P4

1. Experiments
Tamzin Twose

2. Process
I experimented with creating a background scene. I created a 120x80
pixel document in Photoshop and then inserted a template image of
a haunted house so that I could draw over it as I’m not confident
drawing free hand.
I tried to turn the house into a silhouette by using the pencil tool set
to 1px and began colouring the house pixels in black and the
windows in yellow, but when it came to the windows, I lost the shape
and couldn’t get them to look right.
I realised that this was the wrong image to work with as it looked odd
because the house was an unusual shape. Also because the house
and windows were crooked, it looked odd in a smaller pixel scale.

3. Process
Using the document I’d already
created, I found another house to
add in as a template and began my
second experiment. I was going to
follow the same process of creating
a silhouette house but I realised I
liked the details in this house, so
instead, I decided to colour it in
block colours.
I then created a moon using the
ellipse tool, and drew the clouds free
hand over the top.
I also created the pumpkin and
gravestone by drawing them, pixel
by pixel using the pencil tool.
Finally, I created the ghost and bush,
using template images to trace over.
I tried experimenting with shading
on the leaves of the bush, as this is
something I feel I need to improve.

4. Process
I created a character to go in my ghost game experiment. I haven’t animated a
character walking before, so I felt that this would be extremely beneficial to try out.
I created a basic character(1) by drawing using the pencil tool, but I realised this
angle of pose would be difficult for me to recreate in different walking stances.
I then drew a much simpler side stance(2) This gave me the ability to draw the two
different walking poses(3 & 4) I drew the legs and arms at angles and shaded the
back leg and arm to give definition.
1 2 3 4

5. Process
For my final experiment, I made an animation of my character walking as this was
something I felt I needed to practice.
I opened up the timeline window which opened at the bottom of Photoshop. I clicked
duplicate selected frames (1) which created a second image frame. In this frame I
switched the ghost to a flipped version. I made the stood character invisible and made the
Right walk pose visible and moved it two spaces to the right, to make it look like ti was
walking towards the ghost. I set each frame to o.5seconds so that the clip wasn’t too fast.
I then repeated this process with the left and right walk poses and moved the ghost along
each frame. I then clicked File/Export/Render Video and clicked Render to save it as a
video file.
1

6. Reflection
• What elements of your experiments will you
include in your final product?
– I feel because I am not very good at drawing, the use of template images to trace
over will really help me. I also really like the cartoon solid colour look, so this will
be the graphics style that I will use in my game.
– Also placing all of the images and creating the background first, helped me to
visualise what size the character needed to be so that it was to scale. I will repeat
the process in this order when I create my final design.
– I experimented on drawing a character in different poses and created an animation
of the character walking. This was something I was worried about creating for my
final project and I feel now that I have a much better understanding of how to pose
the character and how to make it look as if it is walking. This will help me greatly in
my real design.
• Refer to the brief: Ghost Game