Storytelling and Gaming development timeline and doccumentation.

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The purpose of this blog post is to outline the development, creative process and progression of my Storytelling and Gaming assignment for my second year second semester at Hertfordshire University. While I understand that the assignment brief requested a series of blog posts to be created over the duration of the project's development, I neglected this aspect of my work out of no fault than my own, due to already having to maintain a seperate blog for my Independent Project, and on being told prior that the final end product was the most significant component of what we present. I appologise for the unprofesional nature of this stand-in blog post, though shall do my best to use this blog post to deliver a cohesive timeline of events.


CREATIVE DEVELOPMENT

My choice to have the style and asesthetic of my storytelling project to be in the form of a retro-esc videogame introduction cutscene game both from my enjoyment of the style of introductory cutscene I wished to make, as well as the fact that I was already producing a video game for my Independent Project. 

The style for how the video presented it's visuals, in the form of mostly still, ocasionally sliding or zooming pictures, was taken from the 2018 indie game demo DELTARUNE, produced by Toby Fox, who's work and music I am a large fan of. The first segment of my video of the "past" visuals actually use the same colour pallete as the one used in DELTARUNE's own cutscenes that are used within the game.


 

- Screenshot from the first segment of Heaven's Nail, my storytelling and gaming project

 

 

 

 

 

 

Screenshot from "The Legend of Delta Rune" Cutscene from DELTARUNE (2018) - 






For the characters, the main protagonist of my story, Curatin, was actually a character I created back in 2021 before I attended Hertfordshire University, created for a game's design course that was held on the College Lane campus I participated in back in six form. I reused her design while slightly updating it, and creating a narrative around the very small ideas I had back when I first created her. The two images below show her initial character sheet I created back in 2021, and her reference I used for my storytelling and gaming project I created in Febuary of this year.

-2021 concept page
-2025 reference page
 
As for the other characters in my storytelling and gaming project, only the sidecharacter of Drape is included within my final version of Heaven's Nail. I initially intended for the video to be about another 8 minutes in length, though due to time constraints and my own concern that the end product may end up being TOO long, the script and video was cut to after Curtain accepts Drape's offer of exploring the mountain with the assistance of him and his allies. Below is a character sheet of Curatin and Drape, alongside the other characters indented to be Drape's allies in the capes, exclusing the character of "Masque" who I indented to include later in the video as a character Curtain would meet in the form of an excentric, offputting merchant that would aid her in being more prepared to explore the mountain.
 

 

 As for the design of the mountain itself, I breifly sketched out some very rough concepts for what i wanted it to look like, always desiring it to have a strong silouhette that would be recognisable at a glance. Eventually I decided on the thunderbolt-like peak design for Heaven's Nail, as the iconography of a thunderbolt shape and a mountain was reminicent of the mountain of Olympus from greek mythology, making the name of "Heaven's Nail" help make the mountain seem like an almost divinely significant location. Below are the rough concept sketches and final concept sketch I created of the Heaven's Nail mountain.
 

 

The use of a mountain for the game central location is inspired by the central locations of The Underground, from Toby Fox's prior indie game project to DELTARUNE, Undertale, released in 2015, and the real world location of Mount Celeste in Canada used as the central location in Celeste, released in 2018 by indie developer Maddie Thorson. The clouds circling the mountain's peak are inspired by the appearance of Death Mountain, a reoccuring location in the Legend of Zelda franchise, as this is an easy way to show of the mountain's height while also giving it an air of indimidation.

The design for the Golem that chases Curtain within the mountain about halfway into the video which Drape later kills, was created in a single day in Microsoft Paint, as I already had a pretty solid idea as to what it should look like. I wanted it to be a large, dopey looking brute with simple shapes. The Golem also posessing human teeth within it's mouth is to make them seem more creepy and offputting, while also raising subtle questions as to why or how it has said teeth in the first place. Below is the concept sketch I created of the Golem that I later coloured and included in my storytelling project.


 

 For the format of the video, I decided for it to be in 640x480 resolution. This was a stylistic choice I settled on the make the video itself seem more dated and retro, and also because this was the same aspect ratio used by Toby Fox for the cutscenes in DELTATUNE, which I wished to pay homage to.

DEVELOPMENT TIMELINE

The following will be an aproximate timeline for the development period of my Storytelling and Gaming project, as I have no proper recorded timeline of events as to when what segments of the video were created. I once again appologise for the inconviniences this causes for grading.

FEBRUARY 4th - 7th

Concept art for the characters and locations of the project are created

FEBRUARY 8th - 12th

Scenes 1-8 are created and added into the premiere video project

FEBRUARY 16th - 20th

Scenes 9-16 are created and added into the premiere project

FEBRUARY 21st - 26th

Scenes 17-26 are created and added into the premiere project

FEBRUARY 27th - APRIL 4th

No development was made during this time period due to extensive concentration on my independant project and media theory essay.

APRIL 5th - 10th

Scenes 27-29 are created and added into the premiere project, I drew these in a seperate photoshop file to avoid the one I was currently using for the prior scenes from getting too cluttered. Additionally, the shot of drape required the canvas to be expanded, and so the remaining scenes were drawn in this file to save time resizing the images to fit within the boarders of my premiere project video.  

APRIL 11th - 13th

The music used in my storytelling project is created in both Garageband on my iPhone, and within FlStudio on my personal computer at home. Temporary sketch versions of the remaining scenes are created as standins for use while testing the duration of each track. The songs include publicly available soundfonts for both Undertale and the sound library of the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES), to give it more of a "videogamey" vibe throughout.

APRIL 14th-27th

No progress is made during this time due to me entirely focusing on completing my independent project game and media theory essay.

APRIL 28th - 29th

The remaining scenes of my storytelling project are completed and synced up with the video. The project is officially completed at the time of this post's creation.

 

 

THIRD PARTY RESOURCES

Fonts: 8bitoperator, used as a standin for the text during the development of the video project and serving as the text used for the video's end-credits sequence.

 Press Start 2P, the font used for the video's animated text, created in Kinemaster Pro and imported into the Premiere Pro project to maintain the video size and aspect ratio.

Sound Effects: The sounds used at 1:27-1:32, the second sound effect at 5:01, the sound effect at 5:54, and all sound effects at 6:12 excluding the footstep sounds, are from the publicly available Undertale and DELTARUNE sound libraries, which are free for personal and commercial use. The footsteps for both Drape and the Golem were recorded by me in my own time.

Harvard Format References

Enaguas, J. D. (Creation date unspecified) 8bitoperator font. Available at: https://www.1001freefonts.com/8-bit-operator.font 

 Boisclair, C. "CodeMan38" (2011) Press Start 2P font. Available at: https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Press+Start+2P

Fox, T. (2015) Undertale (sourced audio sound effects). Available at: https://undertale.com/ 

Fox, T. (2018) DELTARUNE (sourced audio sound effects). Available at: https://deltarune.com/ 

 

 

 

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