Community Game Developer wins big in Game Jam!

CREATORS CORNER

WITH SIERRA LYNNE

Michael Campisi is a 20-year old independent game developer and he participated in a Game Jam last year! It’s a competition where game devs on any skill level get an allotted amount of time to make a game around a certain theme. This one in particular lasted a week and the theme was “The game is a liar”. Around that premise, Michael made a game called Instrucdoors, a platforming game where the narrator would be purposely misleading you the entire time. He ended up getting 7th place, in the fun category, out of 1,050 entries! How did he get such an amazing accomplishment in his first game jam?! He documented all of it in a video he made recently, How I made a game in less than a week. 

Below I interviewed Michael about how and why he made this video.

Sierra : Why did you want to make this video? 

Michael : Since this game jam happened more than 7 months ago, I don’t remember exactly why I started recording my game making process on day one. I think it might be because it was my first jam and having some footage of me could be useful for a potential making of video. And you know what? It came out useful for this very fun video. Yes, 7 months later, but I still made it anyway. It’s a great piece to put in my portfolio and inspiring for other future videos of this type I may make.

“I think it’s fair to say that everyone I know knows that I am in love with birds”

What inspired you to make the character Birb?

I think it’s fair to say that everyone I know knows that I am in love with birds. In the past, I’ve made a ton of different bird characters, my most recent ones being anthropomorphic (in other words, having human-like physical traits.) I used a lot of them as my avatar in games like VRChat, but none of them were me. I was still missing the one bird that would truly represent myself (you probably get now why I made that joke in the video where someone screams “FURRY” in the background.)One day, during an Advanced Saturday Cartoons session, I tried the challenge of the day, which was to make an animatic. To no surprise, I made a bird jumping in frame and posing at the end. This was the first ever version of Birb which had no name at this time, no specific inspirational data for his design. I also replicated the frames I drew in FlipaClip to illustrator later for higher quality images. When I started making my video’s script, I got inspired by channels like Code Bullet, which have an avatar on the side talking for them. I wondered what I could use myself (knowing it would be something that would come back in every video I’d make and also represent me publicly)… and I immediately thought about this bird I made in the animatic. I opened up the illustrator file and started thinking. I first added some details on his crest, chest and wings because his initial design looked a little bland and generic. He ended up looking really nice in the end. But now, how would I make my animating job easy? I ended up making a modular system where I drew different beaks, eyes, left wings, right wings and bodies so I could mix and match them with ease. After too much time in Blender putting drivers on everything and transforming my material nodes into spaghetti, Birb became alive and super easy to implement into other video projects!

To summarize, Birb was first made for fun without an actual purpose, but became my mascot for my channel and also my representation as a bird.

Birb from 2D to 3D

What would you talk about more if you had the time?

This entire game jam lasted an entire week, so it is extremely difficult… no… impossible to say everything in less than 20 minutes. But there is some stuff that I would have liked to mention, either I forgot or there was no space for it.For example, one thing I forgot to say about the dialogue I recorded is that it was entirely on the fly. When I made the levels, I just typed in some random stuff that I thought would make sense. In the end, I was surprised at how my “on the fly” lines communicate the “liar” part of the jam super well! (small spoiler here if you haven’t played the game or watched the video) If you follow all of his instructions, he says that the final room has a surprise, but in fact it doesn’t, which is a lie. If you skip both of the first two holes, he will say that there’s nothing at the end. But there is something if you go in the final room, which was also a lie. (end of spoiler) There are so many of those little details that I didn’t even realize when writing my dialogue I was going to mention it in the video. Sadly, I forgot.Something I would also have liked to do but was obviously impossible was to explain a little more in detail how I wrote my scripts (for those a bit more technical with game making.) I did a quick and very simplified explanation of my dialogue system using some text animation, but this system and many more have way more details. So many that I could make an entirely separate video. For example, I didn’t explain how I coded my first artificial intelligence, which were the slimes. I could make a separate video, but obviously not now because of college online classes.

“One of my things with projects I do is that I almost never do drafts. Birb didn’t have one when I first made him nor when I upgraded his design.”

Did you go through a lot of drafts, or did you have a solid idea of what the video would look like from the start? 

One of my things with projects I do is that I almost never do drafts. Birb didn’t have one when I first made him nor when I upgraded his design. My current game passion project doesn’t have any for the game mechanics nor the characters nor the environments. I often have solid ideas from the start. But this time, since I’m not used to making videos with me talking, I wanted to write a proper script to not end up with an unorganized piece of audio visual that would be hard to properly understand. I already had ideas for all the jokes I wanted to make, I just had to figure out when and how to deliver them.

The video’s been up for 2 weeks now and it has under 100 views. How exactly does that make you feel?

When I was in the process of making this video, I already knew it was going to end up as a hidden gem without a lot of views. I never exceeded 100 views anyway with any of my other videos, even in the past, apart from some unlisted ones I had to do for college that ended up in the college’s playlists. It still did relatively very well, don’t get me wrong, even against some of those college videos. But even after sharing it on Twitter, Facebook and one active Discord server I am part of, it still didn’t break the 3 digits. I just don’t feel like I’ve got enough visibility yet. Because everyone, no exception, that I showed my video to said that it was fantastic, and indeed, a “hidden gem.” At least, all of those positive feedback give me the motivation to continue with what I’m doing. Maybe some spark will happen in the near future and my work will be getting more attention.

How much time in total did you spend editing it?

In terms of raw editing, if we include all the time I’ve spent doing other mandatory things (and the break times of course,) it took around 2.5 weeks to edit this video. If we include the scripting part (and the recording of the voice lines,) that’s another extra week on top of that. Making Birb was one of the longest assets to do (around 2 weeks to rig it alone, but another week or more to draw all separate parts.) But knowing I had to make him only once and he’ll come back in other

What did you edit it with?

If you said Premiere Pro and maybe a bit of After Effect, you are actually incorrect. Excluding my Mickyelloow Productions intro that I made in After Effects, I edited this entire video with a software called HitFilm Express. It is a video editor extremely similar to BOTH of these software (to the point that the entire interface is almost a copy paste from both.) If you are familiar with either of those two editors, HitFilm is a breeze to switch to. The best part is that it is completely FREE. The only downside is that some effects and features are extra addons you have to buy. At least, the ones included for free are plenty for freebies that want to add some special sauce to their editing process.

There is also HitFilm Pro which includes all effects and the possibility to import 3D models. That one isn’t free ($350 USD,) but on the opposite of the Adobe CC subscription model, HitFilm Pro is a one time payment and the software is yours forever! The only thing that isn’t forever are the updates and support, which end after 12 months. But the software is still yours to keep. You only have to pay for it again if you want to get new updates, which feels way better than Adobe’s subscription model.

I am not sponsored at all to say all of this, I just really love their free software. This was my first fully fledged video using the Express edition. Right after finishing it, I noticed that the Pro edition was on sale at around $250, a 30% price reduction, with a bonus of 10 high quality explosion VFX clips. I ended up buying it to get those sweet, sweet extra effects and the 3D features. Their software is amazing and I’d totally recommend it as an alternative to Premiere Pro and After Effects, even the free version!

What part in particular was the hardest to edit?

To be perfectly honest, there’s nothing that stands out to me as the hardest part I had to edit. There are so many moving parts that everything was kind of leveled out in terms of complexity. Sure, some parts had a bit more happening in them (like when I talked about the intercollegiate game jam I took place into,) but nothing was too difficult for me to put together.What I can mention though is that I had a hard time figuring out the way I would incorporate Birb. I had a separate text document separating each pose I wanted to do at which part of the dialogue. When it was time to incorporate him in the edit, my first thought was to export each part separately (so beaks, eyes, extra face assets like the rage veins, left and right wings and bodies) and swap them at their respective line. The huge downside is that I would require right between 6 to 21 different video tracks (because of each body pose) and it would have been impossible to animate every part together easily. Plan B: I did my Blender rig, posed and exported all 428 frames (yes, you read that right: 428) into a single image sequence. I imported it into my editing software and was about to use Time Remapping to map him. But I then remembered that HitFilm Express (and even Pro that I now own) don’t have Time Remapping like in After Effects. At least, I quickly found a workaround by time stretching the animation to 0.3%, which now all I had to do was cut out the frames at their respective positions. Once I was there, it was really easy to put him together. Time consuming, but way less than with my old separate parts technique, that’s for sure.

“This COPPA thing with YouTube... I don’t think I will ever understand it. I just felt like I had to do a joke about it, because it was the first appearance of Birb”

You made a joke about COPPA, do you feel like it will affect you much?

This COPPA thing with YouTube... I don’t think I will ever understand it. I just felt like I had to do a joke about it, because it was the first appearance of Birb. Since he is a cute animal character speaking and being animated in something that could be considered kid friendly, that’s something COPPA could immediately catch and sue for. I don’t target my content only for children, but for everyone of various ages, would it be for young kids or adults interested in game making.In terms of me being sued by the FTC, I don’t think it’ll affect me much or even at all at the moment. I’m just too small of a channel to be noticed by them, probably targeting channels with hundreds of thousands of subscribers. Even if I was in that category of popularity and they saw my vid that isn’t set to “made for kids,” I think they would see that apart from Birb, all of the content in the video is not something designed for kids. The actual criteria are extremely vague and hard to get an idea of what is “made for kids” (I still have no idea what falls into “made for kids” myself) and I’m not a lawyer, but if you compare it to obvious nursery rhymes stuff, I think it’s safe to say that my video is not “made for kids.” It is “made for everyone.”

What part was the most fun to edit?

I’ll be honest, this entire video was a blast to edit. It was my first one over 17 minutes long and with a ton of editing from beginning to end (compared to my very old and cringe inducing gaming channel with videos over 20 minutes long and almost without any editing… almost all in private now, no worries.)If I had to pick a favorite, it would be the jokes and the spontaneous moments (when there’s a silence break and something breaks that silence.) For example, the “Blast everyone’s ears with all voice lines at the same time” joke was one of the first I did after the COPPA and voice pitch ones at the start. It was always far in the timeline until I was at the point to properly edit that part. Also, putting Birb at some places and stretching his face at proper times was so fun to do. Figuring out “Hmmm… how stretched can I make him with that face here?” was so fun I’d want to redo it all again! I mean, I’ve got other potential video ideas when I’ll be free from college, so I’ll have plenty of opportunities to do so!Fun fact: I still don’t know why I laugh myself to the part where I say “.....#7” while eating the microphone and with the screen shaking. I guess spontaneous moments like this one are my kind of humour, huh.

You can follow Michael’s progress on his work at @MikedaBird on Twitter and subscribe to MikeDaBird on Youtube.

Michael being mentored by Sonya during Summer Camp in 2016.

Michael leading a shoot during Creative Media Lab

Sierra Lynne

About the author

Sierra is a long-time producer at Spectrum and is a journalism student in British Columbia.