Week 11- Cards

The objective for this week was to get familiar with In Design and create 4 cards we thought we wanted to make. Because this was my first time working with In Design on my own, I decided not to change any of the things that we worked on in class. I left each card the color I chose in class. We did this by making a box around the entire card and picking the color of our choosing. I chose these colors because they were bright and I knew putting text on them would make them easy to read. We then learned how to export photos from Adobe Illustrator to In Design. I chose my rainbow and my shamrock because both of these represent my game very well. I exported these photos as JPEG and placed them onto my cards. I was unsure as to what I wanted as my image for the CHALLENGE card and WILD CARD, so I did not place anything onto them yet. We were required to put text onto our cards so I came up with some questions. My game has both adult and kid cards so for my first few cards I wanted to mix it up and do 2 adult cards and 2 kids cards. I know I want to change the background colors on most of the cards so that my images will pop and be pleasant to look at. I also need to create some images to place onto my last two cards. I know I want to keep my font for the labels of my cards because I have used this font throughout my whole game. However, I think I may want to adjust the font of the questions/statements that my cards have on them.

Week 10- Final Game Board Box

After hearing what my classmates thought I should improve on and what I should keep the same, I found that my font was the main thing everyone commented on, to make it bigger, bolder, and to match the font that I used in the game. To do this, I used adobe illustrator and deleted all of the current text that I had already used. I then changed my font to Marker Felt, and started typing what I needed to be on there. I then sized it using 42pt font. After doing this, I stretched out the title a bit to make it more noticeable. I then copied the title as it was and pasted it onto every corner of the gambol to make sure each side had the same sizing for the title. Next I started typing the number of players, the age intended, where it was made and who it was made by. to do this I still used marker felt font, but I did not want to use the same sizing because I wanted the title to stick out the most. The next thing my classmates said to do was to make the bottom on my box more interesting. I decided that I was going to incorporate the Irish flag into it but instead of just making the bottom an Irish flag, I wanted to switch it up a bit. I decided to make the flag out of shamrocks because my game is an Irish theme and it would add taste to the box. To do this, I copied the shamrock that I made previously for my title and stretched it out so that it would fit nicely onto the bottom page. I then copied the size I liked and laid them out throughout the whole page. I then changed the color of the 3 middle rows to white and the last 2 rows to orange by using the eyedropper tool. After making each color perfect, I finally had finished my game board and was very happy with the outcome.

Week 9- Critical Analysis of Game Board

After receiving my critique on my game board, there were many things that people said that they liked such as the leprechaun hiding because usually people have to search for leprechauns.The next thing someone commented on was the color scheme; they said that it was working because it contrasted the illustrations so well.  Another thing they said they liked was that there was a pot of gold and a rainbow because usually in typical Irish stories, you have to go to the end of the rainbow to find the pot of gold. They said that it was very tied together but there were a few things that I could work on. The number one thing people commented on was the font- I need to make it more big and bold so that the title stand out more. The next thing that they commented on was making sure that when I do change the font, I make it the same size all around instead of stretching it and moving it like I did in the top left and right hand corners. What I plan to do to fix my game board and make it better is change the font, maybe try and fix up a few of the illustrations, making them bigger or smaller depending on where I want to put the title. Lastly, I am going to edit the bottom of my box and add some illustrations that also tie into my theme so that the entire game fits as a whole.

Week 9- Box Cover

When designing my game box cover, I looked at multiple box covers comparing and contrasting each one to decide what I think would work well for my specific box and what I would not want to use for my box. I truly can say I did not know what I wanted to design my box around until I started working looking at both the box covers and my own personal game. After looking at all of the boxes I decided that I wanted to incorporate my name into my illustrations, but also be sure that my name was very clear. I decided this because I felt that every game that had a clear name but was also surrounded by other things that represent the game made it such as Cranium, War of Terror and LIFE. To create my box I had to copy the box cover cut out and open it in adobe illustrator. Next I started to design my box. I knew I wanted to incorporate the leprechaun because it is the main thing on my board that represents the Irish theme. I then started creating a rainbow with a pot of gold at the end because that is the main point of my game, to be the first to get tot the pot of gold. I did this by making a U shape on adobe illustrator using the pen tool. I then created each layer under that doing the same thing but with smaller margins. I used the fill and decided the color about each level of the rainbow. I next wanted to draw a cloud underneath the rainbow to put the name of the game in. I did this by making small U shapes and making the cloud long and skinny.  I filled it in white and used a blue outline to emphasize that it was a cloud. FInally I added the name of the game onto each side of the box. I thought it could use a little more of an Irish theme so I traced a shamrock and shrunk it to fit on each side of the name of the game.

Week 8- Gameboard pieces

For my game board pieces, I chose to stick with the same piece with different cut outs in between so that each player can tell the difference between one another. I decided to do horseshoes because my game is a fictional Irish theme and with many fictional things relating to Ireland, horseshoes are very common to see. I do not have any of these in my game so I decided that adding them as pieces would be a great compliment to the game. I made these pieces by fist taking a picture of a real horseshoe that I liked the shape of, and tracing it by using the pen tool. I then copied the finished horseshoe and repeated it 3 more times. After doing this, I had to decide how I wanted to show that each piece was different. I saw a lot of horseshoes with lines, circles, or even letters cut out of them, so that made me decide to make each piece unique by making the cut outs different. For the first one I just stuck with regular circles because this is what I saw on most horseshoes. I then decided to get creative and I took a picture of a shamrock and a leprechaun hat and I traced them both using the pen tool, then shrunk them to size so that they would fit into the horseshoe comfortably. The last cutout I made was the star cut out. I used this cut out because stars are also used frequently when addressing fictional Irish themes. Lastly, I made a base for each horseshoe so that they can stand upright on my finished game board.