Senna Stakis - PROFESSIONAL LIFE PRACTICE 2

INT- ROOM 903 23 - 01 - 25

SURPRISE.

Yeah, that's exactly what we received in class today.

It's a nice surprise, but you're probably wondering from who?

AN INDUSTRY BRIEF? YOU MUST BE JOKING WE ARE SPOILT.

Yes, it was an industry brief led by none other than Lady Power.

THE BRIEF IN QUESTION:

Come up with a design for a game themed around a randomly picked theme and genre.

THE RANDOMLY PICKED THEME AND GENRE IN QUESTION:

Dream & Platformer

Over the next 10 weeks, as a team, we will work together to create a fun and functional demo and a GDD.

However, before this can begin, we need a studio name, a mission statement and a logo.

WE ARE MOONSHOT!

I liked the sound of Moonshot Studios because, despite things (like the moon) being so out of reach, you miss all the shots you don't take.

I pitched the idea with the mission statement "To Inspire Dreamers, Of All Ages, Everywhere". and the team was sold.

I quickly whipped up a logo, and the rest is history!

Over the coming weeks, you will hopefully see me flourish, fail, and potentially say some nasty things about Kier Starmer raising student fees.

As an Environment Artist in the team, I will try to work outside my comfort zone to create visually appealing designs for the game.

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In order to get to that point, we need the game idea; here are mine that I contributed towards the team.

We all agreed to do 10 ideas each and combine them to make 100+ ideas.

My personal favourites are Hypnosis (number 6) and The Sandman's Apprentice (number 10); I think both of these ideas have pretty good potential to be pretty fun games with nice art styles and strong narratives.

I hope that one of my ideas resonates with the team going forward, but we will see.

INT- ROOM 903 30 - 01 - 25

So we started class today by assigning roles in our groups

I quickly whipped up a more visual representation so that we could easily see who is doing what.

Last week, we were tasked to come up with 100 ideas, as a group, some of us put in ideas and unfortunately some didn't, but what can we do.

After our Job Roles task, we had to come up with three one page GDD's but first as a group we had to narrow it down to three.

We didn't have everyone in our group this week so whilst trying to be considerate with what ideas we had, we narrowed it down to these 3 games and created the respective GDD's

As far as I am aware, we have not decided of the three which one is going to be the official game we design.

INT- ROOM 903 06 - 01 - 25

I wasn't present for this class either, but I was trying to keep as active as possible on our group discord during the class hours.

The team updated me about what we have to design for next week's lesson.

Whilst I understood what to do, I didn't have much to go off on.

We decided to combine our final two voted games

My Pitch, The Trials of Hypnos and Paige's Pitch, The Ghost Detective Game

It was decided that we would have 3 levels and each artist would design a level in their chosen art style, that way it can show off the ability of that artist.

I was quite fond of a simple art style but still one that can be quite impactful, I found joy in looking at a game called Night In the Woods and decided to break down this art style for my level.

Environments are my more in my comfort zone but because we didn't have a structured narrative yet, I felt I couldn't properly design a level.

So I started with trying to break down a character from night in the woods.

Once we get around to designing a character, I will apply these fundamentals to the character unless we decide to go for a different art style.

At this point, I still couldn't think of environments because we he hadn't yet come up with a narrative to build some around, so I took matters into my own hands and wrote up the narrative and potential levels.

I organised a group meeting and presented the idea to the group. Together we expanded the ideas and made changes and it was pretty well-received all around.

on the left is our call and the right is our shared workspace where the team have been adding notes and images to help us visualise everything.

INT- ROOM 903 13 - 01 - 25

Today we had to present our game and pitch our new update and progress to the class. For the majority of this class I was delegating tasks to the team to create the pitch document whilst also trying to work on character design since we hadn't exactly come up with one yet.

I also worked on some environments earlier in the week for our level one but we decided not to demo this level in the end. It was still quite fun to conceptualise and break down environmental elements to create my own piece.

During class I also dabbled with character design.

Since our main art style is inspired by night in the woods, I experimented using the night in the woods character fundamentals breakdown I created in the previous weeks to create my human character Hypnos!

It was quite challenging to design this character even though the shape language is fairly simple.

I struggle with proportions and poses.

I used the mood board here to help come up with a design.

INT- ROOM 903 20 - 01 - 25

I would have hoped by week five we would have more to show but there has been some challenges that have affected our progress. Nonetheless, I took matters into my owns hands and started to focus on level design.

On the left is a zoomed-out version of the level we had planned to demo and on the right is the interior.

Since I didn't have much indication on how the level was meant to be, I really left it up to my imagination and decided to visualise it first then incorporate game elements as I went on. I realise this probably wasn't the most productive way to go about it but at the time, I wanted to draw and felt this was the right way of contributing.

After this, I spoke with quite a few people seeking advice for the direction of the demo and the project and what I need to do / what exactly to demo with the time constrictions we have.

Below is a block out of the third level, both the dream world and the real world.

Below are the two world elements separated for a better understanding.

The level fosters exploration, puzzling and platforming.

Based on these blockouts and our demo in mind, I tasked Finn to start drawing the dream world version of the factory tower whilst I focused on other areas.

Once I had the time, I also replicated his drawing but in the real world style.

DREAM WORLD REAL WORLD

I also decided it was about time we had a logo for the game.

During our formative week (Week 6) I plan on developing the character design, creating a list of assets and start designing the art bible for hand-in.

INT- ROOM 903 27 - 01 - 25

Week six is the week I wanted to have most things in order and make sure the team was on track. Since I gave a foundation to the project I wanted them to build off it but it seemed like there were still some difficulties, so I made some guideline checklists to help set them up further.

I desperately wanted to focus on the art side of things so now since I feel I had given the group enough to go off of without my input, I started to design our character Hypnos.

I diverted a little bit here, since I had done a rush job of the character design before I decided to maybe research into alternative styles / colours.

Although, I tried to maintain the original fundamentals of the night in the woods style and keep it more humanoid.

On the left, you will see variations of Hypnos and then the design I was happy with in the centre. Over the weekend leading into week 7 I decided to work on a character turnaround and colour concepts. This entire process felt like it took a million years. Although, I was quite proud of the work produced.

I will now work on poses / expressions for a character sheet and then I will start to expand on other art elements of the game like environments and assets.

INT- ROOM 903 07- 03 - 25

I have been more focused on the art side of things for this project now than I have been able to be before.

I wasn't able to be present for this class today but I made sure that didn't stop me from contributing work. I have been really keen on starting the art bible now since we are coming to our last month and I know this time will fly by.

Since I had started the character, I wanted to get that character sheet out of the way.

I also wanted to kick start some of the work for the environments
I already dabbled a little with our Level 1 design and Finn & I have both visualised Level 3 so I decided to start with Level 2.

Finn has continued to work on level 3 to further develop the environment sheet.

Level 2 is set in a grand theatre and so I started to visualise that along with the backstage area which is a playable and walkable area for the player to find clues and investigate.

I also created a poster for decoration purposes but also to add to contribute to narrative since the victim who died in this level was the woman in white, died during one of her performances.

Over the coming weeks, I will continue to do more art and create more assets and put them on an environment sheet for the art bible.

INT- MY ROOM 04 - 04 - 25

For the sake of simplicity and for the fact that I have neglected my journal whilst I have been locked in the last few weeks, here is a collection of the work I have been doing since week seven.

WORKED ON SOME UI!

Title Screen & Clue Indication pickup!