#peruvianapple

This is an image I threw together in Paint really quickly to communicate to my team members how I planned to implement the scroll post-decision feedback UI, as well as how the player interacts with actually making decisions on the scrolls. The process is relatively simple; the player picks up a scroll to view, after which they read the possible decisions they can make, denoted by light text (Option A). Once they click on an option, it will play an effect for the text being written in by the advisor you’re playing as in-game along with SFX. To finalise the decision, the player must next seal the decision with the royal stamp, otherwise it won’t be accepted in the submit box.

Going from the first year to the second year can be quite a jump, the transition phase can be a hurdle to cross. The first semester of the year can be looked at as the adjustment or the phase where we scope up different aspects of your interesting and figuring out what direction you are gonna take for the future, So I have heard. Coming into this semester was to learn and gain, develop as many of my skills as possible. The right way or not, using the skills and knowledge you already know, staying in the box and producing a project that meets the requirements, gets you that “A” you have been looking for but does that mean that you have used that opportunity to its fullest? Thus I looked at the outer box as to what I don't know and what I need to learn to further progress down the line of being a “creative technologist”.

To learn is to practice through examples, or to learn through making your own derived from the examples?. In the studio project, I took the direction of Art and conceptual art design in the game we are producing and at first went for the first derivative of “To learn”. The art style we are going for is the low ploy style, as per my research I found out that there are various ways of doing that particular style, first, you can do it on photoshop, Illustrator and also something that I didn't know which was Blender a 3D modelling software. Here lies the choice I needed to make whether I go with the easy and less time-consuming Photoshop or go with the Blender. I went with blender cause it's not only an extra skill but also I would be using that skill further down this year in the Synthetic realities paper.

Here is where I did things a little “wrong”, I didn't take in the time constraint of studio thought that I could the tutorial and then create scenes for my game but it didn't turn out too good, as time was going by and learning something new can have a steep learning curve. Seeing that I was losing time I did a 360 and started to model what I needed for the project at that time was the UI for the game. I was asked the question “Why are you using Blender ?” “ Its faster in photoshop?”, Even though using that software would have been good for the time but I wouldn't have gained the skills I have with Blender which I have at the moment. I might have gone the wrong way and lost a little time initially but I realised the constraint of time and solved that problem.

At the moment I have gone into character design for the project, for which I am using Illustrator. The reason I moved to illustrator from Blender was due to time, as modelling the characters I needed for the game were a little too complex and weren't any simple animal building and also on illustrator I would be able to change aspects of the character easily. Illustrator being also one platform I wasn't too familiar with thus giving me an opportunity to get used to it and also get used to electric drawing tablets.

Check out this video for the latest Dev Update of ‘Iago’, the medieval-themed decision making game I’m working on.

As the final week for our studio project has come, its time to polish our game and also determine the way we are going to setup up for presentation. As we are using an office cubicle setup and then fixing it up to resemble a medieval office, we need to act fast and gather resources and materials for it. As Max and Kelvin are working in tandem in polishing the game I took to the shops and bought whatever we needed for the display.

Look sharp was a good place to hit and it also had items that gave me extra ideas, Such as vials I could fill with coloured liquid to represent poison and such adding another immersive layer to our character in the game and using a wooden frame aging in and ind=serting a family tapestry to portray an actual office where people keep images of their loved ones on their desk.

Book Binding 

Book Binding 

When writing up our contextual and conceptual for our project we had a great for the presentation of it, in the form of an old medieval book. As we wanted to add our own pages into the book we decided to bind our own. Since time is so close to submission I didn't have time to create my own hardcover thus I hit the old bookstores and was able to find a book that met our specifications, the spine was needed to to be blank and with no engravings. The book was cloth bound and met our spec, but I wasn't old thus I weathered it using good old bleach and once it was bound I used coffee to stain the edges of the pages to give it an old library book look.

The process of doing was quite interesting and also it removed me from my computer for a while, which I was stuck to for the better half of this semester. 

The useful thing that I found out through Alyssa Pua @taliabct sister that AUT had a bindery at the art and design building which I could use. I do have some knowledge of how a book is bound but didn't have much experience with it, with Alyssa Puas help I was able to get our book bound.  It was something different to what we have been doing in creative technologies, going back to the hands-on working using traditions book presses and such. I gained a valuable skill plus created a good report with the Technion of the bindery which I could revisit.

The book took me at least one and the half day to finish up with the finishing touches on the book also be done with the help of max such as writing up out game name on the cover ant the spine. The book is to house our the theory and also add on to the setup as a prop and addition to the overall aesthetic of our presentation.

The initial pencil drawing was done Carol Taka, the reason for this was that was to gain on some time which I had lost initially and also I am not quick in drawing characters as time is creeping on me know.

Above is one of the characters I have been working on, this is the clergy that would be in our game, the most difficult thing I found while creating this piece, was getting the clothes of the clergy right as there are various things you have to keep in mind such as the realistic material abilities in the medieval times and the colour saturation they would have. The other hurdle I faced was how much is too much detail, for the game we decided to go with minimalistic low poly, but even in the art style, you could get super detailed. This is where taking feedback from @synergybct as it helped me prototype the character as I made it. Drawing something up does take time which we are running a little low on thus I took the direction of getting feedback from my teammates/ classmates as I make things just so I can change things on the go and meet the deadline.

I created these icons today in Photoshop to use for the feedback UI images. These images will be used for the post-submit icons as well as if we decide to show the player an approximate value of these scores at all times, rather than the changes of them after a submission.

Now that I had these images, I created the entire back end for post scroll submission feedback today.