11/03 Update - Development and Feedback Session

Because I'm helping the head of 3D (Jerwin) with the 3D animation, I decided to focus more on the actual "body" of Butter. The silhouettes from before were the starting point to exploring different shapes of the butter: seeing how things would and wouldn't work. I wanted to keep the rectangular base shape of the butter, but add differences such as a melted bottom.

Body Shapes - What works?

 After sketching designs for different body shapes, I then went on to explore how the hair could look for the character. Curls were the most used due to the butter's softness which would cause strands to hang loose. I thought that using a butter knife for "hair styling" would have a natural look, while also giving the character a unique appeal with the strange hair.

Butter, which hairstyle would you like today?

I ended up continuing my journey down the hair road, leading to exploring a bit of facial hair. Because facial hair makes a character look quite masculine, I thought it would be a nice touch to our rather flirtatious Butter. However, while doing so I realised that this would require a face to create many designs: something that Jonathan would be working on in 2D. I ended up going back to focusing more on the 3D aspects of the model.

Time to get some clothes young one.

I was starting to try different ways the butter wrapper could clothe our character while also thinking about how this would affect his limbs if he ended up having any at all. We initially had also considered having the wrapper act as his arms and after asking group members, everyone agreed that this would be the most natural looking approach...

BUT...(ter...-_-)

After seeing some of the designs with muscular arms, our group started thinking, "What if he just grew arms during a certain event for comedic effect?" A classmate also gave ideas of doing something similar to tadpoles growing limbs. From this discussion, we decided to consider having a 3D body, but using 2D elements for the growing arms to match with the 2D face. This would also save time for Jerwin and I when it comes to animating. :D

On another note, a feedback session with the lecturers was held for each group. We actually had a lot of good feedback. A lot of us are doing concept designs, meaning we had more opportunities to nail the character.

The script? Nearly there! The puns were great to the point a lecturer stated,
"Don't churn me down is delightfully awful" -Dane 2016

The first pun "Bready" was told to be reworked into another butter pun so the viewer doesn't become thrown off. Also, the puns would have to build up in humour and still stay true to the character, meaning if you acted as the character and were embarrassed to say a line, then it is probably a bad piece of dialogue. 

Aside from that, all goods, all goods! I plan on doing some final sketches for the design of the packaging.

Interactive Narrative - Week 3

After playing the game Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, I came to realise that the story nodes used within the game resulted with both strengths as well as weaknesses towards the narrative and immersion.

Pascal Luban and Joël Meziane describe in their article "Turning a Linear Story into a Game: The Missing Link between Fiction and Interactive Entertainment" (2001) that cut scenes are used to introduce characters as well as important objects to feed enough information to the player so they keep wanting to play out the narrative. Cut scenes are quite frequent during the play through of Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, often showing the different obstacles that need to be overcome, as well as important objects such as the dagger which gives the player the power to manipulate time. However, while most cut scenes are deemed relevant, there are a few unnecessary ones such as the protagonist sheathing his sword every time a battle sequence is over. Along with this, I found it rather off-putting when cut scenes had no way to be skipped, especially if they had already been viewed before.

While cut scenes had both strengths and weaknesses within this game, I thought the lack of text and other "extravagantly detailed gauges" was a plus factor towards the player becoming immersed within the universe of the game. Apart from the tips given during the tutorial, there is little to no text throughout the game telling the player what objectives needed to be carried out. Also, the health and sand bar is located at the top left and both are not designed to look extremely decorative. If the game lost this simplicity, the player would have a harder time getting fully absorbed into the atmosphere the game sets.

A final story node I came across would be the camera angles within the game. Pascal Luban and Joël Meziane also mention in their article that "Changes of camera shots essentially allow a visual diversity and thus stimulate the audience's attention." Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time had integrated mechanics of including landscape cameras to aid the player through their journey. Instead of helpful, I actually found this rather pointless as a game mechanic. The only use of it was appreciating the visual design of the environment but it hardly ever helped when I had trouble finding where I actually had to go to.

The mentioned story nodes were only the main ones I concluded to have affected my experience regarding how immersed I was with the narrative. Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time definitely has a strong use of story nodes, especially the lack of text and unnecessary graphics to help the player become more absorbed. However, the game does also include a few weaknesses when it comes to cut scenes and camera angles which slightly hinders this immersion factor.


References
Ubisoft Montreal (Developer). (2003). Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time [Video Game]. France: Ubisoft

P. Luban, J, Meziane (Authors). (2001). Turning a Linear Story into a Game: The Missing Link between Fiction and Interactive Entertainment [Article]. Gamasutra

Butter Character Profile + Final Script

I realised I hadn't uploaded Butter's character profile or the final script we were working off T_T

Character Profile

Script

Thank you to both Mikayla and Michelle Z for the character profile and the script for the group!

07/03 Update - Initial Concepts

Our group split into 2 groups to:
       -have Mikayla and Michelle Z to start with storyboarding

       -the rest of us would come up with designs for our Butter star :3

Mikayla and Michelle Z had also provided us with a character sheet for us to consider while coming up with character designs. He's a rather simple character to fit a simple story: his main  trait is that he is rather greasy and flirtatious. He also wears the wrapping for clothing.

I started sketching some initial ideas regarding what Butter could look like. While doing so, I was given a lot of input from other group members, as well as other classmates which I am very thankful for :3

Jerwin also reminded me of the silhouette method from last year, where we could design initial silhouettes for the character first, then build the characters off the ones which seemed to fit the character description well.

..This isn't going to be enough! I plan on doing more sketches and mainly look up some facial expressions for the character. 

05/03 Update

After discussing the schedule with the lecturers, they suggested a few changes such as Michelle Zhen and Mikayla swapping jobs when they do title/credits and editing just before break. And uh...
they told me to be Director...o_O;;;
I personally think that Mikayla would have been better for the job because the story is her idea OTL. However, I plan to try and learn what kinds of visions she had for the animation and base my judgements off that. I'm guessing they gave it to someone doing animation so they could base the decisions after considering things like problems we could run across during the animating process.

We plan on starting off with moodboards for character design. I tried to get characters which were given anthropomorphic qualities to get ideas for how we could go with the butter.

Moodboards from myself(left) and Jerwin (right)

We found that a lot of characters were just given human limbs (characters from Beauty and the Beast) and characters like Bellsprout (Pokemon) and the Pixar lamp were using their physical attributes to function like human body parts like the leaves as arms, and the lamp head as...a head.


Adjusted schedule: jobs for Mikayla and Michelle Zhen changed during April

3/3/2016 - Butteam After Feedback

Today we had to discuss our final selected story idea with the lecturers. This was for us to know where we could make initial improvements, get ideas with how we could go about story telling, and character projection.
The main point was that the design of the Butter character would be crucial towards telling a more compelling story, even if it is a short comedy. Would the character have limbs? Because he was a stick of butter, we were told to think carefully about what factors could impact the design into expressing the character's feelings to the full potential.
There was a reminder about last year's Flower Sack assignment -  getting an inanimate object and giving it anthropomorphic qualities. Line of action would be a skill to look out for a lot when it comes to body language. One of the lecturers also asked, "Will the butter be...naked?" (...) This gave us ideas of using the butter wrapping as "limbs" rather than actually giving him actual limbs. The fire character Calcifer from Howel's Moving Castle was an example given to us regarding a character who usually has no limbs. Calcifer's fire morphs into arms at times, giving more space to express himself.

Look at them arms

Jerwin also reminded us that characters from Beauty and the Beast didn't have actual limbs, but certain aspects of their "bodies" were made to act as them. 

Another point made was that the puns were too broad topic-wise: he should only make butter/dairy puns so that it makes more sense. Also, we might have to cut down the amount of puns included to fit the entire animation within the 30-40 second limit. 

From these notes, I think I should probably make a moodboard filled with references to different character which share the anthropomorphic trait, along with some actual butter to see what I can do with it >.> Jerwin and I also decided to either get actual butter and craft some concepts with it, or just try using clay instead if it sounds like it will get too messy. 

Interactive Narrative - Week 2

When discussing the interactivity a game possesses, I personally believe that it should be judged by how much a person's decisions impact the narrative of the game. The interactive story game "Façade"

(M. Mateas, A. Stern. (2005). Façade (1.1) [PC game]. Procedural Arts. Retrieved from: http://www.interactivestory.net/) is one which allows the player to construct their own traditional Three Act Narrative Structure for their play session. The game achieves this by direct interaction being available through typing sentences to communicate with the characters, as well as interacting with various objects through the click of the mouse. Because of these elements, despite players being given same beginnings of being invited to the house of Trip and Grace, the events which occur will differ depending on their actions and choices when speaking to the characters, causing various middles and endings to the set Three Act structure (examples being one of Trip or Grace leaving). Therefore, the player is uncertain with what to expect as a consequence from their actions. Game designers Eric Zimmerman and Katie Salen mentioned: "If a game is certain, if the outcome is known in advance, there is no reason to play in the first place." (Zimmerman, Salen, 2003). Facade's interactivity clearly makes use of this factor because of the multiple scenarios the player can generate. However, the only flaw to this mechanic would be the clear limitations of the AIs within the game. There will be times when Trip and Grace don't take into account what the player says, and an ending is mainly decided on a "yes or no" question by one of the characters. 

Resources

M. Mateas, A. Stern. (2005). Façade (1.1) [PC game]. Procedural Arts. Retrieved from: http://www.interactivestory.net/

E. Zimmerman, K. Salen. (Game Designers). (2003). Rules of Play [Book]. United States: MIT Press