Major Project 1

04.02.2025- (Week 1-Week 7)
Kelly Lau Jie Ning/ 0354839
Minor Project 1/ Bachelor of Design (Honors) in Creative Media

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INSTRUCTION

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Weekly Progression

Task 1: Proposal Development

Week 1
This week, we listened to Mr. Kamal's briefing about this project. Based on the briefing, I knew we needed at least 3 to 4 members in one group for this project. As an animation student, I can group with entertainment and immersive design students. So, I grouped with Jie Ying from animation, Bernice and Ying Yi from entertainment design. 

After we were done grouping, we started to decide what we wanted to do for this project. After the discussion, we decided to do a horror game as our final production for this project and further major project 2. After we confirmed that we would play a horror game, we started to do research about it.

Bernice our group leader mentioned to us we needed to do at least 2 game research and she made a table let us to fill in for our research. I did 3 game research.

These 3 games come from the same game studio, Chilla’s Art. Chilla’s Art is a Japanese indie game studio known for developing short psychological horror games with a J-horror aesthetic. Their games focus on everyday settings, slow-burn horror, and supernatural elements, often inspired by Japanese urban legends. I will choose the game as a reference because this studio creates short-form psychological horror games with a distinctive J-horror aesthetic. Most of their games last around 1-2 hours, providing a concise and focused horror experience.

We also come up 3 our own ideation story brainstorming.

Week 2

This week, we consulted our Ideation brainstorming story to Mr Kannan. Then, he suggested we use Bernice's story and combine our unique features of the story together. So, our story comes up:

Here is our visual reference & art style:

Our colour palette:

We also pick our roles & responsibility

Week 3
This week, we came up storyboard, character design sketch and floorplan sketch. For the storyboard, I drew scene 6 and the good ending.

For the character design, each member came up with 3 sketches for the ghost character. Here is my sketch:

We also came up with each floor plan. Here is my floorplan:

This week we also came up with a presentation slide because we have to present in this week

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Task 2: Design Proposition

Week 4
This week, I did the app research with Jie Ying. We tried to find an app that we could use and do a comparison between each other. We also find out the tutorial to support our findings.

Week 5

Starting this week, we will start testing each app. I am responsible for testing the rigging system in 3Dsmax. Because this is my first time using this application, I tried to look for an animated model to observe its rigging system. So, I downloaded a wing-animated model.

In class, Mr Kannan showed us that there are different bones in 3Dsmax. So, basically in 3dsmax, there are 2 types of bone we will use usually for rigging which are Biped and CAT. There are also the bones that we can use but we need to adjust the ik/fk stuff using bone. 

Week 6

This week I tried to rig by myself. I tried to find a similar model ( have hands at the back and there are no legs) to our ghost model to rig. However, I failed. I don't not why I adjusted the biped all but when I tried to move the bone the model still didn't move.

But because of this rigging experience, I found a problem. 

Because I failed this test I re-rig my friend model. Because this model is done using a blender it is very high poly so I try to use the ProOptimize Modifier to reduce the poly too high. Due to time problems, I successfully made the model move by bone but there are still a lot of bugs.

This week, I also did the Gantt charted spreadsheet with Jie Ying and Bernice.

I also have tested the substance painter.

Presentation slide:

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Task 3: Concept Presentation

Week 7

This week we need to present our concept development from Week 1 to Week 7. The presentation was done by Bernice and Jie Ying.

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Feedback
Task 1
- our story is good but we need to find a way to combine the unique features of our story together to be a story.

- try to do some small testing of the app

Task 2
- do more testing - can start with simple testing

- try to style the furniture

- need to draw the illustration that the character in the environment

- do the testing and list down the problem that you met and try to solve it

Task 3
- the testing is not enough

- need to draw the illustration
- for rigging, we should start from a  low poly model

- there is nothing auto we need to try to learn how to reduce the high poly model we can't just auto-reduce the poly.

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Reflection

Task 1

In Task 1, our group quickly decided that we wanted to create a game. This is because our team is made up of animation students and entertainment students. When we discussed what kind of game to make, everything went surprisingly smoothly. Everyone agreed that we could create a 3D horror game. To be honest, I was really surprised by how fast and well we worked together. It felt like we had great teamwork and understanding from the start.

When we were coming up with the story, we really appreciated each other’s ideas. Everyone listened to one another and gave positive feedback. We were also very responsible—each member finished their assigned tasks on time. I felt proud to be part of this group because we all worked hard and respected each other’s contributions. It was a great start to the project.

Task 2

In Task 2, I had to learn many new things. For this task, I was responsible for rigging. However, I had never learned rigging before, so it was very difficult and confusing for me. Rigging was a completely new area for me, and I didn’t know where to start.

To make it even harder, I had to use an app called 3ds Max, which I had never used before. I felt really stressed and frustrated. I spent a lot of time watching tutorials and trying to understand how everything worked. Because of this, I used up a lot of time just learning, and I couldn't work as fast as I wanted to.

Even though it was tough, I did learn many new things from this project. Besides 3ds Max, I also had to use other software that I had never used before, like Unreal Engine and Substance Painter. I think the biggest challenge for me was trying to learn a completely new app in a very short amount of time. It was not easy, but it helped me grow and improve my skills.

Task 3

When we were told to start Task 3, we actually only had one day to prepare. Unfortunately, I also had another project from a different subject that I needed to rush, so I didn’t have any time to work on the Task 3 presentation slides with my teammates. I truly want to thank my teammates for being so understanding and supportive during this time.

Through this project, I really experienced how difficult it is to create a 3D game. It was not easy at all. I think this project was very challenging for us, especially because we chose to make a 3D game. That was a big goal and required a lot of skills and time.

We only had 7 weeks, and I couldn't fully master rigging in such a short time. I realized that time management is extremely important, especially when we have multiple projects happening at the same time. Before we start Major Project 2, we will continue to improve and develop our current game project, so we can make sure everything is ready when Major Project 2 begins.

To be honest, I often felt powerless during this project because there were so many things I didn’t know. I was basically starting from zero, and that made me feel worried about the upcoming Major Project 2. However, I will do my best to learn everything I need during this break. I hope that when we start Major Project 2, we can complete our game smoothly and successfully as a team.