Progress Crit With Fred

At first, I was bricking it before I went in, since normal Tom had taken the reigns I was no longer relatively calm and ready with my form. However, as usual, it went just fine. Giving the chance to talk about the main points concerning my progress thus far on the course:

• PPD - Presentation, feedback from portfolios
• Professional practice
• How I sit in the context of industry

This is the feedback form I got from Fred, along with alot of help towards getting some grounding and focus, before I lose sight of what Im meant to be doing, rather than something that is off on a tangent.

PPD - After being somewhat distressed that I may not be able to get feedback or appropriate responses from my portfolio in time for the presentation, I was told that there was no need to worry but be persistent and keeping up to date with everything. So this includes following up on mailouts, keep sending (my portfolio) them out to people, but most importantly the presentation is only a review of progress made so far. Not the be all and end all.

Portfolio - 'Don't be precious about it' and keep it updated with personal work that reflects who I am, what my interests are and essentially what I'm about. The portfolio is something that will be constantly changing according to what work I am doing, there is no point in me waiting for that 'one zinger' of a project and not updating it when and where is appropriate. Also alot of the product shots looked rushed and unprofessional which is something I will be remedying before hand-in

Moving onto what I wanted answering from Fred, which is issues surrounding the final brief:

• Brand name? Is it working, or does it detract away from what it is intended to do?
• Games to focus on? How many?

The brand name I had originally, 'Ruddy Pixel' was more suited to me personally, since the company would be based in Yorkshire, and still communicates the video game aspect of the brand. 

What I had done instead was over-complicate the brand process, which is only a small part of the project as a whole, since it is product driven I was essentially splitting hairs trying to make the brand something it is not. Trying to make it sound like it was a potential affiliate of American Apparel was not a good idea, and strayed away from the personal experience's of gamers.

I got asked what the focus of the brief is and my only reply was:

"Well its just nerd clothing, for nerds, made by nerds" - Tomas Cummings 2010

• Product - T-Shirts and merchandise
• Promo - Viral, ambient, online, instore, press
• Content - Have to be systematic

This meant I would now have to replan what I needed to do and get a main focus down on what games I will be doing, what range would be on offer, and what I am going to produce in the time I have left.

Range

For example, if I was to start looking at Ratchet & Clank, the focus would be the extensive, creative arsenal of weapons available, and what their stats are. For example, if I choose 10 stand out weapons, that means 10 images and bits of information. 

This means the range would be the different juxtapositioning of the elements (type/image) for each weapon.

1 weapon + 3 T's + 6 Colour variations = 180 different T's. 

This also could be applied to other products, like mugs, hoodies, keychains, wallpaper, or even ringtones.

Promo

Viral campaign to get the ball in motion and the word out on the street first, using stickers, posters and flyers distributed in places like adshels, game stores (gamestation, grainger games, game and CeX)

After the viral campaign, obvious advertising in magazines (front, loaded, Play, Xbox Mag, and Viz) adshels, and even advertising in stores mentioned previously.

Packaging/Branding

These 2 go hand in hand, which is relative to the logo and identity produced. Playing on the 'gamer's experience' I keep mentioning, when you get your product you should feel like you have got something worthwhile and something you would like to keep. Something like the box you receive the products in would be relative to what console it came out on, eg MGS would come in a box with the profile of Playstation 1, Zelda in a gamecube, Ratchet & Clank in a Playstation 2, etc. 

The labels on the clothing could be memory units relative to the console.

This would also give the brand a unique selling point if I were to take this further and put this forward, since then you could reuse the box for storage or something the gamer would not mind putting on their wall.