Ariel Griffiths AND333 Blog

To match the simplicity of the art style, the animations are quite simple. You can view a walking animation and an attack animation below.  

After going back to the drawing board with Memory, I finally settled on a good design for the character. her final designs is below.

My finished level is called Fractured Islands, as I've stated in another post, it shows the idea of a floating deserted island in space. I've taken this term quite literally by designing an island with palm trees and waterfalls in space. The full level and highlights are below. You can see from the Highlights that the level is effectively made from blocks, which in itself is made from pixels. 

For my level, I really wanted to emphasise the Sci-FI/Pirate combination we're selling with this game.  So I began to look at typical pirate story ideas, and landed on a setting based on the idea of a desert island in space. One Idea I had was an asteroid, which is usually a big lifeless rock floating through space, so envisioned the idea of a Grey Island in space, with grey rivers and mountains, as you can see below. However with the firs drawing I realised I wanted less Sci-Fi more Fantasy, so I went back to a mood-board to help with that idea.

At first, I wanted Memory to have a scrappy, more pirate look, as you can see in a couple of early drawings below. However I thought this took away from the hero aspect I was trying to convey with her design.

The images show two early drawings of both the Cordis Pura, these were drawn before we settled on a Pixel Art style and thus show how our art style has developed.

To help create the design for Memory, I've created a mood-board of influences for the character's design and biography.

Phone app games are not renowned for their blockbuster HD graphics, the best way to describe them would be simplistic and retro, which is what we want to convey in our game. One of the influences for this game was the PC and now IOS game Stardew Valley. Stardew Valley was developed by ConcernedApe, released in 2016 for the PC and then ported to mobile devices. As you can see in the above picture, Stardew Valley takes a classic pixel art style and uses modern capabilities to make it look more HD. As we want the game to look a bit more retro, it makes sense to look at influences from more retro video games, such as those on the old NES and Sega Genesis consoles. Back in the 80s, technology didn't have the capabilities to show better graphics than what you can see above (Super Mario Bros 3), so developers had to rely on contrasting colours and iconic characters and gameplay to create a successful product,

The heroine of our game "Memory" grew up in The City of Light with her two friends, before she's thrusted into the world of The Sea of Stars. She is designed to be a quietly timid but courageous individual. She's scared about suddenly growing up in The Sea of Stars but wants to have the courage to find her friends. Her backstory was inspired by the Kingdom Hearts character Sora. Like Memory, Sora explores many worlds looking for his friends and return to his island home, while I've created Memory to be more shy and less optimistic than Sora, they share the idea that they've suddenly had to grow up to be a hero.

The Cordis Pura is the main ship of the game, influenced by Disney's Treasure Planet, the ship is designed to look like an old pirate ship in space. Below is a moodboard.

We have settled on the name of our game, entitled Sea of Stars. We believe this draws on the fantasy aspect and lets the consumer immediately know that this is a Sci-Fi-Fantasy game

As this is a group project, we all need to have separate roles that match our abilities and ambitions on the course. I have taken charge in the story, marketing research, designing the main character Memory, and the design of one level.

The story of my game app as stated before is influenced by Japanese Role Playing Games. Our game tells the story of a teenage girl who lives with her friends in a giant city surrounded by wastes called "The City of Light".  Everyday flying ships called "Cordi" arrive and depart the city, leaving the city to explore the vast regions of space. Memory and her friends long to strike out on their own one day to find their own place in what's called "The Sea of Stars" One day an armada of Cordi under an unknown flag attack the city, leaving it a wreck. In the confusion, Memory drifts off into the Sea of Stars. After an unknown amount of time Memory wakes up on a Cordi called the "Cordis Pura". The captain of the ship is astounded that Memory was able to survive in deep space, and with the captain seeing Memory as a valuable asset, he takes Memory under his wing. Together Memory and the Cordis Pura explore the Sea of Stars to find answers abou...

The next is to develop a piece of work that would fit in our showreel, as such I need to know exactly what I want to be doing as a career in animation, so I can cater my showreel around it. Right now I want to work in Showreels and Script Writing.

We want to create a game app that combines the simplistic gameplay that is common in phone games at the moment, with a complex and deep story that is common in Japanese Role Playing Games. Such as Kingdom Hearts, Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest. These games use fantasy to tell a story that connects to the player. Kingdom Hearts uses the simplistic story of a boy looking for his friends, combining that with different worlds and the use of Hearts and Darkness. As well as this I was partly inspired by the Disney Movie, "Treasure Planet" was a big inspiration for the story.

The first thing we had to do was to pitch a game app for IOS/Android etc, examples include Flappy Bird, Plants vs Zombies, Clash of Clans etc. To do this we need to research Phone game conformities as well as marketing, story, gameplay and design.