Influences and Self Reflection (Unit 1) - with Bibliography

Influences and Summary:

Benjamin's style is evident in even one simple glance

My interactive narrative had several large influences that shaped the graphical style and narrative flow:

Benjamin: Shown to me at the start of term via a lecture on sequential narrative, one of the artist’s works that was in the presentation was Benjamin, and immediately the artwork stood out to me. As an artist, Benjamin has this incredible style that mixes vibrancy, quick strokes and a sense of realism that I hadn’t ever seen before. In “Orange” he not only uses hot and cold colour dominance for effect but he also adds colour to a characters personality – the colour becomes a symbol of that character and this was absolutely staggering.

I didn’t try to emulate his work but seeing it definitely taught me to embrace roughness and colour and turn it into a style that was right for me.



Kasumi's Memory - the starting point of my idea



A mission from Bioware’s hit franchise “Mass Effect” acted as a large scenario influence. This mission was Kasumi’s memories, a downloadable mission from Mass Effect 2 where you have to infiltrate the party of an illegal weapons dealer and steal an important file.  In the mission I enjoyed the idea of a grand futuristic party hall that was full of shady yet high class people – and that feeling in turn was the basis point for my entire narrative generation.

The way that the narrative ties up from both different viewpoints was a storytelling technique that I loved to see in games or narratives that have split choices  and in turn influenced me– I think that every path should have meaning and should take into account the roles of each character in each alternate reality. For example a character that died in the ‘main narrative line’. In the split choice if they live, what would they have done if their life hadn’t been cut short? How would this affect the other characters? Would they interact? What would be the outcome? I wanted all of these questions to be explored even a little.

Self-Reflection: This project was really beneficial for me as an artist for so many different reasons. I explored a completely different style that I am used to. My comfort zone was Japanese comic influenced works that were had strict line art for which my colouring was confined to. By aiming for a more realistic style, I removed those lines and made my work incorporate my natural messy stroke style. From building up layer after layer of messy strokes I seemed to achieve a realism that was balanced within the style, which has now become my normal approach to colouring that feels natural and not forced.

Admittedly I do feel there is some panels that I could have improved, but by religiously doing one or two panels every day for around a month, I became much more fluent and confident with Paint Tool Sai, using colour for effect and I now have much more faith in my ability to colour digitally than at the start of the project.  

If I had managed time better for my other project there was definitely room to add to the narrative’s interactivity – if only a little. I had planned to add small icons that could be clicked on to add a little bit of written information about characters, events, locations and objects of the world. My other thoughts on expanding the narrative outside of the project would have been to branch off onto two separate stories – one from the perspective of the assassin and the other from the perspective of Cain – with the assassins story about infiltration and assassinating her quarries (utilising dialogue choices, weapon selection/ activation in addition to map navigation) while his follows trying to survive in her absence while investigating (much more like the ‘prologue’ chapter of this project). Arrows could have been placed either side of the title screen to this project to ‘scroll’ between each chapter – acting as a hub to further expansions. Because I enjoyed the base concept of my idea and there is room for expansion, is no reason why I won’t continue it outside of the project – polishing the ‘prologue’ and adding the aforementioned additional features.

Unit Bibliography:

Orange, Benjamin (2009)
Remember, Benjamin
Mass Effect 2 (BioWare/EA, 2010)
Assassins Creed: Revelations (Ubisoft, 2011)


Image of "Orange" front cover. Available from:
http://cdn1.lostateminor.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/benjamin2.jpg
<Accessed 25/02/2012>

Mass Effect 2 Screenshot - Kasumi Memories. Available from:
http://www.chud.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/kasumi3.png
< Accessed 25/ 02/ 2012>

Assassins Creed Screenshot. Available from:
http://www.gamingunion.net/newsimg/assassins-creed-revelations-e3-teaser-revealed.jpg
<accessed 25/02/2012>