Newsletter #8

On Hiatus

The Spring Entertainment team is on hiatus this week as we attend the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, CA. This is a great opportunity for us to learn from professionals at top companies and to network with others in the games industry.

Next week is Spring Break so there will be no newsletter. The Spring Entertainment team will return on March 19th and newsletters will resume that Friday the 23rd.

Bonus Article:

Dog Design Adjustments

Since the team is on hiatus this week, this is a good opportunity to include an article that didn’t fit into last week’s newsletter.

Based on both playtest feedback as well as the natural refinement process as we shift from temporary art toward more polished art, we’ve made some refininements to our design of Seven. We’ve increased the size of Seven’s eyes, giving them white irises with pupils inside, in order to make them easier for people to see on the small iPhone screen.

This change also helps reduce perspective confusion: having less ambiguous features makes it clearer that Seven is meant to be seen from three-quarter view. In our first playtest, which was back when only one static pose was implemented, a couple participants had tried to interpret the image as if it was from a profile view, and in the strain to do so, they thought the features must be those of a bird rather than a dog. The combination of more prominent eyes, additional poses, and upcoming animation seems to be enough to eliminate the risk of this confusion.

We also eliminated the strokes of color that outlined some of Seven’s edges and features, which now makes a cleaner image that is easier to interpret at a small size. Lastly, we made Seven’s tail a little rounder. All in all, we think Seven’s newest design is even cuter than the old one. We’ve begun the process of animating Seven and will have some of these animations implemented for halves.