Research into advertising
For me to be able to make myself known to the world as a designer I have to first find out where I can go in order to advertise my work. I already know about websites, such as; Facebook and Twitter are popular places used in order to advertise such work.
Facebook has an option to allow you to create a Facebook page for Companies, Brands, Musical artists and so forth. This allows for those individuals to advertise professional work to the public, where users that are people can like that page to receive updates on the product or company page.
Twitter also gives you the ability to advertise companies to the public also, but the difference between these two social medias is that twitter is used to give the message very clearly, as you only have a 140 character(Letter) limit on what you can post. This can be very useful to give users important updates on situations that may not be easily done on Facebook.
Instagram is also a majorly popular platform of advertisement as it is one of the most popular apps to date. This app is used to advertise on a more casual level when compared against Facebook or Twitter. It has become so effective because of it's use of photography, which does not need explaining and can catch the attention of viewers faster than text.
Other companies like Tumblr are used for smaller scale advertisement or display of new announcements from companies, usually featuring a singular image or several. The unique thing about advertising in Tumblr is that you can add hash-tags in your posts, which will keep them archived under those tags, meaning that if someone were to one day search those tag, they would come across your advertisement. This allows for advertisement to spike in popularity in any point.
Personal Advertisement
Facebook is one of the many ways to get your content out to the people of the world and one of the most popular too, due to the growing user base on the internet, it has become the most successful way to advertise to date. It has been quite useful to use this as a place to display my work, but due to Facebook's policy, I have a slim chance of getting noticed unless I set up an investment into the page via the advertisements you can see in the photo.
Using Redbubble I can put any designs I create onto items, such as: pillows, mugs, laptop covers and many more. By using Redbubble I can advertise my work to others through the use of them advertising by wearing or owning items that my designs are on. Below is a portfolio of my work that I have currently put onto Redbubble, with more increasing every time I make something new.
Below is how an item is displayed onto the website on it's own, for this design I have chosen for the mug to be it's default product, as I believe it works the best on that item.
Game Jam Event
During 29-31 January, me and Mario had attended a local event called the 'Global Game Jam', which is an event that is hosted annually with the specific goal of bringing a group of people together to create a games within that time. The event was hosted in the watershed to where they held a conference to discuss rules and objectives. This years brief was set around the subject of "Ritual".
Several posters were put around the room to give us information on where to go if we needed help.
Me and Marios began working on ideas at this point. We were unfortunate enough to not have anyone join our group, which put us at a MAJOR disadvantage, as every other team had 6+ people within them.
I started off with suggesting we'd make a mind map to come up with ideas based around that one word, I was impressed with the different variety and genre's we'd come up with that we could've branched off of. In the end we had chosen to go with an Aztec ruins as our base for the game.
As the games designer within the team I had begun working up a story that would reflect the area of the game and give us ideas on what we could put within it. At this point I was heavily inspired by the vast amount of potential this idea had, as it felt like it had not been done before and it was something new we could bring to the table.
After we finished the story we began working up so draft designs of what areas should look like and what they could feature in order to get a basic understanding of what we could do. I had the idea that your character would wake up in this vast jungle only to be greeted by a spirit, who would explain that a mysterious thing has happened and that you need to follow the road in order to understand the truth.
Marios had trouble understanding my idea of how you would make it to the first trap because I had explained that you would walk down some steps to where the floor would break, but it visually did not make sense to him, so I drew up my idea visually in order to explain. After showing him the image and explaining again, he understood what I meant and we were able to progress from there.
I had given Marios half of the puzzle rooms so that we could create a fair amount between us and give him access to input into the design of the game. For our first design, Marios had come up with a pressure plate room where you had to find a way to the other side, this was a great start for an easy trap room.
Next, I had come up with an idea of a trap room that would consist of three ways to progress, each way was on another ground level apart from each other, this is purely for the aesthetics of the game to allow the player to look around and look at the walls to look at the detail, but the challenge is still there as times traps go off constantly.
Marios had then come up with a maze puzzle for the user to navigate, at this point we had finally integrated our idea of a point system, which allowed the player to also collect artefacts to gain score. The maze also featured moving walls to change the way the player would navigate, allowing for a different approach each time someone played the game.
For this puzzle I wanted to have exploration and danger zones in the level, in order to get a new level of challenge. This level required the player to climb steps and attempt to jump across platforms in order to reach their goal.
For the final puzzle Marios had it so that the player would have to run across a long platform in order to reach the other side, this level is very similar to the 3 way platform, but is longer and consisted of new traps.
The final room Would consist of the player walking down a long hall that have corresponding pillars holding up the room, when the player reaches the other side, he would pick up a dagger, which triggers a cutscene to where it explains how you got there and why in a flashback.
A photo of marios working on one of the levels.
After the draft designs were done I began working on the first level itself. I wanted to use a strong yellow-orange sun colour to shade the are in order to get that amazon feeling. The image bellow shows the intro to the main menu
The image show the sprite model I had set in place that would explain the intro towards the start of the game. During the start the player would be lying on the floor attempting to get a understanding of where he is.
The character looks to the right.
The character then looks up.
The character then looks left before getting up.
This shows the environment that I had made for the player to roam.
Unfortunately due to the lack of people in our team and the lack of hardware and software, our team struggled to make enough to present, and had not been able to create anything of use. To show evidence of what we had made I compiled a small video showing the cutscenes/main menu and slight gameplay.
Website Design
In unit 64 I had to design a website that would be fully interactive and responsive towards the user depending on what device they use.
Making business cards
Before the upcoming showcase of my work to the public, I began designing business cards that viewer can take in order to get into contact with me about any possible work available for me to take on. Firstly I filled the page with a grey colour and began cutting out small rectangles that would be used as a template for the business cards.
With the template finished I began designing how they would look. I had chosen to use my work from Unit 45 as a background, as I was very pleased on how it looked. I then filled in each space with the image.
With them all filled, I then began putting my information on each one to give a viewer a way to contact me if they are interested in my work. After finishing each one, I merged all layers together and prepared the image for print.
Here's how the final designs look.
Making Showreel
For the public showcase I needed to create a showreel of my best work that I had created over the course of 2 years. Using footage from different Units such as 45, 06,52 and many others I was able to create a diverse range of different types of media that I had created. I hope that when showing this off to the public that it will grab the attention of many, with various questions for me to answer.
Showing off my work to people was a great experience for me to receive feedback from those who have never play video games before or have not experienced something like my work. Feedback ranged from people liking the genreal structure to the game to people finding the game too hard or too long, which is understandable because of the way my final project was structured.
The Future
(https://www.falmouth.ac.uk/sites/all/themes/falmouth_theme/img/falmouth-university-logo-print.gif)
Onwards towards University for the next step of my life at Falmouth, it will be a great progression into the Video Game industry that I have been wanting to head towards. I expect to learn great things throughout the next three years. These past two years have been a great experience for me and will defiantly help for progression in the future.
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