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4 Aug 2010

Summer Project - Initial Ideas and References

The sound scape I'll be using for the project is '9'.

The animation I am going to create will take place in a fully 3D world created using Maya. This allows me to fully explore the 3D space and interact with the models created and are necessary for the final animation I will Produce.

Initial Ideas:
Straight away the music is fast and uplifting. It has a feeling of genuine energy and gives me the thought of fast movement.
Taking this into consideration, and my own personal interests, I have come up with an idea for a Game-inspired Animation. The music has multiple 'jumps' and 'pitfalls' which is perfect to a platforming type game in the same variation of 'Super Mario' or 'Sonic the Hedgehog'. The music even features a small section for a 'End of Level Boss' to appear.

My initial idea for the project is a side scrolling platform game which stars a small game character that must reach the other end of the level in the fastest time. The art style will be suitably cartoony as if aimed at the younger audience, Playing on the Nintendo Wii or DS. All characters , Protagonist, Antagonist and enemies, will the same core design to imply they are all part of the same world. The visuals will be bright and colourful with the staples of the platforming genre. These is bright blue sky, enemies walking in patterns and so forth.

Due to the speed of the music, the character created will have to move at speed to keep up with it. Due to this, I must make a character that appeals to the audience as well as being athletic looking.

For Example, Mario is a portly Plumber that moves at an adequate speed, while Sonic is known for his speed meaning his design is more slender. I will need to create a variation between the two.

References:

(Sonic the Hedgehog)

(New Super Mario Bros Wii)

(Sonic the Hedgehog HD)

(Super Paper Mario)

(Super Paper Mario)





Mario Game play




Sonic Game play.

Initial Character influence:


A Boy and His Blob
I plan to create a character similar to the Blob. To add athleticism, I plan to add legs for speed and maybe arms to increase the look of momentum.

On a side note, I'll be drawing up sketch's tomorrow and creating a Game storyboard Friday. Then you won't see anything because I'll be on holiday in Portugal, but during this time, I'll be drawing and finalising all character designs and the final layout of the animation. I'm going to have all pre-production done before I come back to ol' blighty because I'll then be building my very own computer for the new year of Uni. Then I can get cracking on the production and have that done by the end of August and spending a week in Post :)
Also what is the date we are back on Phil? My loan goes in on the 20th so I assume its that? Also have we got do any enrollment and the such? Don't know why I'm asking... you'll probably blog post closer to the time but hey ho.

2 comments:

Jackie said...

Hi Earl, I think enrolling is done online for 2nd/3rd years...might be worth dropping Jackie Andrew a quick line to doublecheck... have fun in Portugal! PS Don't forget to allow enough time to have your Art Book published...

tutorphil said...

Hey Earl, I think you've got a brilliant idea for your soundscape - yes, it really does sound like something that might accompany a headlong sprint in some gaming world. But REMEMBER - this is a DESIGN project, so I want to be able to trace where your ideas are coming from and what you've done to evolve them; I'm particularly interested in your art direction/visualisations at the pre-production stage... Answer these questions: where is your world (and therefore characters)? When is your world (what is its temporal identity)? What are the laws governing your world - physics, limitations, logic etc. You need to be able to answer these questions before you can start designing anything... looking forward to seeing some answers on this blog - happy hols, but Jackie's right - don't miss the deadline or fall foul of poor time management.

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