Kingdoms of Valour Final Evaluation

For unit 3 of our Media course we were tasked to create our own advertisement from scratch
for a predetermined themed mobile game called Kingdoms of Valour, a strategy and base
building themed game. We were told that the name was final but the genre of the game
could be chosen at our own discretion, most everyone chose to stick with medieval times as
the examples shown all followed that theme however I decided to choose Edo era Japan as
my theme as I am more interested in that era of history and wanted to learn more about it
through this project.

How we started

The very first thing we did of course was view various examples of other real life Strategy
base building games and how each of their ads layout was effective and whether or not the
narrative was clear, the most well-known of which was the popular 2012 mobile game Clash
of Clans. Through watching these examples, we noted key codes and conventions to do with
the themes such as how similar in script each of the voice overs were in explaining the
games.

The first task

Once we learnt the basics on what we were doing and which theme we each had chosen the
next step for us was to develop our own logos for our "Game" but first we needed to
understand what made an effective logo so we each chose a handful of logos and dissected
what made them work and stand out. Since we had already looked at the clash of clans’
logo, I decided to start by evaluating that one. Each logo was broken into 4 categories, Font,
Colour, Composition and Iconography and how each of these tied into each game’s
respective theme. I found this task rather simple and easily doable however learning about
how to make an effective logo was quite challenging in and of itself and I hope I can use that
knowledge later in the course.

The second task

Next came personally my favourite part of the project and the part I most enjoyed and
learned from, we had to design and make our own 3D render of a castle. Firstly, we started
by researching different types of Architecture from various different real-life buildings and
then we started the actual modelling. Learning the new software was tough but fun to do and
eventually I got the hang of it and was able to make a geometrically accurate model of a
traditional Edo castle, texturing it using brighter colours to help draw the viewers’ attention to
the castle, however I thought that by placing the castle in the corner of our created space I
had managed to save time by only having to make two sides but then I was informed that the
render would be rotating in our final video so in future instead of trying to find a shortcut
through the challenge I will simply do it all to the best of my ability and as I now know how to
do so it will take considerably less time.

The third task

Once we had learned how to make an effective Logo and designed our Castles the
penultimate step was to create our own logos and the design our own video game posters
including the logos. This part is by far the part I excelled at as I had already learned a fair
amount of Photoshop skills and was very easily able to make 3 logo designs and a poster.
My designs all stuck to the same theme, Japan, so once I had made 5 concepts I was
pleased with I decided to seek peer opinions on which concept stuck out the most and what
made each one effective. After reflecting on the opinions of my peers I decided on 3
concepts to then make within Photoshop and then cut that down to a final design. Next was
the poster and using the skills I had previously learned I made a layered poster of a Ninja
facing a Castle and the hue of every object was pink as pink is very big in Japan due to
symbolical belief in Sakura trees. However, I did encounter a few issues with not knowing
how to do certain effects but those were quickly rectified as I found guides on how to do
exactly what I wanted and now my knowledge is bigger than it was prior.

The final task

The last part of the unit we had to do was by far the most challenging and difficult for me. We
had to design, make and animate our own avatars to then voice over using our own pre-
recorded scripts. This was the worst part as I had never done any of that and knew nothing
of the software and applications we were using but eventually through countless trials and
errors I was able to make an Avatar and a recorded voice over done by my friend as I am
not comfortable recording my voice. Whilst learning all these new applications was extremely
challenging and at times semi-impossible It was in the end worth it as I now know more
about the concept of animation.

Putting it all together

Finally it was time to put all of the pieces together, after we had created our own basic music
tracks using a simple online track maker, we made our ads by placing our animated avatars,
Rendered castles and Logos all on one frame and moved them around to our own liking.
Then finally uploading them onto the Colleges YouTube page and onto our own Weebly
websites.

The end result

The final result of all this was a piece of work that, although was clearly made by an
amateur, was a piece I was happy with as I knew that it couldn't be a perfect master piece
and yet still fulfilled its purpose of catching the viewers’ attention and accurately informing
them of what the game was about effectively. This was confirmed as I once again sought
peer opinion and the general consensus was "It did what it was intended to do" as "The soft
colours were easy on the eyes and weren't too jarring for children." which was perfect as that
was the intended audience but regardless I learned a lot through the making of it. I learned
about various different kinds of Architecture, how to make effective logos, how to use
different kinds of editing software and how to calmly asses’ problematic situations and deal
with them accordingly.