CASE 1: Second Entry

It has come to the end of the first case. And about time, because this is due tomorrow :B

The Actual, Finished Character (Maybe)

Shaph. He's just thrillled to be here. Practically dancing with joy. Now in PNG for your transparent enjoyment.

The first case was pretty fun, and all that remains is my finished product as well as typing out what my actual concept will be. Drawing a character in Flash goes fast if you don't care to put too much detail in it. Though I personally love drawing in Flash, I struggle to get the depth in Flash that I do in Photoshop. While as in Photoshop, I prefer colouring without linework, this isn't so easy to do in Flash and would take me way too much time. I decided that rather than do my drawing from scratch, I would use my earlier drawing in photoshop as a starting point.

Step by step for funtimes. You can also see my layers in Flash here. One for lineart and only one for colouring as well as linework. This is to make colouring easier in Flash, where you can 'cheat' a little when adding shading.

 
I prefer drawing with the Brush Tool in Flash because it has a wonderful effect called 'smoothing'. It's like lens flare, or vector sex. However, colouring is still a bit of a problem for me in Flash, but a clever third year student showed us a really cool way to do it fast and make it look good. I threw together a simple tutorial on how to do it because... well, I like making tutorials. Don't judge me.

Pretty basic stuff, but as a bit of a n00b in Flash, this helped me out a lot.

Some of the shading I have done without using this technique, but only for the small details. Doing it like this keeps my lineart nice and pretty even if I don't make the lineart a separate layer. I do like keeping a copy of the lineart on a layer of its own, however.

Now, I might change Shaph's design around a little when I get started on making the actual product, as I am not entiiirely satisfied with this drawing, but we'll see when we get there.


The Concept

 For my interactive production I have in mind a game more like a visual novel. The motive of the story will be something pretty basic. Gather three of something to kill bad guy. What will hopefully make the game more interesting is that along the way, the player has to make choices that will affect the outcome of the story. I am thinking along the lines of moral choices, whether to be good or bad, and depending on what the player chooses there will be granted different bonuses in the following events.

The story will be set to a sort of post-apocalyptic themed fantasy world. I am getting inspiration from Ōkami, and Samurai Jack in particular, for something Asian with a combination of futuristic and feudal Japan. The point will be to make something visually appealing. I am thinking less animation and more detail. As I will be constructing it much like a visual novel rather than a game, it means more still images. Then I will also be able to use Photoshop for my backgrounds without causing any major lag. Fight scenes I want to properly animate, however.

Other than the technical work, the story in a visual novel will of course be of importance. I still don’t want to make it too complicated because I have a tendency to overcomplicate things and never get done.

The concept is that the ‘evil villain’ of the story, the Scream has sucked all the magic out of the land, which renders it a dead wasteland in a state near anarchy where people struggle to survive with little food and shelter.

Years after the Scream stole the magic from the world, three artefacts called the Tears of Power appear. These are the last bits of magic left in the world that the Scream does not control, and of course people fight over them. Some want them in order to defeat the Scream, some want them simply in order to survive. Shaph is a trained warrior and he, too, seeks the Tears of Power for unknown reasons.

The story will consist of three main events where Shaph finds a Tear under different circumstances. The player decides by what means he acquires them and, in the end, how he uses them.

While most visual novels carry on until the end, or at least for a great deal of time before they let the player face the risk of dying, I am thinking of adding in some fighting sequences to add some difficulty. It will mainly be a choice between different weapons against different enemies, unless I come up with something better. I have depicted Shaph with a cleaver, a sword and a staff, though I imagine the cleaver to be more of his main weapon.

I have a vague idea about what the different scenarios where he acquires the Tears will be, but I haven’t quite decided, so I won’t go into depth about them. Looking at the sketches in my previous post, you sort of get where I am going.

And that’s about as far as I have gotten with my ideas. Looking forward to the next case so I can develop this some more.


END OF CASE 1! Whoohoo!