Narrative: Style and Character Developement

We have been discussing our art direction for our animation and we have decided to look at art works from Africa as this is the location of our safari. Following from this we will see how this will effect our style decisions when designing our environments, I think we want to incorporate similar designs from African art for our environments but incorporating our own designs for characters and mixing the two together. 

When looking at these influence maps, the characters and cave art work seem to use simple shapes for their designs and I want to use this when designing our own characters. Also in the paintings they are mostly abstract work and suggestive painterly strokes for their environments which would be inspirational when designing the environments for our animated short. 

After discussing with Alan we have decided to look into the personality of our characters before designing to help us to understand our own characters. 

The Porcupine: 
- Old character
- Easily distracted
- Has no idea what is going on around him, in his own little world.
- Slow
- No drive

The Hyena:
- Crazy
- Energentic
- Clumsy
- Adventurous
- Clever but not clever at the same time. 

Here is an influence map when looking at personality and characters and how an old character would look like and the opposite a crazy character in contrast. 

 
 From all these influence maps that I have gathered I am going to take these and start to create some character and environment designs, whilst carrying on with story boarding for our narrative.

Maya Lip Syncing: Eyes, Eyebrows & Toungue

Mental Ray Lighting Techniques - Linear Work Flow

Today we were assigned to start to understand the making of a linear and more realistic render which is commonly used within special effects, but also to improve the quality of our animations when it comes to it. I had learnt how to apply a gamma correction node and to work in 32 bit rather than 8 bit.

This is the process that is involved. 

Original Image - Non Linear

 



Gamma Corrected

Final Gathering



Raw Image

Final EXR Render

Character: Character Design Briefing and Initial Ideas

 

On the briefing I was given three deferent words to use for either my environment, mechanism and character, we could use them however we want to come up with our ideas.

 

Oceanic (submerged, Depth)

Light (visibility, Darkness)

 

Collective (Crowded, Cluttered)

After getting these three words my initial thought was to have the light and darkness as a key concept to my game, similar to limbo and Allen Wake where he uses light to dispel the darkness away (Evil silhouetted characters). With this key concept being done before on console I thought of using similar mechanics but for a different audience, that being the every day user on their phone or tablet. 

In this assignment we were tasked to come up with a game design with 2 characters minimum and environment designs to go along side it, this will be in the format of a kick starter campaign. 



Idea 1

-Tablet Game. Your character has an ability to change from a light and dark character. Each character can see different things within the world, the light character can see the world for what it is but you use the dark side of your character (almost like a shadow state) to reveal what has died or been there before. You can use the dark side of you to pass through walls and unlock secret rooms. This game would be about collecting artifacts under water where you go searching shipwrecks to find artifacts that you are collecting for points within the game, you can use these points to upgrade your character or unlock special abilities.

Idea 2

- Another idea was a sandbox game on console. You create your character in the fantasy world Atlantis inspired, and you have to go around collecting objects and materials to rebuild your home town and then to develop into bigger things, the only problem is when the darkness appears the buildings are lost and you have to rebuild what was lost to the darkness, but you can build defenses to protect yourself.

Idea 3

- This is idea is a table top game. Collecting miniatures where both armies are oceanic based from different dimensions in the underwater world. You can either side with the dark side or the light side in which your army will fight for, each of the armies have different abilities.

Idea 4

- This will be a tablet game. Your character is stuck underwater in a shipwreck or in a mystical reef platform. You have little light in this game, so it would be very atmospheric as you use your light to see the path and get out away from being submerged before you run out of oxygen under the water.
- Idea of trying to reach the top surface in time
-Mechanics uses similar to flappy bird.

Idea 5

- Tablet based game.
- A platform based game that has similar mechanics to doodle jump.
- Jumping up the platforms before the darkness get you?

Idea 6

- Tablet based game.
- You choose your type of character (Oceanic monster design), and you have to go out and collect your family of similar characters to your own before the timer runs out and bring them back to your home base.
- Main Mechanic being light being a safe zone and darkness being unsafe and dangerous.

Idea 7

- Tablet Based game.
- Using silhouettes on painted backgrounds of oceanic scenes.
- Under sea monster designs as the bad guys.
- The idea of the game is to get through the level undetected by the monsters that lurk in the shadows. You are a character that is an underwater archeologist and goes in search for the lost gem of the southern seas (I'll think of something better later on) from an underwater world.
- This is a stealth based game that you use your silhouette cloak to form shapes so the monsters wont detect you as, eg. Plants, rocks, fish. and you use this mechanic to get through the levels to progress further.
- The creatures will have lights on them to detect you with and it will warn you whether you have been detected or not.

Visual examples:

Character: Combining Games Lesson 1

In this exercise we were given two games to merge together to create a new game with a new set of rules.  We had to consider what the target audience was and what style it would be in etc.
 
The two games that I was given was:
Sonic the Hedgehog

& Grand Theft Auto

Sonic the hedgehog:
-Racing game, Speed mechanics
-Collecting and bonus missions
-For children and a younger audience
-Fantasy worlds

Grand theft auto:
-Exploration and Sandbox design
-Open world, making your own character and personalizing it to your own taste.
-Realistic World
-Violence 
-Aimed for Adults and Teenagers

I had an idea of using the style of sonic the hedgehog but combining it with the world of Grand Theft Auto, therefore still aiming it the older audience but with a cartoony style of sonic the hedgehog. There would be an underground league of sonic heroes that emerge to cause destruction. The idea of the game is to get your wanted level up as high as possible but then speeding away from the police trying to escape the authorities, whilst dodging road blocks and helicopters etc. The idea of the game would to see how much of a wanted level you could get and get away with it. The two examples were single player games on a console so I decided to stick to this with my version of the game.

So this game would consist of:
-Dark characters
-Cartoony style
-Violence and mayhem
-Sandbox, but racing to escape.

Narrative: Refining the narratives

We have two main ideas, one including a Porcupine and a Hyaena and one including a Rhino and a Hyaena. We have looked into slapstick comedy and we will be incorporating this type of humour to our animation. Both of these are based in a safari with long grass and a few tress around: Similar to these references: 

Idea 1 Porcupine & Hyaena

The camera will be focused on a porcupine, following a trail of seeds that he would usually eat on a day to day basis, but then gets distracted from the trail to see the holy fruit that he would really love. What he does not know is that he is being hunted by a hyaena at the same time, (the trail of seeds could lead the hyaena's mouth perhaps?) and he is spots a golden/holy fruit and is distracted from the trail and goes for the fruit. On his way he trips or stubbles on some pollen and sneezes to release his spikes into the hyaena and stops him from being hunted and he gets the fruit in the end, showing a little of what he fancy's does him good. 

-This idea of the porcupine sneezes to repel his enemy I really like but I'm still unsure how to incorporate it into a narrative with slapstick and still keeping the comedy values. 

Idea 2 - Rhino & Hyaena

A cub Hyaena finds itself lost within the African safari but stubbles across a herd of rhinos. He decides to creep up and he sees a swinging tale that he would like to play with (like a cat playing with a ball of wool) but he never seems to quite reach it. Once he finally gets the tail by a little bit the rhino decides that he needs a rest from eating a sits down for a bit, consequently squashing the hyaena. He then see's a treat or a piece of fruit that he fancies that makes he get up and it reveals the squashes cub and a floating hair from the rhino's tail that lands on top of the hyaena. This shows that when you get too much of what you fancy you end up with something that is not good. 

Following from this we will draw up some storyboards and see if these ideas can work. 

Narrative: Influence Maps and Style

As a group we are starting to finalise what characters and animals we want to use for our animation. So far we have shrunk it down to three to four potential characters, those being - a Hyaena, a Rhino and/or a Porcupine. 

We have two main narrative ideas behind these characters. The Hyaena is going to be the trickster the joker and funny character that always gets himself in trouble, therefore we thought of using a child hyaena to represent his silly nature. 

Another character is the Porcupine who I think should be this oblivious animal that does not really know what is going on around him during the animation and is reaching for this end goal whilst being stalked by the hyaena without even realising that the hyaena was 

ever there!

And finally the other potential character that we can work on with another narrative is the Rhino, we are thinking of once again an oblivious fattened Rhino to contrast in the silly nature of the Hyaena, who ends up sitting on him for whatever reason that the hyaena was trying to play around with him. 

As for style of the animation  I very much like the deer and the hunter style of art and wish to pursue down that road with this animation in mind. I also like BirdBox productions and the style of animations they produce. But we can also incorporate what creature comforts do, they go out and ask people questions completely irrelevant to the animation but they get the answers they want, this could work for our animation too. Whilst the character design from Aaron Blaise is inspirational.