Interactive Narrative

The Project

The new task is to come up with an idea for an interactive narrative; be it flash comics, digital graphic novels, 3D 1^st person exploration, point and click, etc. One of the examples shown was a graphic novel done I think on iWeb, consisting of 5 options to choose from during the whole game-play with only 1 proper linear outcome; with more or less 15-20 pages in between them.

Research

On my research I started by looking at familiar works that I think is very influential to me and also in gear with this current project, some of them are as shown below.

INFAMOUS 1 & 2 opening cinematic

MGS Digital Graphic Novel

Then I went on to look at how different graphic novels/ comics/ manga utilize different drawing styles; line drawings, shades and also angles and panels. 

Various Marvel comics

The Walking Dead

Man With No Name

 Orange

By then I have a pretty clear idea that the atmosphere and style is going to be moody with touches of bright colors, very inkish, brushy, very grungy; and the execution will be; again more or less like how it is in MGS Graphic Novel and INFAMOUS. Basically lots of different layers of drawings simply transformed and aided with audio and SFX to give an illusion of it being animated. However, at the end of the day, since IT IS first and foremost have to be an interactive experience and having only about a few weeks to finish the project, its clear that making it graphic heavy, too many panels and too complicated will be downright suicidal.

Concept & Development

So I came up with a pretty simple concept of a duel that consist of choosing different options throughout the fight and ultimately leads to 2 different endings.

This will all be in a digital graphic novel style, so all drawings will be done in Photoshop and then transferred to after-effects for simple animations and then to iWeb to put it all together and have an interactive animation. After roughly working out the branches and path, I came up with this (this is the final branch image that I come up with after different sketches)

Branches

Storyboards

And of course some concept design

and lets not forget influences/ inspirations

 Afro Samurai

Man With No Name

Once Upon A Time In The West

The Good, The Bad And The Ugly

Sukiyaki Western Django

Jagger is a character that I doodled on a piece of paper years ago, I really like him but didn’t know what to do with him till now. Jagger's name came from his 'jaggy' hair and the title 'Jaggy Sam' stands for Jaggy Samurai but also sounds like a name, its simple and I think its rather catchy, it came up the moment I finished drawing him and just stuck with it till now. The concept for Jagger is to have an overpowered character, he's seen it all, seasoned, he's a foreigner in a new place but he just wants to chill, have a drag, have a drink, paint nature and he is also a vegetarian. The antagonist in the duel is called Cal, named after Clint Eastwood's Dirty Harry; Harry Calahan, because he IS after all modeled after Eastwood's character 'The Man With No Name'.

Now, at this point I don’t have much story to tell, but the interactivity is definitely there.

Got the green light from Nigel and peers seems to think it’s a solid concept so then I started working on the panels one by one.

1^st few panels into the project and already I am struggling to even get the first scene out, I noticed how I’m not used to drawing more than even 1 picture in a day and even when I did manage to get more than a few panels out, they will be in slightly different consistency and needs a lot of reworking to keep it more or less uniform. Then it dawned on me that I will never finish this project anytime soon, fortunately the university gave an extension.

I stumbled upon this artist on the net with her works on similar uni project, which I find rather simple, moving and inspiring.

Rumination by Yuumei (Interactive Narrative)

At some point I was heavily considering the idea of using Adobe Flash instead of iWeb; its definitely much more customizable and much more interactive if used properly, however after tweaking with it for 3 sleepless nights to no avail, I was defeated by action scripting, it is too much of a pain to learn and get used to at this point (even with a premade script template). After fruitless search in trying out different software for interactivity as well, I am back with iWeb. The problem with iWeb is that is not nearly as interactive as half of what I need it to do, so there’s a lot of compromise; page have to been changed and reload after every choices, there’s also no function that allows buttons to appear only at certain times. iWeb is bearable but definitely not really doing my work justice, however I came up with a lot of adjustments and tried it out (to get used to it) as I was working on them panels, each week I will also use the After-Effects on Media Lab (as mine wouldn’t run properly on my laptop) to get the animation done as I slowly, but surely geting the panels done on Photoshop.

Final week before hand in, all panels are drawn and animated, also came up with a short story to briefly introduce the audience to the world of Edowest, which is a mash up of old west and old east (Edo). Jagger the main character had been wrongly accused of murdering a group of people in a posse, the youngest surviving member had caught up with him and thirsty for revenge. I kept it brief because there really isn’t any point in exploring the story too much when all you see is a 5 minutes duel sequence between 2 characters. Also I put in loads of SFX and original music on the video which If I say so myself; made the animation much smoother and nicer to watch. Also, I start putting in dialogs although initially I was going with the dialogs I had on the storyboard, but decided that its too shallow and could've been otherwise used to bring out the story more. Lastly I came up with a logo before finally putting all the pieces together on iWeb.


Jaggy Sam Logo

Working on iWeb had not been an easy journey so far and at this stage; with its unpredictability involving videos and hyperlinks and layers that messes up on different browsers (Safari, Firefox, etc), it gets brutally frustrating to work with. It is definitely a good software for blogging with simple images, text and links, but it is just simply not made for making clips of video animation interactive. Fortunately with all that being said, I managed to pull it off; at the very least all the hyperlink and branches works, managed to put in my own music on it which wasn’t a smooth process either but eventually it worked. Disappointingly, there are still some glitches when opening it on Firefox, some of the buttons would be invisible but everything else works fine.

Conclusion

In conclusion, in this project I’ve learnt so much about working very quickly to get loads of work out in a really short amount of time and it definitely trained me; at the beginning I can barely finish more than 1 piece of drawing each day, whereas now I could tank at least 3-4 drawings each day. It was a difficult and tedious process but which I really enjoyed and really proud off. I will also be importing this work on to Flash as soon as I can work out the action scripting or get somebody to help out, because as I mentioned before putting it on a blog making software like iWeb is not doing my work justice at all and will only be a temporary solution.

MH : Dying Memories Concept Visualisation

In this project, I am required to come up with 100 silhouettes either of environments or characters, I choose the latter, then develop and finalized it further complete with its model sheet. Coming up with 100 sketches of characters out of a blank page only filled with boxes is difficult, which is why I decided to divide them into groups; main characters (Protagonists and antagonist) Julian, jewel and Seth and also the murder victims to 20 each and the rest for other supporting characters (in that order).

The style of my design are set in a current day and there are really no weapons or armors involved, therefore it was slightly trickier to come up with distinct silhouettes and poses, which is why I decided to work more on what they’re wearing instead of the poses itself. Also to further elaborate, the different death situations are more interesting to work on in this case, some of them are inspired by various Japanese detective comics to movies like SAW.

I have chosen 1 design each from the main characters to be finalized but kept it focused more on the protagonist, Julian.

Here are the visual concepts of Julian from the silhouette process till its fully finalized form.

The Character Julian was meant to be a silent hero type in the beginning but because the isolated plot would mean that he won’t be interacting with much characters apart from dead people and his sister and Seth that he’ll only meet at the very late part of the game, his character is forced to be more vocal, unless I introduce another element which can act as a narrator or chatty side-kick (think GlaDos or Wheatley from Portal or any silent hero Japanese Role Playing Game side characters). Julian is naturally a quiet person but he is presented with this confusing situation where he had to use his new found ability of diving into people’s memories and having to solve a massacre in a strange mansion, therefore he will be throwing comments every now and then and during cutscenes but again not to the point of him sounding whiney due to his confused state; that is more or less overshone by his compassion as a younger brother that’s will put his life on the line to get his sister back safely. Visually, he is really simple and straight forward, scruffy hair not too neat kind of look, I threw in a stripe sweater to capture a more gothic look to suit the setting but covered it up with a dark colored jacket that has a hoodie to make him look slightly more mysterious and emphasize his moody personality. The symbol on his back is an in-game symbol for ‘Divers’ and only appears when he is in a Dying Memory state and at save points. Even when Julian is forced by situation to speak, I still try to keep him more in sync with protagonist such as Wander from Shadow Of The Colossus or Isaac Clarke from Dead Space, that keeps conversations at minimal and let players be in their shoe, like a vessel in many ways.

And lastly the concept for Jewel & Seth Haissem (Antagonist).

Coherent World

Thats J. J Abrams talk on TED about The Mystery Box, this was shown in one of my Contextual Study classes and I completely agree with his take on mystery and how its being applied on movies and narratives. I personally think this idea of less is more or mystery almost like a recipe/ theory even to some of the best, most immersive games I've ever played and hopefully will be making in the future.

So I based my CS presentation based on this idea and how it can be applied to making coherent world in games.

I picked some games out, Shadow Of The Colossus (SOTC), ICO, Red Dead Redemption (RDR, Portal, Grand Theft Auto : San Andreas (GTA:SA) and Assassin's Creed (AC). All of these games shares a very detailed, fully immersive 3D environments, but at the same time, also very vague and mysterious in a sense; many of what you encounter are not explained, sometimes in the narratives and others in the gameplay itself.
Many things are just left there for the players/ audience to bump into/ encounter and then have their own idea and interpretation about it, in most cases this becomes 'viral' due to discussions on forums and word of mouth.

To explain this further, I singled out this brilliantly beautiful game called Shadow Of The Colossus.

The objective of the game is simple; hunt down 16 colossus in this beautifully immersive free-roam landscape, there no enemies along the way, no traps, nothing, just simply find and kill bosses quest, and all you're armed with is with a sword and a horse, it gets no simpler than that, mind you, it sounds boring from this description but it is truly one of the most interesting game ever made as will be explained further.

There are lizards around this 'world' you can explore, that you can kill, acquire its tail and eat it, which boost your stamina (stamina is used to climb, whether the bosses or the path leading to it, so the more stamina you possess, the longer you can climb without falling off). There are also fruits on trees that you can eat to increase your health points, so far none of this is ever explained in the game and is in no way needed for you to finish the game and thats fine. However, this is where it gets interesting, in the beginning, your character, Wander, came from an 'outside world', crossed a bridge and down a shrine into this 'secluded world' of SOTC. When you try going back up across the bridge you'll realized that its blocked and therefore you're stuck in this land for the rest of the game (a way of keeping the players in the area). However, you'll then realize that behind this shrine just below the bridge, there are walls that are climbable, but you haven't got the stamina to do so because it was too tall, this is when you realized, you can boost stamina from killing lizards and also bosses to get you strong enough to climb these walls, and when you did, you're rewarded with the strangest yet most satisfying thing ever.

The climb was intense and annoying every time you fall off and die but when you get to the top, you'll find a Secret Garden that got briefly shown at the ending of the game, again none of this so far was in anyway explained or even mentioned in the game. I could probably go on to talk about the narratives and other brilliant stuff from the game, but I think this garden proved my point. Getting to it leaves you with a sense of achievement, discovery, awe, but at the same time confusion and questions, now this is when players and audience start discussing about this in forums or by other means which made this topic a myth, a legend and most importantly a cult hit.

Similarly to this, all the other games above posses the same sort of mysterious traits as well. Sure, the right cultural reference and settings are really important in creating a believable world such as RDR (sets in the old west) or AC (sets in the Holy Land of Jerusalem and also Europe), but again for example in AC, Ubisoft threw in this Symbolism mystery about Apple of eden (Adam & Eve), politics, historical figures, which are all extremely very controversial and makes the players think and question many things. It doesn't matter whether its intentional or not, the key thing is to get players to start discussing about it (in a good way of course and not because the game/ movie is a so open to discussion because its a blank canvas) and that way, automatically immerse themselves in this story created not just by the developer but by players' imaginations. That is what I think creates a good coherent world.

In conclusion, yes, coherent world is made up of immersive, culturally accurate, detailed and believable visuals, but more importantly, it is open for discussions/ interpretations and memorable, more importantly its in your mind.

Light & Composition.

This blog will revise and re-explore these 2 topics from school's lecture and how they are applicable/ relevant in creating better artworks.

LIGHT

Key notes

- Refraction 

- Reflection

- Absorption

- Shadows

- Subsurface Scattering 

- Franel Effect

- Dynamic Occlusion

- Actuality VS Perception

- Color Relativity

Value - Light-dark

Saturation - Intensity

Hue - Color

Misc Notes

- Rabbit's vision are 180 degrees

- The eyes/ lens sees upside down, but inverted in the brain to orient it back to the rest of body.

3 example of artworks that uses principle's of light

Artwork from Killzone 2. The light from the gun's shows 2 things, subsurface scattering which happens on the muzzle itself and of course bouncing light which happens to the frontal area of the gun. The eyes of Helghast soldier clearly shows a good example of how intensity of the same hue results in the glowing eyes effect.

Artwork by Chase JC from Deviant Art. This picture is made up of mostly shapes and silhouettes which are similar to shadows, its interesting as they're all simply shadows of different values but are able to create such depth.

Artwork by Yaguete from Deviant Art. Similar to the example above, this picture is simply made of shadows with different values, but in this we clearly know the light source is from behind the colossus. 

COMPOSITION

Key Notes

- Divine Proportions

- Golden Section 1:1.618

- Rule of Thirds

- The L

- The Cross

- Iconic/ Diamond

Misc Notes

- Focal points

- Vary elements

- Odd elements

- Spacing

- No Kissing

- Domination

- Avoid Obvious

- Spice it up

3 examples of works that uses good principle of composition.

A scene from Once Upon A Time in The West. This compositions puts the main character, Harmonica, at the right top point of Rule of Third, it clearer had enough spacings, deliberate point of perspective and size isolation which all points out to his position as the focal point of this scene. Very subtle yet brilliantly pulled off by Sergio Leone, especially in this tense anticipation scene.

An artwork from God Of War. The Cross composition clearly shows in this picture; the opposing color temperature on Zeus (light on dark) to the ones on Kratos (dark on light) almost divides the painting into 2 section of top and bottom, yet, it still works as one great composition. 

This is a painting of Patrick Bateman from American Pyscho that I did recently on Photoshop. Consisting of the Iconic/ Diamond composition that works well with portraits especially the full frontal type such as this.

Mystery House developments and concepts

Part 4: Developing the game further.

Now that the narrative, concept and game-plays are all confirmed, its time to get cracking at the artworks and Game document.

Here are some of the conceptual artwork for MH: Dying Memories.

MYSTERY HOUSE REBOOT (part 2)

Part 3 : Developing the game (part 2)

Plot & Concepts 2:


*note*
The idea had been changed quite drastically, this is because I thought the previous idea was too stale and don't really have anything much to play around with, so i added a supernatural element which I think should make the concept a lot more exciting and interesting.

Genre: Supernatural Thriller Puzzle game-play

In game ideology

“The mind & soul produces certain chemical that lingers upon the body’s disposal, this last moments of consciousness can be tapped with the right method and apparatus, provided the body was never moved or tampered from the spot where the incident had occurred, the more extreme the moment of death is, the more memorable it became, thus leaving more distinct ‘stain’ and easier to be tapped into; eg soldiers died in battle/ the fear induced in death by torture.”

Prologue:

-       Julian arrived in a gothic looking mansion looking for his sister, Jewel, who went missing.

-       After exploring the mansion and discovering that he is able to ‘dive’ into a corpse’s last moments before they die, Julian freaked out and tried to escape

-       Only to find out that the bridge connecting from the mansion ground to the ‘outside world’ had been destroyed, someone is trying to keep him in.

-       Without any options left (dialing for help doesn’t work due to signal absence) Julian explores the Mansion to find traces of his sister through puzzles & corpses and finally stumbled upon a secret lab (The Abyss).

-        The plot thickens….

Full Plot:

-       At the beginning of the game, Julian discovered he is a ‘Diver’ and is able to tap into dead people’s last moments and uncover some information and memories from them (in forms of puzzles & action sequences), there are 7 (reference to original game) main boss fights (Dying Memories) throughout the story involving 7 people that died in peculiar ways (elemental) throughout the mansion.

-       It turns out that Jewel & Julian both are part of a project created by a conglomerate, Seth Haissem, who hired scientist and occultist to research upon this ability to tap into people’s Dying Memories (justified by his reasons of understanding how world war soldiers died/ spies/ historical figures and make the world a better place) The only difference is, Jewel volunteered for the project (although she got reluctant after knowing people are killed for this project) & Julian was entirely clueless.

-       At the end of the game, Jewel was accidentally killed by Seth in the secret lab, which triggered the full ability of Julian’s dive, he managed to tap into his sister’s memories (not just her last moments) and find out ways to stop Seth and kill him and also escapes from the place.

-       The ending shows how Julian manage to carry Jewel all the way out of the Canyon and collapsed out of exhaustion (died) on a field overlooking the mansion which is now in flames.

-       After credit roll, an unknown figure came towards the now deceased Jewel and Julian and tapped into his Dying Memories. (new game+)

Game-play mechanics:

-       Maneuvering around is divided into 2 sections E&E (Exploring & Examining.)

-       Exploring allows player to control Julian in Third-Person view and move around the page by page environment (mostly), usually in areas connecting from one place to another like hallways, path, etc.

-       Examining changes the view into first-person, usually when entering a room or examining object of interest.

-       There are occasional QTE (Quick Time Events) that occurs throughout the game (usually involving traps) success leads to progression of the game and failure means starting all over from previous checkpoint or simply retries on the same QTE (depending on how serious the event is).

-       Puzzles are abundant throughout and they are usually solved interactively; point & click, tap, drag, shake, etc.

-       Dying Memories comes in form of everything above ( E&E, QTE, Puzzles) and usually QTEs comes after tapping into Dying Memories. Also as Julian ‘dives’ into people’s memory, he will start and end the scene as that person, but gameplay will still be as Julian.

-       To die in Dying Memory (no matter how paradoxical it sounded) just meant that an attempt of diving into the memory failed, after a third failed attempt, it gets blurry (memory unstable), however it will be easier to pass through.

-       Cut-scenes are in a form of animation that occurs in certain parts of the plot.

Meanings & metaphors:

-       Jewel represents the treasure that everyone (Seth and Julian) is looking for, precious to Seth because he thought she’s the only ‘Diver’ he knows & precious to Julian because they’re siblings.

-       7 main ‘bosses’ that died in a certain way represents the 7 elements of the world that will play quite a big part in the storyline. Fire, Water, Void, Wind, Earth, Light & Dark, they will die according to their represented elements; for example water element ‘boss’ died by drowning in a tank and Earth element died impaled on a tree. 

-       ‘Dying Memory’ system is heavily influenced by Demon Souls & Dark Souls online experience, whereby players are able to touch other players ‘bloodstains’ and observe how they die and learn about nearby traps or ambush, etc.

http://www.giantkillersquid.com/2010/05/03/game-review-demons-souls-pt-1-ps3/

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=161226653950387&set=a.161226457283740.41427.119869331419453&type=3

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=161226587283727&set=a.161226457283740.41427.119869331419453&type=3

example of bloodstains gameplay

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=daToWE2sgGo&feature=related

The idea of ‘Diving’ came form an old JRPG (Japanese Role Playing Game) called Alundra, who is a ‘Dreamwalker’ and able to enter people’s dreams in forms of dungeons to liberate them from nightmares.

http://www.rpgdreamer.com/alundra/

concept of dreamwalking

http://www.listal.com/viewimage/1663377