PM1. Understand pre and post production processes.
Planning
Typically in planning or idea generation, this is where teams will be assigned tasks where they would need to come up with ideas and how they could potentially go about creating or making those ideas. There is a famous idea generation quote or method where you scrap your first three ideas and then keep note of the rest. I believe this methodology was once used by Pixar and can still be used to this very day.
Pre-Production / Pre-Visual
The purpose of Pre-Production is to prepare for the production stage of planning. Without preparation and a sense of direction, you are setting yourself up to fail and that’s why pre-production is important. If this step is skipped then you are essentially jumping into a project blind with no references or idea of resources available.
Once the teams have been sorted and ideas have been generated, during the pre-production phase, teams and individual people will start to get on with their work in terms of proto-typing and giving feedback to one another, this is a fundamental part of team-work to see what works and what doesn’t.
An example of how different sections of the studio might work together here is 2D artists may pass sketches to 3D artists to create and make game ready. The use of storyboards and playboards will be featured heavily throughout this stage, commonly referred to as concept art.
Some challenges we may face at this particular stage may include but not limited to having the correct resources in terms of budget, having enough time to hit objectives, making sure the team is fully aware of the brief they have been given.
As time progresses, Pre-Production can be revisited during the production stage. This normally happens when something isn’t quite right during production and needs to be changed. This comes down to iterative design.
Production
The Production Phase is where teams will put together a build of the product and in terms of game design, would start to get play testers in to get feedback from outside of studio walls, based on the feedback given to them, they would then go back to pre-production to make changes. This is known as Iterative Game Design. Also as the name suggests on the tin, actually producing a viable product.
During this phase, a programmer might work with a gameplay designer to get the movement right or to make the environment react in a certain way. This is ideally the stage where marketing might get involved and start to market the product using early gameplay footage.
Post Production
At this point the product is almost finished, there is only few tasks left such as polishing the game, making sure it all works and looks good, marketing, distribution and extra content if the project was to include it. If your project has heavy interest, it might be a good idea to introduce a roadmap to keep people engaged and in the loop. A little bit of transparency can go a long way with an audience.
JORDAN | GLITCH ARCADE 