Title Sequence

I have been working on a title sequence for the trailer showreel recently, which featured the title of the game against a period wallpaper.

Then I was browsing Channel 4 programmes and was shocked to see the similarity between my title shot and the title image of the topical Meet the Middletons. Uncanny.

My title appears after a paper radio, which plays music of the era to accompany the trailer, and fades into darkness as the first scene is revealed. Today I also watched several training videos on After Effects about animating text, and other useful tricks. I may choose to animate the text if I find an appropriate way. As for now I like the effect it gives as static text.

Shop Font

I finally made a front to the paper shop, including cutting out all of the tiny windows (twice! Digitally afterwards).

I wanted the interior visible from outside and the front to lift like a curtain. After trying this digitally it might look better if it were to part in the middle like a curtain. At the moment I am undecided and need to play with it more in After Effects, but I am pleased with the shop front overall and hope it fits nicely into my showreel.

Tape on The Windows

One of the many faults with the rough cut showreel is that the pink-tinted shop looks as though it is the sweet shop. To change this I have done some research into the practice of taping up windows so they don't blow out with nearby explosions. This is a common occurrence in wartime for homes and shops, and a sinister reminder of danger while people go about their day.

Showreel: Rough Cut

Yesterday I made a rough cut of a showreel in order to spot any gaps so I can fill them now. I was quite amazed at how well some of it fit together, especially with the music I had chosen. Even with everything sort of shoved together it came to 1:30! Because of this I am inclined to plan another, possibly shorter, development showreel. This will take a lower priority at the moment while I iron out the kinks in the main one. I am aiming for more of a 'playthrough'/teaser-trailer kind of thing with it.

So far I have been using photoshop to make high resolution files, but used quicktime image capture and imovie editing for convienience. The image quality is very low as you may imagine, and I am not even going to export it in its current state as it is simply for experimentation purposes.

Music in the Public Domain

All the music we use for our showreels must be in the public domain or we have to gain specific permission to use it. Luckily for me, the main piece of music (at moment its a tough decision between a few songs) is going to be from 1930s. Hundreds of beautiful old tracks can be found on archive.org or jazz-on-line.com, both of which state they do not intend to infringe any copyright and all their tracks are available to download.

Another great source for dramatically different genres of music and music samples is Kevin Macleod's database on incompetech.com. I used a couple of his brilliant tracks for a showreel last year, and although very widely known and appreciated online already, I must say he really is amazing.

EDIT 15/4/11

I have chosen to use the song 'Love Is The Sweetest Thing' by Al Bowlly, as it is slow and melodic, and the singing starts sooner than my previous favourite 'Guilty' also a version by him. The song also has poignant references to feelings of love and uses the word 'sweet' fairly often. This is great, not because it is so cheesy, but because it goes back to my original storyline which was about a man who has lost his wife and remembers his younger years a lot better than recent ones.

Rationing Research

I have been looking for images to do with rationing, a great source has been BBC websites.

This particular section of the site is to educate children about shopping and home life in WWII, the 'fun facts' are quite useful.

"The only sweets not rationed in wartime were cough sweets. Sweet rationing lasted until 1953!"

"Even the moat at the Tower of London was dug up for vegetables."

"No icing on birthday cakes, after the government said no more icing sugar (1942)."

"There was lots of new meat-free recipes, such as turnip pie, or parsnip and carrot pie."

"The BBC 'Radio Allotment' grew 23 kinds of vegetables, with weekly radio reports on progress."

"Children helped 'Dig for Victory' by digging, planting and weeding. Some children worked on farms picking potatoes and fruit. "


Maybe I could make a level just about food.

Grow Your Own

Part of my visual theme in having stark white paper to form the sweet shop is rooted in the idea of WWII rationing: the lack of sugar and the paper rations were supplied in. The levels are bright and full of colour in contrast, being the land of pure sweetness, but similar themes like scrimping and saving or growing your own food could appear here through the illustration. I have started exploring this with the countryside themed level, leading into images of tomato plants which could be grown in a suburban garden.


I stumbled across a relevant source of information on self-sufficiency in wartime Britain through Channel Four's series SuperScrimpers: Waste Not Want Not, where wasteful families are shown an alternative lifestyle by frugal women who have been practising it for years.

"70 years ago scrimping and saving was a point of national pride, there were countless news articles and broadcasts helping Britons dig for victory and make do and mend."

One of the things mentioned was that families used to keep chickens, rabbits and pigs during wartime and after to provide food for themselves more sustainably. "If you kept one or two chickens you'd have free eggs… during the war years everybody had chickens, rabbits and pigs."

Seat Cover Patterns

This banner is part of True of False game on the London Underground website, this question of course is true. I am intrigued by the choice to show the questions emerging from old and current seat cover patterns. Its a wonderful way of tying in several aspects of the underground's heritage, and to me feels like they could be from an exhibition. I wonder who made them.





I am currently back to working on some final level paintings/designs, and my next one will be about the railway/the underground. I may try and incorporate a seat cover design...