NEXT-GEN Nescot Year 4 HND - Going Indie (Final game, itch.io Link)

For the final part of my Game Development project (Topdown Shooter), I was required to upload my finished game to Itch.io, allowing my game to be downloaded by other people, targeting mostly towards my intended target audience.

Link: (https://just-some-random-guy.itch.io/pixhell)

Overall, I believe that I did well on this project, as I implemented many of the mechanics I wanted to add into the game and managed to create visually appealing effects and sprites for the game. However, unfortunately I didn't manage to complete the game to the extent that I wanted, only managing to create one complete level, a menu system and half of another level. Therefore, if I could improve my project I would create more levels and types of enemies, in order to finalise the game and add more variety to the gameplay that currently exists.

NEXT-GEN Nescot Year 4 HND - Going Indie (Marketing strategy presentation)

For my Game Development project (Topdown Shooter), I needed to market before distributing it. In order to do this, I decided to create a marketing strategy to brainstorm different ways of advertising my game to a wider audience.

As detailed in my Market Research blog post ("https://tobymroberts.blogspot.com/2020/11/next-gen-nescot-year-4-hnd-going-indie.html"), I decided that my chosen target audience would be the "Achievers" demographic.

In order to plan my marketing strategy, I decided to accumulate a series of ideas for how to market towards a large range of people, while analysing how each of these marketing strategies would address to my target audience.

In total, I decided upon 9 marketing ideas that could either be done individually or simultaneously. These ideas included:

• Game marketing on YouTube - While this option for marketing the game would be a great choice for showing it to a large audience, unfortunately, this option costs money and the size of the audience it would be shown to would depend on the amount of money paid and what videos you would select for it to be shown on. On the other hand, you could use your YouTube channel to advertise your game. However, unless you are well known in the industry it is incredibly unlikely your video would be accessible to a wider audience.

• Game influencer marketing - This marketing option would likely cost money, however, this strategy could show your game to a large or small audience depending on what influencer you ask or pay to market your game.
  

• Game marketing through blogging - While being free, this marketing strategy would most likely have a small audience unless you are already well known in the industry, or have a fan following that would be interested in your game. 
  

• Game marketing on Reddit - A free marketing strategy with many different options for how to market your game, posting your advertisements to different servers on reddit to market your game to a moderately sized audience. However, this strategy has a few flaws, as it is unlikely most severs would allow you to post advertisements or many people would likely ignore most advertisement posts.

• Branching out to multiple app stores/gaming platforms - This is a good marketing strategy as it allows a wider range for audience, allowing people who may not have specific platforms to download and play your game. On the other hand, some gaming platforms may cost money to post your game to and if your game costs money to buy, they almost always take a cut of the profits. 
  

• Social Media such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter (ETC...) game marketing - Similarly to marketing on YouTube this marketing strategy costs money, once again being a great choice for showing it to a large audience, while still dependent upon how much you pay for how commonly your advertisement would appear on the site. As well as this, you could still market your game using your social media account, again depending on your existing following as to how large an audience would see your advertisements.
  

• Appearing on gaming podcasts - This marketing strategy can be good, allowing you to pitch your game to a wider audience, sometimes it costs money to appear on certain podcasts, or you would need to be invited on which would typically happen once you already have a following or are well known in the industry.
  

• Game marketing through crowd funding - A very common marketing strategy that can be very effective at accumulating the funds to fully finish a game and market it to a group of people that may be interested in the game. This marketing strategy does come with some disadvantages, for example; because many other people use crowd finding sites to fund their own projects, you would be required to contend with lots of competition for attention.
  

• Game marketing through review websites - This is a very useful marketing strategy as it allows you to accumulate ratings from various websites and sources, allowing you to better market your game by showing review scores and the websites themselves also market your game (though this sometimes costs money). However, this method could also backfire if you receive low ratings and review scores.
  

Using these marketing strategies as a basis, I eventually decided to take the cheaper approach to marketing my game, by uploading and marketing it on my Youtube channel.

Finished Videogame can be seen using this marketing strategy below.

Videogame Advert (Work In Progress version):https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4TYwV4Pp6Jk

Finished Videogame Advert (after improvements):https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3cas4kQzKTc

NEXT-GEN Nescot Year 4 HND - Professional Personal Developments (Future Intentions and Employment Vs Self-Employment)

After leaving education, I would like to become a Videogame developer or VFX designer, either creating 3D modelled environments and characters, or writing code for interactions and gameplay.

As a result, much of my portfolio is centered around modelling, animation and Videogame development. In order to help me present my skills and capabilities to employers in the industry, gaining a higher likelihood of being hired than without portfolio examples.

A few portfolio examples include:

Board Game advert: https://youtu.be/fLcnLB_R0iE

Museum: https://youtu.be/5EhKpncosUA

Eternal: https://youtu.be/iPpWDTGVfPg

Eventually, I also intend to use my Personal website (currently un-used): "http://tobyroberts.biz/" as a platform to advertise my work and portfolio as well.

Also, once I finish my college course, I intend to search for employment rather than go into self-employment. This is because, while self employment has it's advantages, employment has many more benefits and regulations, leading to less financial risk and supplying a steady income.

Despite this, both self employment and employment have their pros and cons. For example:

Self employment pros:

More independence: You have significantly more independence with work choices and what tasks you want to complete, doing things such as freelancing.

Higher average income: Freelancers in the UK earn an average of around £50,000 a year – but that’s a crude figure as it includes workers from lots of different industries at various levels, from junior web developers to senior management consultants. 

 

Can be used to gain work experience for employment: There are plenty of ways you can help your career develop as a self-employed person, such as taking additional qualifications, building a strong portfolio, targeting prestigious clients to raise your profile and branching out into new areas as your skills develop.

Self employment cons:

More financial risk: While being self employed, such as a freelancer or contractor, there will inevitably be times in which there is no work, and while running your own business you may have periods of low or negative profits, which may reduce your income, possibly causing you to constantly be chasing work and putting yourself under pressure.

Taxes: When you’re self-employed you take full responsibility for paying the right amount of tax. You need to keep accurate records of everything you earn during the year along with all business-related expenses and you would need to fill out an annual self-assessment tax return form. 

If you run your own limited company, the company also has to pay tax. As a result handling your own tax affairs can quickly become time-consuming, in which case it may be most efficient to hire an accountant.

Employment pros:

Regular income: While you will earn less money on-average than being self employed, you will not need to worry about not getting paid because you will receive money from your job every month.

Benefits: Being employed means you have access to several types of benefits, such as a pension, paid annual leave and paid sick leave.

Taxes: In the UK , when you are employed, you pay taxes automatically (due to tax free filing), so you are not required to do anything unless you have other taxable sources of income.

Sociable: When employed you will likely be working with others, which is a great opportunity to make new friends and network.

 

Safety net: One of the main benefits of being employed by someone else is greater job security. When starting a new job, you should always sign a contract with your employer which outlines the conditions of your employment as well as your rights, responsibilities and duties.

Employment cons:

Micro-management from your employer / boss: Typically, when employed, your employer will always be checking your work, sometimes criticising your work. It is common for people to quit jobs or request transfers to different supervisors because they don't like their boss.

Your schedule may not be fixed: If your employers need you to work at different times than normal, you would need to make lifestyle adjustments to fit the time slots. Also if a co-worker calls off and no one is available to fill that open shift, you may be forced to do so.

Not paid as much as people that are self-employed: On average, you will earn less money than someone who is self employed. However, this can vary between industries and countries.

Less control: While you can control your job stability to some extent as an employee, you’re not necessarily in control of the final decisions being made. From this aspect, self-employment and entrepreneurship have the upper hand.

Sometimes your job will change without your choice: Sometimes, referred to as a forced transfer, employment contracts put in a stipulation that your services will be best utilised by the company at their discretion. If you’re on a great team and you love your boss and the company transfers you over to a different team and you hate it there, your options to create another change may be rather limited.

NEXT-GEN Nescot Year 4 HND - Kibosh (Obstacle Course TV show) animation Presentation and Review

After completing the Kibosh animation in Maya, I exported the final render as an image sequence and imported the PNG sequence into After Effects, converting it into footage.

Once this was done, I added the footage to the render queue and exported the final video as an AVI lossless footage.

Then, in order to compress the file, I used a conversion website called "Cloud Convert" to convert the AVI file into an MP4 to decrease the amount of storage the video would take up, before finally uploading the video to my blog.

However, for the Kibosh animation project, we were tasked with gathering feedback and improving our existing animation idents based off feedback from our peers.

As a result, we each presented our work to the other members of the class. The feedback I received for my animation from my class included:

 

Areas of improvement:

• Try slowing it down to show the details more clearly.

• Try slowing the movement of the legs at the beginning of the animation to make the movement appear less robotic.

• If you made the character hesitate before making the first jump and maybe also stumble at some point.

• Make character stumble to make fall seem more believable.

Areas of good practice:

• The water effect below the obstacle course looks great, and the reflections from the water work well too.
  

• The lighting looks good in the scene, with the character's moving shadow visible to the viewer.
  

•  The character falls mostly realistically, like a ragdoll.
  

Using this feedback as a basis for what I would need to improve, I created a series of changes
in my animation. These changes included:

• Slightly improved the running at the begining of the video.
  

• Made character slip to make fall seem more believable.

• Made character bob up and down in the water to give the act of hitting the water more of an impact.
  

•  Improved the animation of the character sliding off of one of the obstacles, hitting the other obstacle then hitting their head.
  

Once I had made the appropriate changes to the animation, I again exported the scene as an image sequence, importing the sequence into After Effects, exporting the rendered footage and converting it to an MP4.

 

Finally I uploaded my updated final animation with the improvements from my feedback to my blog.

In conclusion, I believe that my final animation went well because of the high visual quality of the final output, fluid movements of the animated character and that the animation has a comical, family friendly tone, appealing towards the required target audience. However, I did not manage to fix all of the problems with the animation, so there are still some areas where there are more robotic movements and there is no texture to add more flair to the visual aspects of the video.

Despite this, I believe that my project meets the client's needs because I managed to produce a high standard animated ident with plenty of research and explaination for the creative decision making and actions taken during the development of the project. Meanwhile, managing to centre the animation style around a family oriented target audience.

NEXT-GEN Nescot Year 4 HND - Kibosh (Obstacle Course TV show) animation Sizzle reel

For my Kibosh animation, I started by creating a simple 3D scene using Maya, then created background scenery such as the floor-plane and the borders of a pool.

After creating the basic framework, I made the assets required to make the initial animation. I did this by compiling a series of different scenes centering around the same area with different obstacle courses above the pool I had created, before finally settling on bouncing balls.

This was because, as stated in my animation R&D blog post (https://tobymroberts.blogspot.com/2021/04/next-gen-nescot-year-4-hnd-kibosh.html), according to the brief for the project: learning the processes of animating characters and scenes, exploring the development of body and facial animations to portray a convincing performance through the use of animation and learning the process of animating characters and scenes. 

With the context that we are "working for the new research and development department at Third floor films" and the company has been approached by a new production management company seeking to branch into animation. As a result, for this project we were tasked with creating and presenting a brief TV ident, at a professional standard, for the upcoming (fictional) obstacle course show ‘Kibosh!’.

I also decided upon using 3D software for the creation of the animation, as it would have the widest appeal to the largest audience, while also allowing me to easily make changes and mimic the styles of other animation types simultaneously.

To complete this task, we were given a rigged character called "BeefCake" that would be used for the creation of our animations. Therefore, I added the rigged character to the scene, positioning and animating the character to jump between each obstacle I had placed.

In order to animate the rigged character, I started by moving the character's global controller from one side of the obstacle course to the other to simulate the character's movement. 

Then, I began individually moving different aspects of the character, such as the legs and arms to visually facilitate the movement of the character. Afterwards adding realistic muscle movements such as the shoulders moving back and forth and other actions to realistically animate the character's movements across the scene and add a sense of effort and determination from the character.

This is because in animals and humans, when a character's joints move the muscles and connected muscles flex and move to facilitate the movement for each part of the body, this is because muscles are attached to bone, making them responsible for the actions of each part of the body and their movement. 

As a result, nearly all movement in the body is the result of muscle contraction with very few exceptions. This is why the inclusion of muscle movements are important to the animation as it shows more fluid and realistic movement with more emotion in each action as it displays the character putting more effort into each action, rather than a more robotic, unconnected movement of editing the joints alone.

I also made the character's arms flail on the failed jump, shortly before hitting the final obstacle and falling into the water, in order to convey a sense of panic as they realize they have slipped. Though I failed to accurately show this with the character's feet movements.

I did this in order to convey the character's realisation and fear as they fell. This was to give the character more emotion as it conveys their thought process within a short amount of time, giving a more likeable feeling to the character and creating empathy from the audience.

Once the animation was completed, I created a few previsualisations for how the animation would look form separate angles. This was to experiment and visualise each position to pick the best location to render from, picking the location with the most view of the movements and more subtle actions that the character would act out.

As a result, this use of previsualisations allowed me to pick out my favourite filming position to be used in the final render.

While I was working on this, I also worked on the development of facial expressions to refine how the animated character could express emotion. This was done in After Effects and Photoshop, by creating images of different mouth movements and compiling them in an animation to mimic spoken words. 

This can be seen in my face rig blog: (https://tobymroberts.blogspot.com/2021/04/next-gen-nescot-year-3-hnd-kibosh.html)

While the character shown in my Kibosh animation does not have a mouth or eyes, the use of eyes and mouths in animation are incredibly useful to convey an animated character's emotion and exaggerate their actions.

This can be easily seen using different positioning's of the eyes and mouth, for example:

This image showcases the different positioning and expressions that can be created using a character's eyes. The first set of eyes acting as a control variable as each other set of eyes shows a different position and conveys separate emotions. For example:

• The second set of eyes clearly shows the emotive response of fear or shock through the use of shrunken pupils and lines underneath the eyes to facilitate panic or widened eyes. This is because in humans and animals pupils typically shrink when viewing something that the person or animal does not like and can easily be used to show that a situation is going against what the character wants, or to show that they are looking at something that they dislike or fear. Meanwhile, the use of widened eyes shows that they have an increased amount of stress, or that they cannot look away from what they can see.

• The third set of eyes shows anger or frustration due to the use of inward facing lines, which can be seen as substitutes for eyebrows. Thus, the inward facing lines mimic the expression of an angry and hostile character, especially if the character is humanoid in nature.

Simultaneously, the positioning of the mouth also shows clear emotion on a character's face. This can be seen on second layer, using only mouth expressions to clearly display emotion. For example:

• The first mouth expression conveys a sense of sadness or discomfort due to the mouth curving downwards into a frown, this shows a clear indication of sadness, especially for a human character.

• The second mouth expression shows an expression of happiness or contempt. Unlike the first expression, this mouth curves into a smile, clearly showing happiness, mostly once again on a human character.

Similarly, body language can also be used to convey emotion. This can be done through the use of movements, the character's speed or mannerisms and the combination of smaller movements such as moving or pointing hands to emphasise the characters speech, feelings or mood. For example:

• A character crossing their arms could be used to emphasise anger, discomfort, disbelief or an attempt to appear tougher.

• While another example would be a character flailing their arms around to convey confusion, fear or panic.

I attempted to show this form of emotional emphasis in my final animation through the various movements and actions the character made:

Overall, I believe that I did well with this animation, however, if I could change an aspect of the animation I would attempt to more accurately display that the character slipped on their last jump, in order to make the character falling more believable.

NEXT-GEN Nescot Year 4 HND - Going Indie (Final VideoGame Advert)

Once my Game Trailer project, to advertise my Game Development project (TopDownShooter), was completed, I was required to accumulate feedback and analyse what I could have done differently during the production of the advert, displaying what I thought I could change to get a better output and how I could improve upon the final product.

Once the video was completed, I uploaded the final trailer to YouTube and displayed it to a small audience in order to gather feedback for the project.

 
YouTube Video link: https://youtu.be/4TYwV4Pp6Jk

The feedback I received included:

(Areas of improvement)

• Needing to add music to the trailer, with action music recommended for the style and flow of the trailer / game.

• Needing to increase the pacing of each shot in the gameplay trailer, segments to move at a faster and more action packed pace.

• Needing to fix / improve the transitions between each shot (mostly in the gameplay segments) because most of them are very sharp cuts or have uneven transitions.

• That there is a small slither of the background animated scene visible before door opens at the top of the door frame during the rotoscope scene, and it is somewhat distracting and ruins the sudden change from live action to game footage.

(Areas of good practice)

• That the rotoscope on the door is very good, as it accurately tracks to the movements of both the actor, door and door frame.

• That the animation shown inside the rotoscope flows well and has accurate pacing with the movements of the actor, leading to a better looking animation.

Analyzing feedback (Actions that could be taken in order to improve my Videogame Advert):

• For the first area of improvement, I could use a variety of methods to find royalty free action music, such as using many different sites or making my own music, adding the music into the video and editing it to fit more effectively before then giving credit, if required.

• For the pacing of the advert, I could decrease the amount of time the gameplay scenes are shown for, only showing the parts of importance or action to make the advert flow more effectively.

• In order to fix the transitions between each shot, I could either add more effects for each transition, to more smoothly move between each scene, or better line up and overlap each of these shots to create a more coherent transition between each scene, giving the effect of a continuation of movement.

• Finally, to fix the visible slither of rotoscoped background before the door opens, I could use a masking tool to overlap a cloned section of the door over the gap, tracking it to the movement and perspective of the door, hiding the gap at the top of the doorframe by covering it with a concealing layer.

Development process:

Unfortunately, during the development of my project, I worked alone due to the fact that we were required to create a trailer for the Game Development Project we each were creating and I was working alone on that project because there were too few possible teammates in the class and we were each creating our own individual ideas.

Despite this, I managed to easily plan the creation of the project, creating a GANT chart to track the time spent on each task, a storyboard to plan the different aspects and VFX elements that would need to be created during the production phase of the project.

However, I over estimated the amount of work that could be completed within the time allocated for our projects. And though my rotoscoping and animation turned out well, this led to me spending too much time on the development phase of production and caused me to rush the post production stages due to time constraints.

If there were different decisions made during the creation of the project:

 

I believe that if I had a teammate during the creation of the project, the final product would have been significantly better, as it would have allowed for more flexability with time management, leading to each team member alternating between each of the projects we had been set with, then leading to the project being continuously worked on and improved.

 

Alongside this, another teammate would have helped improve the final project because it would allow for the combination of a more diverse range of skills that could be used in different tasks and to improve upon each other's work.

Meanwhile, if I could have changed something in the project's pipeline decisions to improve the development process, I would have lowered the amount of work required during the production phase so that I could allocate more time and recources towards the post production of the project. However, due to time constraints and over-estimation as to what could be completed within the time limit of the project's creation, I believe I did not do as well as I could have if I had changed this aspect of my project.

Overall, I believe I could have done better on this assignment if given more time, using the feedback I gathered as a basis for how to improve my video game trailer.

NEXT-GEN Nescot Year 4 HND - Kibosh (Obstacle Course TV show) animation R&D

For this project, we were tasked with creating a 3D animation based around Kibosh, a fictional obstacle course TV show that is inspired by Wipeout and Ninja Warrior.

According to the brief the project is about: learning the processes of animating characters and scenes, exploring the development of body and facial animations in order to portray a convincing performance through the use of animation, learning the process of animating characters and scenes, using this to explore the development of body and facial animations of characters for cinema, television and entertainment while exploring the different processes and stages of creating animations.

We were also tasked with developing the ability to present a narrative concept through the use of an animated character, with the context that we are "working for the new research and development department at Third floor films." The company's been approached by a new production management company seeking to branch into animation in advertising, potentially looking into creating an animated feature in the future.  

As a result, for this project we needed to present research and produce a brief TV indent, at a professional standard, for the upcoming (fictional) obstacle course show ‘Kibosh!’

(This is based heavily on Total Wipeout: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kk3gT7AL-rQ and Ninja Warrior: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IARzaXV8W0E).  

Also, as stated in the brief context, we are "working for the new research and development department at Third floor films", effectively meaning that rather than just heavily focusing on the animation itself, it is also significantly important to justify each descision made based on gathered research.

This ident will display a simple animated character attempting an obstacle from the show with each classmate's individual animations, as a group, collectively making up the final ident. This would then be presented to the "production management company seeking to branch into animation" detailed in the brief's context.

I started this project by by creating an animation strategy based off what was required in the brief. The animation strategy consisted of a list that encompassed the many different processes that will need to be completed throughout the creation of the project. This list of what is required can be seen below:

• Create an Asset list to show what elements will be required for the creation of the animation.
  

• Storyboard the animation / animation ident.
  

• Create a basic playboard for what the animation may look like.
  

• Create a project pipeline.

• Collect and present research conducted.

• Create the final ident animation using the given preset character (Beefcake) in a CGI scene.
  

• Launch promotions for the product.

As a result of this, for my project I decided that certain parameters and constraints are set for the creation of the animation. These constraints consisted of:

• Timeline / Video Duration - The animation must last between 5 and 7 seconds long in order to fit the time shown for each animation ident.
  

• Target Audience - The animation should be applicable to all ages and fitness levels, however mostly family audience similar to Wipeout and Ninja Warrior.
  

• Required Language - If there is any writing or spoken language it must be in English.

• Aspect Ratios - The video should be set to standard aspect ratios (W 16: H 9).
  

• Technical Details - Any colour/colour correction, characters or specific styles can be added however they are less important than the animation itself.

Why use CGI for the animation?:

 

Each type of animation has its advantages and disadvantages for use in the Kibosh animation, each bringing their own target audiences and methods of production.

While Hand drawn / Cartoon drawing can appeal to a young audience, as it can be easily animated in a childish and family friendly way, typically, as of now it is often used to appeal to older audience, as that was the style of animation that those people grew up with and likely wouldn't attract the more modern, younger audiences.

Similarly, Stop Motion can have a childish and family friendly style, with a clay and old fashioned appearance enticing both older and younger audiences alike. However, Stop Motion takes a lot of time and would be in development for significantly longer than other alternative types of animation.

As for CGI however, while it would be possible to create a photorealistic animation, it would not appeal to a larger audience because it would not appeal as much to a younger audience due to its more mature and serious appearance. As the show 'Kibosh' is supposed to be  family oriented it requires an appeal to both younger and older audiences 

Similarly to cartoon animation, CGI also allows for a more childish, family friendly and cartoonish appearance while also appealing to a more modern audience and younger audience. This would be the best pick, not only because it can mimic the styles of both Stop Motion animation and Hand drawn animation, but it also has significantly more flexibility, with it being able to be edited at any part of the animation at any time, helping to create a significantly more fluid workflow.

It would also be better to use the pre-made VFX / 3D modelled character "Beefcake" that was provided to us because it allows for significantly less time spent on development of assets and instead allows for more focus and time spent designing and creating the final animation.

Once I had outlined the constraints, what I was required to do and what animation style I would ultimately use, I decided to create a Production Pipeline detailing the different development phases and processes that will need to be completed through the creation of this project. This was done to better understand the processes within the project. This Production Pipeline can be seen below:

Next I created an Asset list to keep track of what models and resources would be needed for the animation. These included:

• A 3D modelled rigged character for animation (Beefcake)

• 3D models (obstacle course)

• Possible Water effect particles (VFX)

Then, in order to visualise how the animation may play out, I decided to create a playboard showcasing an idea for the flow and content of the animated ident.

Meanwhile, for the creation of the animation ident, we were given a ready made character called "BeefCake" which would be used in each of the class's animations. In order to familiarise myself with the character, I decided I could find out how to move and animate the character through the use of testing and revision.

This led me to creating a Maya project to experiment with different positioning and animation ideas using the 3D rigged character, allowing me to understand how each of the rig's joints moved and how I could use the model in my final animation.