The Explorer

I have started off by looking further into walking cycles. So far, we had looked at animating a walking cycle for a person but I intend to do one for an animal. For this, I did some practical research by filming a lamb walking and looking at it frame by frame. All of these together make one cycle of all limbs moving to walk forward. It is relatively simple due to their small frame and they don’t physically move too much. Movement mainly comes from the front legs and the back ones only bend slightly. I will use this when creating my cycle for the main character.

I have decided to go with the Farm idea for the animation. It allows a lot of chances for me to include animated events to be triggered. As well as this, I will be able to create something with a varied environment, using different areas and giving a feeling of a large area to explore. I will be able to include lots of sounds, should I be able too. This would include animal, machinery, and environmental sounds, all of which can be triggered or start randomly when entering a new area. This can be triggered when moving past a certain point in the area as well. My target audience will be for young children. This means I can keep the design simplistic along with the narrative of the piece. The narrative will be of a lamb exploring the farm before having to go home. She will be able to start a short text dialogue with some of the animals that tell her a bit about themselves. In this sense, it will also be slightly educational. I would have liked to have done something with more of an a...

I decided to do some research and take  some photos on a farm as reference if i decide to use this idea. I looked at locations that had some sort of building or opportunity for animation or events.  This could be a good reference for the lost lamb character.  This area could just be a dead end. There is a possibility for a brief animated sequence.  This would be where the lamb goes home and finds her mother. Im still unsure how to plan the story out.  The barn was where i thought the lamb could go and ask the birds something. This would then require some text prompts.   I thought about having this as a transition area where the lamb could leave the area in 4 directions instead of just left and right. That would require me to find out how this is possible.   The stable is where the lamb would meet the horse. I thought about having some object that is interacted with in order to get the horses attention, as the hors...

An idea I’d like to develop more would be based upon the zoo idea I had before. This time it would be around a farm. Much like the zoo, it would have animals to include and this gives a lot of opportunities to create animated events. There would be a large environment to explore and many things to find. Animals could be hiding in places and walking past could trigger an action, prompting the player to explore the area they are in to find it. Animals could include horses, pigs, sheep, cows, and chickens. It could be a nice detail to have birds flying in the background to keep the environment moving. Machinery like tractors could even be interacted with. The character could be a farmer or even an animal that gets out. This could give it a different perspective and allow for more of a story. There would also be a lot of opportunities to include sound from things in the environment, including the animals. These could happen randomly and be prompted by events. I would like to have ...

I began to look at flash games I played when I was younger. They were a lot more simple and usually made by ordinary people and uploaded to a website called Newgrounds. I looked back to see what was still there. (Fulp, 2006) Pico’s school was a rather simple game. The objective was to get out of school. This required you to control Pico and solve basic puzzles that included picking up items and giving it to people in exchange for other items that get you past an obstruction. This would often involve combining objects too. The controls were mainly mouse based but the animation style was simple giving it a bit of charm.  (Fulp, 2003) Disorderly was another game by Tom Fulp but worked very differently from Pico’s school. This was developed to be a beat ‘em up game based around a rather disturbing idea. The character would progress through the level using the arrow keys and use letter keys for attacks. It was a level based game with a boss at the end of each level ...

The idea for this project is to create a character that can be controlled using the computer keyboard to explore an interactive animated environment. Given that most of my childhood was spent playing these kinds of games, I was excited to see what we can create and had many ideas. For the time being, I wanted to do some research to expand on these ideas and know what we will be able to create within the short time frame. We need to create 2 animated events and I would like to stick to this so I make sure I meet the brief without being held back for being too ambitious.