Poll of the Day > What's the most ambitious creative project you've completed?

(+) Yeah! (+)

Something like a game, album, movie, etc.

I always feel like I want to create something big but then I remember I'm lazy and not very creative so it never gets past the level pipe dream ambition. Has anybody here made anything worth being proud of?

The best I've done is probably my Super Mario Maker portfolio, which isn't much, my levels average like 10 stars

nothing too major

though one time in college we had to do something we've never done before and write a story about it.

I decided to spend an hour tailgating every car I came across, because i never did it before.

kinda scary being inches away from somebody like that. havent done it since but was a decent experience.

I'd say that's more of a social experiment than a creative project. I guess it depends on how you approach it, though. I wasn't really thinking of school projects at all, though I suppose if it's an open-ended assignment it should be able to count.

Hmm, I wonder if any of my school work would be the answer... nah, can't think of anything.

Hm, not really much. I guess if it counts, I 'designed' a game. I say that, because all I did was write about all the aspects, gameplay, controls, abilities, enemies, design goals, problems that may arise when building it, and pretty much everything else. Now I just need to how to make it actually come to light.
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The topic clearly says "completed", so no, that does not count

And I mean if you made a game that had ongoing updates (as an example) I'd say that it's fair to include, assuming it at least saw some form of release, but it sounds like you just have something that's still in concept stages

This is the only original thing I created, and this much can testify to the fact that I'm not a very exciting person. :(

https://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/468480-fire-emblem/74776575
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I have written a 250 page book that nobody will ever read until I die

MICHALECOLE posted...

250 page book that nobody will ever read

Was that that fantasy book you got readers from PotD to vote for in some Amazon contest, so that it would get published?
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That.. was not me

I don't know offhand. It also depends how you define creative. If it's the traditional idea of fiction and the arts, I wrote a number of short stories while in college. In art classes, I sculpted statues and painted. For a comic-themed class in high school, I put together a storyboard for a mock episode of a cartoon and did a short comic book.

I've started novels as part of a NaNoWriMo but wound up never making a dent in actually finishing and I've mapped out other novels I intended to write but, honestly, I can never bring myself to finish and in general I can never get myself into the flow.

EclairReturns posted...

MICHALECOLE posted...

250 page book that nobody will ever read

Was that that fantasy book you got readers from PotD to vote for in some Amazon contest, so that it would get published?

You're thinking of MasterSword. I don't believe he won, and I can't recall if I finally got around to reading it.
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Completed? You're supposed to complete them?

...

I completed a dried-pasta collage, once. Now, if you wanted to know about the creative projects I've started...
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Funkdamental posted...

Completed? You're supposed to complete them?

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DorkLink posted...

Something like a game, album, movie, etc.

I always feel like I want to create something big but then I remember I'm lazy and not very creative so it never gets past the level pipe dream ambition. Has anybody here made anything worth being proud of?

The best I've done is probably my Super Mario Maker portfolio, which isn't much, my levels average like 10 stars

It's not supposed to be fun really. If it was everyone would be doing it. It's supposed to be hard. It takes time and willpower but once you just start it's easy to just do it and get over with.
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Titanic
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My student film project, and I also completed NaNoWriMo at some point.

Sadly, shit keeps happening to tank the really cool stuff. The games get canceled, and the animation projects lose core backers or die on the vine.
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Dance shows with up to 70 dancers, anywhere from single performances to ten-day runs.
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My biggest was probably a story, about 70 pages long.
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The final project for my 3D Animation class at the Art Institute of Philadelphia, way back in late 2003. Didn't help that I waited to do the actual animation until pretty much the last minute (like 3 consecutive all-nighters), but at least I had the characters modeled, skinned and rigged (I used 3D Studio Max 5 or 6 at the time). Slapped together an environment, a city road at night surrounded by copy-paste buildings, with like 4 similar textures of different colors on them, and some trash cans and streetlamps (took longer than I'd anticipated to get the lighting from the streetlamps right). Invited a friend over, we recorded some voice overs. After he left I got to working on the animation (the all-nighters mentioned), rendered all the scenes the morning of the day I had that class (640 x 480, lol, HD wasn't yet big at the time), edited it all together in either Premiere or After Effects, transferred it to VHS for class presentation. The instructor and fellow students were impressed, I was relieved but exhausted. All I wanted to do was sleep, but LotR: Return of the King was new in theaters and I was invited to go with a bunch of friends that night. I saw most of it but ended up dozing off a handful of times.
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I've made a few animated shorts and did some illustrations for a children's book.
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I'm still working on it a year later. >.>

It's a Pokémon fanfiction. It's about 280 KB of raw text, so like 56,000 words or something? Not sure how many pages that'd be, roughly ~150?
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I can never repress the shame long enough to finish my fanfics.
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I've written a few songs.

I don't know if this counts, but I've worked on musical pieces and performed them in front of reasonably sized audiences.

Ever hear of fire and the wheel?

I invented them. True story.
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Eevee-Trainer posted...

It's a Pokémon fanfiction. It's about 280 KB of raw text, so like 56,000 words or something? Not sure how many pages that'd be, roughly ~150?

Damn, a 56,000 word fanfiction? I thought people only made a couple pages worth of those things at most

*shrug*

It's basically a start to end journey, not just some random quick ship or love story. Imagine it like the anime without Team Rocket being shoved up your ass every five minutes. And probably a little darker.

I've already got it mostly planned out, like major events and such. There are five main arcs to it and I'm right around the transition between the second and third.
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My friend and I wrote, performed (all instruments / vocals) and recorded a full-length concept album based off of an inside joke. We did it all on our own, and didn't even go to a studio or anything.
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DorkLink posted...

Eevee-Trainer posted...

It's a Pokémon fanfiction. It's about 280 KB of raw text, so like 56,000 words or something? Not sure how many pages that'd be, roughly ~150?

Damn, a 56,000 word fanfiction? I thought people only made a couple pages worth of those things at most

Longest work of English fiction is that one SSBB fanfic
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I wrote a program that rips porn from sites for me to archive, an open source 2D animation studio, I made a bunch of music I guess you could call an album for my game, I drew some hentai that absolutely sucked, I drew a lot of art for my game that didn't suck. (Basically I need the cartoony leniency)

I've overcome mid-development hell mentally and am slow and steadily completing a large game.

BTW I have a lot of tips for getting over mid-development limbo. Basically, you never ever share or show anyone incomplete work for gratification, and you constantly go back and clean up messy code. That makes it so you only do it because you enjoy doing it and you don't feel trapped in your own project when people want to see the finished result, and clean code is extremely important. I never realized how important it was until I started going open source and was forced to comment and organize everything. It's insanely easier to work on it now.

I also have a big story for the game too. I would write a book about it if that wasn't just a waste of time.

MICHALECOLE posted...

I have written a 250 page book that nobody will ever read until I die

You should post it

My photography degree as a whole.

I can spin my fidget spinna and then catch it while it's still spinning
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I've written several short stories when I was little, and I more recently created a program, using newly learned C++ skills, that generates, stores and encrypts passwords for the user. It's a console program now, but I'm doing research on how to turn it into a GUI.

I also have a mostly filled-in idea for a game, but without the knowledge to execute it (yet).

@jamieyello3 posted...

an open source 2D animation studio,

I'd like to see this.
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JaH Reborn posted...

DorkLink posted...

Something like a game, album, movie, etc.

I always feel like I want to create something big but then I remember I'm lazy and not very creative so it never gets past the level pipe dream ambition. Has anybody here made anything worth being proud of?

The best I've done is probably my Super Mario Maker portfolio, which isn't much, my levels average like 10 stars

It's not supposed to be fun really. If it was everyone would be doing it. It's supposed to be hard. It takes time and willpower but once you just start it's easy to just do it and get over with.

Well, to be fair, it can be fun and/or hard depending how you approach it and keeping in mind that fun and hard aren't mutually exclusive concepts (ie, as opposed to easy vs hard or fun vs aggravating)
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I think that designing levels in Mario Maker is fun, but that kind of meets you halfway. I've tried experimenting a bit with designing 2D platforming mechanics and it's hard, even with modern design tools. It really makes me impressed to think how they were able to do that in the NES days. There are so many little things that are easy to take for granted, like momentum, acceleration and jump variability.

If we're only counting stuff that has nothing to do with school or work, the only thing that really comes to mind is a fan I made for gamefaqs.

Not quite creative, but I've preformed surgery and castrated a single rat testicle. Took two hours.
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Blue_Thunder posted...

I'd like to see this.

@Blue_Thunder

https://github.com/jamieyello/DaySphere_2D_Animation_Studio

That's the source code, it's mostly done but it needs some very important touch-ups before it's ready for anyone to use. I made it for my game, since there really wasn't a good alternative. I should be able to get it working with Unity eventually, too.

I'll just post the exe.
https://mega.nz/#!Ch50laDQ!OYh_2kb3WW6shhdSN6XfWbXmmmWBf7QzSCCbiTFhX-M

You have to go to Add -> Add Image to start. You might notice the frame selector is pretty unfinished, I'm in the middle of adding functionality to swap limbs.

To add a keyframe drag and drop the image wherever, then click somewhere else in the frame selector (the grey area at the bottom) and drag it somewhere else. You should see it play the animation you just made with, with generated i-frames in between. Currently there has to be at least two keyframes for anything to work, it broke when I was working on something else.

Also right click hold to pan.

Soon enough I'll add curved and smoothed interpolation, and pinning limbs to other limbs.

I aim to make it as simple as possible to actually use. I tried so much animation software that was not only stupidly hard to figure out and use but required you to jump through 50 hoops to use them in your game. Most of the time it didn't work.

created a character in a wrestling game
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You should post it

I literally have it locked in a safe along with some other prized possessions and nobody knows the combination except me and my will.

Dead serious.

jamieyello3 posted...

Blue_Thunder posted...

I'd like to see this.

@Blue_Thunder

https://github.com/jamieyello/DaySphere_2D_Animation_Studio

That's the source code, it's mostly done but it needs some very important touch-ups before it's ready for anyone to use. I made it for my game, since there really wasn't a good alternative. I should be able to get it working with Unity eventually, too.

I'll just post the exe.
https://mega.nz/#!Ch50laDQ!OYh_2kb3WW6shhdSN6XfWbXmmmWBf7QzSCCbiTFhX-M

You have to go to Add -> Add Image to start. You might notice the frame selector is pretty unfinished, I'm in the middle of adding functionality to swap limbs.

To add a keyframe drag and drop the image wherever, then click somewhere else in the frame selector (the grey area at the bottom) and drag it somewhere else. You should see it play the animation you just made with, with generated i-frames in between. Currently there has to be at least two keyframes for anything to work, it broke when I was working on something else.

Also right click hold to pan.

Soon enough I'll add curved and smoothed interpolation, and pinning limbs to other limbs.

I aim to make it as simple as possible to actually use. I tried so much animation software that was not only stupidly hard to figure out and use but required you to jump through 50 hoops to use them in your game. Most of the time it didn't work.

Looks great so far; keep up the good work!
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Blue_Thunder posted...

Looks great so far; keep up the good work!

Hey thanks.

BTW not to derail this topic but if you're looking for GUI windows forms are nice to use.

MICHALCOLE posted...

You should post it

I literally have it locked in a safe along with some other prized possessions and nobody knows the combination except me and my will.

Dead serious.

I could get it out with thermite and a screwdriver

jamieyello3 posted...

Blue_Thunder posted...

Looks great so far; keep up the good work!

Hey thanks.

BTW not to derail this topic but if you're looking for GUI windows forms are nice to use.

MICHALCOLE posted...

You should post it

I literally have it locked in a safe along with some other prized possessions and nobody knows the combination except me and my will.

Dead serious.

I could get it out with thermite and a screwdriver

I could get your underwear off with my teeth but you don't see me bragging about that

I spent like 4 years writing the Arc Rise Fantasia game script on this website. Does that count? I also made a small Unity game demo with a couple other people in college.

MICHALCOLE posted...

I could get your underwear off with my teeth

Maybe on one of my bad days.