Zachary Sullivan
Harvard graduate student in Software Engineering
Project Overview
The Hats and Glasses game concept emerged through a week long children's game design challenge, specifically tailored for a young audience (elementary or middle school age
students). Intended for tablet use, the game’s primary interface allows players to attach various silly hats and glasses to an avatar. With the overall objective of providing a lightweight educational experience, players would need to dress various bears found around the globe, for their natural habitat.
Furthermore, the game provides additional contextual information for each dress-up bear. For example, hibernation, eating and migration habits.
Concept Development
During the conceptual phase of development, I was focused on establishing intuitive, simple
interactions with unique, cohesive game dynamics.
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Project Approach
Project development first began with a paper storyboard outlining the progression of the game system. I then began developing vector images of the mascot characters and user interface elements within Adobe Illustrator. Once completed, I began work on the motion graphics component of the concept. Created using Adobe After Effects, the vector images were imported and stylized accordingly. Lastly, the animation was cut, edited and rendered, with scene transitions applied using Premier Pro.
In order to apply realistic movement to both the characters and user interface, I opted to use the JavaScript based expression tool within After Effects (AE). This tool was chosen over traditional keyframing, as a similar motion style would require hundreds of manually placed keyframes.
Furthermore, expressions provided an alternative to difficult keyframing tasks. While keyframing, requires the values of attributes to be set at the selected frames in the animation. Expressions, allowed me to write a formula outlining the desired effect, then AE performs the action as the animation plays.
