Inspirations

   It has become apparent that I will not be able to make a fully animated piece for my practical, and so aside from my collection of concept art, I will be going to plan B (Plan C is where I just drop the entire animation altogether) where I will get a simpler and shorter (It should be less than 1 minute now) cinematic done with the use of After Effects. One or two scenes have already been cut out from the script or heavily simplified. with Rosy Turner helping me with the logo (I will show what she has done so far in another post later on) and title sequence, and Luke Tingle helping me with the sound and music, I will definitely have to pick up the pace on this.

  Below are a few of my main inspirations in terms of the art direction for Lurk's cinematic:

Silent Hill 4 Trailer

    Several settings are first shown at the beginning before previews of gameplay and a few cutscenes are shown. The scary atmosphere is very nicely established with the sound effects, music, and distorted camera effect. What I particularly enjoyed are the first person view shots of the enemies, especially when once they notice you. Some of these shots are practically something out of a David Lynch movie.

   Some of the stronger points of the trailer are its abrupt cuts to scenes such as Cynthia (The long haired ghost that drags herself across the ground) before yet another cut to a close up for the antagonist's face, the song is suddenly cut off and only her heavy breathing could be heard as she approaches the screen. It overall has a considerably nightmarish if not chaotic feel to it where it creates a necessary sense of dread to the player (And will make you hope from then on that something like this will never ever happen in real life).

Cat Lady Trailer

   Numerous voice clips are played throughout this trailer in contrast (Which makes sense seeing that the game is after all a very heavily voice acted narrative). The trailer also has a lot of shock value to it with the montage of images that are shown throughout. Aside from the simplistic (Its stiff and puppet-like movements for the characters however do suit the atmosphere of this point and click game) animation shown for its gameplay many otherwise still, flat images are cleverly shot (Something that can be obtained through the use of After Effects) and shown throughout.

Silent Hill 4 - Teaser trailer 2

   Going back to Silent Hill 4, the series was always good in conveying its creepy atmosphere through imagery and sound alone. There is once again the usage of fuzzy camera effects (Which also hints to the effect they have on the playable character if they go too near) as the teaser presents the ghost enemy to the viewers.

Silent Hill 4 - Teaser Trailer 1

   Once again, there is no talking, but only a clever preview of what would be one of the game's creepiest and most annoying enemies. There are also some very disturbing sound effects to match her movements and... a little startling close-up of her face at the very end (Still not enough to be regarded as a jump scare but still effective enough to be scary).

Alice: Madness Returns - 2D Cinematics 

   Numerous times I was referred to this by others for inspiration (This is a little off topic but I went into such a rant about how half ass Soul Calibur V's own cinematics were as compared to Alice: Madness Returns, and Soul Calibur V came out later), and I can understand why. The paper cut-out styled cutscenes were always one of my absolutely favorite aspects in the game, aside from being incredibly appealing to look at, it just contributes so well to the overall atmosphere that such a game is trying to establish.

   Aside from making reference to the illustrations seen in the books, I find it amazing how much emotion and performance can still be conveyed from such a style of animation. Which goes to show that photorealistic and incredibly detailed animation isn't always the way to convey a strong performance.

And finally: The Walking Dead (unofficial) (2010) — Art of the Title (Sorry, couldn't figure out a way to embed the videos here like the others)

   As mentioned in another blog post (I think, totally lost track by this point), Rosy had referred me to this for inspiration when we had started discussing on which direction I will be taking my animation in. While I myself am not a fan of the television series, I found the usage of the art from the comic book series to be incredibly clever. Very much like the cinematics from Alice: Madness Returns, the strong poses from the artwork selected by the designer is able to effectively convey the story and the characters featured in the series.

Moodboards

   So not much has changed in terms of my inspiration for Lurk, but just for comparison sake, I decided to place the old moodboard that I had made during the end of PPP1 (That I can still make full use of) alongside the new ones that I have quickly put together. I am still aiming for the monochromatic look with an unsettling atmosphere and ambience than a full out gore fest, but have decided to include examples from both. More stylistic games (That also happen to be indie games) are also included here as they have inspired me in terms of their more unique approaches and even more unique storytelling.

First mood board from nearly 2 years back, I am still remaining pretty faithful
to the selection of styles I have shown here.

A new mood board featuring an array of horror games that have gone for the more realistic if not
photorealistic look. While "Silent Hill" remains one of my main inspirations for my project,
games that tend to feature the 'little kid companion/partner' trope have also become a huge part
of my reference, not many of these however were able to succeed in creating that empathy
much like "The Last of Us", "Telltale's The Walking Dead" and even "Resident Evil: Revelations 2"
has done.

More stylistic games that are not particularly of the traditional horror genre. Most
of these games however have succeeded in breaking away from the norms and cliches
of many large company produced horror games (Sorry, guys!), and so are great examples
for when I am working on Lurk's storyline and narrative.

Subcultures - Fashion Research

My Pinterest Boards

Aside from listing down what fashion elements are normally associated with these subcultures (As I had done in my previous research posts), I have also begun gathering together bulks of visual references for when I start designing each character's wardrobe. 

I started picking up the habit of putting together Pinterest boards when it comes to my visual research for recent projects, and this is all thanks to my Applied Animation 2 teammates. While I still prefer properly putting together moodboards on my own (As it allows me to relook through these images that I have collected and put them all properly together for stronger focus), this does make the process a lot faster.

While I cannot say that this will make the designing process easier (Or maybe it will, we will just have to see), I do believe that it will make it much more enjoyable. There is just such a wide variety of clothing and accessories to choose from, that I will surely have a fun time mixing and matching them together.

The boards can be viewed here:

Hippie Board
Punk Board
Goth Board

There are also other sites (Such as online shops) that I can refer to when it comes to what these subcultures would wear, that have already been listed in past posts.