Bloggertation Disserblogging

This is the first entry of my dissertation blog, I don't quite know what to write for my first entry but whatever.

I guess for now I'll make a run-down of the ideas I had for my dissertation over the Summer and what I think I'll end up doing in the end;

• Making a game.
• Making a 3D model.
• Doing some game scripts.
• Making an animated cartoon/something animated.

Making a game

First one I thought about since the end of the last academic year, and pretty much right off the bat I thought that this was going to be a bad idea(when reflecting on how well my solo game from my first year went), but still, the dissertation is supposed to challenge me and make me learn something new. I have room to experiment with what I can do and what I can't do in regards to code, or I can learn it from scratch. So this is a viable option for me, the rationale could be about me improving my coding ability.

Making a 3D model

I was pretty interested in doing some sort of huge 3D model for my dissertation for a while because I only really started to enjoy 3D modelling in the second year. The problem was, however, that I know nothing about 3D modelling beyond that what any regular novice would know, more than I know about coding, but less than what I know about animation, art, writing and design. Because of this problem I'm pretty hesitant to do 3D, I'm afraid I would under-scope or over-scope the project, under scoping it being the more likely scenario. But there is still the possibility of me doing a 3D model of some sort, I've got some time to decide still.

Doing some game scripts

Also something interesting that I would enjoy, I quite liked the script writing/storyboarding and concept arting we did in our 1st Year so I thought why not? To be fair the only reason I can think of against doing something like this is that I think, personally, it would be too easy for me and it wouldn't be very impressive in the end. I still have this up in the "To be considered" box of my brain, but I'll probably not end up doing this.

Making an animated cartoon/something animated.

The option I pretty much decided on, was to do something animated. This option evolved for me from when I first thought about doing something animated for my dissertation. First, I thought about making a cartoon of some sort, this would mean that I would get to push my animation skills and also try my hand at script writing and video editing(something I would like to learn at some point). Problem with this, is that this would have become an extremely long project that I would regret doing halfway in through the year. So I scrapped that idea, it wouldn't have had much to do with games anyway. Then I thought about doing some animated sprites for a hypothetical game, but after sitting on that idea for a week or two I also scrapped it, I had already made a series of animated sprites for my 2nd Year Anymation project. Then I started thinking about making an animated cut scene or trailer for a hypothetical game, but again, I quickly perished the thought for the same reasons I didn't want to make a cartoon.

Now I've settled on making a series of animated backgrounds for a hypothetical 2D game using different styles to create different atmospheres. I created backgrounds for my 1st Year KS1 group game, but those were of a very poor quality because of my working habits at the time, plus I want to see what I can do now that my animation and drawing skills have improved.

-------------------------------

So these were my idea's, if I'm allowed I'll probably end up doing a series of animated backgrounds using different styles to accomplish different goals. That's what I'd like to do anyway.