This week we have been asked to create a prototype of an artifact we find interesting and again I struggled to think of something at first. The challenge itself actually mentioned about using a cut scene from a game so I thought I’d go with that but which cut scene do I choose? I had a look at my games on my shelf and noticed “The Witcher 3” (The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, 2015). This is a story heavy game and one of my favourites. There is a particularly emotional scene when Geralt finds Ciri so that is what I’m going to use. The scene can be found here: “https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQpYLbyE2m4&ab_channel=DutchMessenger” (Messenger, 2017)
I thought the best way to prototype a cut scene would be a story board which will show the transition throughout with explanations of particular parts. This is way out of my comfort zone. I’ve always said that I can’t draw but I thought I’d give it a go. I think it is important for my development that I go out of my comfort zone more often.
I started by watching the scene and stopping at particular points which would make sense to draw. After doing this I ended up with 13 different boards to draw which was a very daunting task. I thought I would practice a few drawings first to get the hang of it. Some of them were pretty bad but there were a few I liked so I decided to cut them out and use them on the story board. For the storyboard itself I decided to use the BBC’s storyboard template (Bbc.co.uk, 2021).
It took a while to get the drawings to draw everything and I’m not happy with some of them. I really struggled with faces and hands and unfortunately there are a lot of faces and hands in the scene! It took several attempts to finish each board which made me think perhaps I should have tried creating them digitally instead.
After completing each drawing I annotated each one to say what was happening in the scene and how that will affect the player. “Creating story boards and flowcharts helps others begin to see your vision” (Mitchell, 2012). I think that going through this process has definately helped me to see the vision that was intended for this scene and I plan to use this in the future when planning my own cutscenes.
Reflections
The reason I chose to do this on paper rather than digitally is because I felt I could express what is happening in the scene more, however, Pallant and Price (2015) believe you can express the same amount digitally than you can do on paper. With this knowledge, going forward I will try to do this digitally as there drawings were quite bad. I know I’m not great at drawing but I wanted to give it a go anyway.
There was also a problem with scanning in my storyboard, the pencil hasn’t come up as clear as I would like which wouldn’t have been a problem if I created them digitally. I have found that storyboarding makes the vision clearer, you can see possible issues and change this around if needed which is the idea of prototyping, to “Fail Fast, Fail Often” (Lucas, 2018).
Seeing what others have done, I’m not happy with what I’ve produced, it kind of seems I’m not putting as much effort in. The quality isn’t as good as I’d like so I should’ve practiced a bit more and when I noticed that the drawings weren’t scanning in properly, I could have gone over the lines again to make them clearer. I need to focus on quality in future, no matter what I’m working on. Kashyap (2021) makes some good points to improve performance, such as to know what you’re good/ not good at. Based on that, if I was to do this again I’d do it digitally as I know I’d be better at that than on paper.
Storyboards
References
Bbc.co.uk. 2021. [online] Available at: <https://www.bbc.co.uk/northernireland/myplacemyspace/downloads/promote-your-day-out/storyboard-template.pdf> [Accessed 3 October 2021].
CD Projekt Red (2015) The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt Playstation 4. Warsaw, Poland: CD Projekt Red
Kashyap, V., 2021. 10 Easy Tips to Improve Your Work Performance. [online] ProofHub. Available at: <https://www.proofhub.com/articles/tips-to-improve-work-performance> [Accessed 4 October 2021].
Lucas, F., 2018. Prototyping in Design Thinking: Fail Fast, Fail Often. [online] Web Design Envato Tutsplus. Available at: <https://webdesign.tutsplus.com/articles/prototype-stage-4-in-design-thinking–cms-31569> [Accessed 4 October 2021].
Messenger, D. (2017). The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt – Finding Ciri. [online] http://www.youtube.com. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQpYLbyE2m4&ab_channel=DutchMessenger [Accessed 3 Oct. 2021].
Mitchell, B., 2012. Game design essentials. 1st ed. Indianapolis, Ind.: John Wiley & Sons.
Pallant, C. and Price, S., 2015. Storyboarding in the Digital Age. Storyboarding, pp.151-172.
Richard Charles Ellis 