Week 7: Game themes, Start screens and Character selection

 Today I focused on creating animated Title screens for my game sequence, which will be featured as part of my final advert.

(Needs to be played on a loop)

I kept the start screen very basic as this is typically what you would see when arcade/retro games came out.

I used yellow and black as they contrast well against each other, the black background brings more focus to the title.

I drew around the the shape of the sprite in it's running position and used the outline to make the yellow running man on each side of the screen, to be used as a discrete reference to the rest of the game/video and so that the start screen didn't look to empty, but also didn't have too much detail.

It took only two frames to make the "Press the start button" flicker on and off, as it was as simple as switching a layer off in the second frame (looped on forever so that it doesn't just blink once like in the video above).

To make this look even more retro I plan to add scan lines, like the ones that would appear on a CRT tv screen and also give the text and shapes an outer glow filter to give a smeary CRT look.

I also animated the character selection screen to make it look as if it was from a first person point of view, and that they were controlling it.

A yellow highlight, similar to the outline of the running sprite is used to highlight what the player is hovering over, and allows the audience to follow what is going on in the scene, this also plays on the first person point of view.

One thing I wasn't sure about was the sprites when they were placed with the black and yellow background. I wanted to continue the black and yellow theme, however if I did this the sprites would blend into the background and I was trying to stick to the NES 64-bit colour palette, in order to maintain the retro aesthetic.

After trying out a number of colour combinations this one was the best one I came up with, and matched the background closest.

If I had more time I would re-design the sprites completely and give them a less basic look and something more along the lines of futuristic/space themed, as I feel they lack detail and don't compliment the surroundings.