Giovanna Gowmez
Game Designer
Projects
Fishy Business
VFS Student Final Project
April 2023 - August 2023
On the frozen glacier, there are no laws. In this 3D, online, party game, players play as a penguin parent, who is trying to make sure that their babies are well fed. Fish the fishes or steal them from others, but make sure that your baby is well fed to become the ultimate penguin parent.
Graffiti Wars
VFS Student Team Project
January 2023 - March 2023
School's out and it is time for the children to play! In this 3D, 4 players local multiplayer, party game; players play as kids who wish to graffiti the whole school with their art. Play as a Painter to decorate the school and avoid the Cleaners; play as a Cleaner to clean up the opposing artist's art and stun Painters to prevent them from painting more.
Game Jams
Heart of the Arsenal
VFS Game Jam - June 2023
Shoot to impress in this aim-trainer dating sim, where you play as a humanoid gun trying to join a group of elites to win the love of your life.
Game Design Vision: Chaos vs. Law | Individuality vs. Community
Our main vision for the game is to create an chaotic environment, and I thought of the dynamic of chaos and law: chaos is formed there is no law in the land and prioritizes selfishness of the person, while law is formed through community and the creation of boundaries. Chaos is individuality, and Law is about community. So we made a game where the players have the opportunity to create a community, or promote severe individuality. Players have the ability to create a community, but they choose not to; this was because we drove the desire of the player's individualism through an implied selfless win state: if the player is the one to feed their baby the most, they are declared the ultimate penguin parent.
Winning Promotes Selfish Behaviour
The win state motivates them to become the best parent for their baby. When people think of the best parent, it is a parent who is kind, understanding, and selfless. However, the actions of the winning players are the complete opposite of what a good parent do: they slap and steal, and actively prevent other players from feeding their babies. We created an illusion that in order to become the best parent, they must do these vile actions for their babies; the babies do not care if the food came from another penguin or from the water, but the other players do -- inspiring hostility between the players. When players are hostile to each other, in the name of trying to be a good parent, that is when the game starts being chaotic. All the players are striving for one goal, to be the ultimate penguin parent, and they are not afraid to do terrible actions to make sure that they are the only ultimate penguin parent.We give players the full ability to work together, and to create a community where all their babies are fully fed. However, we also give players the opportunity to do vile things, to other players, in the name "for their babies"; players choose to take the latter, creating hostility between players, and creating a no man's land in the floating glacier.
The tutorial of the game, detailing the core mechanics and loop. Players are given full control on how they want to get the fish for their baby
The alert system that is displayed on the left side of the screen. The alerts would first flash, to foreshadow that an event is happening soon, and the sign will stay on when the event is happening.
This is a sign from one of our secondary mechanics, the rain. The rain makes everything slippery and difficult to control, creating chaos in the movement of the players and their aiming
This is a sign from another of our secondary mechanics, the seal attack. The seal attack forces players, that are not in the safe zone, to drop their fish and be stunned; effecting the player's judgement for risk (being stunned) and reward (feeding baby).
Creating Chaos in Design
One of the best tips I have ever heard, from my teachers, was that chaos is about having too much things to do and not having enough time to do it. When players are forced upon to do a certain amount of actions, in an extremely limited timeframe; they feel a loss of control as they do not have the time to process their thoughts to make a decision. We create chaos through the overstimulation of the player, based on the events of the game.
Core Mechanics = Control
When designing the core mechanics, I wanted them to represent control; each core mechanic creates an expected reaction that the players can easily learn, and gives players full abilities to feed their babies to win the game. The core mechanics are designed so players feel that they are in command of their character at all times, so players can feel how the game is supposed to be when it is predictable; predictability is the opposite of chaos. However, it is important for players to experience the game, without the chaos, to allow them to identify what chaos is and when it happens in the game. A game that starts off chaotic, and continues to be chaotic, will be read by the players as the natural state and a part of the everyday. However, we delay our chaos to allow players to recognize the predictability and get comfortable in its embrace, so the shift in chaos becomes more significant.
Secondary Mechanics Creates Chaos
While the core mechanics establish control, we use the secondary mechanics to introduce chaos. We based the chaos from nature, as it is one of the most unpredictable element in the world; our secondary mechanics is nature. Nature is chaos, as our players can not control how the world acts towards them; this is emphasized as players can not control when the events happen and which fish is coming. We used the narrative of man(player) vs. nature (the game world), to display chaos.
Maneuvering through Chaos
However, there is a issue with chaos; the unpredictability can make the game feel unfair, and make the players feel like they are being tossed around rather than fighting nature. To combat this, we added an alert system in our gameplay UI; the alert system tells players when an event is about to happen and allows players to be aware of future events. The alert system gives the player some control of nature, like the weather news does to people; we can't control the weather, but we can control how we react to the weather. By letting players be aware of the events, players are faced with chaos but they can orient themselves to control how they behave during the events. Through this system of juxtaposing control (core mechanics) and chaos (secondary mechanics), players get to experience the chaos of fighting with nature.
Designing
the Slap Mechanic
Slapping is how a player is able to do harm to other players, in order to get them to drop the fish they are holding. In order to slap another player, the player must approach the other player and click the slap button. We designed this mechanic to be more convenient to use, as it is easier to grab fish when another player is holding it due to the proximity of the opponents to all their babies and the easy visibility of the fish that is needed.
The Physical Design Breakdown
We wanted to make slapping easy, but fair to other players. We located the slap button in the most convenient location in the controls, so players can press it whenever they needed to: we attached the slap in the left mouse button and the east button in gamepad controls. Due to the ease of location, players slap more than any other button.We also made sure that the players receive instant feedback through the use of vfx, sound, and impact on the victim players; players who have been slapped once gain a red mark on their penguin. This was the only mechanic in the game that created more feedback visual feedback than any other mechanic in the game; due to the ease of action, and the large feedback reward that it give, players choose to slap more than to fish.
The Mechanical Design Breakdown
We wanted to make sure that slapping is easy and rewarding, but fair. To make slapping fair, the attacking players must successfully slap a targeted player twice in order to get them to drop their fish and slug them. When players are needed to slap twice, this creates a change of state in the players: players who are slapped once can still retain their fish and their full control, while players who been slapped twice lose their fish and most of their control -- we wanted to give players control still, so they can only move at a slower pace, but they are unable to slap or pick up fish.Slapping during different states causes different feedbacks, but both still rewarding to the attacking player: slapping a player, when they are first slapped, will give the attacking player a slap vfx and sfx; and the victim players a red band aid mark, implying that they have been slapped once. Slapping a player, when they have the red band aid mark, will cause the same slap vfx and sfx to the attacking player; but the victim penguin will drop their fish and they are only able to move during a small period of time. In the creation of the two hit system, the act of attacking is now more difficult and more rewarding due to the changes of state in the victim penguin.Through the ease of the action of slapping, and the added difficulty of slapping a penguin twice, for them to drop the fish; slapping becomes the most preferred method for players as it is intuitive and rewarding through its challenges.
Gamepad controls of Fishy Business, and the placement of the slap button for the ease of action
Keyboard and mouse controls of Fishy Business and the placement of the slap button for ease of action
The visual feedback for slap in game, when slapped once
The visual feedback when successfully slapped twice; stars appear above the victim player and the fish flies off their hold
This is the previous range of the attack collider; we used this collider for all the mechanics: slapping, fishing, picking up, and feeding
This is how players were able to achieve a larger range than intended, because the server haven't accommodated the information sent by the client and assumed the previous state first
This is the new attack collider, we tighten the range of the collider to accommodate lag.
Tuning
the Slapping System
Due to the nature of an online game, one of the biggest obstacles we faced was latency and lag. When we had our first playtesters, we have been getting repeated feedback that players felt that the slap range was too big; players would slap other players, and the slapped players would be on the opposite site of the map when they get slugged. This was interesting, as our attacking collider has the width of another penguin and it did not make sense how the players was able to achieve the range.
Background on Host and Client for Online Games
So, I did some research on the dynamic of Host and Client in online games to understand the reason of the range. The reason why players achieved the range is due to the information that is being passed to the Host; the Host is not sending and taking information from the Client fast enough, that the Host is assuming the player's most recently received previous position rather than the current position. The result of this means that on one screen, a player slapped another player when they are in range; and another screen, a player is received the slap despite being away from the other player. The Host thinks that the slapped player was in the previous position still, and accepts the request of the attacking player. The colliders we previously set up would have worked if our game was a local multiplayer game, but it worked terribly when it's online due to the delayed messages that were being sent.
The Fix
To make the game feel fair, we tighten the attack colliders severely. Previously, the attacking range is about a penguin's width; we changed the attacking range to be the range of the penguin's arms. We chose to make the range closer to the player, so players are forced to get close. Due to the messages being sent, the attacking collider feels bigger than it actually is, as the Host is recording the player's most previous position rather than the current position. After tightening the colliders, the attack range feels accurate to what we envisioned the game to be.
Level Design
When I designed the levels of Fishy Business, I was inspired by children sports games that would be played during sports class or recess. I thought it would fit our game, as our target audience is people who enjoy party games; party games are enjoyed by people from different ages, and the best way to appeal to everyone is to give players an inherited shared experience. The inherited shared experience I chose to focus on is when we were kids and sports games.The main influences for our level structure was Capture the Flag. Capture the Flag required players to go past no man's land, and into enemy territory to achieve a point. I wanted players to experience a moment of uncertainty, by creating the No Man's land to be majority of the map; this was done by placing all the babies on one end of the map, and all the fishes on another. Through the polarization of the placement, players have to go to the fishing area (safe area) and go through the No Man's Land in order to go to the baby area.
Risk vs. Reward Based on the Map Region
The fishing area is considered the safe area, as it is the area where players are less likely to attack another player, due to the distance from the baby zone and the abundance of fishes; players have more reasons to fish, rather than to fight in the area due to the fish population. However, as players go closer to the baby area the fish population in the area drops significantly; the closer the players are to the baby area, the more fights happen, as the only fishes that are available for taking are from other players. This evokes risks (not getting the fishes that the player needs faster than the other players) vs. reward (getting fish by stealing from others and reducing the travel time to the baby).
The Potentials of Camping
A concern arise from our teachers about camping; due to the all babies being aligned together, players would wait by the baby area and steal oncoming players. This was a valid concern, as it creates a saddle point in the level design. However, during playtests, players who decide to camp do not become the winner of the game; this is because players are able to take steal fishes from others easily.
Core Mechanic Prevents Camping
When a player got slapped twice and their fish stolen, they enter a slugged state; the slugged state do not prevent them from moving. Due to this ability to move, players can still catch up to the player that attacked them and get back easily revenge, as it is easy to steal fish from others. This creates a back and forth between multiple players, and the difficulty to feed babies become severely more difficult as players has to fight and make sure they feed the right baby in the small area. During these fights, the non-combatant players gain temporary safety due to half of the players being distracted with each other; the non-combatant player can enter the battle if they wish to and raise the difficulty of gaining the fish, and raising the temporary safety to the only non-combatant player. When players fight amongst each other, the risk vs. reward rose in each combatant as they weight in the time they also spend in fighting for the fish. While the player who are not in combat have a lower risk and higher reward, by being unaffiliated with the fight, as their chances of being attacked is severely reduced to combatant players being distracted with each other.
This is the first level of the game, where the fishing area is half of the No Man's Land, to allow players to adjust to the controls. The baby area is included as a part of No Man's Land, as players can steal fish until the fish has been directly fed
This is the last level of our game, where the fishing area is less than No Man's Land, due to the single pathway and narrow walkway
This is the chances of fighting/slapping to occur in the first level of the game; the closer the players are to the babies, the higher the chances of fighting/slapping to occur due to the proximity
This is how the Chances of Fighting/Slapping changes when there is a fight that is happening. The players who are in combat with each other have a higher chance, compared to non-combatant player.
Creating Dependency in the Core Loop
Graffiti Wars has two roles that the player can choose to become: a painter or a cleaner. Painters are the main generator of gaining points in the game, while Cleaners prevent the other teams from gaining points; each team is assigned one Painter and one Cleaner. Due to the team based nature of the game, both roles needed to be distinct and depend on each other's action to win the game.
Limit the Available Points that the Teams can Gather
We made sure that players needed to depend on each other by introducing a limited amount of points that can be generated; a point can only be claimed by one team, unless it was to be taken down by an opposing cleaner. Through the introduction of the limited available points, players are incentivized to keep on top of their tasks and promote their team mate to do their assigned task: painters are incentivized to encourage their cleaners to clean the marked walls, so the painter can mark the walls in their team's colours; and the cleaner are incentivized to encourage their painter to paint the walls by cleaning up the opposing team's colours and freeing up the available points that can be obtained. When the player's tasks depend on each other, players enter a cycle where they are encouraging each other to do their assigned roles and creating a community that depend on each other.We also made sure that the game can not be won without each other, as the available points are an even number and painters have the same speed of painting as the opposing team; if the players do not work with each other, all the points will be divided equally to result in a tie. To successfully win the game, players are tested in their ability to work with each other and how well they performed.
Available walls for players to spray on and gain a point
Painters spraying the walls to gain a point for their respective team
Walls that are marked by the respective team (Right: Pink team, Left: Green team), giving a point for the pink and green team based on which wall that has their colour
Pink team Cleaner cleaning the Green team's marked wall, and removing the point from the green team
Overall map with the environment being cold colours, and the interactable with warm colours
Walls where players can spray are indicated with a light yellow and bright spot light to navigate the players eyes to it
Teleport stations have matching colours to indicate their relation and intractability.
Colour Language
The colours of the game are dictated by their based on the interaction of the players. The blue colours, such as the environment of the world, are non-interactable objects in the world; players can not affect anything that is blue and the blue can not affect them. Warm colours, such as the marked walls and the teleport areas, are the objects that players can interact with. We chose red, yellow, and orange to identify their relations between the other interactable, as the objects that have the same colours are connected to each other due to that they are teleport stations.
Contrast to Guide the Eye
We chose colours that juxtapose each other, to create player focus on the interactable. The first priority of interactable are the walls: we made the walls light yellow so the eyes focusses on the walls first; the value of the interactable are pushed through a spotlight that creates a further contrast with the dark environment. The next priority of interactable are the teleport stations, as they are ways for painters to avoid cleaners; we linked the teleport stations with an assigned colour, so players can determine which door will lead them to a specific area.By allowing the map to be mostly blue, players can focus on the contrasted objects, such as the walls and the doors, so players can differentiate which thing can cause a reaction or not.
The narrative was written in Twine, a software for creating choice based narratives; I made the flow of the overall game to be more linear, due to the time constraints
Half of the game is an aim-trainer, so I had to tie the reason why the player is in a shooting range into the narrative by making the drill a part of a test to impress the other guns
The other half of the game is a dating sim, so I made the choices of the players affect the difficulty of the drill. If a player were to answer incorrectly, the drill would be harder to complete due to the speed of the targets and appearance of target
Designing the Narrative of an aim-trainer
dating sim
This was one of the hardest thing I had to do during this Game Jam; writing a narrative that included 7 characters, within a time limit of 2-3 days. I had experience writing dating sims and script writing, but I had at least two weeks to compete the task. Due to the time constraint, I had to work efficiently to complete the story in time.
Connecting the Two Genres Together
The first thing I had to focus on is how both genres can harmonize with each other; what is the reason that the player is winning the hearts of other guns through shooting. I proceed to think about shooting as a way of impressing and seducing; the player is using shooting to demonstrate their skills as someone that is worth their time. One of the biggest downfalls in dating sims is that the player tends to be just a regular person, with barely any attractive qualities, and yet managed to woo a harem. I didn't want that in our game, as it did not make sense, so I made it that the player is attractive to the other guns because of his skills in shooting; that means the more successful the player is in the shooting range, the more attractive the player becomes to other guns. The goal of the player becomes to shoot and impress the other guns, so they can proceed to the next level; the goal of the player character is to impress the other guns, so they can become part of their group; and the goal of the other guns is to test the player character to see how competent they are, then slowly fall in love with the skills of the player and player character.In making sure that the goals of the player, player character, and other guns to be clear; I was ensured that the general story made sense before going into the details.
Integrating Choices in the Time Constraint
However, a dating sim is nothing without its choices. Normally, dating sim uses choices to gather approval from the romance interest, so they can progress with their route. Due to the time constraints, a divergent choice game would be unsuccessful as I would be unable to add depth to each route. In order to keep the choice aspect of the game, I made it that players must make a choice in the middle of the drill, to determine the difficulty of the aim-trainer. When a player answers "wrong," the drill would become more difficult through the speed of the targets or the time of its appearance. Through adding a choice, players are able to learn more about the characters they are impressing and see how their actions directly influence the game.
Character Design of the Guns - P250
(player character)
P250 was the first character I made for the game, as it was the character that needed the most time to create due to his frequent appearance and correlation with the player. When I first started, I went to research what the P250 is and it's performance. In my search, the P250 was a customizable gun that had great accuracy, was affordable, and easy to use. I took the details of the gun, and made it personalities for the main character: a friendly gun (affordable and easy to use), that has low self-confidence (the customizability became a double edge sword as they don't know who they are). Throughout the game, the player character learns to gain his self-confidence, through the trials as the trials give him upgrades; and the other guns motivate the player character out of the low self-confidence as they gave a part of them to him.
Designing Function
One of the challenges I faced in creating P250, is his reloading: the character has a gun head, and shoots from his head. Due to the anatomy of the character, he needs to shoot like a gun. I looked at videos on how the P250 shoots and reloads, to make sure that the anatomy of the P250 is accurate, and makes sense for the evolution of the characters. The P250 shoots with little recoil, so there would be no character design adjustments on the shooting. However, the reloading requires ammo to be inserted and the top part of the gun to be pulled back to define that the gun has been reloaded. I thought that the ammo are food for the characters, so the bullets would come from their throats or stomach; the pull of the top part would be initiated by the hand, like a traditional P250. The players would be able to see how the character reloads and added another dimension to the characters in the game.
P250, the player character, was the only character I had to do a turnaround sheet due to his appearance in the game to be 3D. I knew that the 3D artist would not have enough time to model him, so I thought of making his design fit the low poly constraints
P250 3D render done by Josh Anaya-Paiero.
One of the most important thing in the game is shooting, and all characters have gun heads, so I spent some time researching how the gun would reload to fit their anatomy
BIO
Giovanna is an Indonesian-Canadian creator, based in Vancouver. She grew up playing a wide array of games, from small titles, like Wattam; and large titles, like Dragon Age. Giovanna graduated from Emily Carr University of Art + Design in 2022, with a Bachelor of Media for 2D-Experimental Animation with honours: President's award, Anti - Racism award, and Best Direction award. In 2023, she graduated from Vancouver Film School for Game Design, specializing in game design and level design. Her goal is to make games that is a culmination of her favorite genres.
© Giovanna Gowmez
Inferno - Solo Game Project
October 2023 - Present
Game Description
Inferno is a 2D, turn based, interactive novel, where players play as Cain, an angel sent to retrieve his lover and kill Lucifer. Roll your dice, defeat your enemies with the holy sword or kindness, and get companions to accompany you through the journey towards the 9th circle of Hell. Reach the final circle, and learn who you truly are.
Art Direction
I was heavily inspired by "OFF" by Mortis Ghost, the "Divine Comedy's" illustrations by Gustave Dore, and Japanese manga art style for this game. I wanted to make the game have the melancholy feel of OFF and Gustave Dore's illustration, but also have the flair of joy from the characters in manga, as a large pillar of the game is about light and darkness/good and evil. I wanted to have balance in the art style through having the background be inspired by Gustave Dore, the characters be manga styled, and using the same colour balance from OFF.
Character Design
Cain - Protagonist
Cain is the angel that players play as he descends through Hell. When I was brainstorming what Cain would look like, I was heavily inspired by Guts from "Berserk" because of the serious tone that Guts give off. I wanted that feel for Cain, so I gave him a more mature look and slightly messy hair to juxtapose his sharp features. Cain also symbolizes the role of Dante from "Dante's Divine Comedy;" so I gave him a large robe, that Dante wears in paintings, to push the role on the character.
Cheshire - Sidekick and Mentor
Cheshire is the first demon that Cain meets, and lead him through the circles of Hell. I wanted Cheshire to be the antithesis of Cain, so I designed him to contrast Cain's whole being and made everything about him feel friendly, but slightly mischievous; this was done by making his bag far bigger than it needs to be, and giving him cat features like his eyes and little fangs on his teeth.
Gameplay Mock-up
This was a quick mock-up I've done for the game, as I explore ways to layout the game. I wanted the game to look like a Japanese visual novel, but with the option to fight every character at any moment. In the mock-up, I have Cain on the left and Beatrice on the right. The left and right positioning is based from "Fire Emblem Awakening" dialogue , and renaissance art history on character positioning, as right is considered good and left is considered bad.
Background
Limbo - Sketch
Limbo - Final
This is the background for the beginning scene of the game - 1st Circle of Hell: Limbo. In "Dante's Inferno," he described the first place that Dante landed was at the foot of a mountain in a forest. I wanted the forest to look like Gustave Dore's illustrations, but when I tried putting Gustave Dore's illustrations against my characters, the details of the background were distracting and pulled away from the characters. I simplified the backgrounds, by reducing the details in the leaves and elements in the distance. The colour was chosen due to the saturated look of "OFF's" backgrounds, and the coldness of the forest that I wanted to convey. I placed the light on the left side of the screen, as Cain would be positioned there throughout the whole scene, and makes him shine with divinity.
Heart of the Arsenal - VFS GameJam
June 2023
Game Description
Shoot to impress in this aim-trainer dating sim, where you play as a humanoid gun trying to join a group of elites to win the love of your life.
Art Direction
The whole inspiration of the art direction is gun themed dating sim, but with a queer twist. I was inspired by multiple western dating sims like "Dream Daddy" and "Monster Prom," that had queer romance options; and Japanese dating sims, specifically the genre Otome -- dating sims made for women. I based the look of the characters to have the same visual appeal in Otome, but clearly have queer influences through the use of colour. All the characters were heavily inspired by "Chainsaw Man," as we identified that the market does not have a weapon-head based dating sim, and we thought we should correct that.
UI/UX
Dialogue
In the game, the player plays as a gun man, dating gun people; I thought it would be fun to make gun themed interfaces. Everything in the interface is related to a gun, one way or another: the dialogue box is a magazine, the choices are bullets (because the player is "shooting their shot" hahaha), the character portraits are guns, and the symbol to represent finished dialogue is a target. The colours was connected to our main character, as our character represent purple and is bisexual.
Character Design
P250 - Protagonist
This is our main character's turn around sheet; he is the only character to have a turnaround sheet, as he is the only one that is 3D modelled to shoot targets. One of the design challenges for his was his reloading; he shoots from his head, but where does he reload from? Normal P250 reloads from the bottom, and his bottom is his neck. However, I realized that he has bullets in his body to shoot the bullets, so I made his head where he can prime for more bullets.
The Romance Options
Our team had 5 days until submission, and everyone wanted 6 romance able options -- I designed all 6 characters within 2 days. The challenge in designing 6 characters is ensuring that each one is unique to each other, and stand out from one another. Due to each character being a personification of a gun, I had inspiration based on the history of their use and creation. I would search up each gun about how they are used, why they are used, what their history is, and create personality from the details given. Research made the character designs easy, as formulated their personality for me, and I just had to design their look.
Fishy Business - VFS Final Project
April 2023 - August 2023
Game Description
On the frozen glacier, there are no laws. In this 3D, online, party game, players play as a penguin parent, who is trying to make sure that their babies are well fed. Fish the fishes or steal them from others, but make sure that your baby is well fed to become the ultimate penguin parent.
Art Direction
We took heavy inspiration from the cartoon look Party games, such as "Mario Party" and "Overcooked," and plush toys, like "Squishmallows." The game was targeted for younger audiences, so we made everything in the game to be cute and adorable visually, through simplifying the visual design of everything.
Logo
Old Logo
This was our old logo of the game. Our teachers found the logo to be lacking as it does not show the nature of the game, and did not attract users to play our game.
Current Logo
This was our current logo. The previous logo's weakness was the lack of chaotic and cute energy the game had, so I pushed it in our redesign. When designing this logo, I wanted users to see the logo and understand what the game is about instantly. I integrated the core loop and the main mechanics of the game, through the penguins around the title, and set a glacier in the background to show the setting of the game.
UI/UX
When showing the game, I noticed that all the viewers enjoyed the UI when there is a penguin -- So I placed penguins everywhere. Every screen, in this game, has a penguin.
Gameplay HUD
I was responsible for designing the HUD of the game, and there were elements that the players needed to know based on the HUD: the time of the game, what each baby wants, who is winning, what event is occurring, and what are the controls. I organized all the UI to show up on the outside of the screen, to minimize any information being blocked by the HUD for the players. The rest of the set up was making each element have a penguin.
Menu Splash Screens
In the game, I made multiple splash screens for the game's menus. I wanted the menus to convey the relationship between the penguins, as the main gameplay does not focus on the story of the creatures. In the design, I had a little section on each penguin's history and I thought it would be fun to go through the narrative in the menu screens. As I drew each splash screen, I would place the penguins into scenarios to explore each penguins' personality.
Stop and Go - Emily Carr Final Project
September 2021 - April 2022
Story Description
In a world where robots have achieved free-will, Pappy, the school patrol robot, realizes that all is not as it seems to be.
Art Direction
A big part of the story was the juxtaposition between expectation and reality of the world. We wanted to push that in the style of the animation too: the visuals would look cute and innocent, while the story and the animation would directly oppose that.
Trailer
When creating the trailer, I wanted to showcase the key dynamics between the characters and who is the main character. I did so by picking the shots that show the interaction of the main character and the other characters: shot 1 is the main character with the majority, shot 2 is the main character with the little girl, and last shot is the main character with themselves. The three shots represented the relationship challenges that the main character faces in the story.
Animation Workflow
This is the workflow I followed throughout production. I would first do a rough layout sketch of the animation flow, and let that guide the positioning and dynamic of the animation.