Synapse – A Big Game Project – First Post

Well then, I'm back to my old blog again. I will be doing posts every week from this day forward, to the end of May. 

I'm now reading the last course of the second year of Game Design in Campus Gotland, the Big Game Project. This is the examination course of this year, where teams of between 5-9 members will be working on a two-month game project, similar to the previous year's course during the same period, Theme Park. 

At the end of the project, all teams will present their games at the Gotland Game Conference where students, teachers, children and aduls can go and play these. My previous year's project was not a success, and my team where the only one who were not permitted on puting up our game for the exhibition. 

Laft week, I joined a team of seven members (six artists and one programmer) and we will be making a game called "Synapse". This game will be focusing on the following subjects, according to our current Game Design Document.

"Synapse is a game for the hands on brain scientist in training, where you learn how the brain functions, what parts the brain consist of, and what these parts do."

This is done by performing tasks, where you guide a signal through nerve pathways to a part of the brain corresponding to the task asked of the player to carry out, and seeing what happens to the player avatar performing the action, in the form of an oft-humorous animation. There are several nerve pathways you can move the signal through, with only one of them leading to the correct part."

I assume the role as a graphics artist and animator; I will be doing animations for these tasks, collaborating with the other five artists in the team, as well as graphical objects needed for the upcoming alpha/beta-presentations.

Here are some simple brain nerve paths art that I quickly made. These might not end up in the finished product, but maybe in the alpha version. 

I made the synapse signal that might also end up in the alhpa version. Here I used a glowing effect in Photshop, using this tutorial video from YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-vMObiT7C-U

I started making a storyboard for a couple suggestions for Idle-animations the character would make in the game, possibly in the Sandbox/tutorial level.

And finaly, here is a short ball animation that I made to fresh up my animation skills.

Well that is all. I should also mention that during half of this week I've been having a high fever, so I've had not much time on doing stuff for this week. But as soon as I leave the sickbed, I'll be starting on creating idle character animations.

Hopefully, this year's project will be a huge success. Or at least better than my previous project during Theme Park.