Extended Practice Weekly Evaluation: Week 5

16th to the 22nd of February 2015
This week was a little hectic as the Research and Development presentation was fast approaching and we really wanted to ensure everything was done by this stage to be ready to present. The work load wasn't too much to get finished but we had a lot to get through as we were still a little behind from the previous week and the week before that.

I started the week by completing the character biography for the main character who we have called Keith. I have given him a really rich back story and hopefully given him a really interesting character that will be exciting and engaging for children of around the age of 5-10. I really think that the character is fun and will be really appealing once he is in the game level and interesting enough to want to find out more about him.

I then moved onto coming up with some initial ideas for the look of him and started by looking at different faces, body shapes and eventually costumes and clothing. In the end I decided to go with an outfit that made him appear to be an older man, as this is what we wanted to achieve and is the idea behind our story, so we gave him a very bright tourist shirt and paired that with a nice pair of shorts and some socks with sandals combination. We wanted to go quite cringy but also make him loveable at the same time. I then moved onto generating the final look for him and drew out some concept art as well before developing some character turnarounds that could be used to model from later on. This was really starting to get me excited to move on with the project as I was starting to see the character come to life. At this time Sophie was designing the enemy, which has now been changed into a honey badger, and it was great to then see them together to learn about why they are nemesis'.

As I finished this fairly quickly I got on with catching up from the weeks before and delved into creating the floor plans and designs for my level which I am going to creating, based around Egypt. This was very fun as I got to think of everything that was going to go in the level and think about traps and different obstacles for the character.

This week was definitely more productive than I had planned it too be and I have begun to catch up with lost time, meaning that I am nearly ready for the presentation and next week isn't looking too bad now, as originally I was going to be rushing like crazy to get everything finished, but I've definitely made a lot of progress this week and its very motivating starting to see the character come to life as well as the environment.