Quick idea note down:

- Detective case

- Character narratives + point and click?

- Changing art style (mystery)

- Certain scene assets change depending on art style (Characters are aware)

- Time manipulation to different game console generations (Clock chime)

Concept Stage 1-2 (Legacy) - For this assignment I have been tasked with creating an animated prototype of a game. The initial idea I have come up with revolves around a detective like character who has been called by residence of a hotel to investigate weird events happening in the building.

The main gimmick of this game animation idea is that the art style of the game changes at random and alters the surroundings, while the characters are fully aware. Each art style will be based of older console generation limitations. The goal is for the detective character to figure out what is causing this by talking to the NPC's and investigating items in the scene that change depending on the game generation.

Design Stage 1-1 (Legacy) - I want to take some design inspiration from the Professor Layton series, as well as a few other game characters. Below I've created a moodboard for design ideas for the main character, the detective.

I decided to create a simple photobash for the detective character using a mix of Professor Layton characters. This helps to give me a rough ideas of how I want the main characteristics of the detective to look.

Design Stage 1-2 (Legacy) - It has been a while since I last did the photobash, but I got round to sketching out the design for the detective character.

Character description - The unnamed, un-famous detective and sentient hat duo. A pair that have never been seen working alone. No one seems to know if this pair think a like or that one has more control over the situation than the other. But in a world of even more quirky characters and strange events, sometimes things are best left unsolved... Well, except the cases this duo are out to face...

Concept Stage 2-1 - I have been thinking about the scope of my current animated prototype idea and have made the tough decision to scrap the idea. With the remaining time left I feel that I would struggle to get it to the stage I would like.

For my new idea I've decided to take inspiration from the Mega Man series. However, unlike the series that is known for it's 2D platforming, I want the gameplay of the animated prototype to present itself as a retro inspired sci fi space shooter. I want to focus on the unique boss encounters rather than the levels. I've always enjoyed the bosses in games as they tend to be a fun and unique change up from the standard levels.

Design Stage 2-1 - For the boss design artwork (a Hazard) I wanted to take inspiration from an old drawing I had done. I combined the designs from the original sketch, whilst incorporating the changes made during the sprite creation. I used a mixture of Photoshop and Illustrator to create the final design.

Concept Stage 2-2 - I next focused on creating a storyboard for the animated prototype. For the stage select, I took heavy inspiration from the early Mega Man games' stage select screens and character introduction.

Design Stage 3-Sprite showcase - Here are some of the sprites and animation for the project which mostly got unused due to time for proper implementation.

Audio Segment - For this project I created the music "HAZARD" using Logic Pro. For the sound effects I used royalty free audio libraries.

Design Stage 3-2 - The one main piece of animation I did for the animated prototype was this parallax scrolling background effect. Depending on the size of the star tiles, the slower the infinite scrolling effect would be. When stacking the different speeds together, it helped to create the illusion of 3d depth. I followed a video tutorial, which I then modified for the parallax scrolling. 

End - Unfortunately a lot of what I had planned for the final animated prototype was not finished in time. I plan to continue working on this project to get it to the results I was hoping to showcase for this assignment.