Week 1
06/03/2025
Class Mindmaps of Ideas
Prior to starting my FMP, I had already danced around the idea of potentially developing a visual novel of sorts for my final outcome. This is because I am quite fond of "Ace Attorney" a detective-like visual novel series where you as the player get to interact with the characters and environment around you to collect clues and solve a mystery.
This was also largely because I did not feel too confident in my ability to produce 3D assets, especially when it came to 3D environments, and thought I could not produce a project that would be up to standard if I went through that kind of route.
The purpose of this mind-mapping activity was to explore different concepts and ideas that we could use in our own independent project.
We were given four short prompts to work with — "Hope", "Joy", "Fear" and "Society".
The two slides I believe I got the most out of were the "Fear" and "Joy" slides. This is because these are generally two widely discussed themes as they are very common in our day-to-day lives. Everyone experiences both joy and fear in their lives, especially in the content they consume.
The first slide I looked over and added my own input on was "Joy". I added a picture of a popular character from the "Pokémon" franchise which is none other than "Pikachu".
My thought process behind this is quite simple, tons of people rely on media such as videogames as a form of escapism or source of dopamine. Many people take comfort in their favourite game or character and it is an easy way to achieve some sort of happiness or fulfilment by engaging with said media.
The other slide I took interest in was the "Fear" slide. This is because I think fear is such an interesting theme to explore which may seem obvious given the countless different media texts which rely on it for their horror content.
Fear is something everyone experiences at some point though for vastly different reasons. What scares someone may differ from person to person, though there are lots of overlap that creators such as game developers take advantage from. My input was largely surrounding the idea of psychological horror, as I believe it has potentially to be quite detrimental for someone's state of mind.
Lots of people experience fear which is tied to their mental health, both rational and irrational fears can cause someone to do inexplicable things.
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Course Review
The aim of this course review was to assess where we currently are with our own skillset and general capabilities and how we are going to move forward and work on our weaknesses and apply all we've learned onto our final project.
Upon reflecting on my skillset, I came to the conclusion that pursing a 2D game route would best suit all I've felt confident in and get enjoyment from working on. That being said, there is much to improve in a short time which I talked about in further detail within the document below itself.
Week 2
04/03/25
As the second week into our FMP began, I was still quite unsure whether or not I was going to pursue my original murder-mystery visual novel idea.
This is largely because we were given such a flexible brief so the possibilities for a final outcome are quite close to endless, not to mention I am a very indecisive person by nature when it comes to creative matters. I wanted to ensure I had given enough consideration to other possible avenues before committing to an idea I wasn't really keen with later down the line.
Mini-Project - Thought Process
Thankfully, it was during this week that we were assigned a new project to help us narrow down our options. This project was simply titled as a mini-project with a focus on making a 3D character model from scratch using the photogrammetry technique.
My entire technical process and more in-depth explanation is written down in the "Research & Experimentation" section of my blogger. This next section will focus on my creative thoughts and feelings regarding the experiment itself and how I moved forward from it.
The entire process of this mini-project was a fun experience and although I ultimately ended up deciding to not go ahead and use the technique within my own work, it did spark some new potential avenues I could take for my project moving forward.
While I have expressed I do not feel confident making my own 3D models and ultimately working with a 3D game engine, after some consideration, maybe ruling out 3D entirely could be a waste.
For instance, I am considering the idea of using 3D environments in order to help me illustrate 2D backgrounds for my game with an improved sense of perspective. I may not feel confident sculpting my own character models but building a room and referencing free-to-use assets (with proper citation) within Blender and using it as a base to draw from is far more doable.
Alternatively, games like "The Sims" offer a great deal of decorative assets and tools to build with and in the interest of time, could be a faster way to build rooms and hallways that I could use for my final project. I looked into this further and it turns out, it is quite a common practice! A lot of independent creators utilise games of this sort as a tool to enhance the speed of their workflow as well as to further practice and hone their skills.
I was pleasantly surprised to find out that even "Minecraft", a popular sandbox game that has dominated the internet for over a decade now can be an efficient tool for this same purpose.
This following video is by independent creator "Inspyr Arts". She graciously shares her tips and tricks as to how you can use Minecraft as a tool to learn 2 point perspective so that you can apply it to your own artworks!
She shows how we can tinker with the game's built-in field of view feature to obtain different vanishing points to achieve different effects such as a fish-eye lens perspective.
Normally, learning how to draw a grid in perspective is a quite rigorous and tedious process. To quote this creator from their other video on 2-point perspective, you are usually required to learn to "mathematically make the grid recede at an exponential rate". For people that aren't exactly the most fond of maths, or even simply that proficient at it such as myself, actually learning it the "regular" way can be daunting. Hence why I am thankful these alternatives exist!
In terms of documenting my work, I could use "OBS", (streaming and recording software) to record as I go and export the final recording onto Sony Vegas (video editing software) to create a timelapse of the entire process with notations.
Art Experimentation
As my main goal this far was to make a visual novel-styled game, I wanted to settle down on an art style that I felt confident working with throughout the entirety of the project.
As I am a huge fan of the "Ace Attorney" franchise, I felt that it would be neat to look over some of the official promotional artwork (as well as in-game sprites) and pick out specific pieces to do a small observational drawing study.
I am the most comfortable drawing feminine characters so I opted to use a headshot of a Trucy Wright's in-game sprite as well a promotional artwork of Pearl Fey.
The artist behind these artworks is none other than Tatsuro Iwamoto, a Japanese freelance artist that has been credited in every single official Ace Attorney game to this day. He was original part of Capcom's team division responsible for the development of "Resident Evil - Biohazard" prior to being reassigned to work on the first game belonging to the Ace Attorney franchise.
This is because Iwamoto had expressed he was passionate about working on 2D illustrations which ultimately resulted with him teaming up with fellow artist Kumiko Suekane to develop every illustration within the "Ace Attorney Trilogy". While Kumiko Suekane was the project's main art lead for the first game and took over the designs of the more prominent characters of these games, Tatsuro Iwamoto originally took over designing each of the side characters.
When the second game of the first trilogy came out, every new character present in that game had been designed completely by Tatsuro Iwamoto. An example of this is Pearl Fey, one of the character's I picked for my study.
As you can see below, I mainly focused on studying where Tatsuro Iwamoto placed his shadows as I personally struggle with rendering and adding depth to my own illustrations. During this study, I noticed I also seem to struggle significantly with proportions as I seem to not know where exactly to place each feature to accurate replicate what I'm looking at.
Upon completing this study, I came to the conclusion that with enough references and trial-and-error, I would be capable of completing a series of simple 2D character sprites that I could use in my final outcome.
Of course, I couldn't just plagiarise the designs of Ace Attorney and I ultimately wanted to develop my own style and designs that I could be proud of. The next screenshot below is the outcome of a small character design session I had independently of potential characters I could feature in my game.
I aimed to create two female characters with relatively simple outfits so that I could produce their in-game sprites as efficiently as possible. I wanted to ensure that if I did decide to include simple animations within these sprites that I would not have to worry about redrawing lots of details over and over again as that would cause time to stack up quite rapidly.
All artworks made by me were made using Procreate on my iPad. These designs were my first ever iterations of these girls who at this point in time have not been assigned their final name.
The green-haired girl in particular was designed with a frog-like motif in mind hence why I made sure her facial features, especially her mouth, would get that idea across.
Week 3
11/03/25
As the third week rolled in, I still was unsure of my original visual novel idea. I was worried about whether or not a visual novel with minimal amounts of mechanics would reflect nicely on all I've been working towards so far as well as my overall grade.
I came to the conclusion that I felt this way because I was not confident that my writing and illustration skills would be enough to keep the player engaged through the entire course of the game as the reality is that visual novels aren't necessarily the most impressive to most players. I wanted to push myself further and try to be innovative with this concept without going way over my head with an unrealistic idea.
When I realised that I was stumped and unsure of how to proceed, I redirected my attention to other areas of my FMP that I had ended up neglecting due to my fixation on this issue.
Visual Novel Study - Survey
I decided to conduct a survey to collect data on what people personally thought of visual novel and discover which aspects of visual novels were commonly disliked amongst the average audience.
I handed over this survey to some of my college peers as well as some of my own friends so that I could get back answers as quickly as possible. I'm also quite a shy person, especially face-to-face so the thought of going around and personally asking strangers to complete a survey is daunting to say the least.
Below is a screenshot containing the highlights of the results of my survey:
While no one flat out answered that they dislike visual novels, most people said that their enjoyment of the genre vastly depends on the specific visual novel they are playing.
When asked which aspects they dislike about the genre, people gave answers such as "the lack of MC (main character) appearances" and that the gameplay comes off rather mundane given the lack of competition, action and drawn-out dialogue interactions and overall narrative.
The last question of the survey was regarding their opinion on anime. This is because anime features art styles that I am personally drawn to and would enjoy drawing. Most people answered that they enjoy it.
1500 word Essay - OCD
I had been assigned an essay on a topic of my choice and was advised to use that activity to see if it would spark an idea in my head as to how I could potentially connect that topic with my final outcome.
I brainstormed a few topics, such as sexism in online gaming spaces or the effect that trauma has on an individual long-term and presented those ideas to a couple of my classmates for their input.
In a way, I guess my personal connection with this topic made me more passionate about the topic at hand and motivated me to work at a higher standard. Within the document, I made sure to write down my own knowledge and perspective of the condition and backed it up with secondary sources I found whilst researching online.
Whilst writing down my thoughts and researching on the condition further, an idea sparked in my head that I quite liked. Rather than just writing a character with the condition, what if I made mechanics inspired by OCD symptoms? That way, I could make my game far more interactive and use those mechanics to reflect the frustration that OCD patients experience on a daily basis without simply spoon-feeding that information to the player.
Of course, I needed some primary research data that I could review and reflect on this idea further so I conducted a small, quick survey with some peers and personal friends.
Within the survey, I wrote down a few mechanics I thought of that would potentially be of use when making my game. My goal was ultimately to create some sort of rage game with the sole purpose of enraging whoever is attempting to beat it.
Some mechanics include having rhythm-based movement mechanics and sudden QTEs (quick time events) that would cause the player to lose progress in the event they accidentally hit the wrong input. This would be accompanied by occasional dialogue from a narrator that would taunt the player as they have to restart.
When discussing this idea directly with my friends, the idea seemed to be well-received which encouraged me to pursue this as a final outcome.
The document below contains the entirety of my survey, including a bibliography for all my secondary research sources:
Working on my Pecha Kucha
Admittedly, I was quite all over the place when planning my presentation. I am not very confident in my public speaking capabilities, I lack great confidence in that area. I was also quite stressed out due to outside factors out of my control, not to mention I was still struggling to not fixate on the more niche parts of my FMP.
It was very important to me that my Pecha Kucha was personalised in a way that would reflect who I am as a person. That's why I took time to make some little animated sprites of myself that I could sprinkle in every now and then throughout the presentation.
These were very simple and quick to make as they consist of only 3 frames that are set to ping-pong to create the illusion of movement. I also liquified the line art slightly to make a more whimsical effect.
For the overall presentation visuals, my goal was to make it slightly overwhelming on the eyes. This is because it was meant to reflect my game's topic, OCD, and how it is just a disturbing condition. While my art style is quite simple and not threatening, I still tried my best to make the movement be ever-so-slightly overstimulating but not to an extent that it is unwatchable.
Here is the full presentation:
Working on my Contextual Analysis - Ace Attorney
Given that I had already conducted my own short study of Ace Attorney's art style, it was only natural that I ended up conducting a contextual analysis on the franchise itself.
(It is worth noting that I wasn't able to complete the entire of my contextual analysis by the time I had to present my Pecha Kucha. Fortunately, I have been quite familiar with this franchise over the last few years so I was able to still accurately talk about the game despite this.)
I started off the document by outlining what exactly the Ace Attorney franchise is about, when it was released and how it came to be as big as it is. This is a screenshot taken from my document:
I decided to pick out some of the key mechanics from almost every game within the franchise that I could potentially benefit from applying to my own project. This is mostly because I personally quite like how the Ace Attorney games are in terms of gameplay, even if they can be quite story heavy.
The main thing I wanted to take away from this contextual analysis was actually the visuals of these games. Specifically, I wanted my own game's UI to have a similar sleek but straight-forward look as the UI featured within the Ace Attorney remasters. It is extremely important to me that the user interface of my game is as intuitive as possible to avoid the player getting confused or overwhelmed.
Not just that, I quite enjoyed how the game "Miles Edgeworth - Investigations" handled their cutscene illustrations. Rather than having them animating a frame-by-frame cutscene, they decided to instead have a still illustration for the entirety of the runtime. This allowed them not only to cut down on production time but they were able to add as many details to the illustration as they wanted to.
As you can see in this example below, they took the time to properly render each piece of clothing and added plenty of detail to the background whilst making sure the two characters in frame stood out as much as possible.
I made sure to go into more detail about this within the document itself but the general sentiment I want to get across that I love the art direction featured within the Ace Attorney games, as I have mentioned many times by now throughout my reflective journal, and would love to work towards a similar standard moving forward.
Of course, I am miles away from reaching this goal and won't realistically be able to reach this sort of standard within this project itself but I hope to keep improving and working towards this level of quality in the future.
My final contextual analysis document can be read below:
Week 4
18/03/25
During the course of this week, I decided to redirect my attention into developing the visual side of my game preparation.
This includes experimenting with animation techniques as well as further developing character designs I could potentially move forward with within the final build of my game project.
Character Design Iterations
The first character I wanted to revisit was my green-haired girl I mentioned at the end of my 'Week 2' entry. I decided to nickname her "Hopps". This is how I will refer to her within the rest of this current entry just for the sake of clarity.
I first designed Hopps with a frog motif in mind. In my head, I wanted her voice to be quite nasally to mimic the resonance of a frog's croaking. This sort of ties in with her personality as frogs are usually described to have three kinds of personalities, those being relaxed, bold or cowardly. This is based on a frog study conducted based on the different kinds of species that frogs can be born as.
For instance, a poison-dart frog is said to have a bold dominant personality trait. They are described as "highly toxic, poisonous" frogs with the ability of killing roughly 10 adult men with the toxins finds within just one of these 1 ounce frogs. That being said, it is only natural that predators tend to stray away from these individuals, not to mention their brightly coloured appearance are known signs of potential toxin danger to fellow animals.
It's my own assumption that this is a contributing factor as to why these frogs are naturally bolder than some other frog species. They have the confidence that they are feared and are more willing to explore things that peak their curiosity.
For my design, however, I only wished to reflect the personality found in the more stereotypical-looking frog that most people think of when they think of one. This may be an unusual choice as I agree with the notion that it may lack creativity on my part though there are a few reasons for this!
If I decided to go with the story-heavy route featuring a more rich and complex narrative, I would prefer my design to reflect the nuance and complexity that story would portray. This would cause me to want to spend more time on this character, perfecting not only her appearance but tying the species I based her on with her personality and character arc.
This unfortunately would mean I would have to give the same care and consideration to other characters I would like to feature, meaning a longer design process just within the narrative and its characters alone which would take a huge portion of my project's allocated time. This is simply just not feasible within this time constriction and would cause the project to inevitably be unfinished and unpolished.
Not only that, since I decided to concentrate my efforts into making a rage inducing game, it is only natural that my efforts are poured into different sectors of the project so that it is completed within the allocated deadline.
The final reason is a more personal one as I quite like relaxed and silly characters. This ties in nicely with the goal of my game as it is not meant to take itself very seriously and would benefit from some comedic value. This is why I opted to base her on a generic green-frog, which are described to have a relaxed dominant personality trait.
In her original design, the frog-motif was laid on quite thick due to the big frog print on her shirt. While I did think it was cute, I found it a bit unnecessary to keep in her final design which resulted into me changing the top entirely and giving her a stripped tank top instead. I also figured a summer look would tie in pretty nicely since frogs usually spend their time sitting around near ponds or similar bodies of water.
That was by far the only real major change from her previous look.
Within her original design and something I decided to keep was her orb-like hair tie. This was inspired by Maya Fey's design from 'Ace Attorney'. Nothing too deep behind this artist choice, it was just something I personally like about Maya's design and wanted to take inspiration from and carry over onto one of my own designs.
Something I changed was the metal pendant hanging from her neck. I didn't quite like how it looked next to all of her other features and found that it looked a bit out of place. Although, I did think her neck area looked quite empty without anything there so I decided to give her a necklace that matches her orb-like hair tie.
Below I included a simple, annotated reference sheet to compare the old and new design to each other:
This second design that I will go over is actually a brand-new design I made during one of my classes while I was still able to physically attend college.
Unlike my previous frog-like design, I decided to rely on my artistic intuition rather than trying to find a reason as to why she looked a certain way from the get-go. I figured that trying a different approach could benefit the kind of result I achieved so I can find out what better brings out my creativity.
With that in mind, this design was conjured up within roughly 30 minutes. I wanted to make a design that featured the colour red as its primary colour and worked from there.
I associate red with a fiery personality so when drawing her, I wanted her to have a bright and content face. I didn't necessarily want her to be stuck-up or aggressive but rather confident, up-beat, perhaps a little reckless in nature in a positive way.
I decided to give her some yellow highlights on her hair as it sort of reminded me of fire. I ended up liking that colour combination so I decided to keep it. I also gave her hair these sort of swoopy spikes to further emphasise her personality.
When designing her outfit, I started thinking of red things I could associate with her that would fit the colour palette. I thought that a chilli pepper would tie in nicely with the fiery theme I had going on so I also decided to add it. The green was a nice addition as it stands out and pops quite nicely without being too overwhelming.
I think generally having three main colours within a design is efficient so I stuck to this rule when designing her.
Below is the outcome of this short design session, I wanted her outfit to remain generally casual to fit the college theme I am going for in my project.
Overall, this carefree approach was not as horrid as I feared it could have been as I am pleased with the outcome that came from it.
Though, I do not see myself trying this out within more complex narratives as I enjoy putting more careful thought into my designs and I'm unsure if I could get away with making sensical designs with this approach.
I do think that this approach could be useful when considering making characters that don't exactly belong to a particular universe. Something I personally like to look into from time to time is the "Adopt Community" which consists of freelance artists that make original character designs that are either auctioned off to the highest bidder or sold outright with a set price.
This is a way for freelance artists to have some income as each adoptable is sold with a straight-forward TOS (terms of service) which make the buyer be contractually abided to act within those terms to ensure the artist retains their rights in relation to the product sold.
It is common for their to be add-ons if the buyer wishes to use the work commercially but this is always included upfront within the terms of service before purchase. Of course, a vast amount of adoptable characters include this commercial fee within the base price, especially if that's the purpose they are marketed for (e.g. part of a brand or virtual identity).
All artwork that I've completed myself and displayed within this blog has been made using my iPad. I have decided to rely mostly on Procreate as a drawing software as I've grown quite comfortable with it and it's the software I am the most confident in using as it is very intuitive.
Character Animation Brainstorm
During another one of my classes, I began brainstorming how I wanted the visual novel segments to go like.
I think that visualising how you want something to look before attempting to properly execute it can really cut down on production time as you won't dedicate time to something you end up not liking the look of. It would be a hassle to have to redo an entire section if I was unsure I was content with it, especially considering the deadline approaching rapidly so I thought it'd be best to be safe than sorry.
A crucial point that I took from my contextual analysis on "Ace Attorney" was that I was fond of the UI featured in that franchise. In particular, I really enjoy how the "Miles Edgeworth | Investigations" remastered tackled their UI and took the most inspiration from it in particular.
Here is a screenshot taken from the second game featured within that spinoff's remaster:
As you can see, it features a sleek dialogue box, not too basic yet not detailed to the point it'd be difficult to replicate. I quite enjoy how sharp the shapes are as it is essentially composed of mostly straight lines and trapezoids.
With this in mind, I attempted to sketch out a similar dialogue box, concentrating purely on the shapes rather than the content inside them.
As for the character featured, I pictured them having some sort of idle animation while they wait for the player to proceed to the next dialogue. I opted to have a simple head bopping animation to exaggerate a breathing idle animation. I wanted the rest of the body to also bop down along with the head as some sort of secondary action as that's something I picked up from studying the twelve principles of animation.
Here is the outcome of that short brainstorming session:
Live2D Experimentation
Within my 'Research and Experimentation' section of my blog, I talked about my process whilst working on my experimentation on using Live2D animation for my final major project.
All of my technical process can be found on that page so I will be using the rest of this entry to discuss my thought and creative process behind this independent study.
I find Live2D animation to be a refreshing change of pace from traditional animation. Frame-by-frame animation requires a lot time and a type of skill that I am not sufficient in which led me to pursue alternatives.
I have a personal attachment to this particular animation technique as it is commonly used for those that which to pursue activities as a virtual creator.
This is to say, it is a popular technique used to develop character models used within the "Vtuber Community". It consists of content creators that use a virtual avatar instead of their real-life face to preserve their privacy or simply for the joy of playing a character.
This is a technique I wish to perfect because as I move forward in my life, I want to be able to become a freelance artist that can offer these services for those who wish to remain anonymous online whilst still sharing their passion for content creation and other things alike. I would also like to attempt this form of content creation at some point so having knowledge about the assets I'm using would bring me a long way.
Not just that, I never wanted to be stuck doing just one thing for the rest of my life. The thought of having a range of services I can offer as an artist is something that has always appealed to me.
This technique has many uses, for instance, I can still pursue a route within game design and rely on Live2D animation to create character models. These would be ideal when making idle animations or simply bouncy and flowy movement. It is also possible to make looping animations which can be used for backgrounds, title screens and general UI!
A logical advantage of using a Live2D character model within my FMP is that it can be reused for many different scenes. Since it is capable of changing its expressions and move around, it would save me a considerable about of time that I would normally have to spend into redrawing character sprites.
Cutting as many corners as I can whilst not sacrificing quality is the most important thing to me as I don't just want a finished project, I want it to be done at an adequate standard. Anything I work on is something I wish to be proud of and I hope to keep that sentiment for each and every project I am part of in the future.
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