D&AD BEANO - Final Submmission

Here is our final submission. The animation and supporting design boards.

The Heart Jam - Submission

To summarize the participation of the game jam, I found it was beneficial to problem-solving and experiencing of working in extremely limited time. From the on going self-evaluation, I develop the way of adapting my art, composition and narrative skill into a complete game, as well as efficiently working as a team together for 72 hours.

The Heart Jam - Development

For a part of the extended brief, Luca, Dan and me decided to participate with a game jam together as a team. On one of the biggest game website that held numerous different game jams all the time, itch.io, we discovered our shared interest in a 72 hours game challenge called the Heart Jam. We decided that as a limited time jam, we should arrange a working space to work together where we eventually chose Dan's house.

As we established our ideas based on the theme announced at the start of the challenge, which was scarcity, we decided to make a game about a journey travelling through space avoiding obstacles/aliens while collecting batteries for the player to make it to the space station.

Dan did the designs for the aliens and the space station. Me and Luca both worked on making the objects for the game, while I did the scene compositing and coding. We went through a few problems during different stages which we eventually overcame, therefore we finished the game and submitted it in time. I especially enjoyed the process of problem solving and keeping everything organized.

The following are the gifs of all the objects we made for the game, including the aliens and the planets that are floating in the background, and demonstration stills from the game.

Luckily we were featured on the front page of itch.io for a amount of time, in the fresh games section, which brought several downloads and comments on our game. We were happy about the outcome and decided to establish us as LYD studio, which is the first letters of our names, and to participate with more game jams in the future.

Major project - Inbetweening

At this stage for me and Guy is finishing of all the inbetweens based on the animatic for cleaning up. To keep the consistency we had my final design of the character aside when we are working, and to aim to reduce the complexity of cleaning up, I used single and clear lines for all the rough animation. The following are the demos of my parts of the inbetweens.

My favourite part was the panorama shot as it was the idea came up to my mind when we were taking reference in Leeds College of Music. The most challenging part of this shot is to sync the arm and body movement of the characters to the music while the camera pans, which I have not finished yet.

Major project - Animatic+Key frames

In order to figure out the timing of the animation, we made a quick animatic using Guy's storyboards, which is as follows.

While refining the animatic, we decided to use the final animatic as the key frames to base our animation/inbetweens on. Me and Guy divided the keys between as while Luca is working on the concept of the backgrounds. So the part I did was the beginning till she enters the piano room, and the airport scene to the end of the panorama shot.

Major project - Final turnarounds

Based on the initial idea and the character development, I designed the final version of the characters for our final story based in China, which is about the connection between the character and her grandfather through their memory of piano. Based on the feedback, the final design has the autumn outfit.

The young woman's name is Yun Wang, she is 25 who lives far away from home in another province in China.  Her grandfather raised her up until she went to university, and taught her to play piano when she was a kid. She is an ordinary woman who goes to work everyday, where in the story, missed the flight back home because of work. The grandfather's design is from her memory from the past, as he only appears during the flashback scene of the animation, so as the kid. Grandpa was based on the research and knowledge I have on the outfit and appearance of Chinese elderly.To establish the connection between the grandpa and the young Yun, I used similar colour to their outfit, as she was raised up by him, therefore the grandpa used to dress her up as the colour he likes.

Final coloured design, turn around and GIFs.

D&AD BEANO - Animatic&Rough animation

My role within the team is keys, inbetweens for the rough animation, and part of the clean up. So I started with making the keys as the animatic based on Natalia's storyboards, and added in the inbetweens to the animatic. The following are the animatic and the finished rough animation for the brief.