Going into post-production, I've gotten everything that I possibly can get done in quarantine. This would be the time period in which I would've created any animations missing for the game, and also the cutscenes in After Effects.
However, I unfortunately cannot create the cutscenes in After Effects anymore, but I had a lot of fun creating them. I'm a bit sad that I didn't get the chance to create the cutscenes, as that would've helped me become more confident with After Effects.
It's a shame that I couldn't make the cutscenes fully, as I would've been able to use the scripts I wrote at the beginning of the project. Unfortunately, these won't be featured in the game now either.
I'm glad that I was able to complete the images I had planned for the cutscenes, as it helped me become more confident with Photoshop, which was another thing I needed to get better at.
Creating all of these also gave me the opportunity to research into various Asian cultures, which are something I'm passionate about. I've learned about Japanese and Chinese culture during the creation of the cutscene images, which may help me in future if I'm concepting for something similar.
In pre-production, I was doing far more work than the rest of the project. I had to create the scripts for dialogue, storyboard and plan the cutscenes, and create moodboards and concepts for characters.
I had so much fun in pre-production, as it was when I had the most work to do. I also did a lot of research into the culture of Japan during different time periods, which helped a lot when deciding how the scripts should progress, and what the characters guarding the Robe of Fire-Rat Fur should be.
I made a lot of moodboards for the style, as there's a wide array to Asian culture and styles, as well as a lot I had to think about for the Synoptic Project. I used a lot of these to help me with concept art for the project, and also to set the scene of the game.
Since the game is set in a fantasy, Asian-inspired world, I made sure to get pictures of architecture, interiors and layouts of buildings, and paintings from the time periods that were more relevant to the design. In my mind, this was the easiest way to convey my ideas to the others in the group without writing everything down, which is the way I usually communicate ideas.
I had the most fun writing the scripts, and I actually went overboard with them. I had so much fun imagining to bickering and jests that would be flying between the ninja and kitsune, that I spent a lot of time conveying their personalities through the script. I'm sad that these won't be in the finished project, but I'm still glad that I went through and wrote all of them. It was a good exercise for writing, and taught me a bit about writing game scripts. If I write another script for a game again, I definitely won't write as much, which was definitely something I did.
After pre-production, I found that I had less to do, and four main tasks to focus on: completing the character sheets, animating the characters, creating the cutscene images, and creating the cutscenes.
Unfortunately two of these tasks couldn't be completed because of lockdown, but I managed to do some animating for the project. I had a lot of fun, although it took me forever before I'm not familiar with After Effects. After looking at a few tutorials, I managed to rig that characters in After Effects, and start animating. Unfortunately, some of the earlier animations I did didn't turn out the best, as I was still getting used to animating in After Effects.
The later animations turned out better, as I realised I didn't have to move every frame, and could give the ninja rhythmic movements by spacing the keyframes apart. I also didn't have anything to work from in the later animations, which may be why they don't look as awkward and flow better.
Completing the characters was far easier than using After Effects, although with the impending lockdown, I couldn't complete the final character, Lady Daiyo, who won't feature in the game now anyway. The reason she isn't as polished as the others is that I struggled to find a way to separate her into components to be animated in, while also being short on time.
I decided to take the image I'd created for her character board, and altered it to fit the same measurements as the other characters. I felt that animating the characters I had created already was more important than completing a minor character that may not even be in the game at the end.
I think I made the right decision, as this meant I got to complete the mandatory animations, like the walk cycle for the Samurai, and a running animation for Aki, as well as a crouching cycle and a jump animation.
Now, in post-production, because of circumstances, I'm unfortunately left with nothing else to do, which is a shame, since I would've loved to create the cutscenes, and do more animations in After Effects. However, this doesn't have a catastrophic effect on the rest of the project, as the game will still be playable without the cutscenes and fully animated.
Looking back on the project, there were a lot of things we did and didn't do in this project. Some of the things we didn't do as well as we should've was team meetings, which we didn't have frequently enough. Due to this, communication was often out of confusion and not to tell others what work we had done or completed.
I feel that early on in the project, we definitely should've communicated better by having daily meetings. Not doing this putting a strain on communication for the rest of the project. A lot of things that we originally planned to do had to be changed because of this.
This is the risk assessment for the project. Although there weren't any immediate risks, losing work was definitely something we would have to deal with most frequently. We also did have an issue with using different versions of Unity, which luckily was easily solved by updating the other parts of the project to the same version.
I luckily never lost any work, as I was each careful to keep everything saved up and stored on OneDrive. I also made sure to send the link to my OneDrive to the others in the group, which meant that they could access it easily and whenever they needed any moodboards or reference to work from.
Because of the lack of communication, I feel that everyone in the group had a different idea of how the game should be, and that was affected more by our lack of communication. An example of this was the list of mechanics that I created in pre-production, which we now aren't using at all. Instead, the only the run, jumping and picking up mechanics are used.
With this project coming to an end, it gives me a chance to look back on how this project has gone. Our communication really was our downfall, as it set us all back and had us all going in slightly different directions.
We didn't have a clear leader, which also staggered us. This point is partially my fault, as I had the opportunity to step up as leader, but I didn't. As of now, we still don't really have a solid leader, but Louis has taken up more control over the project, making him the closest to the position.
I feel some responsibility over this issue, as I didn't step up to be the leader. In future group projects, I think it would be a good idea to sit down with the whole group and designate jobs and roles to everyone. That way, even if a group doesn't have a leader, everyone is fully aware of what everyone else is doing and who to go to if they need a piece of work from them or to send work to.
This is the Gantt chart we created at the beginning. One thing we did right was creating this together, which did give us some understanding of what everyone else was doing. There have been a lot of changes to the Gantt, as I wrote the scripts for the story by myself, and Louis was originally down to do the animation (this was under the idea that the animation would be in the style of sprite sheets, and not done in After Effects).
We also didn't set deadlines for when work needed to be done, or create a drawn out pipeline for what was needed for another part of the project to go ahead. I think this would've helped us a lot, and would've helped us in understanding what others were doing and how their work could effect our own. I feel that we were very isolated during this project, which was why everyone had different ideas about how the game should turn.
Despite everything that's gone wrong with the project, we still managed to produce a working game. Although there were many issues, and most of the work I did during quarantine won't even be in the final version of the game, I think we succeeded in what we set out to do, which was creating a mischief game about a ninja and kitsune.