Character: Environment sketches and influence map

To suit my mutation theme, I decided to go with the sci-fi genre for my environment. I want to use the abandoned lab my character was created in as the main environment in the game, obviously differing on each level.

I started doodling out some parts of what I want to include in the first scene/level, primarily the broken test tube. Depending on the type of art style I end up going with I'm still deciding whether or not to make the lab retro/cartoon-y or a really detailed, high tech sci-fi lab.

I also wanted to get the feel of the type of colour palette I want to work with for my environments, the green and blue combination is a favourite of mine.

I've also collected a few different sci-fi lab designs to help influence my environment.

Narrative: Origami Crane idea

In our rough script we have one of our characters trying to get the attention of his colleague in various ways and in the end makes and origami crane, it drifts over to her and ultimately he finally gets her attention.

I had a quick thought in regards to the whole origami crane sequence for our story. There's a legend about making 1000 origami cranes to make your wish come true (Senbazuru), so instead if it being one crane and getting picked up by a draft, maybe we could have origami cranes trickling down the conveyor belt to the girl? (We obviously won't do a thousand since that's a lot of work to do, but it would get the idea across?)

Here's a rough sketch of what I mean, and this would also make her finally look at the other character after all of his attempts?

Character Class: Evoking a Character in a New Culture

Instead of a style I went for an event during the 1950s to combine with Angry Birds which resulted in a Space Race version of Angry Birds.

Narrative: Initial Character Ideas

Since the three of us agreed that cardboard boxes would be a good idea to incorporate into our designs in some way I did few sketches.
I wasn't sure how literal we wanted to be so made a few cardboard characters:

I also did a quick stylized human character to go along with it, inspired by the Animal Crossing art style:

Scarlett, Megan and I all agreed that we wanted to work more on the stylized human style for our character rather than literally being a cardboard box. We plan to play around using cardboard textures on our characters/environment.

Narrative Film: Hollywood Formula - Summer Wars

Exposition:

Kenji goes with his classmate Natsuki to her Grandmother's 90th birthday celebration in Ueda. Whilst there he's introduced as her fiancé to all her family.

Conflict:

Kenji receives an email with a mathematical code and cracks it, resulting in an artificial intelligence "Love Machine" to run havoc on the virtual reality world OZ which coincides with the real world. 

Rising Action:

The longer Love Machine is left to its own devices, the smarter and more powerful it becomes. By taking over avatars in OZ it has access to high class positions in the real world and is able to interrupt emergency services and military intelligence alike.

During this it disrupts any notification regarding Natsuki's grandmother's condition, resulting in her death.

Kenji and the family work together to come up with a plan to beat Love Machine once and for all. They confront it and manage to capture it but due to one of Natsuki's relatives interrupting with the supercomputer preventing them from stopping Love Machine. 

Love Machine redirects a satellite to crash into a nuclear power plant.

Climax:

They confront Love Machine one last time in a game of Koi-Koi in OZ's casino world, wagering their accounts to win back the world's avatars from Love Machine. At one point Natsuki nearly loses all of her winnings but the remainder of OZ users offer their accounts for her to use, and ends up winning.

The coordinates for the falling satellite is redirected to the family's estate and King Kazma beats Love Machine once and for all.

Falling Action:

Kenji activates the GPS code to redirects the satellite away from the estate, but only slightly. The impact destroys the estate's entrance and causes a geyser to erupt.

Resolution:

The rest of the family arrive, celebrating the victory as well as Natsuki's grandmother's birthday. Natsuki kisses Kenji after they confess to each other.

Character: Initial Ideas

In today's briefing we were given three cards; one red and two blue, to base our character design on. 

My three were:

• Weaponry
• Mutation
• Air

Trying out different combinations for my three words; weaponry, mutation and air, my first thought was to decide on the type of environment and genre of game I wanted. I've been leaning towards platform games, these games can be action/puzzle/speed based.

I put together an influence map of a variety of platform games from different generations, some with different game mechanics. 

For my character, I wanted to incorporate the mutation as a "splicing" power. This mechanic is more of a power boost element i.e in Mario with the mushroom/fire flower, but this is taken directly from the enemy (and lasts a certain amount of time). 

Before seeing Justin, I started to do some quick drawings. My main plan for this project is to do a style out of my comfort zone and do something more creature based than human.

These are few rough doodles I did, thinking about the type of shapes I want my character to have.

My influence for my sketches come from a few game and anime characters. Noticeably the head shape and mouth.

After talking to Justin he gave me a few ideas of how to incorporate "air" into my project. We both agreed that if I were to include it into the mechanism of the game it would over complicate things and just doing it for the sake of it, so I'll be focusing on using it for the character and environment.

If I were to use "air" for the character I can relate it to emotion, the examples Justin gave me were:

• Since the air can have something dramatic like lightning, the character can be very short tempered
• Can also be "free and not tied down", like a free spirit. A character that's more like an airhead.

Another thing we discussed was the game format. Originally my idea was to go down the platform game route, but the idea of an open world has opened up new possibilities. A platform game would be a bit too restrictive for narrative. I feel this will be easier to decide on once the environment has been developed.

Character Class: Gaming Platforms

For this I was given Angry Birds and chess to work with. To give it a more serious element, the main objective of the game would be to knock the king down from the fortress, still keeping the main objective of Angry Birds included.

Narrative: Environment Research

Our new narrative follows two characters working in a valentines card factory. One of the characters is bored of their work and the other is in love with them and tries to get their attention in various ways incorporating our quote "actions speak louder than words". 

Since our narrative has gone down a different route, and we have a clearer idea of the type of factory we're going to have this animation centered around, I started doing some research of what to expect in a card printing factory.

This video is a very good reference of the type of machinery we would be expected to model. Its probably pretty helpful when it comes to where we want the two characters to be interacting.

Fig.1 Xerox igen4

Fig.2 UV Coater

Narrative Film: The Hero's Journey Archetypes - Kung Fu Panda

The Hero: 

Po

The Mentor: 

Master Shifu

The Herald: 

Master Oogway

The Shadow: 

Tai Lung

The Threshold Guardian: 

Master Shifu

The Trickster: 

Tigress

The Shapeshifter: 

Mr Ping

Allies:

The Furious Five