Storyboard Reviews
Team 4: JAK - Short Critique
I found the concept of your story very cool, but I must admit your storyboards confused me a little. First you have the scenes where your character is grabbing his tools thinking of saving the city, and then the next scene he is back in his chair in front of the TV. I assume that what is happening is he has fallen asleep infront of the tv, but it's not overly clear. you may need to add some inbetween scenes to explain that he was dreaming. You could use thought bubbles or a fade out transition on your storyboards to do this. Otherwise your storyboard looks great and I look forward to seeing your project. Your website is fantastic, it moves very smoothly and I love the clean look and feel, well done :)
Kimberley Walker
kaw1
Kimberley Walker
kaw1
Team 6: Lonely Planet - Short Critique
I think you have a very interesting and unique idea for your project. I really like the idea of having the overlapping views of normal and destroyed. One thing you may want to think of is using a constant sound effect such as warning sirens to show that these two views are two possible outcomes for your ship. The warning sirens could be quiet and distant while in normal view, but get louder when in destroyed view, particularly when the robot is in the control room. It would also be neat if you could do fade in or "ghost" effects as transition, rather than a solid flash between views of the ship. Have the destroyed view fade in on top of the normal view, or slowly creep up from behind the robot walking or something along those lines. Your website is really great, very easy to navigate and find things. well done :)
Kimberley Walker
kaw1
Kimberley Walker
kaw1
Team 5: The Wizard's Gift - Long Critique
http://www.sfu.ca/~milesl/IAT445-Website/Team5-Home%20Page.html
After watching your animated storyboard I can see that you have a very strong idea of what your story is, who your characters are and what the layout of your project is. The story over all sounds very interesting and you could take it a long way and show this through a lot of detail in your cut scenes. One thing that was not mentioned in your pitch was when the game ends and switches to the cut scene, this is something that you need to make clear to your user. Once programming it will be much easier to figure out your transitions from cutscene to game and vice versa. Another thing to take into consideration, how long are your cutscenes going to be? how long should the game be? how long should it take the average user? what controls will you use? If you are using unity, the game will be automatically programmed using the WASD keys, but think about if this is going to be the right choice for your game. You may also want to consider a short tutorial of how to control Albert. Perhaps you could make pop-up commands to explain what the keys do, or another option you may want to consider is having the character move on auto-pilot and then when you come to a key moment when you have to use a spell, create a pop-up to tell the user how to cast a spell or explain what they need to do. This may eliminate your need for a tutorial.
You also mentioned that you wanted to have very detailed cutscenes and use different colours to help the mood of the game. Try using different materials in maya to do this. Another option you could look at as well for detail is creating your characters and textures using either ZBrush or MudBox. This way you could make your characters and environments more detailed than you could with just straight polygon modelling in Maya, but you can transfer your models into Maya to create UV maps and to do your rigging. From there you can transfer the files into Photoshop to create matte painting texture on the UV's. you can find great tutorials on how to use ZBrush to do just this on Lynda.com (if you have a subscription) or on Pixologic.com.
I saw in your storyboards that you intend to do a lot of close-up shots of Albert's hands changing from the use of magic. This is where matte painting and photo editing could come in handy and save you a lot of time trying to model correct hands in Maya. Try taking photos of one of your team members hands in the position that you want to user to view Albert's hands, and find images of elderly hands for overlay to create the look of damage.
I hope some of these tips help you and I look forward to seeing your final project!! Good Luck!
Kimberley Walker
kaw1
You also mentioned that you wanted to have very detailed cutscenes and use different colours to help the mood of the game. Try using different materials in maya to do this. Another option you could look at as well for detail is creating your characters and textures using either ZBrush or MudBox. This way you could make your characters and environments more detailed than you could with just straight polygon modelling in Maya, but you can transfer your models into Maya to create UV maps and to do your rigging. From there you can transfer the files into Photoshop to create matte painting texture on the UV's. you can find great tutorials on how to use ZBrush to do just this on Lynda.com (if you have a subscription) or on Pixologic.com.
I saw in your storyboards that you intend to do a lot of close-up shots of Albert's hands changing from the use of magic. This is where matte painting and photo editing could come in handy and save you a lot of time trying to model correct hands in Maya. Try taking photos of one of your team members hands in the position that you want to user to view Albert's hands, and find images of elderly hands for overlay to create the look of damage.
I hope some of these tips help you and I look forward to seeing your final project!! Good Luck!
Kimberley Walker
kaw1