BubblePopProductions

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Leeds
I am currently in my final year of foundation Degree Digital Media at Leeds college of art, and I specialize in story-telling using a range of mediums including interactive based content. I would say I am inspired by cartoons and comics, but also the little things that most people don't notice or maybe are not bothered about, like this strange women on the train the other day, I imagined her whole life in 2 minutes! or the way a silverfish freezes up when it feels vibrations in the hope it won't be noticed! OK so I admit I have an overactive imagination, always have, but that is what I like about me and I feel this only helps me in my line of work. My strength as a digital designer definitely lies in my passion for creating a narrative and a mood, I am interested in the visual construction between image and sound and I like to animate using 2D software and my own hand drawings. I want to bring "my world" to life using digital media.....

Thursday, 26 February 2009

Mushroom Panic!


Ah what a cheesy title! this is my mushroom scene in which the player finds themselves in mushroom land where you are greeted by a group of mushrooms! as the mushrooms are static images on the background it took alot of thought and effort (and help from Anna) to get this to work. basically, I made speech bubbles as buttons, in the up state they are not there, but once you rollover a mushroom (the hit area) the bubble will appear, and if you click down more text will appear, then the middle mushroom will give you a choice of helping them or not, you then get to choose yes or no.
I'm not saying what happens if you choose though, you'll have to play it to find out!
However after testing this scene on a number of people I have discovered from feedback that there needs to be some direction as to which mushroom you should click on first, for example if you were to click on the middle one first, you would be greeted with the question: "will you help us?" and you would be taken to a duplicate scene which then offers you a choice.
but if you had not clicked on the other mushrooms first you would not know where you were or why and what they wanted your help for!
so some direction prompting is needed, especially if children are playing it, so that the story flows better.
I was thinking of having a mushroom jumping up and down to entice you to click on that one first, and then then when you have released the mouse another will jump and so on so that they are pressed in the right order, however I don't know how I am going to do this unless i create the whole thing again from scratch as the mushrooms are part of the background.
then how would I do this? make them into jumping movie clips? but then how would i make them stop jumping in order for another to start? how would I tell flash to make the 2nd one jump after the first has stopped? I can't really get my head around it at the moment but I'd really like to do that.
another thought which although won't be as effective could also work is to have say a little fairy, fly in and hover above the mushroom I want the player to press for a number of seconds and then move to the next and so on, this could be done using tweens and timing, so could work but would not be as accurate as the other method.

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