#assignment two

OBJECTIVES

In week one, Andy made us answer a question about our goals and objectives while in this course. I said I wanted to be able to be confident in my abilities as a designer and be proud of my works.

I am very glad to announce that I have achieved my goal. I think I’ve come a long way as a designer from twelve weeks.

DISCOVERY

I have discovered that there are a lot of design movements. But my favourite is probably the Memphis Group and the Swiss Style. Something about their aesthetic is very appealing to me.

I have definitely unlocked the skill of zine making. Three weeks dedicated to a craft will do that to you.

And in terms of concepts or ideas, I really like the idea of design books and technology being used in design. It’s so fresh and sci-fi-esque.

INSPIRATION

I was really inspired by the Guerilla Girls and the United Colors of Benetton campaign that were mentioned in week ten. As a coloured female, it really speaks to me.

Seen below are my final One Page and Sell Sheet.

I think I managed to get across the aesthetic and vibe of the game across well and enough information that people would understand what it’s about and begin to build.

Sell Sheet

One Page

For my assignment 2, I decided to work on my platform game idea. The name of the game is Child of the Forest.

To begin the process, I am writing all the needed information into a word document which I will get my tutor to review in the next tutorial.

Below is all the information I have written so far:

Sell Sheet

Title of Game: Child of the Forest

X statement

This Single player 16-bit game will follow an elf child that gets lost in a forest. With the help of a star spirit and friends you met along the way, you must find your way home. 

Defining details:

Number of players (note for this project: single player)

Single player game

Genre

Fantasy

Platform

Platform Adventure game

Any specific requirements: special controllers, etc.

W up, A left, S crouch, D right, space bar to jump and right click to interact with NPC’s.

1-2 paragraph description of the game

The inspiration of this game is from two different games which are Ori and The Blind Forest and Stardew Valley with some fantasy inspiration from Lord of the Rings.

This 16-bit game will follow an elf child that gets lost in a forest. With the help of a star spirit and friends, you must find your way home.

Your character can make friends throughout the game and complete adventures with them. In turn, these friends will help you either by lending a hand or gifting you with items.

As you make your way through the game, you can collect items Eg certain types of plants. These can be exchanged, with the star spirit or your new friends, for different items. In the first exchange, you can trade 4 different plants for a backpack with the star spirit. This will begin with common items and slowly get more difficult as you progress.

One Page

Gameplay design illustration (focal point)

Sidebar explaining features

How does the camera work: The camera follows the character

How many hit points/ Health: The character has a total health bar of 100 – the respawn point will be at the start of each level – if you die you return to the start of that level

The levels will end when you meet up with the star spirit – and trade goods – or meet with new friends at the end of the platform

How many levels: 10 level game

What is the scoring system?

The goal is to make it too the end of the level – no point-based scoring. Though you can get points by killing demons. These points will allow you to get items such as plants or wood

List of things you interact with

Different plants – bushes, flowers, fruits

Trees – hitting a tree with a hammer will give you wood

Enemies – demon spirits – by killing them

Characters and Star Spirit – talking to them and exchange items

Description explaining the X statement 

The 16-bit aesthetic was chosen to create a retro and nostalgic look and feel to a more modern, fantasy theme. In addition, because the main character is a young elf, the 16-bit style creates a more childlike feel.

Progression mechanics

As the levels continue, the item collections will be more difficult – rarer items or you need a larger number of them

The enemies will also get stronger, harder to kill, and more frequent as the levels progress

The character can over come this by trading items – such as plans for stronger weapons

First things you do in level one

The first section of level one will be an introductory section where the idea of the game (that you are a lost elf trying to get home) is introduced and you meet the star spirit who says they will guide you home. The spirit will then go on to teach you the basic game mechanics Eg Controls, interacting and collecting items

I feel that my second piece was far more successful than my first, especially the base material as I didn’t customise the base at all for the first design. For this design I decided to develop the base material from the second design further by using a range of different materials rather than just calico - I used calico, cotton and canvas to create the base. This was quite a difficult task in itself as each material has its own properties, the cotton was extremely stretchy in comparison to the canvas, less so compared to the calico but there was still a noticeable different between them. This is quite clear when you look at the overall shape of this design as it is not a straight rectangle, I found it difficult to produce straight lines that would help the piece lay flat.

The other two pieces were quite time consuming so I tried to make this design simple so I could try producing a design in a much quicker time. I used blank space as a way to simplify my design, giving it more of a focus within the design rather than feeling like I had to fill the entire base material. I decided to incorporate using a sewing machine in this design as this would help with the speed I could complete the design.

Using Adobe Illustrator I created a rough mock up of my design using the dimensions of my base material to ensure I was working to the right scale for each section of the design.

Fig 1 Design mock up

Fig 2 Textile Piece 3 - Front - 58cm x 31.5cm

Although this is a plain design compared to the second I think it was a fairly successful outcome, I had planned to keep it simple and I included the elements that I wanted to include in the piece. Stitching into the white cotton fabric posed an issue compared to the rest of the piece but this only served to help me understand sewing into materials with different qualities and the effect that can have on a design.

Fig 3 Textile Piece 3 - Back - 58cm x 31.5cm

For my first design, I was so focused on bringing in a range of different materials into the design that I ended up with a colour palette that wasn’t visually appealing. For this second design I was careful to pay more attention to the colours of each element I included. I used a range of felt sheets and embroidery thread which I had matched the colour of to create this design so everything worked well together unlike the first design.

To make a start on my second design, I first had to decide on what I was going to do with the base material. As I used plain calico without any additions or manipulations applied to it for the first design, I wanted to make sure that I paid more attention to the base material for this design. I decided to use calico again but this time I stitched various sized pieces of it together to form a sort of patchwork. I had the paper sample inspired by collage in mind when I thought of the idea but rather than gluing shapes together and layering them on top of one another, I have used stitch to attach them to each other. I tried to keep the entire process as free-hand as possible, I did not measure any of the pieces. This is made clear when you see that the base material does not lay flat, but I think that this adds an interesting effect and gives the piece more height and depth. Rather than iron the back of the base material out I decided to leave it as is once I had completed sewing it together on the sewing machine. I felt that the seams and the way that they lifted from the fabric helped to bring dimension and texture.

Next, I had to decide how I would create a design on the base material. The process of creating the base material had left me with an arrangement of different shaped and sized panels so I wanted to look at how I could use these within my design. I was reminded of a patchwork quilt when looking at the base material so I thought it may be a good idea to take inspiration from a patchwork quilt and try to bring that into my design. Repetition is something that I am very interested in within design and it is an element that I am supposed to look at within this assignment – using the panels already prepared on the base material I could create a selection of elements, some repeated in multiple panels to create a patchwork collage.

Fig 1 Mock up 1

I looked at my collage piece that I chose to work from and picked out the individual elements. I created a quick mock-up of my base material on Adobe Illustrator and began arranging the various elements in the different panels. I tried to make sure there was a focus on repetition – some repeated panels and multiple repeated elements within one panel.

Fig 2 Mock up 2

I then created these in felt in the colours from my chosen colour palette from the previous design (green, pink and yellow). I used the mock up as a rough guide, when placing the shapes onto my base material I decided to change certain elements slightly as I could see they would look more appealing or creating more texture within the piece.

Fig 3 Textile Piece 2 - Front - 60cm x 39cm

I am very pleased with the final outcome of this piece. I wasn’t particularly happy with the outcome from the first to begin with but once I had produced this design I realised how little looked appealing from the first. I think that the mix of both hand-stitch and machine-stitch helps to create more interesting textures as the stitches produced on a machine aren’t something I could do by hand. Using a machine also helped me to layer up my stitches in areas as it is so quick to simply overlap an area over and over.

Fig 4 Textile Piece 2 - Back - 60cm x 39cm

Fig 1 Plan for design 1

I have created a digital mock-up of my design plan using Adobe Illustrator, I’ve added notes around my plan with ideas of material choices and techniques. I will use this as a rough guide when tackling my first piece but I plan to be flexible if I feel that something isn’t going successfully or if another technique would work better. To create the design I took my collage piece from Part One and created each of the elements so I could move them around in Illustrator until I was happy with the layout. I have added colour to the plan using my colour scheme but again, I will be flexible with this as I must work with what is available to me in my chosen colour palette. 

I plan to make use of parallel lines in sections of my piece in combination with stitches in different directions throughout the design as a whole. I think having groups of parallel lines together will create a nice visual effect as well as creating the feel of control and uniformity.

I have included the idea of ‘trapping’ pipe cleaners by stitching around them, this is a way for me to bring a 3D element to the design. As well as creating a column of small lines/stitches which will have their own texture, the raised strips created will be another texture included in the piece.

As the collage piece I am using for reference was constructed by layering papers and cardstocks, I want to bring this aspect into my first design too. I have tried to do this by planning to add material underneath the base fabric, as well as layering elements of the design on top of each other. The stitches I will be adding over the pipe cleaners will add more height and depth to the design, which I think is a great way to further develop my collage piece.

I have tried to add elements into my design plan that repeat as I feel that a use of repetition is a good way to achieve a sense of uniformity and the aim is to create a collection of textile pieces. The yellow strips and small circles are parts of the original collage design that are already repeated but I have decided to extend the repetition of the small circles by adding more into my fabric design plan. I will be using a group of short stitches to trap the pipe cleaners, this stitching method will bring another source of repletion to the design as well as the stitching I plan to use to attach the extra materials such as the felt for underneath the base textile.

Knowing that scale is something I need to focus on, I have tried to make sure to include this by using both small and large stitches. The scale of the shapes within my plan are varied in size, the size of the different components in the design are also of varying sizes.

I have used white space in my collage piece to ensure that it is not too cluttered and that each of the elements is clearly visible. I wanted to do the same for my first textile piece so the attention could be on the finer details of the stitching rather than the attention being taken away by a piece that is overcrowded.

I have picked out a range of materials in my chosen colours before making any final decisions on what to use for this first design. I have already planned to use certain materials (see fig 1) but I want to look at everything available to me before I make my final decision. 

Fig 2 Yellow materials

Fig 3 Green materials

Fig 4 Pink materials

From doing this I have realised I do not have yellow pipe cleaners like I included in my plan but I do have green so as this is still within my colour scheme I will swap this part of the design to green pipe cleaners with yellow stitching on top.

Fig 5 Material decisions

Next I started picking out materials from my selections and arranging them on my base material. This allowed me to look at sizing for the different components as well as the composition of the piece. I couldn’t add in all of the elements such as the beads and yarn shapes but I placed them around the areas I was planning to use them to get a rough idea of what they will look like in that area.

For the base material I decided to use a piece of calico fabric, cut to 30cm x 30cm. Calico is a fabric that is easy to work with and I felt this would help when adding the stitch into my design.

Fig 6 Finished Textile Piece 1 - Front - 30cm x 30cm

I was very confident in my design before I started to actually put it together but by the time I got to the last few elements of the design I felt that it was very unappealing visually. My use of a range of different materials helped me to include a good sized selection of different textures but this affected my colour scheme considerably. The colour scheme is the main issue in my opinion, the colours clash way too much. Although I only used colours from my colour palette, I didn’t put any thought into the actual shades of the items I used so I have a range of shades in my chosen colours but they do not actually work together. When trapping the pipe cleaners with stitch it was difficult to do so without the fabric bunching together. Also as the pipe cleaners can be bent into different shapes, I found that I kept bending them when handling my piece which made it difficult to sew them on in a straight line, even when pinned to my base material.

Fig 7 Finished Textile Piece 1 - Back - 30cm x 30cm