The Casting Of Frank Stone
For this project, I was lucky enough to work with Supermassive Games on an IP they developed, my team chose to work on The Casting of Frank Stone. The game idea we came up with focuses on 2 characters that have split off from the rest of the group. The main characters Sam and James, get separated through events where the player will take control of Sam as she makes her way through the basement level below.
My Roles for this project:
Project Coordinator – My main job role throughout was managing the project and my team, giving out tasks to the other team members, and aiding them with design choices to suit the game we were building. As well as setting up ClickUp to arrange a plan for everyone to meet our deadlines.
Level Designer – I was the lead level designer creating the main level as well as polishing details in the starter level.
Cinematic Designer – Creating the level sequencers by adding music, voice lines, sound effects and camera work to create the best overall look and feel to the scene.
Director – I directed the actors in Motion Capture for the scenes we needed, how we wanted it portrayed and working with the team to record them as I set up the facial capture on our phones using Live Link. Making sure to keep the same naming conventions throughout each scene.
Sound Design – Working as the Level and Cinematic Designer, I was able to see the flow of the levels and sequences being implemented and found/created sounds effects and music for each level.
Due to it not being a large team as it was a University group project, we each had to take on extra roles and these included me trying out new skills of directing, sound design and using Vicon Studio.
When we first started the project, we created a flow chart discussing the flow of the level with different choices and where it will branch off and where they were all inevitably going to end.
With a simplified version, we did a flow chart showing where the first-choice effects goes within a direction depending on the players choice. This being one of the characters picking up a hammer and saying, "Do you want it, or should I keep it?". This choice reflects later whether the playable character can save the other character, save themselves or both dying.
From this, as a group found much easier to navigate the project from we needed to start to where we were going to end up by creating a burn list of where we needed to start making and what was last on the list.
We decided early on that we were going to try out Unreals LiveLink feature to capture the actors facial expressions during shots where the player would see their faces. This was a new challenge as none of us had really used it except me using the feature on a previous project to see how it worked.
The challenge we had was the actors telling us that during more of the fast paced action scenes, the headgear was heavy and was hard for them to act in a way that felt natural for them. So we had to redo the takes twice, once without the LiveLink and once with.
So we decided that the first day in the studio, we had the actors act out the scenes without the headgear so they can memorize the scene and get the scenes with there movements of their best performances (which was incredible). Then the other days, brought them back in to do the same scenes more focused on acting with their faces to capture the right expressions whilst still moving their bodies for the scene so it matched correctly.
We were lucky enough to use the Vicon Studio for the group project where I was able to direct our actors with the shots we needed. First time doing this which was a lot to think about, but once I got in a flow it became natural and an easier process.
I asked the whole team to the studio so every team member was involved in the design process, that way we were all there for the sequences and can see the idea we have come to fruition.
