Lurk - Working on the Cinematic 1

Original Concept Art

   For the first scene, I didn't make all that many changes to it based on the animatic from the previous post, I just cleaned up and redrew a few details on the television. After wasting my time trying to remember how to use After Effects (When you are rushing, it's obvious that you can refamiliarise yourself or experiment as much as you would like), I ended up designing a seperate static montage, erased out the white screen, and placed the television later on top of it.

   I practically did the same for motel room design, cleaning up and adding in some more details insead of leaving it as a blurry charcoal-looking mess (And so I had the chance to mess around with some more brushes other than the usual hard brush that I have grown so accustom to using). I definitely could have added in more details (Such as perhaps making it rain outside the window), but I know I had to hurry on and work on other scenes and so left it as it is. Getting the lighting was the trickest part for this scene, as I was never necessarily sure how much of the area would be lit up by the television, or whether I should just make some creative decisions by showing more of the room than I should.

   In my rush, I simply drew a still image of Jessie once the camera pans out to show her outside of the room. As suggested however, I ended up redrawing her and attempted to add a tiny bit of animation by making her e--

OH SWEET LORD.

   To finish up the overall look of this scene, I messed around with a few texture and layer options. Now, while I am discussing these scenes in order, that doesn't mean that I actually did them in order (HAH!). Before I went back to finish up this scene, I experimented with a texture overlay for another scene and found myself enjoying the color and feel it actually gave to it (Which I will show in the next post) and so decided to do the same for this scene along with a few others. 
   
   The scene that would have followed after that was a close up of her as she shifts about restlessly as she attempts to call her father on her phone. Aside from lack of time, a fully animated scene would once again not go with the rest of the cinematic's simplified movements (Which you will see more of in the next post). I would of course love to animate this scene one day and put together a proper animation as I had originally intended, but for now...

   This scene was also scrapped for the same reasons, I had spent days figuring out her pose (You can't imagine the awful (In more ways than one) stuff I find when googling 'unconcious girl', also, I had no idea you can fall unconcious with your eyes open) as she lays on the ground before deciding to scrap it all completely. While I had attempted to keep the scene where she would come to and look at around for a moment... you probably know what became of that too...

   I know that she looks pretty different here as compared to the previous scene, hopefully the similar pose still clued you in that they are actually the same person. I was happy with the slightly 3D-ish look the wall has.

I still really do like how my sketch for this turned out, though.
So again, one day... ONE DAY.

   

   And this was the new version, a still illustration with some flickering lighting and a shadow passing over her... It doesn't look too bad, I guess.. It was also here that I began to realise how difficult it was to make her poses appear natural with such large scarf/poncho wrapped around her top half. Future considerations is that I will have to take reference photos if when I finally get the chance to come back to this concept.

Getting it Together

   Progress had been incredibly slow over the past few months (Aside from the amount of research I had gathered particularly for my dissertation. But of course, all of that research can be applied to my academic poster and academic poster as well), and it was only near the end of Christmas break did I attempt to get my shiz together. Aside from giving my room a decent clean up, I decided to move my work area back to the front of the windows, which I hadn't wanted to intially due to issues with the internet connection and the fact that someone smashed a ginormous tree branch against my window once upon a time... But yeah, I needed more table space. 

   

   At the same time, I also printed out some concept art references and covered my windows up with them (I ran out of space on my noticeaboards, also, I really didn't want to keep turning my head to look at them). I was hoping that having a constant view of my inspirations would keep me... well, inspired.

   And before I get into what I have been doing for my practical, let's start off with this really rough animatic I did for when I had originally hope to make a fully animated piece (Who knows, maybe, just MAYBE I might be able to go back to it after I graduate... I mean, this was after all a concept from nearly 5-6 years back, so there is a chance that I will come back to it again):

   Alot, and I mean A LOT of changes has been made since this animatic, to meet the deadline for my music and sound designer as well as to show something for my friend who is working on a title sequence for it. I had to simplify a lot of things and chance it to a simpler piece of cinematic with fewer scenes... I believe I will be placing more focus on the concept art book from here on out by displaying more strong poses of the characters and atmospheric scenarios... but yeah, that's another thing to talk about for later on.

Meet the Puppet Masters - Carlos Grangel

They gave him an actual horse whilst designing for this movie, like damn.

   Carlos Grangel is a Spanish-born illustrator and character designer for animated films who has worked on some of the most famous titles in modern cinema, including 2D classics such as We're Back! A Dinosaur's Story (1993), The Prince of Egypt (1998), The Road to El Dorado (2000), Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron (2002) to 3D and stop-motion works like Shark Tale (2004), Madagascar (2005), Corpse Bride (2005) and Pirates! Band of Misfits (2012). It is during Meet the Puppet Masters during 7th November event that I had the opportunity to have a closer look into his beginnings as a comic book artist to the amazing character designer that he has become today.

   To make that big leap from drawing for a German comic series (Which was still pretty successful) to designing characters for some of today's most famous animated films, Carlos needed to be versatile when it came to his art style to survive in the business. During his free time, Carlos would study animation on his own, to better improve his skills as a character designer (Having joked that the studio would have fired him had they actually seen any of his exercises). Turnarounds for characters had especially taken awhile to perfect, but they would prove to be one of the most important aspects for character design later on.

   To differentiate their art style from Disney, Dreamworks needed to push the shapes of their characters and in a way, make them more 'graphic' (Meaning much more exaggerated and cartoony, so keep your mind out of the gutter boi). Aside from turnarounds, silhouettes of the character also helped visualise each of their outline and personality. As character designers, the more references drawn by them, the easier it would make work for the animators (So try to get as many angles, expressions and poses done of a character when designing them before they are sent off to get animated... AKA, the concept bible).

   When working on The Prince of Egypt, it had taken 2 months for the character designers to finalise Moses' design. For such a film (And Road to El Dorado), it was of course beneficial to do some proper researching for more historical accuracy and genuine-ness-ness. Character lines ups helped in making sure that the art style would remain constant for all the characters (That's most definitely an issue many of us tend to face).

Carlos Grangel's character designs on cereal boxes,
consider it his signature or trademark if you will~

   Unlike past titles, Corpse Bride would be the first (Perhaps?) film where he would work from beginning to end. They needed Carlos' skills in bringing Tim Burton's sketches (As nice as they were in their scribbly goodness) to life, giving them a more solid and definite shape so that puppets could actually be made of them. He would also later on see how the characters would turn out when the model makers commenced their part of the job, and was in a way a supervisor of sorts in making sure that all the characters would turn out right.

   Carlos does not necessarily work on sequels, seeing as character designers aren't normally needed as the designs of the characters are already established. An interesting statement seeing as sequels tend to vary so much in quality. And while How to Train Your Dragon 2 definitely had a lot of heart and soul put into it, I did feel that one of the film's glaring issues was the fact that there wasn't a constant style used for all the dragon designs, making them all too different from one another. But going back to that statement, sequels tend to bring up new characters (Lame or not, it doesn't matter), character designers are surely still needed, especially those that had worked on the first title... or is this a Jim Carrey thing?

   So to end off this post, important things to consider if you want to become a character designer: Turnarounds, Silhouettes, Reference, Concept Bibles... PUSH IT.

Bibliography

   It feels nice looking at how much research I had actually gathered over the past months, and seeing them all properly (At least I think so) referenced here... why am I posting this? I don't know, I just saw someone else do this and figured I would do the same.

BIBLIOGRAPHIES

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Magazine Articles

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EDGE Contributor, (2013). Play: The Walking Dead. EDGE, 250 (February 2013), Page numbers: 102-104.

EDGE Contributor, (2013). Play: Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch. EDGE, 250 (February 2013), Page numbers: 106, 108.

EDGE Contributor, (2013). Play: The Last of Us. EDGE, 255 (July 2013), Page numbers: 104-107.

EDGE Contributor, (2013). Play: Remember Me. EDGE, 255 (July 2013), Page numbers: 112.

EDGE Contributor, (2013). Play: Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons. EDGE, 255 (July 2013), Page numbers: 122-123.

EDGE Contributor, (2013). Create Debrief: The Making of Thomas Was Alone. EDGE, 255 (July 2013), Page numbers: 138-141.

EDGE Contributor, (2013). Play: Grand Theft Auto V. EDGE, 259 (November 2013), Page numbers: 86-89.

EDGE Contributor, (2013). Play: Beyond: Two Souls. EDGE, 260 (December 2013), Page numbers: 90-93.

EDGE Contributor, (2015). Play: Life Is Strange: Episode One. EDGE, 277 (March 2015), Page numbers: 102-104.

EDGE Contributor, (2015). Play: Everybody’s Gone To The Rapture. EDGE, 284 (October 2015), Page numbers: 108-110.

EDGE Contributor, (2015). Play: Until Dawn. EDGE, 284 (October 2015), Page numbers: 114, 115.

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Beschizza, R. (2014) How Prince of Persia’s famous jump animation was made, Boingboing [Online]. Available at: http://boingboing.net/2014/10/30/how-prince-of-persias-famous.html [Accessed: 18^th December 2015]

Brodkin, J. (2014) Game Developers Crossing the Ucanny Valley, Dice Insights [Online] Available from: http://insights.dice.com/2014/02/14/game-developers-crossing-uncanny-valley/ [Accessed: 10^th November 2015]

Cellania, M. (2013) The World’s First Video Game, Neatorama [Online] Available from: http://www.neatorama.com/neatogeek/2013/10/21/The-Worlds-First-Video-Game/ [Accessed: 15^th December 2015]

Clayton, R. B. and Leshner, G. (2015) The Uncanny Valley: The Effects

of Rotoscope Animation on Motivational Processing of Depression Drug Messages, Taylor & Francis Online  [Online]. Available: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/08838151.2014.998227 [Accessed: 19^th December 2015]

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Stuart, K. (2010) What do we mean when we call a game ‘immersive’?, The Guardian [Online]. Available at: http://www.theguardian.com/technology/gamesblog/2010/aug/10/games-science-of-immersion [Accessed: 28^th December 2015]

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Tach, D. (2013) How video games could be flattening the uncanny valley, Polygon [Online]. Available at: http://www.polygon.com/2013/9/4/4695108/video-games- flattening-the-uncanny-valley [Accessed: 10^th November 2015]

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Ward, J. (2008) What is a Game Engine?, Game Career Guide [Online]. Available: http://www.gamecareerguide.com/features/529/what_is_a_game_.php [Accessed: 19^th December 2015]

Wawro, A. (2015) Writing Presence: How Good Storytelling Helps a VR Game Feel Real, Gamasutra [Online]. Available: http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/237932/Writing_presence_How_good_storytelling_helps_a_VR_game_feel_real.php [Accessed: 10^th November 2015]

Online Videos

Cowen, T, W. (2015) Magnum Opus Games: How Telltale Games Reinvented the Art of Story Mode [Online Video]. 12^th November. Available from: http://uk.complex.com/pop-culture/2015/11/watch-complex-original-magnum-opus-telltale-games-documentary?utm_campaign=popculturetw&utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&sr_share=twitter. [Accessed: 3^rd January 2016].

Fungo. (2011) Making of Silent Hill 3 - HQ [Online Video]. 17^th July. Available from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KiH4wOkSzGs. [Accessed: 3^rd January 2016].

GameNewsOfficial. (2015) LIFE IS STRANGE Making-of #2 [Online Video]. 31^st January. Available from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_VZ9RQNlMHY. [Accessed: 3^rd January 2016].

Neon Feon. (2015) DONT NOD - Life is Strange [Online Video]. 18^th June. Available from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8zHOE27v8pw. [Accessed: 3^rd January 2016].

PlayStation Access. (2013) The Last Of Us: Behind The Scenes with Ashley Johnson and Neil Druckmann [Online Video]. 24^th May. Available from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=deuVinwv1os. [Accessed: 3^rd January 2016].

Video Games

2K Czech. (2011) Mafia II. Playstation 3. US: 2K Games, Inc.

Bioware. (2007) Mass Effect. Playstation 3. US: Microsoft Studios.

Bithell, M. (2012) Thomas Was Alone. Playstation 3. London: In-House.

Brøderbund. (1989) Prince of Persia. Apple II. US: Brøderbund.

Clover Studio. (2006) Okami. Playstation 2. Osaka: Capcom.

Creative Assembly. (2014) Alien: Isolation. Japan: Sega.

Cyan. (1993) Myst. Macintosh. US: Brøderbund.

Delphine Software. (1991) Another World. Amifa & Atari ST. Paris: Dephine Software.

Dontnod Entertainment. (2015) Life is Strange. Playstation 4. Japan, Tokyo: Square Enix.

Douglas, A. S. (1952) OXO. EDSAC. UK: University of Cambridge.

Frictional Games. (2015) SOMA. Playstation 4. Helsingborg: Frictional Games.

Higinbotham, W. (1958) Tennis for Two. Analog Computer. US: Brookhaven National Laboratory.

Konami Computer. (2003) Silent Hill 3. Playstation 2. Tokyo: Konami.

Naughty Dog. (2011) Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception. Playstation 3. London: Sony Computer Entertainment.

Naughty Dog. (2013) The Last of Us. Playstation 3. London: Sony Computer Entertainment.

Nintendo EAD. (2003) The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker. Gamecube. Japan: Nintendo.

Playdead. (2010) Limbo. Xbox Live Arcade. US: Microsoft Studios.

Quantic Dream. (2005) Fahrenheit. Playstation 2. London: Sony Computer Entertainment.

Quantic Dream. (2010) Heavy Rain. Playstation 3. London: Sony Computer Entertainment.

Quantic Dream. (2013) Beyond: Two Souls. Playstation 3. London: Sony Computer Entertainment.

Remedy Entertainment. (2010) Alan Wake. Xbox 360. US: Microsoft Studios.

Rockstar San Diego. (2010) Red Dead Redemption. Playstation 3. US: Take-Two Interactive.

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Rockstar North. (2013) Grand Theft Auto V. Playstation 3. US: Rockstar Games.

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Live Events

Blue Zoo: Keeping an Animation Studio Animated. Event Space: HOME. 18^th November 2015.

Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture: Game Changers. Sullivan Room, Leeds Town Hall. 13^th November 2015. 29^th Leeds International Film Festival.

Her Story: Game Changers. Sullivan Room, Leeds Town Hall. 13^th November 2015. 29^th Leeds International Film Festival.

Carlos Grangel. Waterside Arts Centre. 7^th November 2015. Meet the Puppet Masters.

Visiting Lecturer: Barry Purves. Room 117, Leeds College of Art. 2^nd December 2015.

Appendice

Hooks, E. (2015) Interviewed by Rebecca Wong

Pae, Shanen (2015) Interviewed by Rebecca Wong

Her Story - Game Changers

   Sam Barlow is a video game director, best known as the writer and designer of the two British Silent Hill games, Silent Hill: Origins (20007) and Silent Hill: Shattered Memories (2009). He currently works as a Game Director at Climax Studios in the UK. Having recently developed and published the acclaimed interactive movie detective video game Her Story (Whilst also practically reviving the FMV game genre in doing so), PC Gamer describes it as 'all the drama and intrigue of the best TV crime shows, but plays to the interactive strengths of the medium in a daring, imaginative way'.

   As mentioned before, Sam Barlow had also worked on Silent Hill: Shattered Memories, a stand-alone re-imagining of the very first Silent Hill game. Set in a completely different universe from the main canon, this included the story, characters, relations and locations. For a time, Silent Hill fans were overjoyed at the prospect at having the game remade (Much like how Shinji Mikami had so successfully remade the first Resident Evil game), but soon that excitement simmered down to somewhat passive acceptance to the re-imagined version that was Shattered Memories.

   While Silent Hill: Origins itself made an attempt to deal with psychological issues just as all the other titles had done (Though wounded up with perhaps one of the most cliche backstories for its protagonist more than anything), Silent Hill: Shattered Memories had most definitely taken a far more interesting approach to it that kept its fans curious (Especially with the disbanding of Team Silent after the 4th game, interest was quickly dwindling with each new title after) enough to stay around for just a little longer.

   Noted for being bookended with a series of psychiatric sessions through first person view, the game in all had a far more interesting narrative structure and had some interesting questions about the role of the player and protagonist himself (Goodbye, simple, sweet Harry Mason) and how those two things kind of meld together. While choices could also be made in the other Silent Hill titles (Obviously to achieve one's desired ending, like many other games at the time), the choices you made in Shattered Memories gave you far more obvious results in the form of the man whom you have taken control of from the start. 

   Back to the main focus of this event, Her Story was Sam's first game an an independent developer and was released on the 24th June 2015 for Microsoft Windows, OS X and iOS (Which was apparently why I hadn't actually heard of it until I had been referred to this very event...). In the game, the players use a database of police video clips to solve the case of a missing man.

   Frustrated in the difficulties faced in making a certain type of game and portraying a certain type of story, and so Her Story was in a way Barlow's opportunity to explore into areas that haven't yet been explored as much in video game design and narratives. There is necessarily no barrier between you and the fictional world in this game, especially as you, the player simply views the police video clips like a real detective would. Despite the minimalistic gameplay, players find themselves taking numerous notes as they attempt to solve the mystery of the missing man whilst viewing these videos.

   Working independently has proven to be considerably different as compared to working with a publisher, Barlow has noticed that the Police Procedural genre especially had very little success in games. While it is practically one of the biggest genres in films and books, pitching a game of that genre proved to be a big challenge for Barlow when giving his pitch to various publishers. The possible issue with this matter is that this genre in particular places heavy focus on dialogue, character development, psychology, areas in which video games tend to struggle with. 

   Nonetheless, Barlow has always been fascinated with the genre from a very early age, with shows such as Homicide life on the Street (One of the first few shows that heavily focused on the interview process, that actually showed cases that weren't solved, and was always able to sustain the drama within the interview room alone) serving as a huge inspiration to him. Her Story was practically an experiment where they wanted to see how far they could go without the use of an avatar, 3D navigation and space. Subtext is key in any storytelling media. Video games have this conflict where the story content is instructing the player to drive the story forward, which in a way kills subtext. Again, Her Story was an exercise to move away from such constraints with heavy focus on subtext, where Barlow could write dialogue and have performance around that whilst exploring around subtext.

Final Tutorial

   I am happy to hear that my rewritten dissertation is a huge improvement to my original one (And I honestly have Fiona to thank for for this). While what I have will suffice for the time being, there are a few other things I should consider including in there. For the conclusion, I could try to make a more personal statement (Well, not too personal, I'm honestly going to try and make everything in third person if I can) about the things a game designer should consider when creating a video game with a strong narrative. Eg, "As a game designer, it would be prudent, based on the research show in this dissertation that..."\

   Seeing how Ed Hooks has been such a huge part of this dissertation, I was also suggested to add the discussion on 'ma' back in there (I had initially taken it out in fear that I would go over the word count), and revolve it around The Last of Us (And probably GTAV with Michael De Santa's character), the characters in both these games have shown example of such a principle, where they are actually allowed to sit and reflect, instead of expressing it all through words.

May Draft 9/13 be my final draft....

   Hopefully, I can quickly finish up these changes and get my friend to proofread it one last time before we  go off to get it printed this coming Friday (ZOINKS).

   As for my practical, it would be benficial to present a larger range of emotions for my characters, particularly Jessie, who appears despondent for most of the animation thus far (This would also go hand in hand with my dissertation, especially after the analyse I did on Silent Hill 3's Heather Mason and the broad range of emotions she has in the game). I coud try to add in a few creepy details too, such as a monster's shadow passing over Jesse before she comes to after the train accident. And a vignette closing in around her mother in that one scene... Also, during the opening sequences, I should give glimpses of the monster designs I did, while they won't be animated, the least I could do is incorporate more of my concept art in there somehow.

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.