The End...

I am very happy with my game and how it turned out in the end. I am surprised that I could have made this game after only approximately half a semester of learning actionscript and animation and the Flash program in general.

Although I had to sacrifice some of my ideas, such as having a memory-game aspect in (when picking off the rainbow petals in the right order {ROYGBIV}), I think that this was an important lesson to learn for the future (set high goals, but sacrifice them when necessary).

I would have also liked to include sound effects, but we didn't actually learn anything related to it in class, so this seems rather impossible. I'm hoping that we can learn how to do this next year!

Now, finally, time to relax and get back to my xbox!

xxx

Actionscript!!

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh, the single best feeling in the world is having completed the actionscript and thereby having completed the game!!!

I found this very challenging and rewarding, and I look forward to learning a lot more and being able to therefore make more complicated games.

I have included comments all throughout my actionscript on my Flash file, to outline what each section of code does, so I will not go into it again here.

The hardest bit of actionscript was at the end, linking the end-screen with the "the end" screen and the start of the game again. I found a lot of errors here, but luckily got it all worked out.

I am very proud of my game and how it turned out.

Introduction/instructions box and the end-game box

Now that I was almost ready to do my actionscript, I only had one other thing to do... create an introduction/instructions page/box or whatever it's called to be displayed at the start of the game to tell the player what they need to do, and an end-of-game/you've-completed-the-game page/box which is to be displayed when the player has completed the game.

This is the intro screen. It gives the player a little information about the circumstances of Murtagh's planet, and his cause - but not a lot. I am assuming that players have seen my planet design and character design, which outlines this history much more. For the sake of not boring players before they begin the game, I kept this short. Here Murtagh gives the player their objective, and with the click of the button at the bottom, the game begins!

This is the end-of-game screen. It tells the player that they have completed the game objective and gives the player the option to restart the game or finish it for good.

Setting up the Flash Stage...

By far, most difficult part of the project was setting up the stage, with all the animations, all the objects, the actionscript and labels.

I spent a couple of weeks trying to work it out, but nothing seemed to work.

At first, I put everything on different layers/movieclips, and inside these movieclips I had the appropriate animations and actionscript:

As you can see, everything is on frame 1.

The 5 layers that have a red cross next to it are the movieclips containing animations. All other layers are just images of objects.

This is an example of what is inside the movieclips shown above. There is a still on the first frame, and the rest contain animations.

This way of organising the stage didn't work for me - it was much too complicated and difficult to access.

Then, after some help, I set the stage up like this:

This is how I made my game in the end.

I have the different animations all on frames that I could call in my actionscript. There are also layers here with still object images on them, but all animations can easily be accessed here.

Animations - FINALLY done!!!

After a few days of solid, non-stop animating and lack of sleep, I have completed each of the 22 little animations for my game!

Here are a few screenshots which show some of the animations:

In this animation, Murtagh gets angry.

This should happen when you click on him once.

His shoulders hunch up, his head moves down, giving the impression that he's crouching. It's kind of a warning position, like "hey, you're annoying me. Stop it now or else you will get hurt!"

Murtagh is angry in this animation. He is crouching even lower, looks even more menacing. his teeth are bared in warning.

This animation should play after you've clicked on the character twice.

In this animation, Murtagh has been completely annoyed and shoots a laser out of his eye at you.

His mouth scrunches up, like he has completely lost all self-control.

This is what happens if you've clicked him 3 times.

After this animation, the actionscript should reset his animations and the next click will go back to frame 1 - which is Murtagh 'annoyed'.

This is one animation that has been created for each of the 7 pink petals. You click on the petal and it falls off while another one re-grows in its place.

Clicking these petals and playing these animations won't get the player closer to achieving the objective (making the flower release a seed), but it adds something else that is interesting for the player to discover.

Similarly, if the player clicks on the leaves, they will move, but this doesn't help to achieve the objective.

This animation is vital to the game. Once the player has clicked on the golden watering can, it will move over the flower and drop a single pink droplet onto it. After this has happened, the watering can stops being clickable, but the flower's petals turn rainbow.

This moves the player onto the next "stage" of the game, and brings them one step closer to the end.

This is part of the above animation, when the water has been absorbed and the petals suddenly become rainbow.

Once the flower has rainbow petals, the player can again click on each of the 7 petals, but these will fall off and stay at the bottom of the screen - they won't re-grow.

I had previously wanted this to have a memory game aspect, where the player would have to click off the petals in the right order to get the seed to pop out, but this was way too hard.

Instead, I decided that they could click them off in any order and that the seed would pop out once all the petals had been removed.

In this animation, all the petals have been removed from the flower and the seed is popping out of the flower bud.

This tells the player that they are close to achieving their goal. All they have to do now is to plant the seed in the green pot and the game will be over.

In this screenshot, you can see the tiny yellow dot (the seed) in the green pot, and a little pink flower stem starting to grow out of it.

This is the final animation of the game - the game is done!

Now, I have to set up the stage in Flash and begin my actionscript!

Animations - 22 to go!

Now that the stage has been set up, the objects all on separate layers and all made into symbols, I am ready to start animating!

Here is the list of animations that I need to do for my project:

1. Click on Murtagh once, he becomes annoyed.

2. Click on Murtagh twice, he becomes angry.

3. Click on Murtagh three times, he shoots at you with his laser eye.

4. Click on the left leaf, it will rustle.

5. Click on the right leaf, it will rustle.

6. Click on each of the seven petals, they will fall off and re-grow (this will be a total of 7 animations!)

7. Click on the watering can, it will water the plant, and the petals will change colours.

8. Click on each of the seven petals in the right order and they will fall off (total of 7 animations).

9. If the right order of petals have been clicked and have fallen off, a seed will pop out of the flower's bud and will fall on the table.

10. Click on the seed, it will be placed in the little empty pot where it will begin to grow.

This is a total of 22 animations... if I'm counting correctly... OH MY!

Preparation#4 - Putting It All Together

Here is the completed stage - all the elements are finally in place.

I'm very happy with this. I think everything is very clear and nothing takes too much away from anything else.

Murtagh is completely visible, only part of his arm and back covered by the plant. I think the placement is all done very well and creates an interesting and inviting scene for the player.

The only thing I'm not sure about is the "lab. 1" sign on the wall. I think that perhaps this looks a little too much like a button. I will redraw this a little later to make it more subtle.

Other than that, I feel very confident with the project so far and will now start doing the animations!

Preparation#3 - Drawing the Background

As I mentioned in the previous blog, I had to create the background of the scene now that Murtagh and the objects had been made.

I decided to set the game in one of Murtagh's 'planet restoration laboratories' where such experiments would no doubt take place on a daily basis. The door to one of these labs can be seen in the walk-cycle.

Since the wall of the warehouse (as seen in the walk-cycle) are a pale blue and covered with cracks and stains, this wall has to be in the same state. Having the wall here the same colour as the walls from the previous project will help to link the two together and to make it clear to anyone who saw the walk cycle that they are indeed in the same place.

Here is the wall I made in Flash, with the stains and cracks, and even a sign to help the player to establish their destination.

Now it is finally time to put all the bits and pieces together - Murtagh, the objects and the background!

I will post a screenshot in my next blog!

Preparation#2 - Drawing Objects

Now that I feel much more comfortable and confident drawing in Flash, I thought that drawing the objects should be a breeze!

I thought that the most important thing would be to keep the colours bright and far away from the colour of Murtagh's body, so that everything stands out, and that Murtagh can also stand out.

Firstly, I drew a table top upon which the objects could stand and behind which Murtagh could be, the missing bottom-half of his body hidden!

Here are the two pots where the grown plant lives (the bigger pot on the left), and the little pot where the seed can be planted after it has been found (the green pot on the right).

I made the soil a deep purple-blue - after all, we are on an alien planet where the sky isn't blue and the grass isn't green and soil is certainly not black or brown.

I think that this has a nice visual effect and makes everything a little more exotic and interesting for the player.

Here are the two stems of the flowers. The larger one on the left will be the stem for the grown flower, and the smaller stem will be the start of the new flower which grows from the seed once it has been planted.

Hot pink is better than green!

Here are the two leaves which will be coming from the stem (in normal earthly fashion), which will rustle or move when clicked by the player.

I decided to make them purple, but a very different, richer and deeper purple than the purple of Murtagh's body.

I decided to make them a little spikey - maybe like holly, to make them more interesting and a little stranger.

Here is the 'bud' of the flower, which looks a bit like a four-leaf clover. This design was also just to keep the 'bud' different from the circular 'bud' that most earthly flowers have. It also has a bit of a swirl in it's center, just to make it a little more peculiar!

This is what the flower's petals will originally look like - pale fleshy pink and yellow - very boring and ugly and plain. This will help to contrast strongly when the petals change colour and go from plain to insane (rainbow insane that is).

Here are each of the seven 'insane' colours for the new petals - which together make up the rainbow.

I think that they are beautiful and contrast well with the plain petal shown above. The colours in order from left to right are:

Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo, Violet (ROYGBIV)

Here is the seed, which will pop out of the flower when the petals have been removed in the right order. I thought that a golden sphere seed would be pretty cool.

And, last but not least, here is the equally golden watering can - which will have baby pink water inside it.

It looks just like any other watering can, but it's golden, so it's much better!

Maybe it also keeps the right conditions for the magical water inside it, which will make the flower's petals change colour.

Here is the complete arrangement of flower and objects together on the table.

I think that this looks really nice.

I put the flower more to the right of the stage as opposed to in the center to make room for Murtagh. I don't want him to be hidden or ignored behind the plant.

Also, I decided that for this reason, I'll put the watering can on the right as opposed to the left (where I had imagined it and drawn it in the storyboard) so that the watering of the plant can be seen to the side of Murtagh, rather than over him.

Now I have to create the background (which will be similar to the deteriorated blue walls seen in the walk-cycle.

Preparation#1 - Drawing character

I decided to abandon my walk-cycle for this project, as well as the previous version of Murtagh which I had created in Flash (which was my first half failed attempt at drawing in the program!), for a new version, based off his frontal pose from the character sheet. This was by far my favourite pose from the character sheet and so I definitely wanted to include it in this project.

This is the 'frontal' pose of Murtagh, taken directly from my character sheet. I knew that I wouldn't be able to get the same gradient in the tone of his flesh in Flash - as I had no idea HOW to use the tools very well at all, so I would have to render him in roughly the same way as I had last time for his 'side-on' view for the walk-cycle project.

I imported this image into Flash, and placed it on its own layer. Then I made a layer over the top of that where I traced the separate elements of the top half of his body onto. I only traced the top part of his body, as I had decided that he would be standing behind the table where the plant and other objects are set.

After drawing the individual elements, I found that I had the same issues as last time, when I was drawing Murtagh in Flash for the walk-cycle project. Each individual line was a separate object and I could therefore not use the paint bucket tool to colour him in. Last time I had resorted to colouring him in manually, which took such a long time and gave me a reasonably poor result. I decided to play around a little more with the tools and options so see whether this issue could be overcome.

Luckily, within a few hours of me playing around with the tools, I found a solution to my problem! It might not be the best way of going about things, but it worked and at the time, that was absolutely the most important thing! I found that after drawing the character's outlines, I could join them by selecting all the individual parts and clicking on 'combine objects' from the 'modify' menu, and selecting 'union'. This usually wasn't enough to allow me to use the paint bucket, but for some reason selecting 'ungrouped' instead of 'grouped' at the bottom of the 'modify' menu, and then selecting 'break apart' from the same menu would allow me this time-saving privilege!

Here are the separate parts from this drawing experience which I will use in my project:

Here is Murtagh's head.

I used the same colours from the guide on my character sheet, to make him seem as close as possible (although very 2D) to the original Murtagh (pictured above).

Here is Murtagh's body.

I decided to keep his chest and stomach in the same object this time, instead of separating them as I had done for the walk-cycle project. I did this for two reasons:

Firstly, it looks more seamless and smooth.

Secondly, I don't think I'll have to really animate his chest moving differently from his body - after all, he is standing behind a table which will probably block most of his lower body from view, making walking unnecessary.

Any other movements which in reality require the movement of the upper body can probably be done just using the head and arms.

This is the lower body! Yes, all of it!

Murtagh won't have legs in this project - or at least, they'll be hidden by a table!

This is just to help give the impression that something downstairs does exist!

Here are all four upper arms.

They will probably look better once they are joined with the lower arm bits...

Again, I really tried to bring some sort of tone into this character by using both the light purple of his skin (#e3c0ff), and the mid-tone purple which is meant to show some shadowing (#d396f6).

Here are the 4 forearms.

I decided to use a darker purple with flecks of light purple on the end of the stump arm (bottom forearm) to make it seem more gruesome and more like he has lost his arm in battle rather than in a surgeon's lab - which would have made the amputation a lot smoother.

This is aesthetically pleasing to me, and also highlights the other dark areas on his body - such as his nipples.

Here are 2 - or well, actually 3 of his hands.

The hand on the left will be duplicated and used on two of the arms, and the hand on the right will be used on the one remaining arm (the one that isn't a stump! Poor Murtagh!)

So, after hours and hours of drawing in Flash, and then a fair while afterwards of putting all the body parts together in the right places, this is the result!

I am extremely happy with this!!! He looks very similar (although, not as nicely rendered) to the image of Murtagh above, from the character sheet.

I think that he looks very smoothly drawn and coloured, and I'm proud to say that I think I have become much much much better at drawing in Flash from the last project!

Now, I just need to draw the objects and scenery for the project and then I can start to animate!

Interactive Narrative - Storyboard & Ideas

My Ideas:

I have been both excited and horrified when considering what we have to do for this project. On the one hand, this is something I've always wanted to do and could be a possible future direction, but on the other hand, I am overtired from the last project and a bit nervous at having only a few weeks to learn and master the action script necessary to pull this off.

Anyways, I started brainstorming ideas immediately. Here are a few of the things I came up with:

1. A shooting game using Murtagh and his awesome laser eye! I thought that maybe he could either shoot away rocks/rubbish hurled at him from people who oppose his political ideas using his eye, perhaps on a walk through the city toward his headquarters. Reaching his headquarters alive would be the player's goal and will be the end of the game.

2. Another shooting game again using Murtagh and his awesome laser vision. I thought that maybe he could be walking towards his headquarters, and the player's objective is to shoot down signs promoting such evil such as bomb-shelters and trans-drugs etc.

The only problem with these ideas - having a game centered around Murtagh shooting with his laser eye - is the fact that he is half crippled and can't move very fast. This means that he won't be able to do much except walk at an incredibly slow pace. He wouldn't be able to jump or dodge well, so the game would be very restrictive and frustrating.

I decided to abandon the first two ideas and keep brainstorming.

3. Make a game with multiple (2) possible outcomes, based around Murtagh's softer side and the location of my walk-cycle: help Murtagh to grow a plant in one of the many 'nature restoration labs.' Maybe this would be a sequence/order game where the player has to choose the right way of using things to make a plant grow, which would be the objective. If they choose the right order, the plant grows and they win. If they choose the wrong order, the plant dies, maybe gives off a bad odor and the player loses.

I like this idea, but Troy said that it might be too difficult to do. I'll think of some more ideas and reconsider this later.

4. Make an informational game where Murtagh is standing in a room in his headquarters, maybe reading something or writing something, and the player can learn more about Murtagh and his cause by clicking on random objects, e.g. a post-it note on the notice board etc.

I don't think that this will work well - it would be too boring and pointless.

5. Make a game incorporating idea number 4, but make it more interactive and interesting. Maybe Murtagh could be sitting on a chair, telling you about different things in the room. Maybe here I could incorporate some of idea 3 aswell - there could be a strange plant on a table in the room and a watering can next to it. If the player clicks on the plant, Murtagh tells you about it and how proud he is of having grown it. If you click on it too much, his split personality comes to life and he shoots and destroys it with his laser eye! Maybe the player can also water the plant using the watering can? Also, I thought that here I could also have a notice board where the user can click and read the different notices to learn more about Murtagh and his cause. I thought that maybe I could also have a windowsill where, after a while, a bad guy comes along with a bag of trans-drugs. Maybe he can say something like "oh, this abandoned warehouse would be a great place to store my stash!" When Murtagh sees this, he gets angry and says something like "those vile things made me into the monster I am today!" then he kills the baddy with his laser eye and sets the bag of drugs on fire.

I was kind-of going along with this idea, but the other animators thought that this idea was stupid and a cop out.

Finally, a little disheartened, I came up with this idea, and I hope that I can stick with it this time!

7. Make a game where you are with Murtagh in one of his labs, maybe the game is in first-person mode? I will try to include aspects from some of the above ideas. The player's objective will be to figure out how to make a grown plant harvest a seed, which they can then put into a new pot where it can start to grow. It will be a puzzle game to make it a tad more difficult and exciting. There would be a few click spots, as is described in the image (a photocopy of my journal) below.

The player can click on Murtagh! One click will make him become a little annoyed. Two clicks will make him angry and three clicks will make him use his laser eye on you for revenge!

I also thought that maybe I can find the right actionscript to make his eyes follow the mouse. We'll have to wait and see about that though.

They player could also click on the leaves of the plant, and I thought that they could then rustle, or maybe the entire plant can start dancing.

The player can click on each of the flower's 7 pale pink petals, and this will make them fall off and re-grow.

The player can also click on the watering can, which will move over the plant and pour water onto it. This is a key to the game, for once the plant has been watered, the petals will change to the 7 colours of the rainbow. I thought that maybe here I could have a little memory game (but this might be much too hard to do) where the player needs to pick off the new petals in the right order (ROY G BIV - order of colours in the rainbow), which will make the seed appear.

The Player can then put this seed into the new pot and the game is done!

Here is the early diagram I did for the "flower game".

And here is the later, clearer version of the 'flower game', where I was considering the placements of the character and the items.

My idea for this game has been largely inspired by the games at http://windosill.com/

I thought that these puzzle games were really cleverly done, and really do a lot to engage the player's attention. I got the idea of pulling off the flower petals from the second level, where the player open's the curtains and the letters 'windowsill' stand there in the background. In the foreground, there are a couple of plants, and when you pull at one of it's flowers/leaves, it falls off and regrows. I thought that this was really beautiful and decided to make my game surrounding this idea.

Final Walk-cycle

Here is my final walk-cycle:

Overall, I am reasonably happy with this, especially considering that I have never used Flash before, and I have never attempted animation before.

I also think that the character I designed was just always inevitably going to be hard to animate, and given that, I think the result isn't too bad.

If I had more time, I would have changed the background, perhaps made it outside with multiple layers moving at different speeds, but as it was, I had spent most my time struggling with the animation of the character as I had thought this the most important.

I was very happy when we watched my walk-cycle in class and a few students said that they felt sorry for Murtagh because he seemed to be in pain - this is exactly the reaction I had wanted, so I guess I did a good job!

Its time for me to let this project go now and focus on the final - INTERACTIVE NARRATIVE!

God save me!

Walk-Cycle Inspiration and Trials

Inspiration:

Most of my inspiration comes from playing games - and most of the time, these games include some zombies or mutants or just absolutely ridiculously crazy characters. While I was trying to figure out just HOW a mutant like mine is supposed to walk (Troy had said, "draw from life!", but this is actually impossible in my case), I came across this video one just another night of searching the web for info on awesome upcoming games.

This video is from the upcoming game "Dante's Inferno," a game based on Dante Alighieri's famous Italian masterpiece "The Divine Comedy." I could probably ramble on and on about why this game is going to be AWESOME, but thats not really the point of this blog, is it?

Aaanyway, as I was saying before - I was kind of having trouble trying to figure out how a mutant, especially my mutant should walk... but then I stumbled across this video and I got some inspiration!!

When the character jumps off the massive fiery demon's back and has to battle Baphomet-like demons and these pale, naked hunched guys. You can especially see a few good examples of how these naked hunched guys walk in the last minute of the video:

Video Games | Dante's Inferno | SDCC 09: Gameplay (Cam)

XBox 360 | Playstation 3 | Nintendo Wii

I especially like the way that these characters seem to shuffle along quite slowly. However, I think that I'd still prefer to have one of his legs bigger/thicker than the other one - so that this leg shuffles along and the other, more normal one has to move faster in order to keep up. I think this will make the walk-cycle look all the more painful, and then the reaction of the audience will grow.

Also, I want to make his spine bend noticeably with his movement to further enforce the fact that he is having trouble walking and that it is very painful for him. The zombie-like characters in the Dante's Inferno clip don't seem to have a lot of movement happening in their spines when they walk.

Other than that video, there wasn't much else I could find to help me with this project, apart from a few really nice pieces of work on youtube:

This one shows really nicely how one leg larger than the other one can work in terms of it shuffling limply along and the other leg having to work harder and faster to keep the character from falling over. However, I will probably just make the 'limp' leg fatter so that it can still somewhat walk, just not very well!

I really like this piece of work. The zombie also has a limp leg, but the same deal as above -

I'd rather just have one of my character's legs fatter than the other one. Also, There needs to be

a lot more movement in the spine. I'm thinking also that my character's arms shouldn't move as

much as the zombie in this video, because it'll make the walk-cycle seem too corny. I'd rather

my character seem depressed and in pain and show that in his rather limited amount of movement.

I decided that since we don't have that long to do this project, and I think I've set my goal way too

high and possibly out of reach, I should start playing around with my character and the way he

should walk.

I found and used this as a guide for the basic steps in a walk-cycle. I figured that if I could make my

character walk in a very normal and generic way, then it would at least be a good start and I could

spend the rest of the time trying to figure out how to make him look as though he is in pain and

having trouble moving along at a reasonable pace. I also think that this is when I can really try to

emphasize the shift in his weight, which should be made quite obvious to the viewer as this shift

would be rather dramatic with the amount of weight on his back, his posture and his busted leg.

This image was found on: http://www.idleworm.com/how/anm/02w/walk1.shtml/

Of course, this is a quite bouncy, healthy looking walk, so I'd definitely have to change it a lot to make it suit my character and my project goals!

FLASH!!!

I have never ever ever ever used flash before in my life, and I am very very very nervous about having to do it now for such an important assignment. Despite being shown for a few lessons how to make a timeline, how to make keyframes, how to do classic tweens, I found it very hard to absorb this information and use it. I feel like I am constantly asking for help for the seemingly simplest things... Flash has really put me outside my comfort and confident zone!

With the last project (Character Design), Suren had told us to draw our characters in Flash, converting each part of the body into a new symbol in order to make this animation stage easier. However, Troy said that he didn't mind people using a program they're more comfortable with, such as Photoshop or Illustrator. I decided to stay in my comfort zone for the time being and use Photoshop. Suren had said that we might not be able to use these files for the animation and that we might have to redraw them in Flash for project 4.

Stupidly, I had decided to still draw my character in Photoshop. Aaand now, with all the stress already on us, and all this work to still start doing, I have to redraw my character in Flash!!!! I think that this is the worst program I've ever used for drawing... none of the tools work the way I'd expect them to, and they seemed to have a mind of their own at times, turning certain lines into boxes and making each stroke separate from the overall object... ARGH, it is so painful!!! Hopefully this means that some of MY pain will be shown in the walk-cycle!

Anyway, having had trouble redrawing my character, I decided to stop for the moment in trying to make him somewhat resemble my character from the previous project, and just draw all his limbs, convert them all to symbols and to use class time for trying to animate rather than to redraw. I figured that if there was time left over after I had animated him, then I'd spend that time redrawing him. Suren told us to draw the character in a star jump-like pose, but I don't really know why, when I'm going to have my character walking in a side-on position, but he IS the animator, so I just did what he told me. Here is a screenshot from that stage:

I think I'll definitely need to at least redraw the head, chest and stomach now to be able to put the character in a side-on position for the walk-cycle. The rest of the limbs I can maybe skew a bit to make them have a side-on appearance.

Before I tried to somehow put the character into the side-on position that is required for me to make him walk, I decided to just quickly to a mock-up in Flash using different coloured circles as each separate, individual body part to see how he would look side-on:

I don't think this turned out too bad, and I definitely feel a lot more confident in now somehow making the character in the image above stand in a side-on position... I'm just completely overwhelmed by the amount of separate limbs/body parts he has!!!

I think that the head in relation to the slouching back works really well, and maybe I can have it nodding or bobbing slightly with each step to show that he doesn't really have that much control over it or that he is just sore and tired from the effort of walking.

This next image is a screenshot of the character with his head, chest and stomach redrawn, and the rest of his body-parts skewed:

I think that this is a good outcome so far... You get a much more accurate idea of what the character is going to look like when he walks now. Still, I don't really like the way that certain body parts look in their skewed manner, but I'll have to wait and see if I can change this all a bit later on.

I also asked Suren whether there was a way to erase the black lines at the joint where one body part meets another, but he told me to ignore it for now and deal with it later. I tried later on to erase them myself, but for some reason, flash won't let me!!! I just don't get it!

Anyway, I am reasonably happy with this so far - I think the legs need to be a bit more bent though, and that I need to figure out what to do with all those arms!! I think that the back looks really good though!

I also have to make one of the legs fatter than the other. I thought, maybe the leg further from to the audience's view should be the bigger one, as it would take away too much from the other leg's movement if it was placed in front and would block the other leg from view most of the time.

This is an image of what the character looked like when I was getting ready to start animating, or rather, trying to learn how to animate:

You can see that I made his left leg fatter than the right one.

Also, I started him off in pose that seems 'mid-walk' so that I'd at least have a place to start where I can continue to make him seem like his walking... if that makes any sense!! Basically, If I made him stand in a position where he's basically just standing rather motionless, it would be absolutely too hard to know where to go from there!

I decided that I'd make the higher/upper arm on the right side of his body limp, so that it just moves when it is pushed by the other arm which is doing all the work. I thought that this might be a nice effect, but I guess we'll have to wait and see whether it will be successful or not!

The arms on his left side are moving in relation/opposition to the moving arm on the right side of the characters body - but a few paces from each other. One arm is always a little bit behind the other one. I don't know, but I'm guessing that if you had 3 working arms, one of them would be moving at a slightly slower pace and the two 'main' arms would be doing most of the work.

I also drew a line for this trial version to help me keep the feet in basically the right positions.

(

This clip above shows my progress with my animation after about a week's animating. As you can see, it is terribly jittery, and the character walks incredibly fast!!! Sadly, it's a very short clip, but you should get the idea!

I'll have to keep tweening it and find a way to slow him down so that it actually looks like he's having trouble walking!!!

Finally getting somewhere...

After a lot more hard work, I got the character's walk-cycle basically finished, and decided to spend some time making a quick background so that I could get help in class to learn how to loop it and put it all together. Here is the clip of my progress up until the end of that week's class:

As you can see, the character walks a little slower (though not slow enough!!!) and the background moves with him (though maybe out of time). Also, you'll notice that after a couple of steps the character and backgrounds stop moving. I have been considering including a clip somewhere in my walk-cycle where the character stops walking to shoot a laser out of his eyes. I thought, I probably won't have enough time to do this, or the skills, but I should at least know where to begin. I don't know if I'll be able to possibly pull this off though as I still want to redraw my character to make him seem a bit slimier and more similar to last assignment's version of him, and I still have to actually decide on and create my background.

Redrawing the character:

BY FAR, one of the most confusing things I had to face in this project was trying to redraw certain body parts of my character. I would start by double-clicking and therefore entering the particular body part, but sometimes, for some reason, anything i drew or erased would simply vanish when i let go of the mouse...

When I finally figured out how to avoid this problem, I came upon more. It was possibly the most frustrating weekend I've ever had (yes, it took me an entire 2-3 days to redraw my character, and he still doesn't look very good).

I found that when I erased and redrew lines, these would make themselves a different symbol to the rest of the body part, so when it came to wanting to use the paint bucket tool - well this was impossible! I had to manually sit there and draw and colour in every part of my character's body again from scratch.

When this was done, I decided to go back and add some basic rendering (the mid-tone purple I used in my last project) in an effort to make him look a bit more 3D and less clean. Again, this proved to be a most impossible and frustrating task. Each individual line or bit of colour I had drawn had somehow decided to make themselves separate from the rest of the lines and colours that made up that specific body part, so using another colour wasn't as simple as simply painting it on where you want it and there it is and there it stays, it meant entering each of these separate bits (and there were thousands of them!) to change them a little bit.

Maybe I need to read a book or two on how to draw in Flash, because I'm sure that I struggled this much just because of my own lack of knowledge and stupidity, but I still think Flash is a stupid program to draw with.

Furthermore, I had NO idea how to add subtle gradients to the characters, and the more I saw of Flash created works, the more I began to accept that there would be no blending tool or change of opacity levels to help me render this character to look more like he did in the last project, where I'd used Photoshop. I just have to accept and be happy with what I've got, which is a relatively 2D character.

Here is a screenshot of my final character rendering:

I don't think that this is too bad overall, considering the terrible time I had to get it looking anywhere close to this. I am a bit disappointed that he looks to 2D and so different to my character from the last project, but time is running out and my lack of knowledge and skill in using Flash won't permit me to change him much more.

However, looking at other people's work, I think that most of everything I've seen also looks pretty 2D. Perhaps these are just the limitations of using a program such as Flash.

I'm happy with how his limbs look, now that they are redrawn and the black lines I complained about before have been erased.

I'm also very happy especially with how the feet and head look.

Also, notice that I have finally added in the strange 'bones' in the areas behind his knees and from his ankle to his heel. I had previously forgotten to include them, but hopefully I remembered! Now I'll just have to animate them too!

Since the redrawing of my character, as well as his animation is now complete, I have to spend the last 2 days before this assignment is due in drawing his background!!! How stressful!

The Background:

I had been trying to decide between setting my background in the outside, town/desert like landscape where my character lives, perhaps walking past a few bomb shelters - or - inside his headquarters.

This was a difficult decision, as I had thought that placing him into the world I had designed in the first assignment would be wonderful, with several background features moving at different paces to give a sense of background and foreground...

However, sadly, I realised that I only had two days in which to make an entire background, and that this would be basically impossible to achieve - as it was, I'd have to stay up for those two nights till I literally passed out to make any kind of background.

So, after much thinking, I decided that it would be the smartest idea to place my character indoors, therefore making the foreground less essential and the background seem a lot closer and more important to the viewer. I could put him inside and probably get away with not having too many layers - if any - moving at different speeds.

As Murtagh is the leader of the Rebels, I decided that he'd be perfectly at home walking through the hallways which I could cover with elements such as windows, doors, photographs etc which would give the viewer a better idea of what he and his Rebels do and what their world is like from their point of view.

I thought that since the world is only a few years/months/weeks/days etc away from their hypothesised apocalypse, most other aliens would not be on their more rational-thinking sides. Therefore, I thought, his headquarters should be somewhat in ruin to show a lack of government funding for their cause and perhaps also to show that everything in the world is falling apart due to its extreme chaos and destruction.

Anyway, here is a screen shot of my background:

As you can see, hopefully, There are cracks all down the wall to show that the warehouse is falling apart. Also, there are stains on the wall and doors from water/liquid coming in from the outside, which is supposed to make the building seem even more run-down.

The first door is a door leading to a "Rebel's Conference Room" - the location of a lot of planning and discussion about the possible steps that they could take in helping their world.

Next to that door there is a window which shows a portion of the polluted, irradiated and jam-packed landscape of the world they live in.

Next to the window is a group of three photographs to show the Rebel members what their world used to look like as well as the iconic Mayan Temple on their planet. These are meant to contrast strongly with the image of their world in the window. These photos are meant to motivate the Rebels into trying to bring their world back to such a pristine and beautiful state - each photo even has it's own motivational caption:

Top: "Lest we forget"

Bottom left: "They will come for us"

Bottom right: "Preserve the natural"

Next to these photos is a notice board, littered with many notices. It is slightly askew to highlight the fact that the building isn't stable. Maybe this is also supposed to play into the viewer's emotions, to make them feel even more sorry for my character. This is also supposed to show that the building has a business-related purpose.

Next to the notice board is another door with a label reading "Nature Restoration Laboratory." This is one of possibly many labs where the Rebels and Murtagh experiment with erasing pollution, growing plants, cleaning water, restoring resources and other things that involve providing some sort of future for their world if their Mayan Doomsday passes without event. Therefore, it is a pretty important room!

And last of all, next to the door leading to the lab is a strange clock which reads "27." I thought that this would mean that there are only 27 days till the supposed end of their world. This would mean that the world and its inhabitants would be in an extremely chaotic, desperate and terrified state.

Lastly, before I begin to animate my background, I'll just show you a screenshot of my final piece - the character and the background put together at last:

Overall, I am relatively happy with all this progress so far. I sadly completely ran out of time and couldn't do the laser eye scene, but I will try to incorporate that into the next project instead.

I will put up the final animation in a new blog soon.

Character Sheet

Now that I've completed - or mostly completed my character design, it is time to work out the finer details about my mutated alien friend.

The hardest thing is to decide whether he should be good or evil... to me it looks like he could be both... both would definitely suit him.

In the end I decided that he should be good, as I had originally wanted the viewer to feel sorry for him when I eventually make him walk. He should look like he's in pain from his terrible posture and the way his legs bend and I think that this will be somewhat lost if the viewer feels compelled to dislike him due to him having an evil nature. If he is good, then the viewer would feel all the more sorry for him in his state of constant pain when he moves, and I would have achieved one of my goals.

I decided to name my character "Murtagh" - pronounced "Mur - tah" as this was one of my favourite characters in a series of novels by Diana Gabaldon. It was between the names "Murtagh" and "Thorr" - an infamous Viking God. As I am quite obsessed with Viking/Norse mythology and history, I definitely had to include something "Thorr" or Viking in my work - as I usually find a way of doing!

I decided that "Murtagh" was a more suitable name for my alien character, so I instead named his home planet "Thorr", making the race who inhabit it "Thorrians".

Next it was time to decide on some of Murtagh's history.

Here are some of the variations I came up with:

• Murtagh is a quiet resident on Planet Thorr who is addicted to Trans-drugs. While he spends the most of his time cleaning up his polluted and generally destroyed planet, he never lets an opportunity to acquire drugs pass him by...
• Murtagh is the leader of a group of aliens who oppose the Mayan theory on the destruction of the world. They think that it's all just hocus-pocus and spend their time trying to prove the theory wrong...
• Murtagh is a loving husband and father who has been kidnapped by his evil government to make trans-drugs. This is particularly horrible for him as he used to be addicted to them and hates them for the horrible mutations on his body that they had caused...
• Murtagh is a kindly old alien who spends his time nursing his plants. He hopes to one day fill his world once again with nature's gifts of plantation, which has been destroyed in the final years leading up to their doomsday...

In the end, I came up with this as his history:

" Murtagh is the leader of the 'Rebels' - a group of Thorrians who aim to restore natural beauty, happiness, cleanliness and hope to their planet.

He personally campaigns against the use of Trans-drugs, as these had mutated him horribly - many years of overuse morphed his body together with his twin brother's, who was wrestling him at the time.

Although they are usually of one mind, disagreements result in certain 'incidents' occurring, and these are disastrous for all present. His amazing charisma generally wins him his fights, but when it fails, he will ruthlessly resort to a physical alternative.

He is physically strong, but has a lot of trouble moving fast due to his terrible posture. As a result of his mutation, he is blind in both of his center eyes - however, when in 'fight mode', Murtagh has the ability to shoot lasers out of them to blind and stun his enemies."

I think that this is perfect basically! I think it's pretty crazy and funny and explains a lot about him. I also included the idea of him having a split personality, and even gave his two blind eyes an awesome function!

Once this was written, it was really easy to come up with information about his likes and dislikes, strengths and weaknesses etc:

" - Gender: Male

- Age: 218 Thorrian years; 31 Earth years

- Species: Thorrian

- Home planet: Thorr

- Strengths: Climbing, leadership, intelligence, dominance, melee combat, scream, speech

- Weaknesses: Slowness, lack of agility, blindness in center eyes, some split-personality

- Likes: Slow dancing, hibernation, healthy plants, campaigning, areas of unspoiled planet

- Dislikes: Trans-drugs, pollution, mental institutions, bomb shelters, chaos, clothes

- Weapons: Laser vision, melee, clawing, head-butting, ear-piercing scream "

I figured that he had 4 arms and 3 hands so he'd be able to climb well.

Also, as he has two mouths, I figured that he'd be twice as loud as a normal alien - making his scream one of his strengths, especially as a weapon. Perhaps it shatters the victim's eardrums?!

Finally it was time to create some extra 'actions and emotions' to further deepen the character and his personality. I did these by copying the head part of my alien 'front' drawing, and changing the facial features in photoshop.

I decided that he should be a pretty depressed alien, as his planet is very much in a state of chaos and his beloved world is slowly dying due to over-use of resources, pollution etc. Most other alien's careless actions make Murtagh angry, and as most aliens are VERY careless, Murtagh is mostly angry. This also explains the second emotion - "as happy as possible." As Murtagh is mostly angry, he would rarely be happy. A happy day might come where he has succeeded in growing a healthy plant or getting new followers or rescuing someone from a mental institution etc.

Another must have expression is a shocked face. Murtagh is naturally shocked every time something else chaotic or horrible happens in his world, and these things would keep happening on a day to day basis as the world comes closer to its apocalypse. I also thought that this face made him look as though he was whistling, and since he loves slow-dancing, he MUST love music too, so he MUST love whistling!

His appalled face would have a place on his face a lot of the time when his fellow aliens do something else that impacts the world or its race of aliens in a negative way. I also thought that this face made him look like he was speaking or shouting, so I decided that this could also be his "command" face.

The last face I included was one showing Murtagh using his awesome laser vision!!!

And with all of that, this project is completed and I am once again ready to submit and hope for the best!!!

I am overall very very happy with all my work on this project. I had an absolutely awesome time with every stage of this project, and I think the final outcome is very good. I have definitely already fallen completely in love with my character, and I can't wait to animate him!!!

Character Design

Character design experimentation:

Here are some of the rather crappy drawings I did for the character design project. I tried to combine some of the features from my previous blog (on inspiration) in these images in an attempt to explore some of the elements I liked.

In this page, I experimented with a few different shapes for 'elongated heads'. I like the drawing in the top left corner's head shape more than the two below it. I also like the way most of this character's features look, excluding the ears. I think I prefer for him to not have ears, or have invisible birds ears. I also don't really like the mouth as it would be hard to show emotions with a mouth of this nature. Also, note that he has needle pricks on the side of his neck from using trans-drugs!!! HOW EVIL!

The drawing in the top right corner shows some experimentation with the idea of making a character with two conjoined heads, or with two faces. The two center eyes are very distorted as they have been pushed together, and have therefore gone blind. I think I'll definitely make my character have two faces.

I don't really like the bottom two alien faces - they are too plain.

I thought about giving my character tentacles as arms, or perhaps just one arm could be a tentacle, but I think that it would be better if he'd just have one arm bigger than the other. A tentacle arm would make walking very difficult and therefore also very difficult to animate!

I like the arm I drew here, with the long nails. I think this kind of arm would suit the alien head in the top left corner of the page.

I also drew some goat legs to experiment with the different bone structure and joints, but I don't think this will suit my alien. I'd rather have him be smooth and hairless, and I think, as it is with my ideas, the character will already be hard enough to animate!

On this page I drew a simple gesture drawing to show the extent of the hunched/slouched back/posture that I want my character to have. Also, note how the legs have to bend to keep the character standing up - this is perhaps a good reason for me to give my character human legs - or mutated humanoid legs!

The drawing of the chest is just supposed to show how one side isn't in proportion with the other - perhaps caused by the character's terrible posture, or his horrible mutations. This should be particularly evident in the 'frontal view' drawing of my character.

The sketch of the alien below the chest was just another experimentation with potential alien ears, but again I'm not happy with them.

I think I might make my character have 4 arms as well, just as another sign of his mutation - and it would make him look a little less human, and possibly more interesting.

This is an image I drew, based on a few aspects of the aliens above.

I don't really like the way his elongated head looks, nor his ears, but I again like the idea of him having 4 arms and 2 legs.

In this drawing I made him have an upright posture and a fat tummy, but I think I like my hunched back, skinny alien idea better.

Also, I drew the goat legs to see how they'd suit an alien character, but I also don't really like the way they look.

I think he looks awkward enough without his legs adding to the craziness.

I think I'll just try to forget about this drawing!

I think I was possibly watching Star Wars when I decided to draw this character.

He doesn't really share many features of the aliens above - he has no arms or legs, but looks like a big fat slug.

At least he has the elongated head!!

No, I think this was another failure.

Best stick to a basic human body I think!

Again, I combined several of the features I had started exploring in the above illustrations in this drawing.

This alien, with the must have elongated head leans to one side due to his having a tentacle as an arm.

he also has some strange fungus or something growing on that shoulder and even partially on his face.

His chest has sunk lower on that side of the body too (to show the impact of his heavy load).

I used the arm I liked above as well in this image, which seems quite normal in comparison to his massive other tentacle arm. Although it is a nice comparison, I think I'd still prefer to give him four arms similar to the one on the left of his body (our right) and perhaps make them different sizes.

I also experimented with the goat legs again, but I think that they look way too awkward.

Maybe it's time to forget about the goat legs!

I don't really like this character design. I think that it looks pretty silly, and would definitely be near impossible for me to even begin to animate!

Here I decided to play around with one of the heads designed on a previous page above. It seems way too cutesy for the world he lives in though, but I thought it might be fun to try to make a mutated, elongated-head, chubby alien.

I think that's all I really need to say about this drawing - it basically doesn't suit the world I've created.

My alien should be more human-like but mutated.

This guy looks a bit like an evil teletubby elephant monster.

I thought that maybe taking a completely different path might pay off.

This alien wears a tattered and ripped uniform with a scary mask.

I thought that you could turn the semi-circular eyes to show emotion, but on second thoughts, I don't think this will be enough.

Also, I'd prefer for him to be more naked so that I can show how his mutated body really looks and moves.

Clothes hide too much.

This drawing is basically the same as one of the first ones above. I really liked it and thought that I should draw it again to see whether it feels right or not.

It actually felt pretty good.

I like this design the most so far.

Again, I'm not sure about that kind of mouth, or the ears, and I don't really like the spikey things on his head, but I think this kind of alien, especially with the elongated head done in a more realistic way will be the best way for me to go. This alien's skull was based off an ancient Mayan skull found by scientists which was also elongated in this way.

I tried drawing the goat legs again (I know, I know) - and yes, it definitely doesn't work.

More human-like legs will definitely be the way to go.

Also, he needs a more curved back and perhaps 4 arms.

The final character design:

This is the character I ended up designing based on my research, inspiration and experimental sketches.

I still haven't exactly decided whether he should be good or evil, or what his deal is, but I am happy with the result.

This is my good copy 'frontal view' drawing using fineliner, which I will then scan into the computer to colour in.

I have obviously drawn my character with two conjoined heads - playing on my old work and the idea of my character having some sort of split personality disorder as I discussed in my previous blog.

I decided that perhaps his two center eyes should be blind - maybe this is shown through the use of a different colour in later stages. This would somewhat make sense, as the conjoining of two bodies would ultimately destroy or alter certain bodily functions. I think it also makes him a bit more mysterious and interesting.

He is also hunched backed and has 4 arms, one of which is missing a hand. I think this just adds something interesting to him and could perhaps be evidence of a rough life.

I thought that perhaps he is a conjoined twin (hence the other face and two extra arms), so to make this even clearer, I added 'bones' to the back part of the joints in his legs. These would probably help to strengthen his legs so that they can carry the weight of the upper body at least partially effectively, and could also maybe assist with jumping or some other physical activity. Aside from all that, I think that it also makes him look a little more interesting and a bit stranger and more unique.

He has a loin cloth to show that he is perhaps not well off, or maybe that he is in touch with nature. On the artistic side of things, I wanted him to be mostly naked so that I could show his disfigured and mutated body in a more obvious way. Also, I don't want to have to draw alien reproductive organs. This was a good solution to all my problems =).

The rest of him is basically in the form and proportions of a human or humanoid creature. I think that this is fine, as it highlights his 'stranger' aspects. Also, I think that I changed him enough from an easily recognizable human form to create a character that would be considered 'alien'.

I had a bit of trouble drawing the 'side view' of my alien character. I thought that the most important thing with this view would be to show the curve of his back and his horrible posture which is meant to give him some personality.

I also used this view to show more clearly the 'bones' or whatever they are on his legs. Perhaps, looking at the way they seem to make his legs bend, this is one of the reasons why the character is hunched back/ slouching all the time... maybe they don't stretch very well and after years of walking with his legs bent, the rest of the body started following the example.

(What is wrong with this text?! I don't know why it's underlined =S)

Anyway, even more difficult than trying to draw the character from the side, was the 'back view'.

I found this especially hard as I had to somehow show that he is hunched back and has his knees bent.

After a lot of consideration, I drew lines extending from the 'front/side view' characters' limbs and main points of change from one limb or body segment to the next onto a new page, and used these as guidelines for where to place body parts for this view. I think that the technique worked relatively well as he definitely seems to have a hunched back, but I think that the overall drawing isn't of the same standard as the 'frontal view' drawing.

This, however, was still my best attempt and with lack of time and still so much to do, I decided that it would be best to accept it as it is and move on.

With this drawing, I really tried to show the back of the head in relation to the back, which i wanted to make as disfigured as possible. It was also a good way to show where the 4 arms sit in relation to each other.

Now that I'm done with the basic drawings of my characters, it is time to scan them in and then colour them using photoshop (I have never used Flash before, and my Illustrator skills are very limited, so using either of these programs at this time seems WAY too daunting!).

Photoshop Colouring - Final characters!

I don't quite know why I had decided to make my character purple, but I like the way it looks in the images below! I think that it was probably just to really push the fact that he isn't meant to look very human, and there is something quite exotic about that specific shade of purple.

I basically used 3 shades of purple to make him look somewhat more realistic and nicely rendered. The two darker shades were applied using a lower opacity and higher softness brush. I then blended them roughly together with the smudge tool on a low opacity to get rid of any clear changes of colour which made him seem too 2D and rough for my tastes.

I thought that this wasn't enough, so I used the smudge tool to give him the strange plasticy texture that he seems to have (especially obvious when looking at his arms and legs). it also helped in highlighting the odd bumps on his body, and just made him look overall more impressive and interesting.

Again, when choosing the colouring for his nails - in this case, blood red, it was purely chosen for its strangeness and to add to the character's non-human qualities. I think that the brightness of the red I chose really grabs the viewer's attention.

The colour of the loin cloth was basically just chosen to be an off green-brown as it is so easily identified as being a dirty colour. I think that it makes him seem quite poor, or environmental but who knows, maybe it is of the highest fashion and expense on his planet!

Lastly, the colour of his two center eyes are an off pinky colour. It contrasts nicely with the black of his two good eyes, and seems to imply that he is blind. It is an almost fleshy colour and seems sickly. I think that this really works well.

Overall, I am very happy with my character development here. The next step would be to decide on who he is, his history, his mission, his alignment in terms of good vs. evil etc, and then to put it all together on my character sheet!