02/04 Update

This week, I focused on finalizing plate designs by making notes on what shape it would have, along with what shapes it would include.

What is on the Plate?

I talked with the group members and they agreed when I said I wanted to make it look as if the butter himself had decorated a space for him to invite his love interest to. As mentioned in a past update, I really wanted to make it appear like some setting for a cheesy romance film but at the same time, not overdo it too much to the extent it pulls the focus away from our butter star.

For starters, I shaped the plate into a flower shape because it wouldn't be as interesting if we just had a circle. Also, it follows the theme with the multiple roses placed at the four sides of the plate since roses symbolize love. I also intend to include a flowerbed of roses in the middle for Butter to situate himself on - litter him with roses and it is a bed made with love >.>;;

Drawing for the Rosebed

I drew up a bunch of roses for his bed and intend to colour it with simple shading so it doesn't stand out too much - the red will already be enough to make it noticeable. If I feel that there are too many leaves, I plan on removing them along with making some of the roses have less petals as they look rather...detailed(?) compared to what I want (apart from the rose on the left side).

Past Update >.> - 28/03

Jerwin from our group had made a bunch of colour concepts (Thanks man!) and from looking at those, we all decided that the golded wrapper for the butter would make him look the most elegant, as well as emphasize his "high end creamy blend" status.
However, we had changed our wrapper shape into the Elvis Presley type high collar shirt as suggested by lecturers due to how we couldn't really have a bathrobe without the waistband.
We weren't too sure how we would make the folds look realistic so...
Jerwin, Zack and I had a job:
Round 2 photoshoot with butter. Jerwin went to the dairy and purchased a stick/block/bar of butter >.>;;;; (A plus being that it had gold wrapping! :D)

Front of butter - Couldn't open it fully because it already smelled bad as it was

Side view of the butter wrapping

Back of butter - raised for the butt

The back would have the brand name and logo

We did this mainly to figure out how the wrapper would have its creases and folds, meaning it would help us to make the wrapper look as natural as possible during the modelling process.

After studying the butter, we had a few design points that we knew we had to include in the final design:

Results during investigation

-Barcode at "front" 

-Might include nutritional information
-Ripped Top Half for Collar: Presley shirt
-Bottom of wrapper curls up + folds at the back for the butt
-Writing on the "back" for logo

Producer Michelle Zhen also suggested we include the slogan "Spread the Love" where Love is replaced with a heart symbol instead for the ripping effect at the end when the butter is heartbroken.

Interactive Narrative Week 5

For this week, I decided to play "The Wolf Among Us" and during my experience, I was constantly thinking about what morals I followed and what kinds of choices they lead me to make.

The Wolf Among Us is split into five different chapters and mainly involves the point and click mechanic for players to investigate around the mysterious death of a character named Faith at the beginning of the game. There are also quick time events along with conversational choices when interacting with other characters which can impact the player's narrative varying from slight to vast lengths.

The player controls Bigby who was previously known as the Big Bad Wolf along the Fables and because of his dark past, he now acts as the Sheriff of Fabletown to reconstruct his bad image. Being shown this fact alone made me consider how I would make my decisions from both my own morals along with where the character stood within society. Because the other residents of Fabletown have a hard time believing Bigby stemming from his aggressive nature, I found myself following my "no violence" policy, holding back when it came to violence in an attempt to prove Bigby had changed as an individual. Even though this killed me once during the beginning for not hitting the Woodsman with an axe, the majority of the events afterwards awarded my decisions with characters remembering my small acts of kindness during the narrative progression. Brandon Perdue mentioned, "There is plenty of reason to try to quantify a player's moral choices somehow in the game system. It allows rewards for certain kinds of activity. Non­player characters can react according to a player's reputation." Even though there is no clear mechanic gauging your reputation implemented within the game, the clear variety created for character relationships and narrative paths made it feel as if the player's moral choices made an impact. The game offers many choice situations, both small and large, to challenge the player with what they believe is correct, and also has times to test the player's patience when interrogating other characters: how long will you hold back until you bring back the wolf's claws?

Overall, The Wolf Among Us is a game which I consider a more compelling one because of its strength regarding how it incorporates the player's morales along with the gameplay and narrative. From this fact alone, I intend to continue my experience until the end with this game. :)

References
Telltale Games. (Developer). (2013). The Wolf Among Us [Video Game]. United States: Telltale Games
B. Perdue. (Author). (2011). Ethical Dilemmas and Dominant Moral Strategies In Games [Article]. http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/6460/ethical_dilemmas_and_dominant_.php

20/03 Update - Character turnaround

Our group doesn't have a turnaround yet so I drew a character turnaround of Butter for his current design. It is highly likely that we will change his clothing (wrapper) from what we have at the moment. ><

Butter

Mass Update! - 17/03

Continuing from before, I sketched a few ideas regarding the different poses Butter could use.

Pose for the camera Butter! ><

Where will your butt sit?

I also designed a few plates with one idea in mind: make it look cringe worthy. To give this effect, I added multiple patterns filled with hearts, roses and flower petals to make it look as if Butter prepared this lovely seat to look romantic but appears cheesy instead. My group members along with lecturers liked the bottom left design with the flowerbed, saying it fit the idea the best out of all of the plates.

Feedback Session

We had a group feedback session with the lecturers today, and we were relieved to hear that they thought we were really nailing the character down with all of the group's hard work. We had also discussed our problems with the butter wrapper which lead to ideas of it being changed into a highcollar shirt rather than a bathrobe. 

Throughout the week, a few of the other members headed to Jonathan's apartment to do some early sound recording for the animatic Mikayla and Michelle Z are preparing. (Really sad I couldn't go because it sounded like it was hilarious x'D)

Mass Update! - 15/03

The final script has been announced and the puns were approved by lecturers! X'D Many thanks to Mikayla and Michelle Z for their hard work in putting the script together along with having to come up with the vast number of puns!

New Pun: "I 'AM' the cream of the crop!"

Working off the final script, there was a group discussion with the storyboard Mikayla and Michelle Z made. We all had input on details such as camera angles and how the character could be posed. It was really helpful in the way it made it a lot easier to actually visualize the animation. We were a bit worried about the timing and did make a few cuts from the original storyboard to shorten it and now Mikayla and Michelle Z are going to transfer it to an animatic.

Page 1 filled with sticky notes :D

Page 2!

Looking at the storyboard, I decided to draw a few pose ideas for the butter along with designing the plate he would present himself on.

Mass update! - 14/03

Mass update on what happened during the past week! ><

Current chosen design

Our team gathered together and we discussed all the different ideas we had for the appearance of our Butter character. It was good that we had many people working on him, because the more ideas made it a lot easier to get his design on point. In the end, our group decided to use this as the base design, while developing how his clothes work throughout this week. We had combined many different aspects from everyone's ideas. 

From that, I worked on trying to get different designs for Butter's wrapper. We intended to make it look like a bathrobe to give off the affect of a "high class" character despite his incredibly cheesy lines.

Little idea of including a heart on the wrapper for when Butter is rejected

Different ideas for Butter's wrapper

I tried to explore how the butter wrapper could be used as a bathrobe...by starting off with looking at one. For the 2D arms, our group remembered Doodlebob from the Spongebob series and got influence from that. I sketched up different designs of how the "sleeves" would work, along with seeing if the waistband from the bathrobe would look natural - later in the week, we realised a lot of us were having trouble making it look like a bathrobe without the waistband because actual butter wrappers wouldn't have it in the first place. T_T; There were also little inclusions of how the word "Butter" could be written on the robe along with the heart.