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>

Second Option Panels with Reference

"Option" Panel

 

First Panel sketch

Storyboard

Very rough storyboard (that I didn't keep to in the end)

Assassin panel sketch 1

Assassin panel sketch 2

Originally when I had created ‘the second option’ of drinking the poisoned drink I had only planned to make it around 2 pages long. When it came to producing them, I created another series  of mock storyboards since I was ahead of my schedule and experimented with a number of different things – shifting once again from the black panel to the messy white (and back again). I tried to be a little more stylistic with the shape of my panels – especially in page three of the poisoning arc with the slowly closing eyes.

I added two strong panels of pure colour/ pattern to increase the effect of their message (in one the shift from life to death of the protagonist and the other to place emphasise on the ‘Mr. Pyre’ (which is the big narrative twist).  

Personally I think the outcome of both narrative paths now house half the story – meaning that the reader can complete the narrative by following both paths, and uncover truths about the story that would not appear until later if they had not done so.

There are one or two alterations I need to make before I can place the panels into iWeb and finish the project – mainly panels that have been bugging me due to a distinct difference in quality to the others, in addition to the obvious lack of a title page. As I am going to be tackling the game demo next which will require a huge amount of work in itself, I will place these smaller tasks to the side for a week or so in order to make larger strides in the other projects.

Final Panel (Option A)

I found this last page difficult to plan out because I wasn’t sure whether to stretch the ‘shooting scene’ to one page and have the final panel with additions as a page in itself. The final result was this. I think if I have time to go back and make alterations, I might toy with the idea of doing the above mentioned ideas but I am very happy with the outcome – especially the final panel (in particular the way how Keira turned out; from the colouring to the pose and overall quality).

panel 13

original sketch (Cain)

Original Sketch (Keira)



First iteration





Second Iteration



Final Panel

The final page was born after a critique session, whereby after a few helpful suggestions I made changes to the first panel – splitting it into two that had been cropped to focus on the gun/ face of the character. This adds a much more cinematic feel to that page – with the changing focus of the ‘camera’ from the gun to Keira. I also made a few alterations to dialogue, reducing it and cutting some of Cain’s lines as they did not seem like how the character would act.

panels 10, 11 and 12

I made various changes from the storyboard on this page – moving the closing doors across the page and removing the above shot of the Cain in the elevator. This was because I felt that page was too ‘flat’ atmosphere wise I did not suit the tone set by the chase. I replaced this with the clicking of the button and the doors closing from Cain’s perspective. To build up a sense of lighting on the figure I used broad and rough strokes, that in the end formed the final panel as change in art style seemed to add a sense of horror and suspense to the page that wouldn’t have been captured with the style thus far.

 

This panel didn’t technically have a storyboard because it was necessary information that needed to be put in but I hadn’t had the space for previously but had discovered a window for (how Cain had come to know that to escape – his first discussions with Keira). I did use the panel from the above storyboard (the aerial view) as it returned the action to a calmer mood to the previous page. I also briefly returned to the dark grey and boxed panel layout for the half a page flashback as a visual indicator that wasn’t hugely explicit.

I returned to the storyboard with page 12 after filling in the narrative gaps with 11. For the lower shot the background colour and style was something that took a little while to get right as I wanted that strong light from above and cold colour dominance. I also like to think that on this page, the gradual shift from the cold blues of the elevator, to the red of the hallway represents the shift from safe isolation to the danger that lurks in the next page.

Panel 9

Original Storyboard

Revised Storyboard

Final Panel

This panel was actually the hardest I had done so far – as the rough style made for designing corridors very difficult. I did trial different lighting and colouring styles and poses before I settled on this. The corridor itself is messy and the panel style changed to address the change in pace from the story. I also made sure to turn the camera at the end of the panel from first person to third in order to prepare for the next page as switching the camera between pages could have seemed to too drastic.

Panels 7 and 8

My inspiration for the first panel of the page from Assassins Creed: Revelations (Ubisoft, 2011) opening cutscene. 

 I didn’t have any sketches to base this set of panels from, but one of the largest influences on the first panel was from Assassins Creed – with a disappearing almost ethereal figure amongst a crowd. This was storyboarded as a lone smaller panel, but I felt that having the close up of the assassin’s expression and the flashback inner monologue added additional fluidity to the narratives flow.

This second panel was important, despite the lack of visuals, as it acted as a clean cut between the poisoning scene and the chase scene – which are two distinctly different locations. Furthermore I was planning to experiment with panels during the chase so that this could also act as a visual segue between the two.

6th Panel

Reference Sketch for the pose

Shocked Woman reference

This Panel wasn’t part of my original Storyboard but given the flexibility of my concept, I could add this shot, which depicts the poisoning of a random person by showing the full collapsed character. This is much more explicit than my original idea of including it in Panel 5 and helps the story flow better.

In all honesty, I was really impressed with the outcome of this particular panel. The colours, strokes and change in mood all really worked to add effect, whilst not straying from my consistent style so far.

5th Panel

I made a few changes from the storyboard for this panel because it the images were too stretched in the composition so it didn’t make it necessarily clear what was happening.

4th Panel

Basic Idea



Final Panel

It took so many sketches to get this image exactly how I wanted, and one or two days to colour it in a standard that I felt was good enough. I put emphasis on this particular image because it was an important event that the scenario was based around, plus it was meant to highlight the enchanting nature of the girl who was serving the drink. I was tempted to include some kind of internal comment from Cain - however, this would have likely detracted from the image.

Panels 3 and 4

For this panel I wanted to signify the difference between the Philanthropist and a Tyrant in the design of the silhouette so they can be split in half – with a person praying and a person whose hands are covered in blood visible in the bottom half of both of the figures.

 

As Winston Pyre is an influential yet mysterious character in the narrative, I decided that he would simply be a silhouette so that the audience doesn’t know what he looks like to retain that mystery. The face had slight changes in tone as I decided that it would be affected by the hue of the background

First Panel

I had to make a few changes to my original Storyboard layout. Initially I had planned that the Narrative would begin with Cain running through a corridor towards an elevator - narrating that he is being hunted and it all started with a drink. I decided to change this to an establishing shot of the party hall from a distance and then to the inner monologue of Cain.

Finished Panel

The finished panel has a messy, yet colourful style that was born from the influence of Benjamin’s work. I debated for a while on whether or not to include a planetary long range shot for the establishing shot, but decided to create the hall instead and have a caption that stated the planet/ date to set the scene.

Storyboard (Expanded)

(No)