http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=03fHrQJeiM8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aFhCktLmZGE
Wednesday, April 17, 2013
Early Design Sketches
These were the early sketches I have done for Kirsikka, Stella and Elize and an unnamed magician character. The first 3 were shown in class in my second presentation.
Sample Character Sheet
Dreamscape Circus Sample Opening Movie
Download the swf file here:
https://sites.google.com/site/graphicnovelsctseng/home/chapter1/dreamscapecircusver0.swf
Music Credit: H/MIX Gallery http://www.hmix.net/
https://sites.google.com/site/graphicnovelsctseng/home/chapter1/dreamscapecircusver0.swf
Music Credit: H/MIX Gallery http://www.hmix.net/
Friday, April 12, 2013
Senior Animation Project Proposal
Michelle Chih-Hua Tseng
Senior
Animation Project Proposal
Dreamscape
Circus
Summary
I am
making a visual novel game about reviving a disbanded circus by going
through a journey to find potential circus members. These members
will all have special abilities that make them outcasts of society.
The game is driven by written dialogues, divided by chapters, and
each chapter lasts about 10 to 20 minutes.
Synopsis
The
Dreamscape circus was the most popular in the whole country when the
protagonist, Kirsikka was 8 years old. She started learning juggling
after watching the performance of her favourite juggler at the
circus. But when she was 15 and has the ability to perform, the
originally creativity-welcoming government started to oppress
creativity due to the pursuing of technology. At first the town
people did protest, but due to the resignation of the ringmaster, the
circus has collapsed. After this incident, the protagonist was
heartbroken and wished strongly for the revival of the circus.
However she was unable to do anything as a 15 year old. On her 20th
birthday, she visits the abandoned circus tent and did a performance
with no audience.
She
was still unsure if she can revive the circus by herself. When she
walks out of the tent, surprisingly, she saw a girl walking towards
the circus tent. The girl was surprised to see the protagonist too.
The girl was Kirsikka's childhood friend, Stella. She left the town
to pursue an engineering career; while she is educated in scientific
terms, she liked the fantasy setting of a circus and wanted to work
in that environment. They both shared the feeling of regret when the
circus collapsed, and seeing that the protagonist is wavering on her
decisions, Stella pursues Kirsikka to start the recruiting journey.
First,
they went to the neighbouring town. At the inn there, they heard
rumours of a girl, Elize, who is strong at ventriloquism. Before the
government changed policy, her ability was welcomed by the town
people, but after the policy change, a lot of people found it creepy
to be able to speak without moving her mouth. Her family had to hide
her in a house in the forest in order to protect her from
verbal
attacks. Kirsikka and Stella went for search of the girl; when they
visited her house, she was too scared because she thought they are
coming to laugh at her. Under this false assumption, the two sides
have a huge misunderstanding. But after fixing Elize's doll which is
torn by the town people, the two of them explains their true
intention and promise that in a circus, no one is going to make fun
of ventriloquism. Eventually Elize opens her heart and agreed on
joining their quest.
In the
end, Kirsikka and her circus members returns to their town and does a
performance. Depending on the player's controls, the performance can
either end in disaster, or can be a performance that revives people's
dreams and successfully brings back the Dreamscape Circus.
Visual treatment &
production process
All
visuals will be drawn digitally by digital painting programs, mainly
Paint Tool SAI and Adobe Photoshop. The characters are designed in
Japanese anime style because I have been greatly inspired by Japanese
anime facial features since childhood. During the game, one to three
characters will be standing in the foreground, and a dialogue box
will indicate where the texts are. The background image and the
characters in the foreground will use different finishing techniques
in order to make the characters stand out against the background. The
characters will be detailed and have realistic shading. The
backgrounds will have lighter colours, and less detailed. Most of the
scenes will happen in daytime, so the colour scheme will be natural
sun light for most of the time. In indoor or night scenes the
lighting will be dimmed, depending on the mood.
Sound treatment
My
game will include no spoken voices, thus it will be music-driven.
Sound effects will be used in places where I want players to pay
attention. Throughout the game, Western ethnic music that are either
mysterious or melancholic will be chosen to create an unusual mood.
In the more Victorian inspired scenes, traditional classical music
works to create familiarity between players and the game. Ambient
sound will be used in the quieter scenes in order to make the aural
space more real.
Production
schedule
Please see the table at the post here: http://ctseng.blogspot.ca/2013/04/production-schedule.html
Budget
Adobe
Master Collection Student Edition: 250 CAD per year
Music:
$30 maximum for every original music piece
(Will
be using free music as much as possible)
Background:
maximum $20 for every commissioned background artwork
(Will
be mostly done by me or found on websites that provide background
graphics for free)
Novelty:
freeware
External
hard drive: $99~150
Production schedule
Production
schedule
Character
Standing Pose- 4~7 hours per pose. Background- 3~5 hours for
each. Total characters: 4 Poses
per character: 3
Total Backgrounds:10~20
Since I think game creation is not a linear process, I've created this table based on weeks that enables some back and force editing.
Sun
|
Mon
|
Tues
|
Wed
|
Thu
|
Fri
|
Sat
|
Learning
|
Background
|
Character
|
Scenario
|
Editing
music
|
Artwork
|
Scenario
|
Software-
|
Artwork
|
Artwork
|
Dialogue
|
Revising
|
Writing
|
|
Novelty
|
Writing
|
|||||
Flash
|
||||||
Composing
|
System
|
In
betweens
|
Planning
out
|
Finding
free
|
Storyboard
|
Composing
|
All
Elements in
|
graphics
|
For
any
|
Ending
|
Web
sources
|
Thumbnails
|
All
Elements in
|
game
|
Animation
|
game
|
||||
software
|
software
|
|||||
Debug
|
Title
|
Opening
|
Planning
out
|
Write
the list
|
Find
free
|
Test
play
|
Test
play
|
Design
|
Design
|
Game
flow
|
Of
borrowed
|
File
hosting
|
|
resources
|
Site
for
|
|||||
publishing
|
||||||
Advertising
|
||||||
On
website
|
||||||
Thursday, April 11, 2013
Dreamscape Circus Sample Movie
This is the movie I have done for the creative exploration project.
Screenshots for the movie (which are also screenshots for the game):
Character Standing Pose
These are the character standing poses that will appear in the game.
For the meantime I do not plan to animate them, except for some minor movements in the face like blinking and changing expressions.
For the meantime I do not plan to animate them, except for some minor movements in the face like blinking and changing expressions.
Kirsikka
Stella
Elize
Sunday, April 7, 2013
Saturday, April 6, 2013
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