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.

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.

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."

Revised Game Guide Document

Lately I have been working a lot on my programming research and trying to establish a prototype menu system so that, over Christmas, I can work on my animation with a bit of peace of mind. That said however, I am also submitting a revised Game Guide document to communicate how the game structure and aesthetic has changed and progressed since my last Game Guide document was written (although useful, it is definitely out of date).

As the entire document reflects the aesthetic themes of the game, you should notice the title page reflects the level menu screen progression - the shelf of jars, from digital to paper. 

The other pages have also been changed to match the transition from digital to paper.

The entire game should also reflect this transition, through the start screens and animated sequence at the beginning of the game you are taken through the digital 'real world' into the white paper 'real world' in order to represent the starkness and depravity of sugar during WWII, when you are suddenly and contrastingly thrown into the 'sweet land' made entire of the opposite - pure colour and all digital. This is the kind of development with the game the new Game Guide should communicate.

Edit: I am also emitting any use of texture or stock image that I did not make myself, from all documents and game content. Examples of this include the wallpaper background and elements used in the end of year show reel, the shelves and picture frames.

Recent Reference Photos

Streets and rooftops from a train

A Mr Simms sweet shop in London this time, even more perfectly situated than the ones in Cambridge and Norwich.

This photo reminded me of some I found a few weeks ago, when looking for wartime photographs, in particular the one below...

I love this photograph, the scene is so still and the light is so soft at, such a dramatic angle.

New sweet shop in Cambridge

These are some photos of the Mr Simms chain of old fashioned sweet shops in the Cambridge branch taken over Easter break, they have since opened one in Norwich too!

Tutorial with Sharon

I recently met with Sharon for a tutorial predominantly on the narrative of my game. This was an excellent experience and a huge help to me in developing a more stable narrative, especially when it comes to animating cut scenes or explanatory scenes at least. Sharon and I discussed all areas of the narrative and of the gameplay and I was extremely pleased to see how much she understood of it without my added explanation. We exchanged so many ideas in such a short space of time that I will summarise here what we concluded from it, aided especially by her follow up letter, all of which I am very greatful for. This has probably been the most useful single thing that I have done so far in the development of the game.

Firstly we talked about the 'real world' part of the game, and how so far I have represented the starkness and deprivation of this world in the absence of colour, and the colours used also hint at it being a passed era. Sharon suggested, having seen my most recent experiments with paper, that I may wish to leave the 'real world' as blank, white paper. This would be an even more exaggerated, literal  representation of starkness and that the paper texture would evoke two very prominent but almost subliminal meanings; the idea of 'making do' and an almost quaint crudeness that would not be inappropriate when trying to represent wartime Britain, that many people would pick up on and understand without having to be explained to them. The other would be that the paper texture would be a reminder of real, physical materials when contrasted with the digital paint effects of the 'sweet land' and that each would compliment each other. I love both of these ideas and after reviewing my experiments in post production colour of the paper cut outs I am beginning to think leaving them blank is a very nice idea...

Sharon was also hugely interested in the development of the boy, as the projection of the player and as a character himself. She thought I needed the boy to gain something at the end of each level, not necessarily a physical thing but maybe a new technique or piece of knowledge and we struggled for ages thinking of a way to make it more rewarding for the player but without changing the game too much. In her letter I was blown away at the thought that the boy and the old man could be the same character, the boy his younger self - more able to complete the task he wishes he could do, ie finding his wife. This would provide motivation for the boy, as it would technically be his wife also, as opposed to a favour to the old man, and makes the relationships between characters in the game more romanticised and less scope for them to be interpreted as creepy. From this idea the boy can develop, into the old man! This allows your character to move differently and he will grow in size subtly, not changing gameplay too much, but also solving the tricky situation I had at the end of the game to get the old man to the sweet land. Now he will already be there and the boy will also be accounted for.

Sharon reminded me that the lack of sugar in wartime was a huge thing, and that it was something of dreams, I am already exploring this as a major theme in my game but she helped me understand that with stories such as this it needs to be clarified with the viewer and then it becomes more satisfying for them to have understood.

Adverts

Two uk adverts influenced my design for embedded illustration:

Robinson's 'Just for Milk' cordial and squash adverts 2008/9



And the McCain's Rustic Over Chips advert April 2008




http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AnNDX_uiMag


Both feature animated figures and recognisable imagery emerging from a two or three colour scene or texture.

Embedded Illustration

The sweet land levels, as explained in full in my game guide document, will be made of seemingly unstructured patches of colour taken from different traditional sweets, within which the player will have to construct a path. The background or foreground colour will sometimes contain illustrations of scenes relating to British cultural contexts (fields, the seaside, railways, orchards etc).

To get ideas I looked at some books in the library:

The English Farmhouse and Cottage, M. W. Barley, routeledge and Kegan Paul, London and Boston 1961


Industrial architecture in Britain 1750- 1939, Edgar jones, B.T. Batsford ltd, London 1985


Nostalgia spotlight on the fourties, Michael Anglo, Jupiter books 1977


Looking back at Rural life 1901-1939, C Fielden Hughes, EP publishing limited 1975


A peoples war, Peter Lewis, Methuen London, 1986



These books gave me some idea of what became important to Britain during wartime, such as the underground and farmland for their change of use. Other things became important because of the ways they changed irreversibly, there is a lot of sentiment for the things that were lost in the war that can be brought out subtly in the game's scenery.

Street reference

The old sweet shop is where the game is set, on a street somewhere in urban wartime Britian. I have started sketching terrace buildings around Norwich city for inspiration on how the old sweet shop will look, and tomorrow I plan to take photos. For now I am looking for photos online as reference for the street.

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[1] Flickr.com