Project Prototyping & Development (Formative)

After presenting my project pitch deck, I received many valuable feedbacks from the industry guests, supervisors, and my peers. Their insights contributes in refining my approach and guiding my project’s development. In this blog page, I will share my progress, breaking it down into various parts of the project to provide a comprehensive overview of my current journey so far.

(Last updated on Week 12)

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Characters Variations

In order to give more variety to each of the character, I decided to have two different variation of each characters. This means that each character will be started with the base form, and then it will 'evolve' into different variation depends on users' decision making. Basically, different choices will lead to different variations of the characters. This will ensure that not everyone will get the same variation.

As I have concerns of the duration of this project, I decide to limit the variation on up to two types of variation for each characters. That means there will be 4 base characters and 8 total of variations. This has not yet to be confirm, but I will be making changes if I still feel the need to cut down the number.

Each characters will be branched into different attributes of each red flags. Explanation of each variations are also included to ensure that it is still related. When it comes to character design later on, each variation will have different details such as decorations or colors on the characters itself.

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Character Designs

Initially, I planned to create new characters in the existing art style of Discord to align seamlessly with Discord's brand identity. So, I had already did one of the character design that follows Discord's art style which is Maru previously in the pitch deck to demonstrate the art direction that I will be going with.

One of the feedback that I received is that instead of playing it safe, I should explore and try different art styles for the characters. I thought that since this project would be carrying Discord's brand, it's a must to stick to its art style. After doing some research and observations on their official characters, it appears that Discord used a lot of different art styles through out their designs. One of the examples:

The image above was taken from Discord's website, and it shows that they have wide range of art styles used on their characters. This also shows that it aligns with their brand voice because Discord is a community based social platform. It goes without saying that with this approach, they can somehow display inclusivity for their users.

With that, I decide to explore and experiment with different art styles that Discord has never done before on one of my character, which is Maru. There are a lot of iterations because it takes quite some time to design and see which art style works with the vibe that I want Maru to have.

Above are the experimentations of Maru's designs done in Adobe Illustrator and Aseprite. I decided to go with the pixel art style because Discord don't have any characters in pixel art style yet. This would be a good opportunity to make use of this art style for this project, with the high possibility of catching people's eyes. With that, I continue on doing more character designs using this art style.

Although, I received a question as to why I designed certain characters this way. This definitely made me to be in deep thoughts because I did not put much thought on it while I was designing the characters. I realised that I need a strong reason why the characters look like that - it needs to be related with the main theme and topic of this project.

The next step to combat this obstacle is to research more about stereotypes of these red flags (whether is there's any known terms that is related) and find if there's any information that can be used visually on the characters. Hence, there will be more iterations in the upcoming weeks once I have finish my research regarding this matter.

For other pixel art assets, I am currently trying to create phone devices for each of the characters. This is specifically for the character selection. The phone devices will be designed in a subtle way to give 'clues' of the owner of the phone. This is not the final design, but can be taken as a progress for next iteration.

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Moodboard

Once I have decided to go with pixel art style, I created moodboard to help me align of what I want the art style to look like. It will also help me to set the tone and aesthetic direction (pixel has different styles as well) for this project. These will act as my references and inspiration for my overall designs.

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Scriptwriting

When it comes to scriptwriting, I am using Twine to help me organize the dialogues of each character's chat simulator. It can also help me to temporarily use it as an interactive tool so that I can see the flow of each dialogues branching out to different outcomes. By using Twine, I can continue on writing and planning the script while I'm working on the assets. It can also be tested and it works good enough to mimic the 'chat simulator'. It kind of works like a visual novel. Very easy to use and definitely will speed up my process in later stage.

I am currently still doing for Maru's scriptwriting. It's a bit slow progress because I was focusing on experimenting the art styles for these past few weeks. I need to some what research more about how specific red flags 'talks' in the internet so that I can capture their accent accurately.

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Lo-Fi Prototype

I briefly create the lo-fi screens to briefly show the flow of the whole interaction. I also prototype all the screens briefly. Here are some of the initial lo-fi screens that I created.

After consulting with my supervisor, I expressed that it felt weird to have a lot of empty space around the phone device. I wanted to use the phone device as part of the chat simulator so that it has the relation with the character selection visuals later on. My supervisor stated that perhaps I should try to not include the phone device and make the chat simulation on the desktop mode. But, I want to still stick to include the phone device for now.

Another approach is by adding a background with pixel art illustration of environments that would suit each characters. There would be opportunities to make the background environment to be interactable, but that can be further develop later on. I agree with this approach and decide to give it a try, and see how it will feel like in the prototype. Hence, I will be using a placeholder image for the time being.