girl are we cooked!!!!

The showing for this meeting was kind of bad with barely any work done lowkey. It is to be expected as I get more familiar with the team and start to understand everyone’s work ethics and commitment, but I’m a little worried about the workload divide that might fall onto a single person because of no-shows. The MVP should still be viable, just with a bit more struggle.

ARTISTS

Yu:
last week I finished up most of my concept silhouettes and chatted with artists and writers to keep up with their work. I haven’t started iterations yet, which I wonder maybe it’s because I’m scared about making decisions on which characters should be in the story and which shouldn’t…. While I have been asking for everyone else’s input on things, answers have been vague and I feel like I need to take a break from characters for a while…

This week, I will be concepting for backgrounds/sceneries to establish the environment. Originally, this task was given to Viridian (at least the first level) but there has been no concept art done. I think stepping away a little from the characters and establishing their world more will give me a clearer perspective of things.

Achi:
last week Achi completed some visual development for Lumiron citizens and their general style of clothing as well as hair style. They took inspiration from elven and tiefling style aesthetics in their design.

Our main problem with these designs is that it ended up looking too medieval-esque for our setting, which is meant to have a more victorian flair. However, the difficulty of designing fantasy victorian clothing is that a lot of classic fantasy is set in medieval style outfits and architecture. This will still need to be refined, but it’s a start to be able to identify the issues early on.

Achi will continue to work on character design in this coming week. They will also attempt to tackle the retainers concept and take it for feedback to their own professors (not in UAL).

Shuli:
Nothing has been heard from Shuli this entire week despite multiple check-in attempts with her. It is possible that I may have to study and draw placeholder tiles to assist Aurora since no work has been provided thus far.

Viridian:
Last week, only managed to gather some more moodboards for the first level design, and no work has been provided. I am a little worried about this as Viridian is very hyperfocused on one singular character that he has personal connections with, which may end up in the neglect in everything else of his role. I need to have a talk about this to him if I can.

This week, I have asked him to have a design of the deuteragonist of the story (the character he likes) and put him in different sceneries in an order to get him to draw some more scenery concepts for the first level.

CODER

Aurora:
Last week, figured out tiling work (despite the lack of placeholder assets) and is currently working on terrain blending. Aurora is fairly confident in her work and works at a fast pace, she’s currently only held back by the fact that there are no assets for her to use. I’ll try to rectify this as soon as possible.

Goal for this week is to have terrain blending fully figured out with placeholder assets and add enemy AI to first level.

WRITER

Gwen:
Currently gathering a compilation of a timeline in a presentation slide form to allow clearer navigation. Due to the fact that the story of Lumiron was made mostly between Shuli and me, there may be discrepancies in the story that Gwen will need to sort out between us. Honestly I feel like I should just be the director of it due to how often Shuli is absent but whatever.

I haven’t heard back from our music producer at all. Nobody has been able to get into contact with him, which has me a little worried but tbh music production can be delayed for later. Probably!

We’re definitely behind schedule on what I’ve planned but I think I can still salvage it. Pray for me

This is technically our second meeting since our project started, but the first one was held without me (since it was held at 3 AM my time orz). I made sure to plan this meeting as early as possible, which still ended up being 12 AM on Nov 3rd for me.

This was the first time that I got to talk to everyone fully, too. The main issue with this meeting, I think, was that no one really knew what they were supposed to do! Their first self-led meeting made them assign some different tasks to one another, which I didn’t look into until recently (my fault completely). A lot of the work division was weird and unbalanced, some with repeating/overlapping tasks that were too vague to differentiate between. Talking with everyone and assigning them new tasks for the week made me feel more optimistic about the game’s progress.

ARTISTS

Yu (me):
last week, researched and created loose concepts on various victorian careers for potential characters.
continue to produce character concepts based on different Victorian career paths (consider how they would look different in an era of peace, era of war, the in between where everything is in ruins, etc)

use the 5 stages of grief and establish which 5 characters would fit most for retainers and begin considering their place in the story and the stage environment matching them

 goal: lock in characters and begin iterations 

last week my concept drawings were rather lacking. i need to catch up with the amount that i missed

Achi:
last week, put together moodboards and research on the moon goddess, ruins architecture, environment, etc.
this week, continue to find references but this time with more specific points like specific flora/fauna instead of general scenery. begin concept sketches of lunarian civilization, with a focus on the populace/characters.

achi is a new person that i’ve met through shuli. he’s a full time artist which means he has a lot of other projects aside from this one, though hopefully he’ll manage to make time for this if hes used to already drawing a lot daily. his technical skill is solid, and he specializes with character concept art. i think he wants to try to attempt working with environment in this project to expand his portfolio and skills, though.

Shuli:
last week, gathered research on tilemap creation, worked a little on character concepting, and put together google calendars…?
this week, create placeholder tilemap and integrate into game with Aurora’s help, as well as take notes on tilemap creation research for documentation.

i’ve known shuli for a long time and she is one of the original people that conceptualized the world of lumiron with me. she’s very flakey and does things at her own pace which usually means they wont get done. i need to keep a tighter leash on her if shes going to be doing anything. shes also the one who invited a bunch of people i didnt know to work on a personal project together lol

Viridian:
last week, did brainstorming on the first level/tutorial of the game and researched into types of real world forests to aid in the creation of the stage.
this week, begin concept sketching of flora for first level, with a stretch goal of moodboard/concepts for enemies.

viri is shuli’s friend and i’ve known him for a couple years as well. he can technically do work but is held back by his self depricating nature, to the point where he will not do anything because he believes others will be better at doing it than him. i have to give him very specific instructions to make sure he knows nobody else will be doing his work and shut down any self depricating behavior if i see any.

CODER

Aurora:
in the past few weeks, added character movements and jumps as well as collisions within levels.
this week, work out tile map and research into level design and how to make appealing levels for platforming

aurora is a new person that i’ve recently met through shuli. she is also working full time but so far has been crushing all her goals even with a lot of time to spare. she seems to be stuck in what to do because of the slow start of our project, which is understandable since i dont have any experience in pipelines for game design/coding. i want to go talk to the game design tutor about how i should structure her work.

WRITER

Gwen:
last week, gathered research on city creation and victorian town architecture.
this week, will aid Yu (me) in storyboarding the main plot of the game, mainly regarding the different characters’ motives and plot relevancy towards the main character.

gwen is a new person i’ve recently met through shuli. i dont know a lot about him and i’m not exactly sure of his qualifications but he seems to be some sort of writer. i think its good to have someone to bounce ideas off of considering shuli is almost always absent or late to discussions. i will see how well he works after this weeks task with him.

MUSIC PRODUCER

Violet:
i haven’t heard from him in weeks!!! is he dead???

Overall, I think I’m happy with the way the meeting went. Everyone seems to have a little more direction than before which is a weight off my shoulders. Hopefully. Anyways I need to get cracking

To start conceptualizing for my project, first I need to decide the main inspirations for my work. The first challenge is to decide on an united time period to set the setting in– since the project world is a fantasy world that takes place on the moon, we have more flexibility with mixing and matching time periods (but I’d still like them to look unified aesthetically together).

Old character designs of Lumiron cast often takes inspiration of the European Victorian era style fashion, so this gave me a basis for the rest of the project. I originally considered Gothic style architecture, but since it was situated in the medieval era, the time periods didn’t quite match up.

While researching I found out about a movement named the Gothic Revival movement, around the 18th-19th century which sees the start of the Victorian era as well. The historical reason for the comeuppance of gothic style in that era is actually quite interesting!

Gothic Revival is also known as Victorian Gothic or Neo-Gothic, although it should be noted that Neo-Gothic comes later around the 20th century

“The reasons that Neo-Gothic developed are complex, but essentially they were a reaction against the Enlightenment as part of the overall trend towards Romanticism. Where the Enlightenment celebrated Reason, science, and logic (and rejected the allegedly anti-science fervor of the Middle Ages), Romanticism rejected all of that and was much more mystical and otherworldly. Hence it hearkened back to an earlier age that supposedly upheld the same mystical ideas of the Romantics.”

– Josiah Greenbrier (2019)

https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-main-differences-between-Gothic-and-Neo-Gothic-cathedrals

this quote does come from quora so sources should be taken with a grain of salt

I find the idea of rejecting logic and science to instead focus on the mythical to be in line with the themes of the current Lumiron game. As the main character descends further into his own mind, his eternal quest for salvation overtakes his reason as he slowly becomes trapped inside his inner world. The architecture style of Gothic Revival is also reminiscent of storybook castles and cathedrals, adding on to the fairytale-esque vibe of it all.

(a companion piece to working in groups)

aside from the main concern of group work and timezone differences as well as availability, there are still quite a lot of risks involved in the making of this project.

starting with technical things, such as softwares crashing and files getting lost in translations and whatnot. this is a common problem with all digital age projects, so really the only way to counter this is to save frequently and make back ups. nothing much to discuss here.

secondly, and the more important part, is again with interpersonal relationships within the project. i firmly believe that everyone on the team has the capabilities to create art worthwhile, but the main struggle i have is with the direction of the project.

because Lumiron is a world co-created by me when i was much younger, its only natural that i want to include the friends that conceptualized it with me together on this project. but because of how long ago Lumiron was created, visions are sure to differ from one person to another. if i want this project to be a success, i need to be able to take charge of this vision and direct it–this doesn’t mean not taking suggestions obviously but ive been struggling with making decision making lately.

my friend told me that the entirety of university experience is realizing that 80% of the populace (especially introverts like artists) will never take initiative with anything. i felt this very hard at the start of this project, where we kept bumbling around as a team because nobody could decide on anything. i would have ideas to direct the story into, and then get anxious about disrespecting others’ autonomy on the project. but the truth is i cannot keep waiting for everyone forever, so i have to learn how to take charge and propose definitive things. if anyone wants to disagree and offer a different opinion, then we can slow down and reevaluate. otherwise, the project would suffer without a clear direction and constant ping ponging of ideas.

an edit to this post: it was a hard hurdle to cross, but i think in retrospective at the end of E1, i managed to pick up the pace in time to keep production at a reasonable pace. let’s hope i can keep this energy moving forward!

the main risk concern I have regarding this project is actually about my group members. I am working with a group of people that are not part of UAL, meaning they have no incentive to be hurried along to the same deadline as I am. As I am around two three weeks into this project already, I am beginning to feel the problems that may arise out of this in the future.

My team consists of 4 (probably) artists including me, 1 programmer, and 1 music artist. To be honest, the way the team came together was less than ideal– there originally was only 3 people sharing the lumiron world as we have been loose friends throughout the years, but eventually fell out of contact due to simply growing apart. My original plan for my FMP was to make an art book completely solo, but recently one of the other two old acquaintances invited a slew of people into our archive server to make a game. It all came rather suddenly, but the idea of having programmers and artists that want to work together with me to create something bigger made me excited, so I changed course into wanting to produce a game demo.

The problem with this is just. I don’t know any of these people. And the two that I know, I don’t particularly know one of them for being very reliable.

Mostly, I’m worried about motive– I struggled with this last year too as the art director of my group’s game project, where I didn’t know how to motivate others to work because our priorities are different. This time even more so, considering my team is not tied to UAL grading systems and deadlines. Since everyone is working for free, I just have to trust these people (who have school and jobs in their own rights) to be passionate enough about the project to be able to assist me in it.

Three weeks into the project, my team has managed to have one meeting so far. Everyone else is in the NA timezones compared to me, so the meeting times are less than ideal for me, usually way after 3 AM. Not being able to attend and enforce these meetings in advance is stressing me out, honestly, even though I did get meeting notes from them after that one meeting. Otherwise they haven’t managed to meet again due to personal commitment. Research has been minimal from everyone aside from my part as well, which doesn’t bode well for the rest of the project.

I think the main problem currently is the lack of role assignment as we are still in the research phase of the project. We have divided up roles vaguely to look into different aspects of what we will need, but I haven’t heard back from most of them yet. It seems like this group of people is the type that needs to have clear tasks assigned to them with clear deadlines for them to work– my mom would call them abacuses, probably. Moving only when prompted?

I need to rethink my approach towards managing the team. Since we have much less structure than the last time I attempted art directing, the project feels disjointed and stagnant. Aside from my responsibilities as an artist, I need to devise up better planning to utilize the most out of my team. Hopefully this lull won’t last forever once we pick up the pace.

lumiron gdd:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1X9cvzxd_Nv9V_r2iKIB8fEapFUWxyGyTdNHtSp7NqtA/edit?usp=sharing

the aim for this project is to create the demo for a game project complete with concept art for world, characters, complete storyline with a playable first 2 levels as the minimum deliverable outcome.

The world of lumiron has been a personal project for me for years now, spanning back to when i was still a teenager. It started out as nothing more than a group of friends playing dolls with their created characters, and over the years has developed into a whole world with its own lore and characters. As all young personal projects, there are a lot of plot holes and lack of direction when it comes to the story and end product, which is why I want to take this opportunity to make something real from the disjointed ideas that form this world.

In the attached Game Design Document, I have listed things such as deadlines, goals to hit, character and world lore, storyline, etc. This blog will most likely be more about documenting my personal thoughts and progress throughout the project, so please refer to the GDD for the full overview of the project.