Introduction:
In this blog post, I’ll be speaking about our group’s first official meeting in person and what we discussed, as well as my thoughts on how the meeting went. I’ll also be outlining the group member’s roles and their responsibilities for this project. Furthermore, I’ll also be explaining why we thought each member would be suitable for their role. This post will also consist of a couple of my draft animations that I did this week, and the feedback I received from my group. Lastly, I’ll be highlighting my personal objectives to complete by next week.
Group Meeting:
We finally scheduled a time and date for our group all to meet up in person for the first time and finally establish a concrete concept for our upcoming game. We first got to know each other on a more personal level, which was great as it made us all feel more comfortable with each other, building up our team’s chemistry. Before we spoke about our game, we all discussed what we enjoyed doing and what we disliked, highlighting our strengths and weaknesses.
We first decided that the game will begin with a hurricane taking place, leading the player to start off flying through the wasteland. As we want our game to appear aesthetically beautiful and realistic simultaneously, we emphasised the wind mechanics need to be spot on and that animations need to move according. This led to the idea that the wind should affect the player’s movement, adding resistance to the bee’s flying.
We next discussed how we plan to end the game once the player has fully restored the land. Unfortunately, we didn’t get to establish the game’s ending as we all were unsure at this point in time. We threw some ideas out there; such as ending the game with another hurricane for comedic reasons, but nothing was set in stone as of yet. We then broke down what animals and objects we would like to see within the 3D world. The game designers told us what they would be able to produce in Unity quite easily, which was great as it helped me and Michaela shortlist what we had to design. We then further discussed what we felt comfortable modelling, rigging, texturing, and animating. From here, we assigned each other roles and tasks to complete for the upcoming weeks.
Lastly, We spoke about scheduling regular meeting arrangements, where we could meet up in person to discuss further updates. Even though we already have a Whatsapp group chat where we discuss our ideas, we seem to work better when talking in person as we come across and cover so many more ideas and concepts for our game. So we decided to meet up every fortnight on Friday, just after the game designers’ lecture and just before our animation lecture. We also agreed to schedule a group phone call on Mondays if needed by any member.
Roles:
Hisham – Director and game mechanics
Sophia – Environment leader, and game designer
Michaela – Producer, meeting scribe and animator
David – Animator
The roles were decided based on what suited everyone, and what their preferences were. From the very beginning, Hisham was very direct and outspoken about the idea he wanted to execute for the collaborative unit. He was very proactive from the start, and we saw this when he sent out a generic email to everyone about collaborating with him to create this game. Therefore, we all agreed and was happy for him to step up to become the director of this project. From meeting Sophia for the first time, I could tell she had quite a lot of knowledge in Unity and she seemed to know a lot about designing environments. Furthermore, she already had experience with environments in 3D games already. Therefore, we thought it was necessary to appoint her as the Environment leader. Michaela mentioned that she likes to be very organised, knowing what stage everybody is up to in order to maintain good time management. She also likes to take down many notes during meetings and discussions. Therefore, she became the meeting scribe. Whereas I, on the other hand, wanted to focus more on the practical side and focus more on the actual elements that were going to be in the game. I would regularly pitch new ideas to the group and see if Hisham approves, but besides that, the group trusted me with the design and movements of the assets to appear realistic and aesthetically appealing.
I and Michaela spoke afterwards to divide the animation workload between us. We both agreed to have a list of objects to model, texture, rig, and animate. We considered one person doing the modelling and texturing, and the other doing the rigging and animating; however, we both wanted to learn and improve on all skill sets. So we decided on the following:
David:
- Title Sequence
- Cut scenes
- Flying bird
- Tumbleweed
- Spider
Michaela:
- Bee
- Flower
- Quadrupeds
- Cloth
- Swarm of bees.
Draft Animations:
Title Animation:
I decided to get an early start and crack on with a few designs and animation, as I knew I would need leeway in terms of time as expected to receive feedback that would require me to change a few things. I began with the title screen animation as we spoke a lot about it during our meeting. We all liked the idea that once the play presses a button to start the game, the title will transition into dust particles, representing the wasteland environment. So my first task was to come up with a title design and animate it.
I’m currently unable to complete the entire title sequence because the background we intend to use would be the game’s 3D world. Therefore, I can only work on the title itself for the time being. This title animation received mainly positive feedback which I was pleased with. Our director said this was perfect, but we would have to see how it looks with the 3D world behind it. Sophia and Michaela liked it; however, they wanted to see me experiment with other fonts, but apply the same animation.
Flying Bird:
My second task was to model a bird. Whilst modelling the bird, I took on board that the bird wouldn’t be much visible to the player. Therefore, I chose to model and texture the bird at an average standard, as it wouldn’t be ideal to spend a lot of time modelling and texturing an object in full detail if it’s not going to be visible. Instead, I’d rather invest more time into the rigging and animation stage as we’ll be able to visualise the bird’s wings animating throughout the game.
This animation also received good feedback. Everyone agreed that the modelling and texturing didn’t need to look detailed. Michaela mentioned that the wings could look better in terms of movement. She asked if I could curl the wings a bit more. I totally agreed with what she said, because now when I look back on it, the wings do seem a bit too stiff.
Objectives For Next Week:
- Do research on how birds flap their wings by browsing through reference videos and images.
- Complete the 2nd draft of the flying bird animation.
- Experiment with multiple fonts for the title design.
- Complete the title design.
- Complete the 2nd draft of the title animation.