Project Critique and Tutorial 7

It's the final tutorial session for this semester. Everything needed to be asked and solved have been questioned to both my lecturer and tutor, as well as some peers. Today's tutorial session is more focused on the web interface (shown in the previous post) although the graphics were also shown to see if there were anything else I can improve on.

Comments and feedbacks for today's session:
- Frame and interactive space can be enhanced.
- Test on smaller font size, and to see if they fit in general computer's resolution.
- Background design is ok, unless depending on the purpose, can add simple patterns or design.
- Interface information can be rearranged.
- Website alignment can be refined.
- Buttons can be discarded if unnecessary.

My tutor made a quick example using my existing mock up to give me an idea of how I can improve my website's alignment and overall design. Here it is:

Picture 1: Print screen of tutor's web interface example.

The "About", "Game", and "Credits" button can be discarded as information can be written on the blank spaces in the web interface itself. The idea is so that if I were to promote the game fully, unnecessary information and elements should not be there so users can fully focus on the game itself. He also suggested to put the credits at the bottom of the interactive space or as part of the game itself.

Game Website Interface Mock Up

After going through various references, I did a simple mock up of the website's main interface:

Picture 1: Main interface of Socially Introverted.

The character at the left of the title is not coloured in yet, and the fonts are not finalized because I need advice for it. Overall I feel that it looks neat but plain, yet I could not think much of how to enhance it. 

Game Website Interface References

Found a few websites' interface design similar to what I want and proposed to my lecturer before. Here's the few examples:

 Picture 1: Herbal Essences website interface. Link: www.theoleg.com/hes/

 Picture 2: Lego Star Wars III website. Link: www.lucasarts.com/games/legostarwarsiii/index.jsp

Picture 3: Orisinal game website. Link: www.ferryhalim.com/orisinal/

For Picture 1 and 2, the reason I chose them is because of of the overall interface design. The buttons are located on the top center or top left/right corners of the interactive space (at the center of website). The website's name or logo, as one of the core elements, can be placed at the top left or center which allows users to identify easily with it.

As my interactive space is 800 x 600 pixels, the finished website interface would be most similar to Picture 1. And the colour would be referenced from Picture 3. I want to make the overall feeling very neutral and down-to-earth so that all ages feel comfortable in the website. It also suits the game characters' colours which are very similar with the soft earthy colour.

Project Critique and Tutorial 6

For this week's tutorial session, I've shown progress on graphics and also updates for finding background music and sound effects for my game. I meant to show my mock up main interface of my website, but there was an error in retrieving the file.

Feedbacks for the tutorial session:
- Progress being behind schedule. Should work harder to be back on track.
- Programming is about done, except minor errors for the clock.
- Can continue with progress for now.

Character Sketches

Had been having health related issues lately, but am getting better and will be back to normal soon. 

Here's a sketch of my characters - introvert and extrovert that I meant to post up earlier. It also serves as a character sheet for references of different emotions or poses/angles needed for the animation in the game.

Picture 1: Character sketches.

Digital characters will be drawn straight into Flash to ease the animation process. There was also some light coloring for the front view characters but it's not quite visible in the picture.