Evaluation

   This final Context in Practice module has certainly given me the forceful awakening that I needed to get my head together for the next two modules. I am not at all satisfied with the work that I have done for this module. And despite how much effort I put into it, a huge part of me knows that I could have done so much better. My performance has certainly deteriorated during this module as compared to the past two years, 
  
   I wish to stay optimistic during situations such as this, however, and it is certainly not to say that these past months have not been a complete loss. I believe that I have learnt so much more about video games and animation from the research that I have gathered for my dissertation, as well as received a much needed lesson during my struggles with both my dissertation and practical. I now have a whole new perspective on the topic that I had chosen to write about in the first place, and I hope that that will allow me to further improve in the game concept that I had been working on as my practical responses. I will certainly continue to develop Lurk even after this module has come to an end, and I know now that there will be so many ways to improve on it.

   I wish to further improve on my drawing skills as well, I realised in the past weeks that I was struggling while I was attempting to draw my characters in more dynamic poses and perspectives, two things that pay huge contribution to an animated performance (Or any sort of performance). I also must be more organised for my next big project, so I will not end up panicking over where all my work files are like I had done for this module.

   And after being reminded of the immense potential that Adobe After Effects holds at the very last minute, I am very keen on refamiliarising myself with that software in hopes of using it more frequently for my other works in the future (I especially hope to use it far more for my Extended Practice project). Organisation will once again will be of great importance seeing as I had forgotten that Photoshop files can be imported into After Effects for editing, during a last minute attempt to get a few more scenes edited, it proved fruitless considering the state of most of my work files.

Lurk - The Concept Art Book

   The other piece that I was working on for my practical submission was a concept art book to accompany the cinematic itself. The book consists of character and monster designs, and progress for the background designs, as well as experimentation on different colors and lighting for various scenes. Little descriptions were written in there to talk more about the characters themselves as well as show what inspired certain designs. Some scenes from the cinematics are also further discussed about here. 

   A lot more content is included in here as compared to the cinematic, such as some experimentation in strong poses for the characters themselves (Which I wish I could have done more of). There are also a lot more monster designs (With most of them only briefly appearing in the static montage at the very beginning of the cinematic). Even some really old concepts from years back have been included in there for comparison, to show how much the characters have actually changed and developed during this module.

Lurk - Character Designs

   It has been quite some time since I designed Sister Diawara and the other characters, aside from a few alterations to her outfit, she hasn't necessarily changed that much as compared to the rest. Her incredibly colorful outfit contrasts to her calm demeanour, I was especially inspired by a photo of a Cuban priestess who covered herself from head to toe with all sorts of jewellery. And for a moment, I was almost tempted to give Diawara incredibly long decorated nails too (Something which the Cuban priestess also happened to have), but decided against it as she still needed to stay mobile. Sister Diawara was also initially depicted as barefoot in the older concepts. And while it cannot really be seen in the latest character sheets, Diawara now sports a pair of sandals. 

   Father Alex in contrast to Sister Diawara, was my least favorite character design of them all, while I eventually stuck with a look for him during my first version of the project, I just found no appeal whatsoever to him. As a character, while he couldn't necessarily keep his cool, he was still a kind man that did his absolute best to keep the other survivors safe, and is someone that they can still turn to for reassurance and comfort. And so next to Jessie, Father Alex would have been the most human character in the cast.
   
   Before adding the beard, I found myself double checking on whether priests were actually allowed to keep beards (Seeing as so much images showed clean shaven priests). Aside from making him fairly distinguished, I believe that this was one of the things that finally made Alex a little more interesting and appealing without having to make him appear as outlandish as Sister Diawara. His look was especially based on actor Jake Gyllenhaal. And while I wasn't going to necessarily flash out all of their backstories, I wanted to show that each character had so much more to them than what is shown on screen.

   Jessie went through the most changes out of all the original characters. Seeing as she is the main character, it was important to make her more pleasant to look at whilst playing as her (You know what I mean). Originally named Felicity, I felt that it sounded a tad old and that it just did not suit her, and so, I decided to name her after my best friend (Who happens to be a boy).

   She has also changed a lot appearance wise. Her hair was made much shorter, and there was an attempt to give her a slightly more stylish or at least more appealing looking wardrobe (As compared to the toddler-style outfit she wore in the older concepts as shown below). The game also happens to take place around autumn and so it made sense to dress her in something warmer as well.

   Felicity's mother, Helen Marshall was a inspired by a mixture of several female Silent Hill characters (Dahlia Gillespie, Claudia Wolf, Magaret Holloway and Lilian Shepherd). When tweaking and polishing her design a little more, I referred to photos of actresses Alice Krige (Who played Christabella in the first Silent Hill movie) and Julianne Moore (Who played Margaret White in the latest Carrie flm adaptation). It was obvious that I had wanted to depict her in a catatonic state by the time the game's storyline actually starts, and it was just a challenge balancing out the unnerving and... well, motherly aspects about that will still make the player want to seek her out throughout the game.

Lurk - What I Attempted

   I'm just writing this as a reminder to myself to stay as organized as possible when it comes to my work files. Earlier today, my lecturer had edited one of my scenes on After Effects with the use of just the puppet and camera tools and made it look so much more dynamic. I attempted to do the same after that, but for half the day, I was struggling to find files (Most that I must have already deleted) while trying to get After Effects to work for me, only to have it crash on me countless times. I finally made the decision after that to just continue focusing on the concept art book itself, seeing as I still have the academic poster to update and a few more blog posts to write aside from this one...

   This is a lesson to me, I will make sure not to make this mistake again for Extended Practice. While I am saddened that I won't be able to improve on the cinematic a little more (I did insert that one edited scene in, but everything else is so stiff in comparison), knowing that I will be attempting to redo the entire thing from scratch is where I realise that I should just carry on. On the bright side, speaking of the concept art book... Stay tuned.

Lurk - Music and Sound

   I have had the pleasure of working again with Luke Tingle on this project, and seeing that he was just as enthusiastic as I was about working on something horror related, he immediately jumped on board. While I had told him about this even before summer break had begun, there really was nothing to worry about as Luke had been incredibly fast in getting together the sound clips needed for it. It only took him less than two days to edit the sound and music in, making it tenfold better (Words cannot describe just how much better it looks now with the sound put in.

   A few discussions were held, but nothing that was particularly in-depth. We simply exchanged examples (Like those that I wrote about in my inspirations post) of what we had in mind before we settled for a style of music and sound that I would want for the cinematic.

   A separate sound bed has been done for Rosy's title sequence by her friend (As a precaution in case we can't send it over to Luke in time before submission for editing), but I'm sure it will all come nicely together. Seeing as her original piece has a duration of 30 seconds, Rosy will have to edit together a shorter version for my animation. And if I'm able to pass it onto Luke for editting, it really shouldn't take him all that long.

Lurk - Working on the Cinematic 3

   Very much like the motel room scene at the beginning, I took some time to add more details to this underground subway tunnel. The characters were of course drawn in more detail as well (Compared to the stick figures in the concept art). This just gave me the opportunity to include Sister Diawara and Father Alex in another scene (Funny that his face isn't shown once again, however).

   It was from here that I tried to decide what other key scenes I should include within such a short span of time. I reluctantly wounded up dropping the soldier encounter and exploration scene in the end to at least include one scene with a monster in it (The static montage at the beginning doesn't necessarily count). I had hoped to include more, but once again was short on time (This was also another monster design I need to draw up clearly for my concept art book, most of the other monsters didn't seem like the shrieking sort and so I had to quickly design up another one).

   The last scene I wanted to keep was of Jessie's mother as she is staring at her (Or perhaps, at you) from across her seat in the train carriage. She appeared too sweet in the original drawing that I used for the animatic, and so aside from fixing her pose a little, I had to fix up her face a little. I am a little saddened that some of her beauty was taken away in this new version, but I think a creepiness factor was far more important for this scene (And that bloody looking shading on her cardigan was completely unintentional).

Resketching her pose.

Lurk - Working on the Cinematic 2

   This was a scene that stuck with me even during the early days of Lurk, and seeing as I couldn't fully animate them, I had to make their poses stand out (Strong poses, right?) as much as possible, which was a huge challenge. While Father Alex was a toughie to draw simply because of my rusty drawing skills, Sister Diawara was the bigger challenge. 

   I have long since characterised her as an eccentrically calm character as compared to everybody else, and so I had the toughest time figuring out what pose to give her without actually making her out of character (Not that anyone would know what her character was like... EXCEPT FOR ME). When I get around to animating this scene, I'm definitely going to video tape some references for it as well.

  The background itself was a heavily altered photo that I took of my friends' creepy basement (And I mean creepy, I seriously wish I could have used more of the photos I took of that place for this project).

   Another scene that I had to scrapp would have introduced the next key character to the series. Seemingly your stereotypical soldier and practically the only one competent to defend themself against such creatures, this soldier encounters Jessie in 3/4 ways of the plot. While the original design had been a male soldier named Peter, I found myself growing more interested in designing a female solder, which I will discuss more about in the character design post. But, as you can see, I thought I could have hidden his or her face for the time being for this scene, before of course excluding it from the cinematic.

   And here was the bit from the animatic that I had attempted to animate.