairly quickly and liked the result. I then made another version were the head was lowered just by moving the head and redrawing the neck. I thought it looked good with its head raised but I knew there was a scene where I need his head to be lowered.

I looked through my run cycles and walk cycles and was pleased with them. The only one I had not completed was the snow leopard’s run cycle. I looked at it compared to the improved walk cycle I had done and I didn’t feel it was quite good enough so I drew the leopard run cycle again but just copied the original movement from the first one I had done.  

Day23
Today I wanted to have a quick go at making a simple background in photoshop. I print screened what I was doing and will explain it in my sketch book. I did one drawing of just a simple snow floor and blue sky. I quite like the way it turned out. I then did another one and I think the technique I used the first time is improving. I liked the second painting a bit better I then added them to the runcycles I had done in Flash to see how they looked with my characters against them. I am happy with the result.

Day24

Today I decided to write out a quick plan of my sketch book. I wrote out what I would be putting in the sketch book and planning some of the pages and contents of the book. I also finished the leopard run cycle by spending time adding the spots. I now had all the run and walk cycles I needed for my animals. I did a couple of tweens to get the characters to run across the scene to see what it looked like. I also made all the runs and walks into symbols so I could tween them and add them to different scenes.  

Day 25

I started writing out the script for the plot today. This would help me and I can start animating parts of it now that I have the script. I can also do the storyboard now I have the plot planned out and the script done in a rough form. I can also use this to write character profiles but I will do that near the end of the project. After seeing the script I am a bit worried about how long the story is even though it is cut down and I feel like I need to start animating the scenes as soon as possible. I also managed to plan out some more interactive parts into the story.  





Day26

I began to write the full plot with detailed descriptions. I only got two paragraphs down and then decided to do some animation for what I had written. Tomorrow I will do some story boarding but I just felt like I needed to do some actual animation. I started with the opening scene. The pictures next to this are screenshots of the animation I got done today.

Day27

I decided to change the script today. I wanted to change the original because I wasn't very happy with the way the characters were talking to each other and how the plot was being explained. So I had an idea of how to slightly change the situation. I the original the wolf told the fox that he was hunting the creature and the fox decides to go with him. But I changed it so the wolf doesn't tell him and the fox thinks they are moving away from the creature but actually moving closer to it.

Day28
I started doing the storyboard for the animation. I did it in my A3 book and I got about 3 pages done. I am only doing it as a rough storyboard as a really detailed one would take too long to do and I need to start animating. I added dialogue from my new script into the scenes.

Day29
I bought some art stuff today to use for this project. I am going to be doing some charcoal drawings of the animals featured in my story I also bought a white pen so I can write in the black sketch I bought for this project. I also got a graphite pen which I did a drawing with later in the day. I drew a fox sitting down. I also continued the storyboard and got more pages done.

Day30
I decided to come up with names for places in my story and draw a map with the graphite pen. I referred to the map used in lord of the rings while drawing it. After I had got that done I spent the day printing off my research documents so I can stick them into my sketch book at some point during this project. I also did a bit of animation continuing what I had started in Flash previously by following the storyboard.


Day31
I printed off more of the documents that I needed to stick in. I also worked on animating more. I continued with the opening scene. I took some screen shots of some of the scenes I got done.

Day32

Today I continued with the stroyboard and got more of it done. I then decided to do some drawings in Flash of the characters. I then had an idea to put the pictures together in photoshop and create a poster for my animation. I may print it off and have it on the first page of my sketch book.






Day33
Today I looked at some of the old wolf animations I had done I found a good mouth opening one and I decided I could use it for this project and make it the creature roaring. I had to change the colour of the fur on the animation. Looking at the other old animations I had done there isn't any others I could use as it looks like a slightly different style.

 There is one old unfinished outline animation I had started doing. This one doesn't look too different. If I finish the animation and add colour I may consider using that too. The images below are the two old animations I added.





Day34
I did some animation for the project. I worked on the scene where the main character first sees the creature. All the animation are just outlines at the moment. I will need to colour them in another day. I also used the charcoal I had brought to do a drawing.




Day35
I spent the day colouring the animation I had started yesterday. I also did another charcoal drawing. To the right is the animation from yesterday and to the left is what I added today.

Day36
I finished off working on the storyboard today so now I can just conserntrate on animating. I also did a few backgrounds and added then to running scenes the character were doing.







Day37
I continued to animate the begining scenes. The quality of the Gif files I am putting up arn't very good. I'm not sure why they look like that. But I have to put the up to show my progress in the days.

Day38

More animation. I decided to work on the rabbit animation.

Day39
I worked on animation for the final project a lot today. I looked at a few different scenes and animated some different parts of the story.I also got all my written work I had printed off to be proof read. I then changed it to be correct and then print it off again.




Day40

Today I started sticking things into my sketch book and getting it all layed out well. Then I continued with the animation and just concentrated on getting more of that done. I will be animating most of the days now up until the end. I will need make room for coding on a few days and I will do more sketches too.

Day41-56
I did animation for all of these day.

Day57
Today I decided I needed to learn coding so I could start it on my game/ interactive story. I looked up a tutorial on Youtube which showed me how to do buttons. Below is the link to the video I watched. It was really useful and it helped me start the coding.I figured out how to create buttons easily after watching this.
http://youtu.be/bFUXWJ_QFLQ

Day58

I found that you can just insert code by clicking on code snippets and it comes up with a list of codes that are already written.

Day59

I added in code that said when you click this button it goes and play at a certain frame. I used this for most of my coding.

Day60
Today I made a document on how I did a bit of animation. I plan to put it at the end of my sketch book and annotate it to explain how I animated it. I also stuck some more documents I had done into my sketch book and annotated them.




Day61
Today I added some more coding to the final project. I then started putting the project together. I added in the begging scenes and the multiple choice part. You have to decide where to go at the beginning and you have two options. Depending on where you pick the backgrounds would be different for both. I hadn't done the backgrounds yet but I wanted to figure out how I would do this. I needed to add the same animation twice. I had one version in the same scene as the multiple choice option was and I had the other one in the next scene. I just then needed to code that one button would take you to the next scene and the other would take you to the next frame.

Day 62

I put together a mini game I was going to add to my story. It's a lake with ice floating on it and the player has to click on certain pieces of ice to get across. It took me a while to think about how I was going to do this. I had done a similar thing in scratch (a game program) but the coding is different in Flash so I had to think about it. I ended up making the ice pieces buttons and when you click them it takes you to a different frame. This is basically the same technique I have been using for the rest of my project. 

Day 63
Today I finishing of the mini game and code for the scenes before it. I also started adding music to the early scenes.

Day64
Working on animation for second half of the project.

Day65
Working on backgrounds for rabbit scene.

Day66-73
All animation.

Day74
found out that file was too big. Had to split the project. I also got someone to test the first half to see what they thought. I got a few suggestions from her and one was the ice jump game might be to  difficult and I should make it so when you fall off the ice you appear back on the one you jumped off and not go back to the start of the mini game. But then I tested it with two others and they said it was good and they liked the way you had to remember a pattern to get through it.

Day 75
More backgrounds- for the western wood and northern clearing

Day76
worked on second half animation

Day77
Worked on second half animation and coding

Day78
I added a menu to the first half of the story and I added the map and a few other interactive things.

Day79
I practically finished the first half of the story and am close to finishing the second half.

Day80
I added all the coding to the second half and made some more backgrounds for it.

Day81
I have now practically finished both parts. I will just need to add a few extra things on the last few days. For example I need to finish adding the credits. I also finished sticking most of the stuff for the sketch book tomorrow I will be writing in the sketch book.

Day82
Today I finished sticking all the sheets into my sketch book and doing some final annotations and drawings in the book.

Day83-84
These last days I finished off the animation and adding the final backgrounds.

Day85
I got all the text spell checked and corrected. I then completed the credits. I then exported the both parts for the final hand in.