Street Scene

A scene from the intro that I have been working on this week, on and off. I need to make an animatic before I continue I think... getting ahead of myself with the details.

Showreel

Today I finished putting together my showreel, based on the shelf design I was experimenting with in a previous post. I decided to painstakingly animate the drips in flash frame by frame and then put the rest together in iMovie...

I used music by Kevin MacLeod, you can see the full showreel on my portfolio site rosieball.com

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!

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..

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.

Photos from around Norwich and London

Here are some photos I have taken recently when I saw something relevant around Norwich...

 

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.

Ted's Dolls House

A while ago I helped the artist (and family friend) Ted Coney[1] furnish and decorate his large dolls house and took some photographic records. This is now part of his permanent exhibition in his home, to accompany some paintings featuring sections of the rooms. Here are some of the (terrible quality) photographs I took:

I can remember thinking that in some of the photos it could be a real room, but now I feel it is obvious that it is miniature and I like this feeling.























[1]http://www.tedconeysfamilyportraits.co.uk/

Lauren Child

I have been introduced to Lauren Child recently by Nigel my tutor. Her illustration style when drawing is similar to Quentin Blake (who I looked at in my first research document) but feels more carefully constructed to me, but just as wistful and alluring. Most famous for her books Charlie and Lola (below left) and Clarice Bean (below right)













Her work I have found most interesting though is her book The Princess and the Pea (below)

This book is illustrated with photographs taken by Polly Borland of scenes created by Child of cut out paper illustrations and dolls house furniture arranged together in small, hand painted card or wooden sets.

After making one model I am enthusiastic to make another, more intricate and accurate to the changes I have made - and more substantial. This is a bigger task though and I will attempt it next year. For now I may make a section (eg the shop counter and old man) in paper to see if it would work.

I have always loved doll's houses and have animated this way before. I am still keen to do some 2D drawn animation, but this is a different way a 2D image can be brought to life.

Update - 5th week

I have been making my documents for hand in over the past week, finished my orthographic views and most of my research into the shop and real world aesthetics. I have written most of it up again (when relevant) in my style guide document to accompany my document of final images. Next I need to finish my drawings of the old man in the shop, and some of the boy in the shop from the model photography I recently uploaded. I was planning to do a lot more of these but I am finding it hard, I am conscious of time and how much I have planned to do still for sweet land environment concepts. I originally wanted to do all 6 proposed level designs with embedded illustration (needing research of its own, some of which I have done already). Now I think 3 will be a more realistic target and will communicate what I am aiming for just as clearly.

I know now that, even with the extra week extension, any animation is unrealistic at this stage. But I have looked into time management on a larger scale, and including next year into this project I will be able to concentrate fully on animation and building a fully realised model in that time. That leaves me 6 or so images, and plenty of pages of style guide still to do this unit.

Models - old man

Photos of the old man model bust as promised. Here is my final design for him, upto his chest:

Models - boy and jars

More images of the boy in his jar, this time among other jars. Could this count as my image of a character in an environment? Probably not... but I could draw this scene...

Models - boy

I took some more photos of the little boy model in his jar:

Empty shop reference

Saw a lovely empty shop on my way home from college and took some quick photos. I was particularly interested in what you could (or couldn't) see through the windows. The interior just fades into darkness... The reflections from the other shops on my side of the road were quite strong, but you can still get a feel of the emptiness.


I also liked the door a lot, and the lose tiles below the windows.

Views

I have finished an orthographic view from top down, and an Isometric view of the shop. I have also started to create separate documents for the real world images and the sweet land images, each with an accompanying style guide. Here is a screenshot form the real world document:



I think planning the documents as I create the images is helpful as I will see if I have anything missing, and helps me prepare for hand-in in good time.

Street perspective practice

Today I re-watched the animated film Bellville Rendezvous, Sylvain Chomet, 2003 again, this time taking particular note of the urban environments and elderly character. I researched Sylvain Chomet, creator and director, last term - but only briefly. He is a huge inspiration to this project's aesthetic. Here are some screen shots from the film that are of particular interest:

I have many more that I will refer back to when relevant.


This is a practice sketch for the street focusing on perspective and use of line. I turned off the size adjusting ability of my tablet so that the line thickness remained even throughout. I liked the outcome and will probably use this for my final images.

Shop interior

The shop is very important, and until now I have avoided planning the shop layout and interior except for my preliminary animatic:


After seeing the inside of the bear shop in Norwich and drawing some birds eye view sketches, I made this paper model to work out how I am going to draw an isometric view of the shop.

Shop front reference 2

I went to the college library and found several books on shop fronts and architecture. Here are some images from:

English Shop Fronts, David Dean, London, Alec Tiranti 1970



These are extremely relevant, and I struggled to find anything as detailed online. But in terms of direct reference and inspiration these shop fronts are far too elaborate for the humble, neglected and mysterious look I am aiming for.

London: the art of Georgian building, Dan Cruickshank and Peter Wyld, the architectural press ltd, London 1975


The majority of this book was useless to me, but these two images appeared near the end as examples of Georgian architecture in London in the 40s. These images show exactly the kind of street I want to create, and I wish I had some reference I could visit without travelling far.

I went back to the bear shop and drew several images of the front:

Shop front reference

I have been collecting images of traditional looking shop fronts since last summer, and visiting some around East Anglia. By traditional I mean late Victorian/Georgian, or associated with stereotype sweet shop themes. Here are some of the best examples of shop exteriors:

[1]

The last image here is of a shop in Norwich. It would be great if I could base the shop on somewhere local that I can study. Tomorrow I will draw this shop and go inside to see the layout for myself.


[1] Flickr.com