Final Evaluation

My original idea was to either make an interactive character profile or a 2D platformer, which I talked about in this blog post.

After debating for a while, I decided that making an interactive character profile would be the way to go as my strengths are in art and storytelling, both of which are required to make a good character.

I was going to create my own game idea with its own story, lore, maps, etc, and create characters for that game idea.

So essentially my idea came in two parts, creating the world/game idea and creating the characters.

I originally wanted to make 3 magical girls and 3 enemies but changed it to JUST magical girls as I figured the time limit I had to create everything was too short to create 6 characters. I changed it to make three magical girls, a sorceress, a rogue and a warrior. One of each of the basic classes. These characters would be the only playable characters in the game, so having each one of them a different class made sense so players had a choice of who to play as depending on their preferred way of playing. More stealthy and sneaky like a rogue, more warrior and tank-like, like a warrior, or magic.

Towards the end of my project, I decided that the final designs of the characters I'd created were not good enough for what I could do. I could do a lot better. So using Autodesk Sketchbook, free software similar to Photoshop, I redesigned all my characters, weapons, and I painted a background for my interactive character profile. I am so happy I did this, although it was a risk to take considering I did not have a lot of time left. I am now happy with what my characters look like.

When I was very first thinking about this idea, I wanted my audience to be the same audience that Magical Girl anime series have, kids. But after doing research into the different classes, and researching characters that already exist, their backgrounds and stories, I realised that wasn't the way I wanted to go. I wanted to create something with an audience like me. For people who already like RPG video games, for people who like rich, intense and sometimes completely messed up story/lore. I already know what an audience like myself likes because I am that audience and most of the people I know and that I'm friends with are that audience. That would also give me the freedom to create whatever stories I like no matter how messed up it is.

I think my final game idea & character profiles are suitable for the audience I decided on. My characters backstories involve murder, heartbreak, betrayal, cultists and so on, suitable for an 18+ audience.

I mostly stuck to my Gantt chart but due to some inevitable things going on in my life, I didn't completely stick to it. In all honesty, I didn't really find the timetable helpful. Maybe if I'd organised it in some other way, or printed it out and stuck it to everything I own I would have paid more attention to it. That way I ended up organising my things was to list things I need to do at the end of each reflective blog post, write them into a list and do as much as I could the following week, again listing things to do next at the end of each reflective blog post. I know that doesn't seem like the most effective and efficient way to organise time but I found it worked quite well for me.

I didn't exactly do a playtest as I didn't create a game, I instead created multiple surveys through the project to get people from my target audience's opinions on what I was working on. I used Google Forms to do this, then posted the link on my social media's for people to take.

I really took into account what people said about my ideas and work.

For example, when I first designed the sorceress, Kyra, the feedback I got from her was that her skin blended into her clothes too much and it was hard to tell what was what. Now, I originally wasn't going to do anything about it as I thought I didn't have the time or resources, but with discovering Autodesk Sketchbook, I went on to redesigning everything, but I'll talk more about that later on. When redesigning Kyra, I took into account that people said her clothes blended into her skin, so instead of using gold as the main colour for the clothes, I used purple instead. I also redesigned part of her attire to make it look more magical, but also so I could give more detail and shading and make the character look better overall. The character is now a bit different to what I had planned but sometimes you have to change things in order for them to work.

Another big thing that I got back from my surveys is that I couldn't draw hands or feet right, which is true, I suck at drawing hands and feet. Unfortunately, that isn't going to change in a week but over the summer I'm going to look at anatomy in hands and feet, and really practice drawing them so that when I come back to college after the summer break, I will be at least a bit better at drawing hands and feet.

So overall, I found my surveys to be very helpful.

I'm next going to be discussing the research I carried out and how it helped me develop my ideas. Clicking on the bold title will take you to the appropriate blog page.

Legend Research: The first piece of research I did was to find out what a legend is so that I could relate my idea to the theme of "legend". I searched the internet for the definition of legend and went from there. I put what I learnt into the mindmap and straight after that I generated ideas. I'd say this was helpful in helping me think of ideas for my project to start with.

Magical Girl Genre: After deciding I wanted to base my idea on magical girls, I thought it would make sense to learn about the magical girl genre. I'd say this wasn't as helpful as I first thought it was because I kind of went away from the idea of having anime-style magical girls, but learning about the three different types of magical girls and choosing the warrior style magical girl helped me to realise that I didn't want to make anime-style magical girls.

Madoka Magica: I researched this as it is an anime that features magical girls. The same as the previous research, It didn't help me in the end but contributed towards my realisation that I didn't want to make anime-style magical girls.

Survey Research #1: I made this survey when I still thought I was going to make monsters as well as magical girls, and it would have been really helpful if I stuck with creating monsters as I had lots of mythical creatures that I could have researched that people liked but in the end, I didn't go with creating monsters so this survey was less helpful than I would have liked it to be. What this survey did help with however is choosing the classes of the magical girls I wanted to create. A mage and a ranger were both popular choices but in the end, I went with a mage, a rogue and a warrior, I went with the close-ranged rogue as rangers tend to be rogues anyways, and i didn't. want there to be two ranged characters. The rogue still has ranged abilities (throwing knives) but does not wield a bow. Something I did want to do that this survey gave me the idea for but didn't have enough time to actually do was to create multiple armour sets for each character as I learnt that people like to personalise their characters. That could still be a thing in my game idea though and could be something to consider in the future, that people like to customise their characters.

Level Up! The Guide To Great Video Game Design by Scott Rogers: This made me think about naming my characters correctly. When Choosing my warrior's name, I wanted something to do with battle and anger so it would match who she is. I went with Avicia as according to http://www.mybabyname.com/names/Avicia it has a meaning of "sanctuary in battle". Lilith's meaning is ghost, night monster, which relates to her rogue lifestyle and the fact that she is as pale as a ghost. https://nameberry.com/babyname/Lilith Kyra's meaning is sun. Which relates to Kyra's light magic. https://www.babycenter.com/baby-names-kyra-5655.htm

Helped me with coming up with abilities for each character. As you notice, Avicia the warrior has abilities suited more to a tank, giving her a lot of health and protection. As sain in the book: "Think about your characters class/type and how that affects their max health, attack damage, movement speed, attack speed and advantages/disadvantages.", and that I did when thinking of abilities for each character.

Kyra is truely a heroic character. Lilith is a tough guy character and Avicia is a mix of all three, funny, heroic and tough guy.

Drawing For Fantasy Artists by Socar Myles: This gave me a few ideas on where to look for inspiration. I went to pinterest and pinned all sorts of things from other artists artwork, fashion, real armour, and i got that idea from this book.

Mage Character Research, Rogue Character Research &Fighter/Warrior Character Research/Analysis: This was helpful with knowing what is already out there character wise. Doing this research activity helped me to realise that I didn't want to create anime style magical girls. Things like looking at the design of Ezio and how he has all these pockets and places to put things, I really took inspiration from that into my rogue character, Lilith. She has two pockets on her belt to put things in such as vials of poison and health potions, and she has a large satchel over her hip that she can put stoles items in, as well as three throwing knife holders attached to her outfit. I probably wouldn't of thought to add those things if it wasn't for researching Ezio's attire.

The Elder Scrolls research: I took a lot of inspiration from all the Elder Scrolls Research I did into creating the story and lore of my world.

Fantasy Worlds: This research helped me a lot with generating my fantasy world and some of the lore and history behind it.

Semiotics: Semiotics was important to research and take into consideration throughout the whole design of my characters. For example, on my character Avicia the Warrior, I put spikes on her armour to indicate danger, a symbol that people would recognise as danger as we tend to associate spikes that way.,

Medieval/Middle Ages Period: This was useful in designing the stories around my characters, but I didn’t really get to use this research to the extend I would of liked to. From this came my idea of researching female knighthood though, which plays a big part in the backstory of Avicia the Warrior.

How Geography Affects Appearances etc: This helped me think about where on the map my characters were coming from and how it affects their appearance. Flamespeak, being a hot country means that Avicia has darker skin with more menalin which protects her from the sun. Kyra lives in a colder area, therefore, she has paler skin. Lilith would be darker skinned but from all the time she's spent in the shadows, she's palest of them all.

Artist Inspiration: Gave me some inspiration on what art style I wanted to go for.

Woman Knights: Researching Woman Knights helped me develop the story for Avicia with her joining the Woman Knighthood in Flamespeak. I wouldn't have come up with this idea if it wasn't for the research I did into existing all women knighthoods.

Colour Theory: This helped me a lot with thinking of colour schemes for each character, With Kyra's colour scheme consisting of complimentary colours, and Lilith & Avicia's colour scheme being monotone. My research into colour theory helped me, learn that some colours go better together than others so I applied that to my characters to make them look more appealing to the eye, and to draw attention to details.

Survey #2:

RPG Heroine Creator Experiment: This helped me a lot with experimenting with colour palletes and seeing how they looked. Also helped a lot with hairstyles, i discovered I wanted Avicia to have short hair after creating a version of her with short hair. This generally helped me with coming up with a general idea of what I wanted each character to look like. It was fun playing around with existing clothes and hair styles, but there were limits to what I could create.

Survey #3:

Adobe Illustrator tutorials: These helped me with designing the characters when I ran into an issue or didn't know how to do something.

Autodesk Sketchbook tutorials: These were helpful when I was drawing my characters in developing my skills in Sketchbook.