Boom - tastic!

Hi guys just to let you know where i have been and what I've been doing first of all i went to Prague for a couple of days and to cut the long story short. There was a lot of things out there that was very beneficial to my work and thoughts, first of all i went round the "Lego Museum" which helped a lot because it showed how "Lego" changed its designs through the years from very big blocks with only a few shapes to choose from and eventually got more complex years on (haven't got pics yet but once ready i will crack on more with the research pages.) The second one was looking at the old "Czech Toys", these are old hand made and painted and again i will go further in detail in my inspiration section. lots of shape, simplicity, that likable factor and a key thing for me they had the same toys in lots of different sizes. Unfortunately the Toy Museum wasn't open :( 45 mins walk it took us to get there.

Another game was "Rory's Story Cubes" this caught my attention because on  the dice it was images and you roll about 9 at a time and once rolled children make there own stories up but including the images that appear on the dice.( again ill do more of this in my research.)

finally just to give a quick taster I have gone back to creating a few simple shape drawings to see what works and what doesn't below is a few different basic shapes, techniques and keeping that child, blocky look and feel!

The Piggies (Flat Counter)

Cheeky Devil (Legs)

Egglets (Flat Counter)

Me at Prague Lego Museum 

Less Talking more Doing!

After handing some designs to Josh, I then got talking to him about some of the ideas i had at this early stage and pretty much i look for a quick answer to my problems but after some input and direction i am continuing with the research to see what i find and also to keep coming up with new ideas to get another unique product. During the discussions I managed to get some interesting points to have a look at such as "Fingerbobs" and "String augmented reality" (These will be a bit more in depth in my research and inspiration section).

Overall its been a good little bit of feedback and now I'm going to continue researching and to keep on developing my ideas to expand the "Pixel Me" world.

A New Design!

After playing around and looking into the research and board game ideas i thought i would stop that for a little while and concentrate on the concept of a character being small as possible but still being cool. So i First Started to draw some basic shapes in my sketch book and eventually i have branched off the rectangle and to add feet or/ and ears. These aren't separate parts they actually connect to one template. Here are few examples below.

Here is the basic Template of the Triangle Character

Adding Horns as a possibility

This is where i started to add feet

After adding these little things I then started to put these templates together and see if they worked well. First thing was the get the basic design and look at size comparison.

The Big one is far too big, the small one can be slightly fiddly but the medium one is perfect for the actual size and there's no problems putting it together. 

I Then looked into adding Feet and Ears and the ones on the right worked the best in terms of giving the characteristics to the users creation but the others don't really seem a strong enough design to have on the character  permanently. On the other hand i found that the actual ears ( below) seem to work very well to make the design stand out more and to make it even better adding these feet will make it look more life like.

Design with Ears

Semester 2 is here!

The first thing I did was to do a learning agreement of what I wanted to do next and what and how I wanted to take forward. So after talking to Josh about what I want to do, I am finally set on something and that is to create a successful, small scale printable sort of board game and the key areas are to see how small I can go with the design but still keeping that fun, cool and likeable factor just like the previous design from semester 1. The first step is to crack on with the research and looking into advanced making and doing.

. I will need to research different types of games from traditional to digital.

. I will be getting some sketches and designs together to see what shapes and characteristics work well.

. I will be doing a lot of testing with my own designs and playing to see what the audience thinks while taking their feedback on board.

. I will also be playing a lot of games either on my own or with different people and discuss what's fun, what looks great and how these can be used within my ideas. and to do this documenting and evidence is essential.

. Once the ideas get up and running will branch out and try and get my idea across to the public such as the school, arts crafts fair in my village and my friends and family.

To kick it all off for getting to grips with new games I have a play date with my boss and his mates and I will be playing the game wings of war.

The others in the pipeline will be to play board games, and digital games like the Lego building games and kids games at home and uni, then to question them on why they work and possibly see how I can use these mechanics in my own game idea.

So overall just having a think and play around with several games and coming with my own design for the second game of Pixel me

MA Show?..............Mmmm Maybe?!

This is just going to be a quick one guys but i had the idea for my MA show to maybe make into a little event based on this idea such as, the website up running that people could view, Big posters, a chance for people to play the game, make an actual board game version with a box as said in the last post and finaly things like 3D Models being made as ornaments, Trading cards, T-shirt design and many more! anyway just an idea for what my show could look like depending on how"Pixel Me" can evolve! :)

More Ideas!

I just thought I would wright this in before i forget. Ive also had a big think about a board game version of "Get Step" as the example. where the player will use movemnet cards as described in my inspiration section ( Wings of war) and the other was going to be a range indicator so how far away you might get hit. but i like thie idea that the player can move where ever they want as long as they obey the dice....... so instead of cards for the board game it would be just a giant grid so the players just move into squares and they still can make there own rules up. This will be put aside for now and possibly made into a pitch document in the near future! but for now im going to concentrate on getting this webasite together and im currently looking into the layout and presentation, ive got an idea for the facebook page but just need the english checking and second I'm currently working on the Front cover ( Help of Josh Taylor).......Simple, clean and kind of looks like morph style. the only thing needed for the opener is a character bursting out! :) so a working progress.... I have a week! :)

Website Idea - The opener!

Pixel Me Community!

The past couple of days have been great with ideas and so forth such as a board game idea and how i can get pixel me out there tothe public. So here goes ive come up witht he idea of creating a website with a series of tabs based around pixel me!
This will consist of a page about the product which will lead onto my blog a bit about me, contacting pixel me and a facebook page, the second is to get the template up so the audience can download it. and i can put their finished characters up in a gallery that people can download, the next one is the 3D versions of their character and again will be in a gallery (This is currently in the process with the help of Scott Taylor). The next one for theaudience to send me rules of how they played their game with their character and once sent they will be published on the website.

The first game idea consisted of Me, Josh, Scott and Steph played a game based on us rolling dice, taking turns to try and capture Steph and listed below is the rules (These are set out by Josh Taylor).

Rules for "Get Steph"

Yesterday we got the 2nd Years to have a go at the game and see what their version was and in the end they created some unique ideas based on one of the characters having a hat which can be taken on and off. so their idea was,( if i remember this right) who ever reaches the hat gets to control the other players and they kind of have to chances. so when the another player crosses each other they will duel and throw 3 Dice at a time. who ever matches 2 out 3 numbers on the dice first wins that battle and the losing player is out of the game.

So overall today there has been another success, for getting more players together, new rules and overall the other players loved it and what makes it that more unique is the audience can customize everything and create everything that suits them.