Character Developement

I took one of my sketches and placed it into illustrator to create a vector image from it.

I slightly changed the shape of the fish before adding colour and shading





Above I was experimenting with colour. I like this fish due to the simplicity of it, although when I showed people this image the first thing they said was 'it's a little bit boring'.

above is another sketch which I then put into illustrator




Above is the sketch with colour and shading added. This one is a little more intersting in comparison to the first fish. This game is going to be mainly aimed towards children so I want the fish to have character.

Again a sketch which I put into illustrator

I really like this fish, I think it has a lot of character. My next step is to develop this fish further.

Class - 16/10/2009

Today we looked at things to consider when developing our games. We looked at what is in a game, characters, storyline, marketing, gameplay, levels etc. We watched a a talk by Tod Howard (ted.com) which I found very interesting.

After chatting with mike and telling him my idea he has given me some ways in which I could develop my idea further. He suggested that I do different levels in different scenery. For example the first level could be in the pipes, then the second in a stream, the third in a river etc. He also suggested that I do each level from a different angle - such as birdseye view, then a side view and maybe a view slightly tilted. I feel this has helped me and has given me a direction to go to develop my idea further.

The next steps I will take is work out my character profile. I will consider everything that was discussed on Friday to bring together the look and feel of my game.

Research

I thought about what fish do and what they might want - its sounds stupid but it helped me to deicde on the aim of my game. My initial idea was a game about a fish, who starts life in a small bowl and wants to get to the sea and after each level is completed the fish gets into a bigger bowl, eventually ending in the sea.



I thought about this idea some and took it further. I am going to develop the idea of a maze game, where the fish has to find it's way through pipes after being flushed down the toilet. It will eventually make its way into the sea.


Above is a story board which I did for the idea.

Here are some sketches I did for charachter development.

Research

Above is a mindmap looking at the types of gaming out there from table top to console games


Above is a mindap looking at the various genres of console games. This helped me to determine what sort of game I want to create.


First of all I researched problem solving gaming. I thought about a game where the characters need to get home but they find obstacles along the way which prevent them from getting home. I took inspiration from a game called 'ben there, dan that' by zombie cow studios.

http://www.zombie-cow.com/?page_id=17
download that game here.

I then thought about a maths game which would primarily be aimed at children.

This was another idea for problem solving. I though about doing a hidden object game where a diffrent member of the family are looking for certain objects in certain rooms, but this has already been done before and would be hard to make original.

I then jotted down some ideas for an adventure game. From this I looked at characters I could use for a game.


After doing my research I have decided that I want to use the theme of under the sea for my game. I would like the game to be for children. The next stage of my ideas is to look into game ideas using this theme.

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