Week 12

Not updated this in a while and I do apologise, just had a busy few weeks and just could not find the time.

Just finished the Viva Voce meeting with my supervisor Alison Varey and 2nd marker Susan Turner. 

The storyboards are completed although they had to be developed so that scenes can be added dropped from the project depending on how long each scene will take to develop. A point that was raised at the meeting was that I should try not to repeat the same techniques over and over, a maximum of 2 elements of the same type of technique would suffice, due to this reasoning elements of the storyline may be dropped/added/developed.

The Flowcharts for both parts of the project have been completed.

The Activity Diagrams for the 1st half of the project have been completed although it has been noted that a lot of the elements can be seen quite easily through the storyboards and for this reason it was thought that they were not overly important other than offering a text format of the events within the storyline instead of an illustrated one. They will all be completed but are not a high priority.

The Report was produced and handed in before the deadline although I have to work on my citations making sure I do them correctly and remember to do them for each quote. The report would have benefited from screenshots from the games and interactive comics that were reviewed, as well as scans from books, specifically Scott McCloud's illustrations, these elements shall be amended. Additional sources of literature also has to be referenced.

Character concepts were produced although my own opinion is that they need to be worked on and developed further before they can be implemented to the project.

I will scan my storyboards, character concepts and diagrams and upload them here some point in the next few days.

 

Moved House (no internets :( )

I have moved house over the past few days and have been unable to udate my blog due to the lack of an internet connection. This should be sorted by this saturday coming (the 13th) and I intend to do a proper update then when I have more time to do it properly.

A quick summary of the work I have been doing

• developing storyboards
• developing characters
• making last ajustments to the storyline and structure
• working on a 1st draft of a report
• looking into colour theory and how it can be incorporated
• developing flowcharts

Week 9 Objectives

Original Objectives:

• Produce Flowcharts
• Produce Activity Diagrams

Due to the fact that I have already began work on these, using them to help define the scenes as they have developed has lead me to fall behind with some other aspects of the project. therefore I have decided to allow the following tasks continue for another week allowing more work to be done on them.

• Create Storyboards
• Create Character Profiles
• Create Concept Characters
• Create Develop Scenes
• Project Plan Update

An updatedproject plan will have to be produced to keep track of the new set of deadlines and the additional time that has been allocated to each task.

Week 7/8 recap

Week 7 and 8 followed the same objectives as week 6.

Due to my time being taken up with coursework for other classes and elements outside of University I have been unable to meet the previous deadlines for week 8 that I had set myself originally. I have however begun work on flowcharts andother items that were not required until week 9 began. This leave me with less work needed to be done for week 9 while still having to develop some of the work from weeks 6-8 further.

I have decided to allow myself another week to complete the 1st draft of the storyboards and some other elements and will move the deadline back by one week, although I cannot afford to allow it to slip back any further. During week 9 I will have to focus on the deadlines and not continue to develop the previous scene of the comic as I have been doing recently.

Introduction flow chart

I created a flowchart for my intro as I found it to be a great help when it came to planning out the scenes and how they would play out, with this in mind I think I may go ahead and create the flowcharts for other scenes in order to also help plan those out.

Notes continued

My notes continued...

An idea of the structure that will contain the flashbacks.

An idea of the events that will be contained within the Orders flashback scene.

An idea of the items contained within flashback 2 where the player will discover how the character made it onto the ship in the first place, I also wanted to include a montage within this scene as I thought it would work well in showing the character gearing up and getting ready.

More scenes that would be the cause of or included in flashbacks, I really liked the blinded idea with the character's vision getting all messed up and the overlays messing up and becoming unreadable.

Notes

thought that it would be useful to upload some of my notes here, I have been working on scenes and coming up with a basic idea for these that will be expanded upon for the final draft of the storyboards. I also intend the final draft to include more detail  within each panel in order to give a good ideas as to what is going on in the scene.

I wanted to keep a record of what areas and other characters may be encountered on board the ship.

A brief run down of the background behind the universe that I have set the comic in, it is a lot more complex although the background or history may not feature at all in the comic, I followed Alan Moore's advice in that the author must know everything about the setting in order to help build a more believable environment. Some of the history may be on offer if the player is willing to look for it and interact with certain items/characters.

A brief summary of how I first thought how to do the intro for the comic, the idea of including the montage has now been dropped as I feel it is not dramatic enough to grab the readers attention and transfix them. I want the reader to be drawn in and have to find out what happened, whats going on and what happens next.

The name of the character may change and the idea has now been built upon but this was the starting point it grew from, the basic story will still be the same but the environments, actions, etc are different.

Again this is where I began from, the idea has been developed further.

i want overlays on the character's vision to be present when events are seen from the main character's perspective, very similar to the computer overlays used in Minority Report.

Another possible intro that has now been dropped for the same reasons noted before. Although it could still be used for some other scene.

The first draft of including flashbacks in the comic and using them as part of the structure.

An idea of how the second part of the comic will play out, obviously this will not be followed exactly but it will be of a similar nature.

I wanted a character selection to be available within the comic where the player decides what path the character will follow, while not all of these will appear in the finished product I plan to develop them so that they could all be eventually made for the application. Some of these ideas have developed as they were thought about and been built upon as seen above.

I thought it would be a good idea to let the player play out the characters being given orders, letting them find out additional information and connect with the character as it will feel as though they are the ones experiancing it.

Bellow are just some ideas for an interactions, that I had thought may prove useful. I didn't have an initial idea of where they could be used but thought it best to keep a note of them incase they can be used.

Week 6 recap

• The structure will have been decided.
• The interactions will have been decided.
• Develop a structure.
• Start creating/developing scenes.
• Start developing interactions.
• Start creating concept characters.
• Start creating character profiles.
• Start creating storyboards.
• Start work on colour theory templates.

The structure for the comic has been decided upon, it will be presented in two sections. The first will be an introduction using flashbacks to present the story so far to the user, filling them in on what has happened so far and how the character came to be in the current situation. The second section will be set in the present, using an A to B structure where the user will take control of the character and their actions will travel down predetermined paths although their actions will decide which of the paths they take. The structure has been developed for the introduction with a clear path that the flashbacks will follow. The structure has also been developed for the escape section of the comic although more content is currently needed.

The interactions have been decided upon, the user will be able to interact with items, objects, characters and other elements. I also plan on including some mini games within the application but their inclusion will largely depend on the time I have available to develop them. Therefore they shall be planned within the concept and design of the comic but an alternative will also be considered if the mini game proves too time consuming to build.

I have begun developing the scenes within each of the sections, detailing the events that will take place in each, this has also resulted in the production of some flow charts in order to help plan what will happen and in what order.

Concept characters and character profiles are currently being developed. So far there are currently six different class specific characters that all, or a selection of will appear in the final product.

Work has begun on storyboards, working in colaberation with the flowcharts with helping to plan out what happens in each scene from frame to frame. The majority of the storyboards are in their first draft and will be developed and added to.

Colour theory has been considered for different elements, for example at one point the main character's vision will be distorted after being exposed to a painfully bright light source, this will result in colour overlays, things not looking quite right, having more unusual colours for the environment being used etc. Another aspect of this was inthe long shots for the comic where the surrounding environment can be clearly seen to have it all in the one colour, only changing the colours of objects and items that are suppossed to stand out, making them immediately more eye catching.

Concept art and other images

Found these pretty inspiring

And more weapons!!

missed these ones...

Weapons!!!!!

been looking at different weapons and ideas for weapons while coming up with characters. reference pics below.