The Heartbeakers

Hello everybirdy!

I was recently invited to join the development of a friend’s game, which is super exciting! Before I joined the team was only two people, an artist/designer and a programmer. They asked me to do the writing for the game and of course I jumped at the opportunity!

As much as I love 2D and 3D work, narrative writing has a special place in my heart.

So, it’s a strategy game called The Heartbeakers, in which you play as a small bird leading your friends into battle against evil vultures. In order to win fights you have to change the birds’ emotions, because vultures are weak against some emotions and strong against others.

The story is that the vultures have stolen seeds from the birds, and the birds have to get them back. There’s also talk of a disaster looming in the near future, which will upset the natural balance of emotions in the world…

This is what the game looks like at its current state! The artist and the programmer had already gotten a lot done before I joined! I’m excited to see how it turns out!

Life drawing – final assignments

Hello all! This summer has gone by so unbelievably fast, I get a bit stressed out when I think about it. But it’s definitely been fun!

Our final assignment in life drawing class was twofold; the first part was to make a sculpture, which we did in class with a model as a reference. The second part was to redraw a classical painting, but change it slightly.

Here’s my sculpture:

I’m actually quite pleased with how it turned out. (There’s something you don’t hear me say very often…)

For the second part of the assignment, I chose to redraw the painting La Belle Dame Sans Merci, by Frank Dicksee, since it’s one of my favorites.

In the original, the woman is leaning over the man and looking very dominant, while he looks terrified, which I honestly love. However, I decided to make my version a bit more gentle and romantic (and gay).

I quite like this one as well, it’s going in my portfolio!

I’ll try to keep updating this blog with things happening in my life regarding game design and development. At the very least I’ll upload some screenshots of what I’m modeling at the moment!

Take care!

Life drawing

Hello gang!

This summer I’m attending the life drawing class here at campus Gotland. It’s been fun so far but a bit intense at times. I’ve been drawing people for a long time and I think I’m pretty decent at it, but practice is always good!

I found my old drawings from three years ago when I read the first 2D class and I’ve improved a lot more than I thought since then!

Here are some drawings from this summer:

Cheers!

Final year at GGC

Two updates in one week? I must be going crazy.

Anyway, as it is my last year here it is also time for my last GGC, at least as a student here. Perhaps I’ll come back sometime in the future! Besides my self help app, which still isn’t finished, I haven’t worked on any game this year, which means I won’t exhibit anything at the conference.

However, I decided to put my work up on the art wall for the first time! I chose a personal project I did for fun, practice and my portfolio. It’s a modular 3D environment which I think best showcase what I’m good at and what I like to do!

Here are the pieces I’ve put up on the wall:

Plus two gifs (which aren’t on the wall for obvious reasons) to show the room in action!

Bachelor’s thesis

Hello everyone, it’s been a while!

I’ve spent the past month and a half writing my bachelor’s thesis. Originally I wanted to do something creative, specifically a 3D environment which I could use as part of my portfolio when looking for jobs after graduating.

However, my tutor didn’t think this idea was suitable for a thesis, so I ended up iterating my project until it became something entirely different and entirely theoretical.

I’ve written my thesis on the subject of cultural appropriation in character design in games. Cultural appropriation is when a majority culture takes elements from a minority culture and uses these outside their original context, without permission or compensation.

One of the examples I have in my thesis is Pharah from Overwatch. She’s an Egyptian woman who has two outfits based on Egyptian mythology, but she also has two outfits based on Pacific Northwest native American cultures.

Above: Pharah in her two native American outfits, called Raindancer and Thunderbird.

Besides the visual aspect, the name Raindancer is a reference to the rain dances performed by native Americans, and Thunderbird is a reference to the mythological creature of the same name, which is a popular myth in native American cultures.

Above: a chief’s headdress from the Kwakwaka´wakw village in British Columbia. (Source)

If we compare Pharah’s outfits with Pacific Northwest native artwork, we can see a striking similarity in the clear lines, bold colors and exaggerated features. Animal motifs are also common, and the use of red and white in Eyak artwork especially. Pharah also wears her hair in braids common among native Americans.

The developers behind Overwatch have hinted at Pharah being part native American in their comics. Pharah’s mother is Egyptian, but her father is implied to be native American, which means Pharah would be descendant of two cultures. However, as long as Overwatch doesn’t explicitly state that Pharah is of native American descent, this is an example of cultural appropriation.

It is appropriation because the developers are part of a majority culture, and because they have taken elements from a minority culture and used these outside their original context.

In my thesis I have examined a few more examples of cultural appropriation in recent games, this was just one of them!

The deadline for the thesis is in three days, but so far I’m feeling pretty good about it. I’m more or less done, I’m just poking at minor details at this point. Cross your fingers that I pass!

Self Help App: ALPHA and BETA build

Hello! It’s been quite a while since I last wrote (more than a month… shame on me) and a lot has happened since.

I mentioned last time that I was close to finishing an ALPHA version of my self help app, which I did! I should have posted about that here, but I completely forgot. If you’re interested, you can find the build and the survey to go with it over here.

However! Since it’s been a while since I finished the ALPHA version, I have now gotten so far that I’ve actually finished a BETA version as well! You can find the build and the survey to go with it over here!

So what have I done when it comes to developing the app?

Well, the alpha build had a library with a lot of information about depression, anxiety and mindfulness. It also has a mood test and a simple breathing exercise. Here’s a screenshot from the ALPHA build:

It’s looking a bit barren, to be honest.

For the BETA version, I have added two new rooms: the garden and the store. When the player visits the garden, it makes a flower bloom and gives them a reward in the form of gems. These gems can then be used in the store to upgrade and unlock new parts of the treehouse.

I have also added another relaxation exercise to the pillow fort, updated the mood test with more options, divided the library into more categories and generally just made things look prettier.

Here’s a screenshot:

Looks a bit more fun, doesn’t it?

The biggest issue I still have is the results from the mood test. That feature is currently unavailable because I simply couldn’t figure out how to make it work. I think I either need to do a lot of research or get some help from an actual programmer.

In a way, I would also like to remake almost all of the art. The art that I have is more or less taken from the original concept art I made way back in April this year, and what you see above is basically just copy-pasting-reusing-frankensteining that concept art. I mean, it kind of works, but I’m not entirely pleased with it.

I also need a lot more animations in the app. I currently only have a few which I really just put in to test the animation function in Fungus. The entire app is very static at the moment, and animations would bring more life to it and make it clearer what you can and can’t interact with.

Overall, I’m fairly pleased with what I have managed to make, but I do still feel like I could have made more with the time I had. I’m probably going to stop development for the time being, as I have other things taking up my time. Hopefully I’ll get around to finishing this project sometime during spring or summer next year!

Self help app update!

Just a very quick update today, to tell you that I’ve switched the self help app blog from a wordpress to a tumblr, as I thought I would reach more of my target audience there!

You can find the blog here: http://tovasselfhelp.tumblr.com/

This is what the app looks like at the moment:

I’m close to sending out an alpha build of the app, so look forward to that!

Self help app work in progress!

Hello gang! I mentioned in an earlier blog post that I wanted to make an app for self help with depression and anxiety, and that I would have the opportunity to do so during the course Game Design in Practice. However, I had the issue that no one seemed to want to work with me, and I was unable to find a group to join, so all of a sudden I found myself alone.

I debated what to do for a while, but in the end I decided to just try and do something on my own. I’m very comfortable working on my own and despite the fact that I don’t know programming I know a few short cuts which have helped me.

Before I begun development I made a survey which I posted on my tumblr, and I got over 130 answers in two days! The majority of the people who answered were women aged 16 to 25, with experience of both depression and anxiety, which is exactly my target audience! Finding my audience and getting so many answers really was a mood boost for me, and motivation to really start working.

Besides motivation, one of the most important things I got from the survey was what people expected from an app for self help, which gave me a point to start when making the app.

I have started developing it using Unity and the addon Fungus, which is actually a tool for creating branching narratives. There are a few more advanced things I want to include in the app, so I’ll probably need to ask a programmer or two for help at some point, but for now I think I’m doing pretty good.

You can follow the development of the app on the blog I create specifically for it!

Trip to Kustateljen!

This Tuesday our 3D class went on a field trip to Fårösund at the northern tip of the island to visit Kustateljen, which is a film studio. In our 3D class we’re going to start working with ingame cutscenes (movies) this week and the trip was meant to be a sort of introduction to that.

We were given a brief overview of how cameras work with different lenses and such, and how to light scenes to create different moods. After that we were divided into groups and given a manuscript which we got to film during an hour or so. The movie consisted of five shots which we had to plan out beforehand with the staging and the lighting, as we could only do one take per shot! It was a bit challenging, but it was fun! I especially liked lighting the scene. It was fun to try out a real movie camera as well, on a real set, it felt pretty cool!

Year three

Hello again! It’s been a while since my last update, hasn’t it? I’m currently at the end of week two of my third year of game design at Campus Gotland! I’m pretty excited about this year because the number of people who chose to stay for the third year is bigger than it usually is, which means a lot of my friends are still here!

The two courses I’m reading right now is 3DIV and Game Design in Practice. The former focuses on 3D animation, which is something I’m not very good at and need to practice, and the latter focuses on marketing and entrepreneurship, which I’m also not very good at and need to practice!

Ïn the 3D course we’re currently working on ingame animations based on data from motion capture, which means we already have a base animation that we need to beautify. (Is that a word?)

Our first assignment in the game design course was to create a five minute presentation of ourselves, which is something I struggled with a lot. I don’t like talking, and I really don’t like talking about myself. The presentation was supposed to answer what we want out of the course and what we plan to do in order to get there.

What I would like to do during the game design in practice course is an app for self help with depression and anxiety. I’ve had since idea since spring and I thought about doing it for BGP, but I ended up working with Sam and Nicole instead. So I would like to make my app now!

The idea is that the app looks like a treehouse, where each room has a function designed to help people with depression and anxiety. Each day when players open the app they are asked to rate their mood on a scale of one to ten, and they are also given a small reward which they can use to upgrade their treehouse. If the player returns every day for a week they get a larger reward.

Room functions include reading material about depression and anxiety, breathing exercises and a ”sound room”, where the player can listen to soothing sounds such as rain and bird song. The rewards the players get can be used to upgrade the rooms, for example buying more sounds, like thunder or waves crashing against a shore, or buying more articles about mental health.

If you’re interested in more details you can check out my concept document, which you can find here!

I’m looking for people to develop this app with! I would probably need at least one programmer and one more artist :)