From concept to final design the project took roughly 5 months, putting together a video with original music however was a more complex undertaking. Despite having played guitar for many years (off and on!) I’m only just beginning to understand music theory and getting to grips with music and video editing was a challenge. Crafting a kickstarter campaign was reasonably straight forward, but I often found myself adding too many options and I realised that for my first ever launched project I should keep things simple for myself. Below is my step-by-step process and all my resources.
To begin with I looked up sea creatures and made a sketch of the ones who’s poses I liked the look of, and those that inspired me to think of a pun or pop reference. Not having access to a scanner, I took a picture of my sketches and DM’d them to myself via messenger, from there I copied and pasted them into a file on my editing software.
Real expertise, right?
One of the challenges with the concept of the game, in terms of art design, was “Where do I put the fins?” Dorsal fins for example tend to be quite near the middle of animal, but when your animal needs four middles… four fins? the idea of how ridiculous that might look did intrigue me, but I thought it would be more sensible to put them near the front. Thinking about it though that could be funny.
I use FireAlpaca to turn my sketches and into digital versions, I’ve used it for ages because I like that it’s free, has no ads and all the tools I need. At the time I started See Creatures I had an old, failing laptop with a touch pad and that was it so going through the process of digitizing them was a bit of a slog to start off with – although it got easier with time. Several months into the project I was given an art tablet and that sped things up a lot!
I traced the lines of the sketch and played around with colours and brushes to give each one a unique texture, bringing them to life. Hand made cards all have a distinct border on them to make them easier to cut out.
I printed the fronts and then the back onto coloured card and used spray adhesive to stick them together, and cut them out. They had a lot of play testing and they clearly needed protecting, to start off with I used sticky back plastic to protect them but it was a bit flimsy at the sides and made the cars harder to shuffle. Trimming it too close to the sides would let the front and back begin to separate. Future cards will be either laminated or stored inside clear plastic wallets. I’ve been looking for greener solutions but haven’t found a suitably alternative yet.
Play testing revealed a lot of weaknesses and strengths in the deck and the amount of cards quickly sky rocketed to improve the dynamics of the game. While I was concerned it was becoming overly complicated, ultimately a game must be what it must be!
I made some alterations in the second design phase, mostly text fonts, and when I had a full deck that I was satisfied with I ordered a professionally made deck with a few samples (£100) and put together a final box design – I decided to keep it really simple with a plain box because I loved the idea of people being able to draw on it and personalise it with memories and/or art, mass produced products seem cold and heartless to me and I wanted the game to remain customisable. The inside of the box comes in default purple to stay in theme and contrast the emerald permanent marker, or with a choice of colour to suit you!
With a final product ironed out it was time to put together the campaign! I poured over it for months. I kept thinking: “I could include this! Oh, and this!” Until I eventually realised I was making too much work for myself and that I should keep the rewards easy to manage, instead of adding more and more rewards hoping to seem more enticing. It was a bit of a slog making all the graphics, but the hardest part was the promo video. While getting some footage was easy enough video editing has never been something I’m particularly good at, although I think the humour makes it good, and the music was a bit troublesome. I’ve been learning guitar for ages but my composition skills are minimal, and when I again found I was making things too hard for myself and expecting perfection I decided to be kind to myself and made something slightly easier that I’m satisfied with. I was lucky enough to have been given a good microphone fairly recently and got a decent recording, combined with a few wale like vocals of mine and a royalty free, watery backing track and I’m actually pretty happy with the results. Perfection is for capitalists, of which I’m certainly not.
The problem post launch that I’ve had is reaching a new audience. Despite using all the tags I possibly can almost all of my new engagement is from people who want to charge me to share my game and exploit my labour. Is it worth it? Do I have another choice if I want a successful campaign? I don’t really have the money, so it’s perhaps a moot point.
In the meantime I have plans to distribute posters in my local city (particularly the gaming cafe’s) – due to having an extremely low income this has posed a challenge without a good, working printer, not helped by the fact the city is difficult to get into and if I’m there I usually have a very full schedule. I’m anxious about how successful this campaign will be, and how to fix the problems in future if it’s not.
My next steps are to: 1) distribute posters, and 2) create playthrough videos.
