Development diary

Development diary

• 1.
  Development Diary Advert For theadvertising planning, my group sat down and discussed the ideas that we all had and they came from very different directions at first but we were able to collaborate on an idea that used aspects from all of our individual plans to create an anti-bulling, pro-LGBT+ non- controversial advert to move away from the bad reputation the company had set for itself in some circles. We came up with a storyboard, a script and a prop list meaning we all knew what we had to do and prepare for on the day of filming. At the last moment, the group of drama students I asked to help me with this project were unavailable due to their classes and we had to switch to actors from the other media class which meant having to explain the plot line very quickly without much time for them to practice or prepare. However, we were able to make copies of the story board and the script so everyone could try to be as ready as they could when the camera started rolling. The filming went okay, the biggest issues I think were with people getting distracted and having to make sure everyone was focused on what they were meant to be doing. Once the footage had been shot it was time to move into the classroomand start the editing process, looking over all the footage we had gathered and seeing what could be used, making sure everything was in the right order in correspondence to the storyboard, experimenting with the volume to make the script loud enough. Something that I hadn’t thought about during the filming was that it was an overcast day and this meant that a lot of the footage was shot in different lighting as the clouds moved and let more or less of the sun through, so on top of getting everything into order and looking smooth, I tried to spend some time on colour correction. Advergame This project is the first time that I will be doing any kind of animating so I’m really going in blind and this is primarily going to be a learning experience for me as a way to experiment with the production style and try to get an understanding of the different elements that are needed to make a full game animation. I had a look into the different styles of simple game animation that I could approach and ended up choosing the endless-runner genre. Using the research of Irn Brus existing Advergame I was able to get a feel for what the company already makes and what would fit in well based off of the advertisement that I made. The general idea for the game was to create a character based off the hero who would have to make his way past certain obstacles in a Mario fashion. A big part of the process was having to make all the different layers that would be used to create the seemingly moving image, and learning how everything needs to fit in together so that the movement looks smooth between each frame and having the patience to make sure that everything is moving together and the same space with each movement. A mistake I kept making was struggling to make everything on screen move the correct amount of space, so I might have moved the benches that the hero had to jump by four pixels but then the background only by two and things would fall out of place and it quickly
• 2.
  became a struggleto keep everything moving seamlessly. Once I had everything done I tried experimenting with additional things that would improve the overall quality such as shading on the background and character. The final thing I added to the project was a simple music track that I made just to try and help the game feel more realistic. In the end I know that there were things that I could have done to improve the Advergame but I think that as my first attempt at animating I did an okay job and made mistakes that I can learn from in the future.