'The Last of the Monks' - Graduation Project

After my proposal, I have finally begun searching for inspiration for my own (personal) graduation project. This project needs to be supported by my narrative, so I thought of creating an animated cinematic cutscene for a game (that might function as some sort of trailer).
I already found a lot of animated cutscenes that inspire me greatly - but I only recently found this one again - the Cinematic StarCraft II Trailer....



I had forgotten all about this, maybe because it's 3D, maybe because I haven't played StarCraft... But still this trailer gives me the shivers. I find the anatomy and impossibility of the design choices a bit laughable, but the bad-guy diehard message is absolutely clear - and not laughable at all - it's awesome. This convicted murderer is being welded and screwed tight into his space armor: he will most surely never come out of this suit again. And with the huge gun he is ready to take down the enemies one by one.

So, back to my own project. I am planning to do a retake on an older project of mine: 'the Last of the Monks'. In the (original) story, a small church in a futuristic metropolis is trying to defend itself against the jungle of technology that is trying to crush them. The five monks fight off crews of bulldozers and workmen that are trying to demolish the church.
In my own graduation project, I am allowed to take a (fictional) game and make an intro cinematic/trailer for it. So, I chose to make the Last of the Monks a fictional game. I will punch up the graphics, choose a different feel (less cartoony), and make it a bit more hardcore.

The first mockup-screenshot can be seen below; I edited game-footage with some photo-reference and created this shot. This is the last church, almost being crushed by the enormous metropolis around it.



I then began writing some game premises, all based on different kinds of gameplay.
Many examples I had found were based on Real-Time-Strategy games, where you build an army/base against evil forces. You send out teams/squads of people and place them strategically around the battlefield.
I finally came with an interesting (first?) premise for an RTS game.

‘A monk was condemned to Hell for killing the demons that attacked his church. Now that he’s in Hell he can finally kill them all.’

You play as a faction of monks that will build their sacred base inside the deepest ditches of Hell, to rebel against the Devil himself. You build squads and sanctuaries to protect your life and conquer the forces that have destroyed your church on earth.

Sounds a teeny bit too dark for me, now that I write it like this, but I am trying to take it a bit more humorous and lightly, more of a parody (of StarCraft). I made a quick storyboard for a trailer, where you see the monk being condemned to hell after having killed a demon. Little do they know, that by sending him to hell, he can get closer to his enemies... When the gates of Hell close behind his back, his hands reach for the wooden cross around his neck - which transforms into an epic gun.
'Heaven it's about time.'

EMMA - Field Research 17 (Proposal 1.0)

Annnnd here goes! After almost four weeks of research, I've finally found my proposal version 1.0!
All my examples and animations that I've researched (and want to make myself) were so-called intro or cutscenes. Games use a lot of animated (as well 2D as 3D) cutscenes, and I now start to wonder:

"What is the added value of animated (2D) cutscenes in games?"

Also, to expand the possibilities and difficulty of this task; I would love to investigate the following: games are leaning more and more towards realism.

"How can one make the 2D animation fit with the realism of the game without causing to break the style of the game?"

So there it is!
The only problem I'm currently facing, is the fact that I don't have a 'game' to make an intro for. I have been asking around for some projects, and there is some interesting stuff there - although I am not sure if students are able to create the high standard of realism that I've been aiming for in my research.
I'm not sure if it's okay if I create my own (fictional) game, but then there will always be an 'assumption' instead of proven fact that the style will fit according to my research.

EMMA - Field Research 16

Hyperreality will be my next big thing - surpassing reality in some ways. I am currently finding out its meaning.

http://brendonodwyer.wordpress.com/2009/10/04/research-essay%E2%80%94hyperreality/

Pretty awesome, while diving into the concept of Hyperreality, I come across the name of Umberto Eco, one of the most profound writers in essays about hyperrealism. I wonder if it's the same dude as the writer from 'The Name of the Rose' - but I guess it is.

Anyways, the concapt of Hyperrealism truly applies here; it means that parts of this 'reality' start to overtake 'our' reality. This means, that the perfect world that is created within that hyperreality (celebrities' lives, Las Vegas, games) even more 'real' feels to us than our 'normal real' lives. The world is more exciting, more beautiful, more succesful than our own. From the moment we decide to live in that hyperreality, we already forget to live from out of our own heart, and thus creating an hyperreal world for ourselves to live in.
The art I have been examining shows a hyperreal world without the imperfections (and often boring things) in our real life. People do not flee in this world, they start to see it as their own reality. (i.e. we would not hope to be living in a science-fiction world, but we do when we see the images of celebrities and models in the media).

EMMA - Field Research 15

Allright, seeing that I've come across the fact that I do not fully embrace realism as my favourite thing, as all my prima artist examples use a realism that is further away from realism than I expected: I'm going to dive into SUGGESTION.
So, here goes!

Where I had found an article about the realism in videogames, I found another one stating exactly the same thing. I guess more recent (3D!) videogames are unable to 'suggest' things, not sure how to explain this, but it's more like: all textures, area and surfaces are clearly defined to be rendered by the engine. This leaves more or less no room for any 'undefined' areas that can tickle the imagination.
This is why I love 2D and not 3D. A brushstroke in itself can suggest a lot of things. A plane in a 3D environment does not.

EMMA - Field Research 14

As relative the term 'realism' might be, even the 'real-live-action' movies are not as real as they appear. Marlyn mentioned the assumption we viewers take on when seeing an actor. Knowing, that this man might be in his normal life a simple father who takes care of his wife and children, we still see the actor as the person he is playing.
With this in mind, I scrolled across an article which searches out the 'realism' in Science-Fiction. Even on a movieset, which is often no real-life location, we viewers are asked to place ourselves into that location for now. We are already requested to suspend disbelief.

The subject in the following is how we may identify and how we should weigh the criteria for what is implausible, improbable or impossible enough to impair our suspension of disbelief. Almost every fiction, as already mentioned, strives to overstate and to put emphasis on the extraordinary. There are also TV series of all genres, not only comedy, that are deliberately made without continuity and hence in a way not to be taken too seriously. An extreme example is "South Park" where Kenny, with exceptions in more recent episodes, is killed every time.

But what is the special quality a televised fiction must have in order to appear realistic? It seems as if a drama set in our present world and time has a clear advantage in that it apparently shows people, places, things and situations that we are familiar with from our every-day life. We should easily be able to unmask it if the depiction were flawed. In this sense some critics even go as far as rejecting any kind of science fiction because, in their opinion, it shows an utopian world and, in particular, science and technology that deviates from what they think is correct. Therefore, already the basic setting of science fiction as something that does not exist in our world or time should fall under the category "impossible". They don't manage to suspend disbelief (or don't even attempt to). Moreover, I am surprised that so many laymen out there seem to have the knowledge in physics and engineering that would allow them to recognize fictional technology as unattainable along the lines of "impossible speeds and starships defying gravity". Ironically, the share of science fiction fans among real-world scientists and engineers seems to be much higher than among the "ordinary" population.

EMMA - Field Research 13

Despite my horrible cold I'll try and evaluate some of the findings I've done today.
First, I came across an article from an University which had developed an automated method in which a 2D image could be transferred into a 3D environment.



This was a so-called Photo Pop-up. It had an annoying command-prompt program which I haven't been able to run 100%. Sigh. Ah well, I'll find that out later on.
Secondly, I found this video about transferring 3D motion information onto a 2D skeleton which used a more image-like approach.



I liked both of the subjects a lot, and hope I am able to dive into them a bit more to use them for my own project.

Thirdly, I wanted to adress some aspects of realism that I have been using very often in my work. The subject concerns Custom Brushes.
Many Photoshoppers use brushes with custom settings to apply in different situations. Often, you can use complete photographs to create textures, buildings or abstract works. I have done a seminar a while ago, about these custom brushes, and we went outside to take our own photographs and use them (instead of internet ones).

It is easy to use the photographed object 'as is'. For example, if you photographed rice and created a brush out of it, you would only use the brush when painting rice.
This was something I wanted to experiment with: often structure is the key to recognizing things, so I gave them a funny assignment.
They had to create a brush from photographed food, and then create a scene with that brush. I myself had done the assignment as well, and eventually created a deep-sea coral reef from a rice brush, flowing hills from wallnut-shells and a sea monster from a jar of beans.




The funny thing was, that the essence of 'realism' lay within the complex sructure of nature, and which you could adapt to your own advantage and purpose. Leaf-brushes are easily created and cost 1% of the time if you had to paint all the leaves by hand. And also, these images are often perceived as more real - the image complexity resembling a realism that 'hand painted' works do not quickly resemble.

I hope to be able to refine this area of 'abstract' designing with 'real-life' elements. I would love to be able to perfect the technique.

EMMA - Field Research 12

The original 'Realism' in painting has become famous because of a few schools that taught Realist methods.

The Realists (1800 - 1899)
This is a group of international artists in Paris which begin to devise new methods of pictorial representation. They are focused on scientific concepts of vision and the study of optical effects of light. The Realists express both a taste for democracy and rejection of the inherent old artistic tradition. The Realists felt that painters should work from the life round them. Indisputable honest, the Realists desecrated rules of artistic propriety with their new realistic portrayals of modern life. Artists: Marie Rosalie Bonheur, John Singleton Copley, Gustave Courbet, Honoré Daumier, Hilaire Germain Edgar Degas, Thomas Eakins, Ignace Henri Theodore Fantin-Latour, Wilhelm Leibl, Edouard Manet.

Barbizon School (1840s - 1850s)
Barbizon School was a group of French landscape artists one of first formed outside the Academy. They were named after the Forest of Fonteblau near the village of Barbizon where they got away from the revolutionary Paris to produce their art. They attempted to paint nature directly; Constable who pioneered in making landscape painting a faithful depiction of nature was their model.
The Barbizon painters helped establish landscape and motif of country life as vital subjects for French artists. They also cherished an interest in visible reality, which became increasingly important to the later artistic styles. Artists in the group: Camille Corot, Charles-François Daubigny, Jean-François Millet, Pierre-Etienne-Théodore Rousseau.

The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (1848 - late 19th Century)
In 1848 a group of English painters, poets and critics formed the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood to reform art by rejecting practices of contemporary academic British Art. They have been considered the first avant-garde movement in art. They accepted the doctrine of imitation of nature, as central purpose of art. Instead of the Raphaelesque conventions taught at the Royal Academy, their central doctrine was that artists should seek to represent the natural world. They believed that the only great art was before high renaissance, before Raphael. He was representative of the time when painters would scarify the reality of the subject to their own ideals of beauty and morality. The Pre-Raphaelite Brothers condemned this art of idealization, and promoted works based on real landscapes and models, and paid intense attention to accuracy of detail and color. They advocated as well a moral approach to art, in keeping with a long British tradition established by Hogarth. The combination of didacticism and realism characterized the first phase of the movement. The landscape compositions were painted outdoors, what was an innovative approach at the time.
The interest in the Middle Ages inaugurated the second, unofficial phase of Pre-Raphaelitism. Their subject matters were from medieval tales, bible stories, classical mythology, and nature. With technique of bright colors on a white background, they achieved great depth and brilliance. However, we can see now the curve from their immature rebelliousness, through the realistic painting of detail without idealization, to works of art that are finally more surreal than real. Their work cannot be realistic with the mythological matter and medieval tales that they chose - they can only be envisioned in the mind and do not exist outside of there. So they ended up closer to some other art rebellions - Symbolists.

French Realism:


Gustave Courbet


Honoré Daumier


Gustave Doré

Jean-François Millet
Rosa Bonheur
Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot
Charles-Francois Daubigny
Pierre-Etienne-Theodore Rousseau
Ignace Henri Theodore Fantin-Latour
Edouard Manet
Edgar Degas
J. Dalou

British - PRB:


Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema


Dante Gabriel Rossetti


John William Waterhouse

William Holman Hunt
Thomas Woolner
John Everett Millais
William Morris
Edward Burne-Jones
Ford Madox Brown
Arthur Hughes
Henry Wallis
Frank Cowper
Simeon Solomon
Evelyn de Morgan

German Realism:


Georg von Dillis

Wilhelm von Kobell
Friedrich Wasmann
Friedrich von Amerling
Ferdinand Georg Waldmuller
Franz Kruger
Carl Blechen
Adolf Menzel

American Realism:


Thomas Eakins

Winslow Homer
Francis Coates Jones
James Abbott McNeill Whistler
Thomas Pollock Anshutz
Augustus St. Gaudens - sculptor