Week 7 began the first of three development sprints with aim of having a fully working prototype by the end. As part of this cycle I moved away from my role of creating pixel art assets and began creating a vertical slice so that it could be used a blueprint going forward for other members of the team.
Other team members were working similarly, identifying actions that could be completed alongside their usual roles - with individuals becoming flexible within their roles and being supportive of task performance (Tuckman, 1965).
It is possible that the team was collectively becoming more aware of their individual roles and how they fit in with the shared vison of the project. I believe that there are two important factors that came into play.
Firstly, the team leader is now fully accepting of his role and its additional responsibilities and clearly delegating realistically achievable tasks.
This clearly links into the second factor, that trust is being shown and in turn reciprocated with individual accountability (Image 1).
Image 1: Factors affecting successful implementation of high-performing teams (HPTs) (Castka et al., 2001)
It is clear, that these factors are the foundations to becoming a high performance team, as risks are being taken within the group with regards to trust and interdependence (Katzenbach and Smith, 1993).
Team Charter
The team charter was also completed and signed off this week with the whole team adding to the document individually over the last few weeks - with it then being collated and edited by one person. The charter has a comprehensive list of team norms and expectations, as well as detailing areas of focus and who will work on them.
The work around this agreement has made a positive impact within the team, as it clearly identifies who is doing what and the expectations of them.
Character design and animation
One final asset was needed for the development cycle, the demo's playable character, as before I was given concept art to develop this from:
Image 2: Caveman concept (Debbie Norton, 2021).
I approached the pixel art design the same way I did for previous concepts and concentrated on the defining feature or features - in this case the hair and tan!
By this time, I was getting my head around the isometric perspective and was able to produce what I felt was my best asset yet:
Once I had received feedback, I began working on the idle animation - which was initially just a standard breathing state. Deciding that this was a little flat, I added an addition scratching action to the loop.
Image 3: Caveman idle animation (Will Ward, 2021)
The amount and type of walking animations were heavily discussed within the team and it was decided that a slanted idle stance and standard horizontal walking animation would suffice to give the illusion of isometric movement, as the demo controls would be primarily mouse driven and we would unlikely use a traditional 8-way movement going forward.
Image 4: Caveman walking horizontal animation (Will Ward, 2021)
References:
CASTKA, P., BAMBER, C. J., SHARP, J. M. and BELOHOUBEK, P. 2001. Factors affecting successful implementation of high-performance teams. Team Performance Management, 7(7/8), pp.123-134.
Chapman, A. (2021). Tuckman: Forming, Storming, Norming and Performing - BusinessBalls.com. [online] Businessballs.com. Available at: https://www.businessballs.com/team-management/tuckman-forming-storming-norming-performing-model/. [accessed 14 July 2021]
Mike Cohn (2012) Advanced Topics in Agile Planning [online video]. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D2r2KryYAaY (Links to an external site.) [accessed 14 July 2021]
Katzenbach, J.R. and Smith, D.K. (1993). The wisdom of teams : creating the high-performance organization. Boston: Harvard Business Review Press.
Lencioni, P. (2005). Overcoming the five dysfunctions of a team : a field guide for leaders, managers, and facilitators. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Williams, R. (2012). The animator’s survival kit. London: Faber And Faber.
Images:
Image 1: Factors affecting successful implementation of high-performing teams (HPTs) (Castka et al., 2001)
Image 2: Caveman concept (Debbie Norton, 2021).
Image 3: Caveman idle animation (Will Ward, 2021)
Image 4: Caveman walking horizontal animation (Will Ward, 2021)