The Consumer Project in Design is described as a ‘physical object that you can display and give away to people.’ Many students use the project as a form of advertisement, creating business cards, t-shirts, or posters. My Consumer Project was a behind-the-scenes booklet on the process of Esque’s narrative and game development. It includes character profiles, their design process, and tips for RPGmaker MV! If you’re interested, below is a PDF of the booklet. It was available in a physical copy for $15 at the 2017-2018 Freestyle Exhibition.
The original concept for the booklet was that the Overseer of the Trial of Fears (a work in progress for that name) had written the journal while overseeing the main cast’s adventures. The booklet’s cover and design is meant to feel like an old leather-bound journal, since the Overseer herself descends from ancient times. However, this is an original character that my partner had made up, so unfortunately we didn’t have enough time to put together a personality and background, which would have helped me write in that character’s voice. So while the booklet retains a similar theme, the language in the book is more informative and straight-forward.
Completed Cover Design with some help from Miss Parkinson!
The character profiles were also meant to be similar to what you might find in an RPGmaker game. They usually appear as part of a bonus room, like in the popular LiEat series! At first, I modeled a draft based on different profile formats, but everything looked all squished together. Too much information and too much emphasis all on one page! So, Miss Parkinson saved me again by spreading all the profiles out into two pages!
Here’s an example of LiEat’s character profiles! These are simpler than the profiles from the booklet but the format is quite similar. Also, you might notice this is a screenshot from a video. I don’t have the system to play most RPGmaker games (RPGmaker games didn’t make the move to Mac until recently), so I get most of my fixes from Youtube (this screenshot is thanks to ManlyBadassHero’ Let’s Plays of the series).
The original draft for the profiles!
In addition to the background information on Esque’s narrative and programming development and the character profiles, many doodles pertaining to the story was also added as a bonus! Here a few below and you can see the rest scattered around by clicking the link at the top of the page! Explaining most of these doodles would be spoilers for the plot, so these also function as a teaser.