What's Next?

This week I am going home, which means I have access to paints etc, and I'm taking my camera. I hope to film some shots of paint, marbling inks and other things to use in compositions in After Effects when I get back. Lots of other important things are happening at the moment, but this project is always on my mind. Working on the showreel should be satisfying.

BBC Four: The Beauty of Books

This evening I found an interesting series currently on BBC Four about the beauty of books, one episode in particular, Illustrated Wonderlands, about the relationship between illustration and text through the 19th Century to present. "Illustrated books set out to provide a fuller reading experience, to access deeper meanings through a synthesis of words and pictures.What a picture adds to a story and what the words leave out is key."


When talking about the illustrations to Lewis Carrol's 1865 edition of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland it was emphasised how important Carrol regarded the illustrations to accompany his writings. Employing John Tenniel as illustrator, Tenniel's characters were much more sophisticated and naturalistic than Carrol's original drawings, but still true to being absurd. In these ways they invited adult interpretation, allowing the book to be enjoyed beyond childhood. They even included small in-jokes between author and illustrator, such as a monkey thought to the hotly debated Charles Darwin, which the Victorian readers would also enjoy. The character illustrations in  Alice's Adventures in Wonderland are vital to accompanying the text because the characters are not much described in detail.

A modern interpretation of the illustrations for Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (of which there are countless examples) by John Vernon Lord was discussed. He explained that by not including Alice in his illustrations you, the reader, let yourself become Alice. He also thinks Carrol would be furious at this as she is the heroin of the story and would have wanted her depicted. These are things I am directly concerned with in my game design.

The programme also discussed Mervyn Peake, originally for his Alice illustrations, but mainly for his passionate belief that illustrations were important for serious adult fiction, including his own books aimed at adults. Best known for his Gormenghast series, published circa 1950, where the illustrations were drawn before the descriptions were written so that he had something formed which he could describe. His characters were described as having their souls on the outside of their bodies.

"Picture books can be very deep and often more universal and more adult than the next age group [of books] up.… They can be about life and death and fear and all sorts of things." - Julia Donaldson

I enjoyed this episode very much, a great trigger for thinking about my own story and animation again after such a long break. Now that I have playtested my game (documented offline, sorry!) I am going to attempt fitting in some work on the animation around the other projects I have taken on recently. I hope I will have something to show for it within the week.

The Borrowers - Play

This week I saw an amateur dramatic production of The Borrowers, it was an excellent rendition of story I love, with all the themes I love too! The use of scale was excellently incorporated into the stage and surroundings, with larger than life props (although all a bit irregular and inconsistent, which can be forgiven). On several occasions a trap door was used to represent the floor board under which the family lived, while at the back of the stage represented the tiny house under the floor. A huge screwdriver came down from the ceiling when a corresponding smaller version was put through the trap door! And dolls house furniture turned life size when placed under the floorboards too.


The story of The Borrowers, miniature people who live alongside 'human beans' as they call them, always hiding but venturing out to collect household objects to fit their needs. In terms or my game this play reminded me of the many uses of a theatre stage, and of scale yet again! Two things I am directly involved with in my game, especially in the intro animation which I am now able to spend time on.

It made me want to watch the 1997 movie, and then I remembered that Studio Ghibli are doing a rendition of it focused on Arrietty. It isn't as stylistically inspirational to my game, but I am looking forward to it nonetheless.

Sylvain Chomet Revisted

Now that I am working on my storyboard for the intro animation I thought it would be good to look at Sylvain Chomet again, having last looked at him so long ago it doesn't even appear on this blog! This time I have been looking at some of his earlier work and remembering The Illusionist which I saw in Autumn.

This is a screenshot from
'La Vieille Dame et Les Pigeons'
(1998)

This early work is much less refined, but are expressive in some ways. Taking most interest in the street scenes, this one is beautiful -  appearing washed out but containing so many colours.



The Illusionist was set in Scotland (where Chomet's current studio is) but in the past, and in London - both rainy and foggy and bleak. There were wonderful street scenes here too, so much to take in.

Playthrough Video

I have spent all day making my prototype in Gamesalad Creator, before today I had a rough skeleton but now I have fleshed it all out except for the levels. That means I have a working menu system! I have recorded a play-through in Camtasia, and put it on my portfolio site. It is the first video on this page...

http://www.rosieball.com/Site/Showreels.html

Animated Short About A Shop

 

This animated short has many similarities with my game idea! First off it has no dialogue, and it starts with a child walking down a deserted street... they then reach a spooky looking shop... sound familar?  In this short, though, the shop is creepy and it has only dolls in it. Watch the animation to get the story, I won't ruin it. But it was lovely and very helpful to see how someone has produced such a high quality animation with such similar themes to me.

Paper Shop - Complete

I finally finished the paper shop set the other day and took many photos.

I also made some mock ups with the man in the shop, made from separate photos of each limb put together in photoshop.

Update - Late April

Paper work is going well, I have quite a few positions and pieces for the old man character and lots of tiny paper jars. I have found a reasonably sized cardboard box to build the shop in and I've made some of the shelf units and the door. I have though a lot about how the counter will be (one pieces of flat paper, or a folded pieces with a surface top) and how the shop front will appear when animated. I have intested in a high quality camera over the easter holiday and I have been looking more at After Effects. Animating the level segments is not going so well, Flash does not alow the colour to behave as I would like because it is vector. I have also tried using some other animating programmes like Pencil which is simple and effective but crashes a lot. Traditional media has also proven largely unsuccessful so far, I tried making a flip book of the swimming boy but I was going about it the wrong way. I am still enthusiastic to try more at all of these areas and make something that works. Since making my site rosieball.com I am keen to see how I can mold the sweet land page to become my portfolio for assesment. As for a showreel the shelf unit experiment from the previous post could be used for this.

Game Concept Portfolio 2

In order to meet the brief requirements my 'portfolio' needs to be a creative and imaginative display of everything I have produced, emphasising the stylistic themes of my project and embodying them. I am planning on making a display case in effect, a large image of a shelf displaying all visual aspects of my game idea. This may be interactive. Here is an initial mock up I have made..

Update - Easter break

So at the moment I am at home working on my portfolio document to hand in and I have completed my PDP to date with updated CV, and built myself an up to date portfolio website. I have been taking a little break from working on my sweet land game, but I have not stopped thinking about it whilst working on my other areas to hand in. Before we broke up for Easter I played with Adobe After Effects for a while and I thought about the advice Sharon had given me. I am now planning to finish drawing the paper pieces I need for an animation (the old man body parts, the jars, the shop set, possibly some cut out buildings to make a street scene) and photograph it, then move to After Effects to animate them. I aim to finish this by hand in date May 26th.

In the meantime, whilst at home for Easter I am working on my document as I have said, and also aiming to film some paint/marbling inks in a transparent container to see how liquids behave and then possibly animate over the top when I return to Norwich.

Overall I am on schedule and can afford myself a rest these few weeks of Easter, whilst still working mainly on my blog and documents for submission.

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.

Paper Cut-Outs

First try at making a paper cut-out set today, went well and I hope to continue this set in a cardboard box and make an animation from it. So far I have taken some photos and also digitally coloured some...

Kara Walker

A contemporary female artist who also works in silhouettes and paper cut-outs is Kara Walker, here are some examples of her work:



Walker's work seems to pay homage to traditional silhouette art like Reiniger's, but with a larger concern for topics such as identity, race and sexuality.  

Lotte Reiniger

Reiniger was a female animator in the 1950s, she worked with paper cut-outs in a different way to the artists I have looked at so far and worked with silhouettes. This is similar to the way my boy will appear in the sweet land levels, but the way they move and the actual animation process may be more helpful to look at for my real world animation experiments... here is an example of her work:


Her later work had some coloured backgrounds, but still mainly silhouettes...

Update - FGA6 Week 1

I have handed in my document of concept images and can now focus on FGA6 in which I will be mostly experimenting with paper cut out animation and digital animation techniques. Flash tutorials this week (week 2) have been extremely helpful for more basic understanding of the programme. I have started animating a sweet land scene in Flash. Discussion with Britta has introduced me to animator Lotte Reiniger and I will be doing another post on her silhouette work, something that I hope will help my real world cut-out animation and my sweet land boy animation. I will also be looking at representation of the elderly in games and possibly other media, something I will mostly be doing in critical studies but that will help my course work. I will no doubt blog about it here too.

Dreamspace and The Neverhood

Nigel also introduced me to Maurice Agis's Dreamspace - "An inflatable, walk-in sculpture made with brightly colored cells was designed to induce a tranquil, relaxed mood and be a colorful interactive experience for visitors." http://www.designboom.com/weblog/cat/10/view/5554/maurice-agiss-dreamspace-breached-safety-rules.html

 

 The colours and organic shapes bear a similarity to my 'sweetland' but what I found most interesting about searching for information on this installation is that it has a sinister side. The source of the above description is an article covering how 'Dreamspace V' breached health and safety regulations resulting in injury and death. The though of such a down to earth tragedy in such a surreal environment is creepy and sad, but as it was accidental it does not subtract from the innocence the artist intended. Ironically I am trying to achieve a darkness among my game environment while retaining an innocence appealing to children, but not in this way at all. This is simply tragic and very sad. 

Another source have recently been studying for my sweetland research is The Neverhood. A puzzle game for PC (I have generously been made a Mac compatible version by a very talented friend). The environments are mostly plasticine and objects such as glass and wood and metal, that has been filmed to create an interactive scene. It is fairly old (1990s) and I recently saw a 'look back' section of GAMES™ magazine, Imagine Publishing, feature it. I will try to find it and include it in a short review when I have played the game more. For now, here are some images from the web:

 

  

  

So far I mostly like how the scale is so obvious, you can see fingerprints reminding you constantly that it is plasticine and that it has been lovely hand crafted.