📅 Date: February 22, 2025

🔹 Focus: Refining the Environment & Animating the Player Character

🔍 Goals for the Night

✅ Generate high-quality, walkable background environments in MidJourney

✅ Maintain consistent platform height & edge-to-edge pathing across scenes

✅ Refine the character walk cycle to feel smooth & natural

✅ Establish a repeatable MidJourney workflow for scene generation

📌 What We Accomplished

✅ Generated multiple high-quality pixel art backgrounds – Spent 5 hours iterating in MidJourney, refining prompts to achieve continuous walkable platforms spanning left to right. The key phrase used:

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pixel art video game platform, designed with a walkable platform in a side-scrolling game, continuous walkable platform spanning entire scene from left edge to right edge, edge to edge path, side scroll platform, {cobblestone path} platform crossing the entire scene from left to right, {stone wall}, {enchanted mountaintop shrine}, {ice blue palette} --ar 16:9

Key strategy: Variables in {} were modified between scenes, keeping all other elements identical. This ensured consistency while allowing for variety in the world’s aesthetic.

✅ Solved major challenges in scene generation:

• Platform height consistency was tricky—some scenes generated with platforms too high or too low.
• Ensuring full-width walkable areas required multiple iterations and slight rewording of prompts.
• Final results were visually stunning and feel cohesive as a continuous game world.

✅ Successfully animated the first version of the player walk cycle – Created a 4-frame animation using Photoshop, refining:

• Foot placement – Moved neutral stance feet closer together for a more natural transition.
• Two walk styles tested: stomping movement vs. natural step tilt. Chose the tilted, alternating foot motion for a more fluid feel.