Illustrative synopsis

Main character:

 

                                                               

·         Name: Raja

·          Age: 14

·          Personality: friendly, laid-back, athletic, isn’t afraid to put his life in danger, hates dragons more than anything.

·          Likes: Food, Climbing, running, small animals

·          Dislikes: fighting with friends, dragons, being told he’s wrong

·          Worst fear: Water

·          Family: none

·          Lives: The desert in Arabia

 He travels through the desert to hunt down the Dragons that destroyed his village and killed his family.

The main protagonist:

 

The most powerful Dragon, Drogo, that controls the other dragons into destroying towns and villages.

Stealth Gameplay: 

The genre of this game would be hack and slash, so most of the time in the game, the player will be slaying enemies. But at times the player will have to go to certain places without the enemies noticing him. The stealth gameplay will be a little bit like Metal Gear, where the player will have to crawl, or hide behind objects, or large rocks, so that the enemies won't spot you.

Reward the player:

The reward system will be similar to Dante's Inerno, where the player will be able to unlock new attack moves, and collect different items. Inn my game, the player will also be able to unlock different outfits and weapons, and if you kill a dragon, you will be able to use its bones to create an armor, or a new weapon. The player will have the ability to upgrade his/hers weapons and armor.

Hack and slash style:

As i said before, this will be a hack and slash game, and it will be quite similar to Dante's Inferno, where the player will have different attack combos, that he/she will have to unlock throughout the game.

Tag line:

"Revenge is a dish best served cold"

Feedback

i have pitched my characetr idea to my client,  where i talked about my character's personality, his goals in the game, a bit of his past, and the enemies he will be facing. I thought the presentation went quite well, i had concept art to show (i drew the main character and the default weapon in the game), and talked about my character, a bit of the enemies, and the setting of the game. I do think i could have talked more about how the game would work, like how the game is a hack and slash, talk about the reward system, and about the gameplay. i could have also found some music that would give the client a better idea of how the atmosphere of the game will be, and how when the player will be facing an enemy, the music will change.

After my presentation, my client gave me some feedback on how my presentation went, and thought i did a good job on presenting myself and my character at the beggining. I also learnt that i directly led into the story where they met the character and saw immediately what he looked like. My client could see all the elements of myth, magic, and history, that drew a strong appeal. My client thought that should have talked more about the gameplay of the game, the player rewards etc.

I have taken everything that my client has said into consideration, and i will use everything that i have learned to improve on my next presentation.

New blog

I have made a new blog where i introduce myself, and upload my work. If you are interested you can go and have a look :)

http://chloegowdy.blogspot.co.uk/

Creating the character

I decided that my character would be a 14 year old boy, named Raja. His family was killed by dragons when he was just a little boy, and his life mission is to slay every single dragon and get revenge for his family. He is friendly, laid-back, very athletic, but when he sees dragons, his mind goes completely blank and is consumed by rage. He killed his first dragon at the age of 7 who was still just a baby dragon learning how to hunt. Raja made his weapon out of that dragon's bones, and wears the dragons skull on his head as a trophy and also as a warning to the other dragons.

The environment will be set in the desert in Arabia.

 This is what i imagine Raja's village would look like.














I drew the 3 picture below, and they are concept art for my character and his weapon.

Character design research

When creating a character, there are a lot of questions you have to ask yourself, like:
-What is the characters name?
-How old is he/she?
-Where is he/she from?
-Do they have allergies, physical weakness?
-Are they scared of anything?
-What is he/she like (personality)?

You have to know your character inside out, so the list of questions can be very long. It's helpful to look at characters that already exists, and see why certain characters and their characteristic work and why some don't. Interesting looks alone don't necessarily make for a good character, its personality is very important as well. The driving force behind a character's personality is what it wants to achieve. Be it riches, solving a mystery, saving the world, can help to create the dramatic thrust behind the stories and adventures your character gets up to. No one is perfect, so your character is bound to have some flaws, and make mistakes.

I really loved the Disney movie "Aladdin" as a child, and i wanted to create a character and his story set in a world like Aladdin. 
  

Joel Simon

  I attended a presentation where Joel Simon, the owner of Flickerpix talked about his work, how he started his company, and what kind of animation techniques they used. The film "Macropolis", by Joel Simon was the winner of best animation at the 10th annual IFTAs 2013. Flickerpix have produced a wide range of projects, including "On the air", which is a mix of stop motion, and 2D animation. Here is the companies website if you are interested in looking at his work: http://www.flickerpix.com/

William Simpson

I went to see a local exhibit to look at William Simpson's concept art for the TV series Game of Thrones. Here is a couple of pictures i was able to take of his artwork:

Iconic characters

Shiny Money are currently  in the process of making a new game, and they are trying to create a new iconic character. In order to achieve that, i have done some research by looking at iconic characters, such as Mario, Sonic, Lara Croft etc. and find out what makes them so iconic, and different from other video game characters.

Mario, Link and Donkey Kong were created in the 80's.  Mario is a short Italian plumber that has appeared in over 200 video games, and he serves as Nintendo's Mascot. The picture below shows the 3 characters evolution through time.

Lara Croft is a female iconic character. She is the main protagonist of the Square Enix video game series Tomb Raider, and she is presented as a beautiful, intelligent, and athletic English archaeologist-adventuress.

Video game characters have been developed to suit their game's genre, for example, for action, hack and slash games, characters with big muscles like Kratos (from the game God of War) and Dante (from the game Dante's Inferno) are created. If you are playing a side-scrolling platformer game, cartoon-like characters such as Mario and Sonic are created.

Advertising

In order to make your product known, you have to advertise it to make people want to buy it. Nowadays, most games are advertised through gaming magazines, like PC Gamer. There are also websites such as Kotaku, which is a gaming blog,  that gives reviews on video games, and puts up screenshots of the games. 
There are also social medias, like Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr where people can advertise their products.  Now, almost everyone has at least a Facebook or/and twitter account, where they can keep up to date with upcoming games, see what the developers are up to etc. Advertising your product on big social medias like twitter and Facebook is very helpful because like i said before, almost everyone has at least a Facebook, or a Twitter account, so you will know that you could get a lot of people to see your product.
YouTube also has adverts that plays before a video starts, and they are sometimes video game trailers. A lot of people goes on YouTube to watch videos, so another way to advertise products would be to make a YouTube channel and make videos, advertising what you want to sell. 

Shiny Money

Shiny Money is an international video game development company that was founded in 1995 by Mike Collins and Joseph Smith. Throughout the years, the company released games for different kind of console platforms, such as the PS3, Xbox 360 and PC. They have also recently started to make games on mobile platforms (IPhone, IPad, Android) in order to expand their company. Shiny Money games are mostly action/adventure and  hack and slash, so the target market would be males around 15 to 25.

Shiny Money has a few big competitors, like BioWare, and Activision.

 BioWare is a Canadian video game developer, and is currently owned by EA (Electronic Arts). BioWare became famous for launching highly praised and successful licensed franchises, Baldur's Gate, Neverwinter Nights, and star wars: knights of the old republic. They also  made several other successful games, like the Mass effect series and the Dragon Age series.

 Activision is an American video game publisher, and was the world's first independent developer and distributor of video games for gaming consoles. Activision is now one of the largest third party video game publishers in the world. Activision published several popular games, like the Crash Bandicoot series, Call of duty series, Marvel video games, Spyro the dragon series, Guitar Hero series, and Prototype series.