Final Tasks and Evaluation for Lego Street Fighter.

IntroductionMy task was to produce a Lego Street Fighter character which is a combination of two franchises, although Lego has joined forces with other franchises previously Lego and Street Fighter have never crossed paths until now. To complete this task I had to first get a body of research together by doing structured plays of both Street Fighter and Lego and look more into mechanics and how they move, characters and their backstories and the differences and similarities between the Lego audience and the street fighter audience. All of the research I conducted helped me to design a character that’s from a country that has never been created by Street Fighter before. There are so many different elements and firsts to this task. The first time Street Fighter a Lego would meet and the first time a character was made from the country of Canada.

Discuss five strengths and five weaknesses in your final design

Strengths WeaknessesResearch – I felt that I put enough research into Canadian stereotypes to accurately create a character that was based off of the stereotype.

Art side – I feel that my drawing in this task really let me down I wasn’t able to create something quite how I imagined it to be. My lumberjack is not very detailed.

Colours- The colours used were a strength of mine, they are taken from the Canadian flag and mixed well with my character too.

Character pieces – As my character was built around a template because I didn’t add the outline to each of my pieces it looks almost like my character is separated and not joint up.

Backstory – I have a good body of text on the information side of the card where I took my backstory and just expanded on it a little bit to add more context to how my character found out about the tournament.

Beard/moustache – I had an issue trying to create a beard/moustache because I wanted to create something that fit the character but also matched the Lego style which is painted on. Lego do not have additional pieces for beards.

Font – I believe that my font choice is good and represents the character.

Special move icons- These were easy to make but hard to fully understand what they are. However this can be due to no knowing the character because it isn’t iconic enough.

Friendly look – I feel that I had a strength of making my

Text box – I should have made my text box pop a little more to

character look friendlier a majority of this look come from just slightly offsetting the pupils in the eyes.

make the text easier to read.

Was there a theme for the design ideas? Can you describe it? Can you reference any influences here? How did you develop your ideas for your character and what were your influences? Why did you make these design choices?

My theme was Canadian Stereotypes, so how they are always polite and how it is consistently snowing out there. I decided to use the stereotypical red and black chequered shirt and a beaver hat for my main choices as if you type in lumberjack onto google or just picture what a lumberjack looks like it will most likely have the chequered shirt I am talking about. As for the beaver hat it is sprung off of the idea I watched in which a comedian called Jon Lajoie creates a bunch of different rapper personalities and one of these is called “MC Canadian Stereotype”.

Figure 1 MC Canadian Stereotype (Youtube, 2010)

What were the key areas of development in this project? You can discuss skills, techniques, equipment, programs, story development and a greater understanding of character and audience.

The key areas of development for my project was refining my skills in Illustrator, using the pen tool effectively as well as features like clipping mask where I learnt to

clip my flag into the circle so it creates a rounded effect. I had to learn various new skills including going to the radio room and setting up the recording equipment and recording my characters voice lines. This led into using my Audacity skills to edit my sounds. I also learnt how to do animations in two different ways including a way in which I set up a camera and a light box and recorded paper animations of my moves I made a storyboard of. I also learnt how to set up a CAT rig and camera in 3DS Max and recorded my moves again. This was a long process learning how to set up and manoeuvre the rig to record moves. In the future I hope to improve on this further. I also gained a better understanding on audiences since I had to work within and identify two different audiences I did this through various different methods such as watching the “I am street fighter” and “Lego Brickumentary” documentaries. Creating Venn diagram in Photoshop of the two audiences to find where they overlap and where they differ. I was able to play test both Lego games and Street Fighter which allowed me to look and dissect the game into different features such as background and character. This helps in many different ways because it helps me to understand movement of the characters, audience, styles and themes and sounds. To learn more about backstory and what a normal backstory is for a Street Fighter character I did a lot of research including a task in which I created a Lego version of Elena for the SF series.

What could you adapt about the work produced to improve and develop it?

I could do a lot more work on the little details so to improve my design specifically my character I should add a black outline on all the pieces to make them stand out more. I could also work on adding more definition to the clothes and the hat. As for the card I think I should try fix the silhouettes.

Is the final work appropriate for the needs of Lego? Does it fit with the ethos of their existing games and products?

I believe that it is very appropriate for Lego and the Lego audience from both a visual stand point and a story standpoint. When I had the task of changing my story into a more Lego audience story I didn’t need to change much. From doing research on characters within the Street Fighter series a lot of the characters have got pretty simple and appropriate stories none are really that brutal that they couldn’t go into a Lego game. The moves I produced as well are all clean moves with no blood or brutality.

Is the final work appropriate for the needs of Street Fighter? Does it fit with the ethos of their existing games and products?

I still think that yes the product is still appropriate the needs of the Street Fighter series. I goes back to the colour chip test in which they did where they made a strip with colours and because of how Iconic the character was you could guess just by

the colours which character it is. I feel that if you can tell which Street Fighter character the Lego character is then it works especially as in the Lego games hand to hand combat is a thing. I think that Lego and Street Fighter can fit hand in hand with each other.

Did it go better or worse than you expected?

I would say that it went worse than I expected but only because I am not happy with my work when it comes to drawing or using the pen tool. I would defiantly want to try do it again and I would want to improve my skills further until I am happy.

What feedback did you receive from your peers?

My feedback was that my work was good I had good colour coordination my character looked cool and suitable. I also received feedback that was how to improve which is make sure that I used outlines and make sure my arms don’t have a gap between them.

What do you think you could improve next time?

I could improve on many things if not all of what I did I feel that the more I get used to the pen tool the more my work will improve. I will also improve on animation making I had to recreate them a couple of times because they were just bad. They still need a lot of improvement.

Backstory of your Lego Character

Lego Street Fighter Illustrator character turn around

The 3D rigs of your moves fully rendered with sound recordings

Your Lego Street Fighter Top Trump Card

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REFERENCESYoutube, 2010. Youtube. [Online] Available at: https://youtu.be/EbAJivTHPoQ[Accessed 13 12 2017].