Unit 14 – Task 3

CV

To maintain my workflow I will need to gain some work to begin with, I will start with advertising in appropriate places; such as websites, social media and possibly shop windows too. Once I have the work coming in I will need to maintain the work coming in and make sure I am managing my personal time and work time properly. I may come to a point where I have too much work, to avoid any issues I will try to negotiate with each client and try to find out if I am able to work on one persons work and push back another clients work until I am available, I will have to make sure I don’t overwork too as that may cause mental issues and physical issues for me, I will try to work 4/5 days on the freelance work and 2/3 days on personal life. In my workspace I will need to make sure my workspace is completely clear and free of any distractions so I can focus and maximise my workload potential.

I looked on Creative Skillset for jobs within in my media sector and I found a couple of matches; on was a cinematic animator, the other was a game designer. I would say both of these suit my current skillset as I am capable producing basic models for games and basic animations as shown in my portfolio on my wordpress blog. The jobs I found however; are too advanced for my current skill set and I will need more tutoring or time for learning the more advanced techniques associated with these chosen specialist jobs, i.e modelling in new software to industry standard and animating smoother animations.

The feedback I received from my peers is as follows;

One person said “The business card looks very nice and the space theme to it shows a good creative mind, however the card is somewhat packed and looks too vibrant so the colours clash.”

Another person said “I think the website layout and business card are too messy and should feature more info on what you do, also the colours aren’t too good to look at, but the slogan is cool.”

CV

CV

professionalism

The competence or skill expected of a professional.

the key to quality and efficiency is professionalism

The practising of an activity, especially a sport, by professional rather than amateur players.

Task 1 Lynne

)Chosen Specialism: Graphic Design (for comics and online animations) / 3D Animation (for games and cinematic trailers)

Type of Work: Animating and creating images and graphics digitally

Resources: I will require a good working intel desktop; intel i7 7700k quadcore 4.2ghz with a Gigabyte Z97P motherboard, 4x 8Gb DDR3 ram at 1600mhz, Samsung c24f390 curved LED monitor, LAN card and a corsair hydro cooling system, aerocool 750w psu and finally a Nvidia GTX 1060 graphics card, to contain it all I will need a rosewill atx full tower.

Types of Contracting and Process: Formal brief and it will be done face to face/over some form of video chatting platform; this will enable me to have security when working my trade and I will be able to make sure the agreement is settled with no tricks or any disputes as we can discuss it there and then face to face.

Tax, NI etc: I will need to meet the requirements of IR35 which is.. (Essentially, IR35 will affect all contractors who do not meet the Inland Revenue’s definition of ‘self employment’. Those contractors who fall under the IR35 rules will be liable to Schedule E taxation and National Insurance (N.I), following deductions for expenses. Income will be in the form of a ‘deemed payment’, following these deductions.)

Health and Safety: The only risk I face is overworking and possible eye strain, however there is always a tiny risk when using electronics of electrocution. To avoid this I will source my computer parts from reliable sources.

Professional Associations:

• The Freelancers Union. ..
• Graphic Artists Guild. …
• Association of Registered Graphic Designers (RGD) …
• Society for News Design (SND)

 

Insurance: Cheapest price to cover graphics designers is £5 a month, however to cover all of my electronics etc is is £44 a month for property worth around £5,000

(https://quote.markeluk.com/quote/quotedisplay)

Business Plan: £500 a month rent for studio flat, £300 a month for food, expenses etc, £200 a month for equipment/insurance. I need to start growing on social media almost instantly to insure I have the required business to cover the cost of everything a month I’ll need to earn £12,000 a year minimum.

Pensions: I can deposit up to £300 a month to a pension scheme regardless of pay but I am not forced to, therefore I can range it depending on my salary, £300 a month would be the ideal goal but realistically I will most likely be depositing £150 a month. This increase my overall minimum budget to £13,800 a year meaning this is also the minimum required salary for being freelance in my specialism.

business_plan_template-princes-trust

Example of copyright breach

Ed Sheeran recently settled a 16 million pound lawsuit over a copyright breach of his song photograph; Martin Harrington and Thomas Leonard sued Ed sheeran because ‘photograph’ sounded exactly like ‘amazing’ they claimed it was a “note for note copy”

VR Headsets

Vive – 779

Morpheus – 349

Google Cardboard – 15

Freefly – 49.99

Hololens – 3,000

Samsung Gear – 99

Google Glass – 731

I’d invest in the Hololens as it is the most advanced headset that is currently available and eventually it will be compatible with everything and will have amazing features.

VR – Virtual reality is an artificial environment that is created with software and presented to the user in such a way that the user suspends belief and accepts it as a real environment. On a computer, virtual reality is primarily experienced through two of the five senses: sight and sound.

Augmented Reality – a technology that superimposes a computer-generated image on a user’s view of the real world, thus providing a composite view.

Uses for VR- Surgery, Games, Socializing, Therapy, Porn

Hardware

GoPro 400

360 camera 250

developer kit 200

mocap 299

graphics tablets 300

blue yeti mic 89

copmputer 1k

studio space 275/pcm

 

 

skillset jobs

Animator for games is the highest rated one because animating seems to be something I can do and I’d like to work with games.

Animating 3D is next up as I would probably be able to create something for a film if I was trained on it.

Stop motion is last because it would be the most tedious and only slightly interests me because of its animation aspects.

Unit 6

Animation Idea

The animation is set in space with a space ranger-like character called Xavi, in the short preview animation it will feature Xavi flying through space grabbing a weapon in his arsenal ready for a firefight; because of the violent nature I will most likely have to force the rating of the game and preview animation up to a 16+ minimum, this is because there will be fighting in the actual game however the preview may not feature any actual fighting as it it just a short introduction to Xavi and what he can do.

Target Audience

The target audience will be 16+ as this comfortably allows for a wider market while also providing a boundary to stop children from playing the game or from watching the preview, it shouldn’t stop me from selling the game for maximum profit because the average age of gamers appears to be over 36 years old, the data below also shows that statistically there are 52% male gamers and 48% female, this information means that gender specific games could be losing nearly half the potential sales, therefore I will be including some aspects that may appeal more to the female audience. 

Primary Data

I created a survey using Google docs to try and determine once and for all if my game idea would actually be successful, I had some fairly strong conformation that my game would be a success, however the only issue I could see in the data was that the survey participants were predominantly male, this could mean that it will only appeal to half the gaming community but it isn’t for definite as the results should be technically classed as inconclusive due to the results being slightly skewed.

This is one of the results that I got from a male participant, to start off with the age of said participant is above the age rating I will be giving the game and preview also they are male. This person’s favourite genre is ‘action’ which is ideal as this game will feature lots of action in the form of firefights etc; furthermore they like both spacey gun battles and is a fan of the space game examples that I gave, this means that I will be able to successfully market the game to other men like him and hopefully make a good profit from it. To finish the participant stated that he would be ‘pretty happy’ with some aspects of the space games mentioned being used in my game; this should is all the evidence I need to continue on with the game production with confidence that it will sell to the male sex.

Statistics from Similar Games

Above is a screenshot of the official game sales charts and shows which games had the highest gross sales over christmas time, the busiest time of the year for sales of games, as you can see COD Infinite Warfare is at the top of the list; therefore showing that I may be able to achieve high sales due to my game having the same genre and similar mechanics as the top selling one.

The previous year Star Wars Battlefront was the second highest selling game at christmas time, this game is also a space-based fps game so it must be popular for these games to have managed to achieve a slot so high up in the best selling charts.

And finally Halo 5 came top of the charts just 3 weeks into the lead up to christmas and was the highest selling game just before christmas, these bits of evidence all show that my game idea should be fairly high up as the population of gamers seem to be flocking to these games more frequently.

Conclusion

To finalise, in my research I can clearly see that my game idea will fit the target audience very well and should hopefully grant some good results and profit; furthermore I feel that producing a survey is the best way of finding out how the game will sell, next time I may use a focus group of around 50 people to get more accurate results. The research from the similar games shows that these games sold very well and made it very high in the charts of christmas sales with COD Infinite Warfare coming out on top, this supports my decision to create a game with similar assets to hopefully achieve similar results.

 

Aydin Clayton – 30161165

 

 

 

Bilbiography;

Eurogamer.net

http://venturebeat.com/2014/04/29/gaming-advocacy-group-the-average-gamer-is-31-and-most-play-on-a-console/

 

What Makes Me Buy a VideoGame and notes 27/1/17

I look for a compelling storyline that gets me wanting to progress or sometimes I buy a a game based on the prequel for example I played the first Assassin’s Creed a few years ago and I ended up buying all of the sequels after because they always ended on a cliffhanger that made me want to progress and find out more.

Another reason why I buy games may be because of the brand/name of the game for example I buy Call Of Duty Games because of the producers and the series, because they set the bar so high in all previous games I tend to expect a high level of quality.

Bartle’s Taxonomy test:

Negative and Positive Impacts Games Have on Players.

Negative

Manhunt was a game that was reported to be the reason behind a gruesome murder performed by Warren Leblanc. This seems to indicate that games cause players to become aggressive. Link below.http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1468088/Manhunt-computer-game-is-blamed-for-brutal-killing.html

Positive

Police in America use games to train themselves to be SWAT and they use the game to gain scores anything above 90 is suitable for joining the SWAT force, video games have been proven to improve hand-eye coordination as well as improve reflexes therefore making the police force more deadly and capable; below is a link to ‘Vinnie’s toughest cops’, the episode outlines how bad crime is in Baltimore in America and how the SWAT force and police force training including a part where they train with a video game. (This part is further towards the end of the episode. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YOHGfM6pxg4