VCD 302: Project Proposal
The project is an ambitious title sequence, combining cel animation, 2.5D animation, and integration of word type. The project is themed around a theoretical title sequence for a short animation film, and is to act as the primary tone setter for the audience and prepare the viewer for the experience.
The overall tone the sequence is trying to portray is a duality of bright and colourful, almost to the extent of a fever dream, which is to be contrasted with the minimalist and muted undergrowth in the latter half. This is to rely a lot more heavily on narrative elements of the motion design, and is going to be borrowing heavily from cinematic techniques, such as panning shots and cuts.
What design elements are going to be expressed?
The motion design elements that will be present is long list but the key elements will be the use of 2D elements moving in 3D space; this is to create a sense of the space the characters inhabit and the way these character act in this environment.
Rhythm is also critically important, following a narrative pacing allows the audience to more easily immerse themselves in the world created.
And finally will be the creation of kinetic type, creating a strong sense of the experience that is coming, but integrating this type into the world and tying it directly to the sequence.
Technical Process
The process has a very clear production timeline; the backgrounds and the environment the characters inhabit is created in Photoshop, using a digital painting technique. This is chosen because it has an extremely fast production, that has a nice natural feel, and is very reminiscent of older Cel Animation such as Land Before Time.
The environments will then have smaller secondary motion created in After Effects, such as camera movement and elements in the environment moving such as wind, and water. The first set of environments created in after effects have created a distinct style, with a lot of colour, but will be reanalysed once the key motion and events have been created in the final stage of production.
The key stage is the Cel Animation Style, this will be done in program called Toon Boom Harmony. This program was chosen for it’s greater range of features allowing for faster production, and it’s ability to mix vector based graphics, for clean lines and motion that is easily scalable, and raster based graphics, in order to add better lighting and effects to the characters in the 3D space.
And finally will be the final stage in After Effects again, this will involve unifying the various elements into a more uniform colour grade and visual style, further tuning secondary motion, and of course implementing kinetic type to create the title sequence.
Of course this is an ambitious project, despite only being a sequence less than 30 seconds in length, it has a lot of interconnected elements in lots of different programs; and so the key skill to be implemented is ensuring quick workflow on each stage.
BCM 303: Collaborative DA, Reflection
So in this subject I was placed in a group of 5 people under the name “Stoopid” (hilarious I know), of which we had what would normally be a blessing, at least in my opinion, if the collaboration was in a shared physical space, where communication and sharing of assets and individuals was less obstructed by digital constraints, but had the unfortunate aspect of being of mostly similar backgrounds in a visual orientated profession.
I found the collaboration process good and fortunate because our particular group agreed a lot on the direction we should go, and the similarity of our expertise made finding a direction to take the project quite easy; but frequently through the process, I was almost worried to create something and do a part of the project in case of stepping on the proverbial toes of our other team members. I am uncertain if this was a sentiment shared by my other team members, but I definitely feel the effects of the digital space made knowing where each person was at and what was needed to go forward extremely unclear and coordination of assets of the larger project harder and more difficult.
Because of this barrier, I feel our final DA is a little disjointed from it’s two halves (figuratively, their not exactly half) but I do feel considering our limitations and the scope of what we made that we have achieved something really effective, if at times a little unclear. The piece acts as a narrative like short film, but told through a first person interaction with an alternate future, heavily inspired by Orwellian Themes. The first part acts as a archived PSA that has been hijacked by an unnamed rebellion, and the second half acts as a fear mongering piece of propaganda from this unnamed rebellion, showing the dangers of the world and the people they are becoming.
The group specifically had two editors, myself and Timothy; I primarily worked on the last part after the PSA, and adding the extra ‘glitch’ effects during the PSA section. Timothy Edited the PSA including the base framework for the glitch aspects, and aligned the separate vocals with the visuals.
Jaime and Briannon, created the first draft of the script in the PSA section, and Isobel Filmed and Acted the majority of the PSA segment. Briannon worked as the Vocal Talent and Audio mixer for the glitched sections.
In conclusion I feel the work we have created was quite excellent, and had a strong sense of personality and a unique perspective and mode of delivery. I feel the work has a strong potential to be expanded with a transmedia aspects, and to be honest, I am a little sad to see the DA to be transferred to someone else, but am excited to see how the next project will go.
VCD 302: Design Analysis and Reflection
So overall I’m relatively happy with how the project went, while it isn’t polished, what I like is it’s narrative-esque in it’s pacing, as the beginning of the video, all the way to the end, goes from my first foray of motion design or After Effects work all the way until the end where I feel I had gotten better and confident (because that’s something I need) about my ability.
On a technical achievement, I feel the beginning is the weakest, it started from a poster, as the original task we had been set out was to ArtiVive a poster and have a video play over that, and so I started with a basic poster I threw together as a starting point (and lets be honest, not exactly my best work for a poster) and then explored from there. But I really do feel that the piece gets stronger, more complex and interesting as the piece ‘moves’ along, and while far from the sheer number of fonts and complexity of the title sequence I’ve been referencing and loving since day one in this subject, it did accurately capture the emotion I was aiming for, and on a technical level, I explored a wide range of techniques to use in design.
In terms of motion design fundamentals, I feel my choice in subject matter, a title sequence attempting to capture a staccato fast paced jolt of motion and type, left a lot of the key fundamentals that were cited by Disney and Lupton/Phillips in the previous blog posts, not fitting the aesthetic and style I was attempting to convey, but I tried to maintain a strong sense of perspective and changing size and shape to convey motion of the perspective, and used the very small comet at the beginning to explore some aspects of squashing, shape change, and acceleration and deceleration.
I think the design and aesthetic, is stark and punchy, which was a goal I was aiming for, but by virtue of trying to employ so many different forms and type, the style from the start to the end is a little too disjointed. I feel if this sequence was extended out to a minute, the change could be more gradual, and this wouldn’t feel so heavily contrasted.
So I think overall this presented a huge learning opportunity, and I felt like my evolution from never using After Effects before, to not only developing a firm understanding of the technicalities of the program, but critically developing a personal style within the framework of After Effects. In particular the ‘dripping’ segment helped with understanding the camera in 3D space, and the final flashes at the end let me explore transitioning and how I can tie seemingly disjointed motion together. For the future, I feel I want to explore an animation exploring the 12 Disney principles in it’s entirety, and developing a sense of character animation, including the lessons and aesthetics explored here. Nine words left, how do I finish this post?
VCD 302: Design Process
So my design process begins very messy at first; it is just the way I work. I strongly stick to the ‘Double-Diamond-Design-Discipline’ (alliteration is beautiful).
As well structured as it looks up there, it mostly involves just throwing every idea technique (or in this case, having never used After Effects before, lack thereof) at the wall and seeing what sticks. I tend to learn better myself making lots of mistakes and more than likely, making something that looks like dookie (a PG rated word for excrement) and picking the bits that work out from that, rather than following a structured tutorial.
In the book “Graphic Design: The New Basics” by Lupton and Phillips in 2008, line and shape in still images still convey motion, and so adopting these principles in design, particularly for motion design where the shapes and lines accentuate the motion on screen. In particular referencing how changes on a 2d plane can mimic the changes on a 3d plane.
Another one of the key principles of animation is ‘Disney’s 12’; most of which isn’t relevant to the type of motion design I am doing for this first assignment, but I am planning to explore more character focused animation in the following assignment! The most important aspect’s I will be taking from Disney’s 12 Principles, is pose to pose animation (mostly for efficiency of what I am exploring), Squashing, and Slow in and Slow out.
Rhythmus 21 by Hans Richter (screen shot below) and The Innovation of Loneliness (screen shot below that) are two strong examples of animation that doesn’t attempt to mimic organic forms, but rather geometric forms and express a motion through these forms.
My Project
So as stated in my previous blog post, I particularly wanted to explore the title work of the film “Enter The Void” by Gaspar Noe in 2009, in particular capturing the almost staccato high energy sense of change and motion created particularly towards the end of his shot. But to get there I wanted to start with a more traditional smooth motion and transition to the psychedelic kaleidoscope of type the sequence becomes.
And so this is the starting frame of my composition, each dot has been animated to get bigger and smaller as they travel, and pulse soft and rhythmically with the sun behind. The aspect ratio is really wonky because it was originally made to be on a phone, but evidence of the squishing motion and the slow in, slow out principles was first implemented in the comet.
Which breaks the composition into the first break away from the slower more rhythmic forms, a spinning wheel of bright neon colours (using the classic Cyan, Magenta, and Yellow, because I’m a hack when it comes to representing the theme of breaking).
More of that wonky aspect ratio.
But overall my design process has been fun and interesting, I’m looking at exploring every option After Effects gives me, including playing with 3d objects, lighting, and camera angles, and am truly hoping to have a representation of an evolving and accelerating sense of motion.
References
Lupton, E, & Phillips, JC 2008, Graphic Design: The New Basics, Princeton Architectural Press, New York. Available from: ProQuest Ebook Central.
Leborg, C 2006, Visual Grammar, Princeton Architectural Press, New York. Available from: ProQuest Ebook Central.
Cohen, S, 2013, The Innovation of Loneliness, Shenkar College of Engineering and Design, Available from: Vimeo
Richter, H, 1921, Rhythmus 21, Animation, Ink and Film, Available from: Youtube
Noe, G, 2009, Enter The Void: Title Sequence, Film, available from: Youtube
VCD 302: Title Sequences
So part of this subject is designing motion; which I know some people would say “Why not just call it Animation”. Reasoning is quite simple, animation is the study of movement in real life and abstracting and representing that, or as the Latin word literally translates to “breathe life into”. Obviously while it sometimes can be described as breathing life into a project, motion design is simply using moving assets to create a particular response in the viewer.
As examples take a look at the following title sequences.
The Dead Zone 1983
Stranger Things (2016)
Altered States (1980)
Notice the strong use of Typography, with an extremely subtle motion that strongly conveys the sense of unease these movies are trying to convey. Altered States and Dead Zone were created by Richard Greenfield, and involved working with Film directly to achieve these results, they suitable evoke a sense of dread at the coming show and prepare the viewer for the experience.
Stranger Things are much more recent incarnation borrowed heavily from these styles and attempted to evoke that sense of nostalgia (which is a little funny considering I’m sure most viewers who have seen it weren’t alive in the 80’s), but critically, evoke these same emotional responses to the scene at play. Emotional identity in a sequence is where the true strength of motion design lies; colour, line and shape do all create a sense of emotion, but the act of emotion carries intent and a determination that a static image can struggle to convey.
As an antithesis to the slow methodical death that these film’s title sequences prepare you for, consider the following.
Enter The Void (2009)
BUT FIRST! Epilepsy warning, don’t watch this if you are sensitive to lights. Perhaps don’t watch even if you are not.
An experimental film from director Gaspar Noe, however the title sequence was done by designer Tom Kan, and assisted by Thorsten Fleisch; I’ll get to why I didn’t directly reference him as a designer.
The film has this constant strobing effect throughout the movie, and is filled with psychedelic visions in a neon filled world of Tokyo; and so the sequence is designed to fill the viewer with an anxious energy as a ‘toe-dip’ in the metaphorical waters of visual trips. Noe knew (weird to say next to each other) that the title sequence was to be a strobing kaleidoscope of type; and Tom Kan created type faces that referenced other titles, and neon signs reminiscent of neon advertising.
Where Fleisch comes in is the electrifying (if I wasn’t so dedicated to good design here is where I would play a Ba-Dum-Tss sound effect) “ENTER THE VOID” type. This type face was actually created by placing metal sheets in the shape of the type on to light sensitive sensors (similar to the kind in digital cameras) and literally shocking it with an electric current to create the effect.
Now while I am particularly fond of clean typeface with smooth motions, I can’t help myself and love the high energy of Noe, Kan, and Fleisch’s title, and will probably heavily reference this throughout this subject.
BCM 300: Individual Project
So in my previous post I called myself ambitious for analysing two board games, and ended up writing almost double what I had originally intended; apparently that’s a running theme as the individual Game Experience project ended up a bit of a monster.
In terms of what the game’s genre is aiming for, it is a Niche Market, Wargame, but aiming to bring a sense of accessibility using minimal maths and abstaining from a large encyclopedia of rules as is common in the genre. Some inspirations for the game are Specter Ops, Bloodbowl, Labyrinth and Custom Hero Chaos (a game mode for the popular PC Game Dota 2).
Cosmic Mercenaries: Event Horizon
Theme
The game attempts to place you as a mercenary captain in a Hyper-Corporate galaxy, hired to scrap down and retrieve key materials on derelict ships before they disappear into a black hole, to get more money, and then use the money to get more materials. However there is competition (the other player/s) as they will also be trying to score as many points as they can.
The world and art will be silly and satirical, but mostly silly, a ghost cat with a cybernetic upgrade to shoot jets out of it’s paws. That’s a thing. A lazy executive that made a bad investment and is stuck in a stupid mech-suit trying to prove it’s worth. Also a thing. The world supported by the mechanics allows players to create and play with their own favourite combinations.
Mechanics
The core of the game revolves around a joy of creating your own character with their own combination of abilities. Each game starts with you drafting from a limited pool of characters and abilities, to be mixed and matched however you see fit, and supplementing those skills with other characters, and equipment.
The game doesn’t use any math more complicated than adding or subtracting numbers less than 6. It similarly doesn’t rely on dice randomness to determine how a character moves or acts, each player has control. Dice do feature in the game, but only for tracking certain Stats (which you can opt to instead track via pen & paper, or mentally if you got the noggin for it), or to represent the chaos and degradation aboard a ship slowly collapsing into a black hole.
How it comes together
The game is an expression of each player’s creation, and ties with themes of being a freelancing space mercenary for hire in a weird world of corporate greed. The game itself brings out that piratical need for competition and greed of getting more money (or credits) than the other guy. The game never explicitly says that you need to attack or directly compete with the other player, but undoubtedly through the drive to compete, and show off their unique creations, players inevitably will compete.
The game mixes these two elements of chaos and control, you always have complete control over your characters and the decisions they make are yours and the actions that occur are also yours; but the chaos of the environment and the uncertainty of the situation you “are born into” you try to control and manage through the system mechanics, to come out alive, and hopefully on top. Players are free to leave at any time, even on the first round, and simply wait until the next one, as the ship draws closer to the end, it becomes harder and harder to manage the incoming chaos.
The game will be visually a treat, with great art, and in a perfect world, models to have as your own. The sound of a dozen dice will be teeth gnashingly tense waiting to see just how bad the ship will be at the end of the round. But the game promises to be different every time, while minimising frustrating bouts of randomness, rolling 7 1’s in a row for example, and sure to be a strong addition to any Niche Hobbyist Gamer, or Gateway Game for people scared away by long lists of numbers.
References and Similar Games
As mentioned the game has some inspiration from a game called Specter Ops (2015); which was a hidden movement game, and involved moving around a large board as an agent attempted to complete objectives, and hunters tried to track him down. Obvious inspirations are the large board size, and objective based gameplay pitting one team against another.
Bloodbowl (2016) by Games Workshop, was used as a template for both the humour inherent in the game, but for the distinct personality each character had, with varied stats and abilities.
Labyrinth (1986) was a huge inspiration in how the map moved and operated, taking the iconic mechanic of Labyrinth and making it a part of the key replayability and randomness of the game, where there would otherwise be very little.
And the final reference is Custom Hero Chaos, a custom game mode for the massively popular PC game, Dota 2. This mode enables players to create a unique character to play with based on the games pre-existing characters and abilities, and is a real joy in the way a character comes together.
Reference List and Readings
Boardgamegeek, “Labyrinth | Board Game | BoardGameGeek” Accessed via https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/1219/labyrinth on 16/04/2020
Boardgamegeek, “Specter Ops | Board Game | BoardGameGeek” Accessed via https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/155624/specter-ops on 16/04/2020
BCM 300: Analyzing a Board Game
So in the course of completing my degree I’ve taken on the subject of Game Experience Design, in which we play games, and then think long and hard about what we found out about playing them. Now I’ll present to you two of the games we have played so far (aren’t I ambitious) because they both represent what I feel is an important aspect for the medium of games.
The Resistance: Avalon
Designer: Don Eskridge
Artists: Luis Francisco, George Patsouras, Nan Sumana, Rafal Szyma
Publisher: Indie Boards & Cards
So firstly the name was very confusing for someone who is relatively new to the wider world of board games, considering the box seems to emphasise the words “Avalon” a lot more than “The Resistance”. Which is convenient really since we never felt like resistance members, but neither did I particularly feel like an “Avalon”. But it is a sequel of another game called The Resistance, in which you are actually part of a Resistance, so there’s that I guess?
The game revolves around a kind of social mystery and deception, in which a number of players, in our case 3 of 7, were “bad guys”, and the rest of us were “good guys” set in the world of King Arthur. One of the good guys was Merlin, who knew who the bad guys were; and one of the bad guys was the Assassin, who once they found out who Merlin was, at the end of the game they would win if correct. The good guys won by completing successfully 3 of 5 missions, and blah blah blah.
The game was very interesting and had a lot of excitement in the idea, but there was a couple problems I personally found with it. First note, above it gets very, very wordy to explain how the game actually works, so much of the rules and interactions are held in each players head and so moving forward in the game almost felt like we needed a Game Master of some kind to clarify and walk through the steps until we had caught up with how it all worked and what we could do. When you look up this game on Board Game Geek, well the original anyway, it mentions it takes inspiration from other social games such as Werewolf, but removes the ability to vote players out, and we’ll get back to this.
Our game in particular went very weird, from 15 minutes of discussing what we could and couldn’t do and how the game works, to an actual game being almost immediately being over with three good guy quest victories but Merlin was instantly discovered (by yours truly because I have a big boy brain with lots of wrinkles) and the bad guys won. We’ll get back to this as well.
Final thing of curiosity, apparently this game is compatible to mix together with The Resistance, which judging by the cover, has a lot of Sci-Fi elements; so Merlin is in a world with agents and guns?
Unstable Unicorns
Designer: Ramy Badie
Artist: Ramy Badie
Publisher: Self Published (Kickstarter)
Unstable Unicorns is the other game, a King Maker, Card Race game, where your goal is to get a certain number of cards in your stable before your opponents, and touts a multitude of ways to stop them with adorable art and interesting card mechanics.
First thing you’ll notice is explaining the basics of this game is a lot easier than the other to explain. Obviously there is a lot of cards with different effects and going over all of them would take a long time, but with specific effects relegated to being on the card for explanation purposes makes this game a lot easier to jump in and play, and immediately start experiencing the back and forth and the “unstable-ness” of these unicorns.
Well that is the fantasy anyway; in practice the game always felt like it was coming short of this fantasy it set, and while I could see potential for combinations and interesting interactions between cards, I always was wanting more from the game. This could in part be because of the ridiculous bloat of our deck with all the expansions making the new interesting cards you can pickup few and far between, but also because actions you take that are against other players are mostly reactionary and limited.
Let me explain; the game has cards that let you remove cards from the enemies stable, but as stated with the huge number of cards you never seem to have the card you need, the cards so spaced out in the deck (in my admittedly limited experience) that your turn was mostly spent helplessly maybe expanding your stable by one, but unable to interact with the other players.
The other issue was these Neigh cards, which prevented another players cards from being played. You are limited to playing one card per turn, and so the most direct interaction you have between players is to tell them that “no you can’t play”. Or another way to put it, the fun you have in this game, is making sure that the other players aren’t having fun.
All this brings me to the point I found between these two games.
Player Agency
These games both felt extremely limited in individual player agency; The Resistance has you vote and sometimes this is the most interaction you have between players, and despite whether you know who the enemy is you have no way to act on this, apart from the obvious convincing others to act a certain way, and having such a set win condition kind of set in an early sense of futility in the actions on the board “Well this doesn’t matter, that guy is obviously Merlin”.
The intention of removing the players ability to vote other players out is admirable allowing everyone to keep playing until the end, but this action removed a lot of the play from the game as a whole. In short I believe that this was a good idea with bad execution, and removed choice and action availability hence, player agency.
This was the same issue I found in Unstable Unicorns, the lack of ways to influence the other players in a meaningful way, the sense of inaction and ‘waiting for it to be my turn’ was omnipresent throughout the experience. But the most disappointing aspect of this game was your turn came up, you had this awesome move planned and everything was coming together like the game had promised. Neigh. You don’t get a turn, and put that card away, and so your moment of action and agency had been taken from another player.
Of course you could argue that using one of these Neigh cards is an action with strategy with action and planning ahead. But if you say that you are wrong, stupid and I hate you (and no I’m not salty from having my awesome move thwarted with a dismissive neigh). This is because when you use a Neigh card, it’s not done with a sense of action and planning or something that enhances the fun everyone is having, it’s done almost dismissively it doesn’t really matter doing it to you directly, it doesn’t feel fun you just didn’t feel like that happening.
So, games with promise but disappointing in executing a fantasy they set out.
mooshbag 