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Rose

My honours project focused on an exploration of situational awareness in a gameplay avatar's animations; investigating how gameplay animations could be more responsive to their surrounding environment and context, whilst demonstrating the character's personality.

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The final artifact, Rose, applied the theory to a short playable experience, showing the character's animations evolving as the narrative and game progressed.

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I produced all content apart from the rigs and audio.

Made in UE4.

Overview

Studio

Abertay University

Role

Solo Developer

Platform

Mobile

Date

2015

Key Skills

Technical Design

Animation

3D Art

A sister sits in front of a grave under a cherry blossom tree at sunset.

Characters

The story focused on a sister and her brother.

A polaroid style drawing of a brother and sister.
  • Turnaround drawings of the sister.
  • 3D models of the sister.
  • Coloured UV map texture for the sister.
  • Turnaround drawing of the brother.
  • 3D models of the brother.
  • Coloured UV map texture for the brother.

And their unexpected separation.

3.4 Backstory.mp4

Environment

The world reflected the sister's emotional journey.

Inspired by Matthew Nava's work on Journey, and Kung Fu Panda, I created a colour script to follow her experience.

A painted colour script of four sections of environments: bright windmill, to overcast forest, to dark mountain, to sunset cliff.

Pink was the colour of home, safety.

This showed up in the flowers around the windmill, her home.

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The pagoda where she sees the ghost of her brother.

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And the ending where she emerges out from a mountain pass to a sunset lit blossom tree.

Pink roses adorn the front of the windmill, whilst pink flowers scatter around the grass outside.
The sister walks through a narrow gap with a sunset at the end, and blossom gently blowing through.
The sister hides in a pagoda as rain falls outside. A rose winds it way around one of the pillars.
The sister falls to her knees in a dark forest.

Where as blues represented loss.

After seeing the ghost of her brother, a storm rolls in as she comes to term with his passing.

Lightning flashes overhead and the sister covers her ears.

The rose was symbolic.

Rose: a flower of the prickly stemmed variety.

Rose: to return from the dead.

The rose was symbolic.

Rose: a flower of the prickly stemmed variety.

Rose: to return from the dead.

Animations

I created animation sets to express the sister's changing state.

This covered her idle, walk, run, and reaction which evolved as the experience progressed and her context changed.

Upset

Shocked

Rain

Afraid

Content

  • Upset idle
  • Upset walk
  • Upset run
  • Upset reaction
  • Shocked idle
  • Shocked walk
  • Shocked run
  • Shocked reaction
  • Rain idle
  • Rain walk
  • Rain run
  • Rain reaction
  • Afraid idle
  • Afraid walk
  • Afraid run
  • Afraid reaction
  • Content idle
  • Content walk
  • Content run
  • Content reaction

Final Experience

RoseFullPlaythroughCompressed.mp4

Interested in learning more about situational awareness?

My full honours presentation below details out my research and how it contributed to the development of this project.

And, I made cake.

I like to bake, and for the graduate showcase I baked a moving windmill. 

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It earned me a place in the local paper.

Windmill cake
Windmill cake with it's sails gently spinning
The brother and sister look out from the bridge, with the windmill and hills behind them.
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