CREATING A FRIDAY NIGHT FUNKIN' MOD WITH MY OWN ORIGINAL CHARACTERS

I have always wanted to create something, ever since I was in grade 2 I have been creating comics and drawings about my own and other characters from the media I consume. I spend my free time drawing on paper of characters from cartoons and anime I watched. When I watch these shows I always get inspired to create original stories with my characters. I've always imagined my characters in cool fight scenes like in the shows I watched, but sometimes I also wanted to create a game with my characters. In October of last year a game came out called Friday Night Funkin’. It was a rhythm game but it had character and personality not many rhythm games have. And to this day we see people modding the game and adding their own twist to it. I wanted to make a mod for this game but I did not have any coding experience to help me do it, when I heard about personal project I thought that this might be an opportunity for me to learn a new skill, therefore I decided that my learning goal will be to learn how to animate and code with HaxeFlixel.

Product Goal

With my learning goal I hope that I can learn new skills and use them in the future. My product will be a Friday Night Funkin’ mod that will include an interesting story with animated cutscenes. When I was thinking of a story for this mod. Several ideas came into my head. Eventually after having a discussion with my friend about different story ideas I have decided that the story will be about my characters Reyn, Rosaline, and RR traveling to the Friday Night Funkin’ universe, Reyn travels there to recruit his counterpart in that universe, but Reyn gets lost in that universe and needs the help of Boyfriend (The protagonist of Friday Night Funkin’). My mod will include animated cutscenes, ones that are not too long for the convenience of the players. The menu will be changed from the normal base game into a menu that suits the characters, and of course it needs its own OST (Original Soundtrack), for this I would need to commission a musician for this since I don't have any music making experience.

Reflection

Working on this project made me realize that making a mod, even for a game like this, takes an extraordinary amount of time and effort to do. When drawing and animating it felt fun and it's amazing seeing my characters who were always stiff and motionless in my drawings move and emote (even if it doesn't look that good). And seeing the completion of my project was a huge relief, seeing everything I've made come together and end up being a cool playable thing is awesome to me. The impact of this project to my learning is that not everyone can do this, dedication and motivation is needed for a project like this. This is certainly the case for the animated cutscenes in this mod. Animation in general is difficult and this truly taught me that the animators in these gigantic industries like Disney, Pixar and even game companies like Epic are painstakingly drawing or moving rigs to achieve a really good product.

Product Evaluation

The overall reception of my mod is positive, especially to the art and music department. A lot of people seemed to really like the music my friend made for this mod, and the overall reception of the art is positive with one fellow going into more detail with what I can improve on. From this I can conclude that the main criticism of my Mod is the animation itself. Some of the cutscenes were rushed, yes, due to time constraints. The cutscenes were the hardest part of making the mod, animation is no joke, it takes a while to make this especially with only one person doing it.