#going for a more cartoony/storyboard friendly look!!

[macchitea]

break doodles

[lrfmp2021]

Robot Toy Research

As well as the Star Wars replica toys that I researched, I decided to go in depth with others. I looked at Cozmo, an educational robot toy aimed at children which allows for programming and entertainment.

As with all robot “characters” I have been looking at, Cozmo is designed with appeal in mind. To add curvature to suggest friendliness rather than hard edges, his “head” shape is a rounded cube with soft edges. As journalists from around the time of its mid-2010s launch stated, there is no doubt that his design is comparable to WALL-E’s, with an illuminated face design comparable to EVE’s. 

The tyre tracks serve more than just an aesthetic purpose as they are physically used to manoeuvre the robot when played with by children (or its target audience). Tracks are superior to wheels and tyres when going up steep surfaces. 

It is worth noting that a slight redesign with a black and gold scheme (and green eyes) was introduced, named Vector. I think Vector’s big bubbly green eyes help shake away the association with EVE. Additionally Vector’s eyes can change colour depending on the activities he is doing. I think it is a phenomenal feat to have the robots’ emotions display through their eyes and it adds to the cuteness factor substantially. 

Lastly, I would like to state that I find it very intriguing to think about how these robots were entirely designed from the ground up to function as toys - in comparison to the Star Wars droids and WALL-E, who were designed to be appealing film characters first and foremost. I would be intrigued to learn about the process of designing such toys as I am sure the creators must have had to sacrifice appeal or aesthetic for functionality, as the character is the toy itself.

And so I did learn - “Designing Cozmo was a collaboration between engineers and animators. The robot was storyboarded and tested like an animated character for film or TV” (a quote from the creators about the process). I think that looking at the design process for this has been beneficial to me and it allows me to see how I would go about performing a similar feat.

I find the alternative eyes for Cozmo to be rather spooky. I find it intriguing that the three columns of inspirations for the eyes were cartoony open eyes, dot eyes and robot eyes. It is not a surprise to me to see BURN-E, EVE, and MO (all from WALL-E) as inspirations in the robot column. I was surprised to see so many potential iterations that went unused and, despite being just the eyes, seem to change the look of the entire robot. It goes to show to me how important it is to get these distinct features right, and that I prefer more simple eyes rather than overly cartoony shapes, but it needs a degree of cartoon-ness to give it the edge it needs to appeal to the target audience.

Lego Mindstorms is a Lego set with programmable parts. It effectively allows its target consumers (“10+”) to build their own robots (but with five sets of pre-designed instructions), and I think is extremely cool. As with Cozmo, it can be coded with a phone app and has a lot of playability (not to mention compatibility with other Lego pieces and sets), but at the cost of ~400USD.

As there are many designs and they are all fully customisable, I will not review them individually, but I do like how they vary from humanoid design/mech shape, to vehicular and even quadruped animal-shaped. It truly shows how many directions I could go into with a toy robot design. Despite Lego tank tracks existing, none of these use them and they use either wheel or leg-based movement.

In regards to the packaging, its simple box shape is just akin to other Lego sets, but I really like the design of the box and the strong unique “teal” shade that is dedicated to the Mindstorms range, and how it contrasts well with the magenta background around the robots pictured. As well as this, unique teal blocks are made for this set to match the theme. Whilst I am a huge fan of how this set encourages customisable building and replayability, I do not think that I could achieve such with my own creation, though I could contemplate a Transformer-style modular rebuild system.

[recentanimenews]

FEATURE: Sword Art Online: Ordinal Scale Review

Spoiler Warning for the entirety of Sword Art Online: Ordinal Scale.

  Some movies are made for a single moment.

  For Sword Art Online: Ordinal Scale, that moment is when Yui appears in the middle of the film's final battle—a showdown with the boss of the Aincrad Castle's Floor 100—bringing with her all of Kirito and Asuna's friends from stories past. There's a swell of music (the tune's called "let's join swords," and it's a remix of the franchise's most memorable track, "swordland"), and suddenly we see the silhouettes of Kirito's iconic dual blade against the backlighting. Along with back-up, Yui returns to Kirito and Asuna their appearances and weapons from the original Sword Art Online game, and the entire group explodes into frenetic action that carries through until final moment of the battle. 

  If you have even a shred of fondness for Sword Art Online as a franchise, particularly the Aincrad arc, this moment alone is worth seeing Ordinal Scale for. It's the moment the entire film drives toward, a rush of near-euphoric glee enough to make me scream with delight under my breath in the theater. It's been five years since the first season of Sword Art Online began airing and nearly three since SAO II ended, so it feels like we've been without new Sword Art Online long enough for it to feel like an event of the past (despite the continual chatter following the show since then). This, in turn, gives us enough space from the early days of Sword Art Online, the time when it truly felt new, that Ordinal Scale can actually get away with remembering Aincrad, both as an motion within the film itself and outside it with the fans.

    I walk into my local showing of Ordinal Scale about 30 minutes before the film began, wondering what kind of crowd I'm going to see. An awkward pass in front of the screen looking for a seat later, I'm reassured that this won't be like some of my other anime filmgoing experiences, as the crowd is substantial—and boisterous. Occasional laughs about the "super easy" quiz questions rotating on the screen pepper the dull buzz of conversation; I hear one girl mutter "Must get" to herself with a vengeance upon seeing an ad for the recently released SAO mobile phone game. And although less interested in the welcome messages from LiSA, Haruka Tomatsu (Asuna), and Yoshitsugu Matsuoka (Kirito) before the film begins, by the final corny slow-motion fist pump from Matsuoka, a genuine cheer finally emerges from the crowd before giving way to silence and the movie's opening moments.

  Whatever else was true of my company for Ordinal Scale, one thing was certain: these people were fans of Sword Art Online. And that was good, because this movie—all else aside—is for fans of Sword Art Online.

  I'm no stranger to being a fan of things generally, but as a fan of Sword Art Online (it was one of the first anime I watched once I'd finally figured out what "anime" was and decided I wanted more) it was delightful to see Ordinal Scale speaking a language only those who care about this franchise—warts and all—can understand. In the moment when we see Starburst Stream unleashed once again or Yuuki's spirit embracing Asuna as the Mother's Rosario Sword Skill appears in a burst of purple lights, the film clearly, unavoidably asks but one thing of its audience: "Remember. Because if you remember how you felt when you watched Sword Art Online, this is for you."

    So, that's the fanservice angle, but what's really neat about Ordinal Scale is that it pulls this metatextual conversation with its fans into the actual text of the film itself. The primary conflict in Ordinal Scale is, at its most basic level, one dealing with the importance of memories—specifically those of Aincrad. Memories that are immeasurably painful for some and bittersweet for others. One of Sword Art Online's ongoing themes has been a question of the validity and value of virtual experiences (although this idea's traced an admittedly inconsistent arc throughout the franchise's various stories), and so Ordinal Scale putting Asuna's memories of her time in Sword Art Online (the game) on the line aligns it strongly with this tradition—and, by the end of the film, doubles down on the Aincrad arc's very serious affirmation of the worth of such experiences. 

  So when Ordinal Scale instructs the audience to dig into their own memories, it marries the meaningfulness of the fan's memory to those that Kirito, Asuna, and their friends hold dear. Whether or not the memories were all good or all bad matters little—rather, the key is that they mean something to them (and, ultimately, carry tangible weight in the real world as well). In some ways this parallels the fan act of immersing yourself in a show, finishing it, and then fondly carrying on the memories of your time in the world with you as you move on with your life—possibly even allowing them to affect who you are as a person. Of course, it's not like this kind of unity between fanservice and themes is anything new, but it's certainly enjoyable to experience it with Ordinal Scale if, like me, you do carry some measure of affection for SAO.

  This kind of textual/audience resonance aside, as a film for fans, Sword Art Online: Ordinal Scale succeeds because it reaches for and achieves a single peak of unadulterated fan joy. It can be watched, thought of, and loved purely in these terms. That single shot of Kirito once again becoming the Black Swordsman who saved Aincrad justifies the entire movie. It was the only thing the film needed to do.

      On the other hand, there are still 2+ hours of film that aren't that moment, I think it's still necessary that I note that on the whole Ordinal Scale is a surprisingly detached movie. While Ordinal Scale is certainly a more restrained, mature take on the world of SAO, at the same times it feels like it looses some of its charm in the attempt to present itself this way. The crisper, flatter character designs lend themselves less to diverse facial expressions than the more cartoony and moe designs from the TV series, and when paired with the lack of interesting character acting animation, the vividness of these characters had in the TV series finds itself drowning somewhat in the darker, grittier, colder world of augmented reality. It's without a doubt satisfying to see Kirito and Asuna looking and behaving like the young adults preparing to head off to college that they are, but I can't help but feel that the overall effect is one that makes the whole film feel rather cool in a way that lacks the passionate spirit of Kirito's over-the-top video game coolness from the TV series.

  There's also a disappointing lack of immediacy in film's cinematography, which relies heavily on long shots that place the characters in large backgrounds and distance them from the camera. Director Tomohiko Ito and his friend Takahiro Shikama shared storyboarding duties for the film [1], and both have proven to be excellent at the task in past works like the Sword Art Online and ERASED, but the direction in Ordinal Scale is depressingly lifeless outside of the more dynamic action scenes, completely lacking the engaging energy of the TV series. One scene that's emblematic of this problem occurs midway through the film. Following Yuuna, Kirito finds himself on a bridge in the virtual world and talks with her. Framed with a long shot, we can only see the barest outline of each character's face, and even as Yoshitsugu Matsuoka's voice rises along with Kirito's frustration, all we see is Kirito walking in a basic cycle across the bridge towards Yuuna. The direction completely sucks the power out of the encounter—a frustrating pattern that recurs throughout the movie.

    Happily, the story and script have a bit more of a spark to them, although the former is disconnected and the latter somewhat inane. It's fortunate that the key to the story of Ordinal Scale is, basically, that for the first time since Aincrad we finally have Asuna and Kirito's relationship back in the spotlight. Despite many battles that frankly don't always feel like they have actual stakes and the script's amusing failed attempts portraying friendly banter between Kirito and Asuna's group of friends (someone says something vaguely amusing, the rest of the group gently laughs), it's the promise that our two heroes made back on the 28th floor that holds it all together. If the final boss battle is the film's justification for existing, then it's Kirito and Asuna seeing the stars together at the film's end (and having their kiss interrupted by Yui lol) that validates the story.

  Which, really, is just to say that Sword Art Online: Ordinal Scale is, at heart, Sword Art Online—a sometimes bumbling, sometimes ineffective, impossibly dorky, and charming invention with nothing but the best of intentions. SAO being SAO, this was never going to be a perfectly crafted movie—but it captures so many of the charms of the franchise whilst also avoiding nearly all of its most aggravating faults. It may be a few dozen minutes longer than it needs to be, undercut its own the drama by putting off the twists until near the end of the film, and lack the personality-driven dialogue that could really have made its characters come to life on the big screen, but it's still trying to be good and succeeding just often enough that I can't find it in my heart to ignore those efforts. 

  And, again: Yui appears, the Black Swordsman and Lighting Flash Asuna return. That was everything. And it was glorious.

[1] Thanks to Canipa from the Canipa Effect for making available his list of the full animation staff for the film. Be sure to check out his video breaking down the film's staff and the paths they took to this movie.

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Isaac eases his compulsive need to write about anime on his blog, Mage in a Barrel. He also sometimes hangs out on Tumblr, where he mainly posts his drawing practice as he seeks to become a renowned idol and robot fanartist. You can follow him on Twitter at @iblessall or on Facebook.

By: news+feed@crunchyroll.com

[aishaboudjillouli]

Reflection on 1st Week of FMP: Initial Research (Cartoons, Comics, Films)

I spent this first week of the FMP researching other work that related to my project concept, including various cartoons, films, and comics. Because my FMP is very character based, this research focused on the specific ways that characters clash due to their opposite nature and how different aspects enhanced this conflict. This included appearance, moral leanings, and general behavior towards each other.

Because I am planning on doing an animation, I started with cartoons, looking at how they create contrast between their characters to indicate opposing personalities. Looking at this was helpful as it made me see how important appearance was for this, as opposed to films where this would generally be less exaggerated, cartoons use appearances to make the characters moods and personalities extra obvious, mainly for comedic effects. I was able to see how silhouette is a good indicator for characters, as the use of different shapes often suggests the characters personality; pointed=aggressive, soft=friendly. This research was also helpful in revealing to me type of cartoon I want to create. On one hand, I could go full goofy and create this very textural, exaggerated characters with large features for expression, or I could go the less obvious route and design my characters based on more subtle traits. I found that with the former, you tend to get a funnier and looser animation, with the opportunity to do really crazy animations like squash and stretch. I like the freedom in this, plus it’s a style of animation I find really interesting and really effective in communicating the characters current state. In this research, not only was I able to learn about how visuals connect the characters with the extreme personalities, but I saw the animation styles that appeal to me, thereby helping in the development of my animation in regards to the details. It will help in the overall plot I decide, as well as the characters themselves.

In researching comics, I found that, similarly to cartoons, the character’s personality is often shown through their clothing or facial features. It’s almost like it acts as the middle ground between film and cartoon in which the characters are stylised, but not completely taken out of reality. Obviously this isn’t the rule, but the comics I happened to loo at were based in reality, two of my favourite comics that I found worked well with my theme (The Killing Joke and Watchmen). In this case, the character conflict was based morally, being from superhero stories. In this, the problems had more weight than the plot lines for the cartoons. In researching this, I found it interesting how these fictional and cartoony characters had such deep personalities, motivations stemming from years of conditioning. I think what I took most from this research was the level of backstory given to these characters, and because it was a comic it had the ability to provide this intense depth that films wouldn’t be able to. In this case, the comics provide a more serious take on the concept I am looking at, and whilst interesting it isn’t the direction I want to go in.

In researching films, whilst looking at the characters I felt that they were put into more realistic contexts that battled with human emotions on a relatable scale. The oppositions would look at the difference in he way humans interact with the world around them, as well as with their own mentalities, making them really engaging and introspective pieces. Because of this, the visual connotations for opposites aren’t as obvious, maybe playing more with symbolic imagery, such as playing with light and dark colours to suggest innocence. What I mainly took from this particular research is the thematic components of how humans behave at their own extremes, leading to the very real consequences of a deteriorating mentality. In some cases it leads to the crippling detachment from others, which then would rock over to the conflict between convention and mental illness creating a conflict that mess with the “natural order” of society. Overall, interesting and full of depth, but not the direction I want to take with my animation. I may take some aspects from it, like the triggers for breaking points, but I’ll take the weight out of them to make them more light hearted.  

I had planned to do more research looking the psychology behind personalities, as well as interviews between people with conflicting personalities to see how they interact in reality, but I found that I’ve overlapped into pre-production week. If I were to finish my research, I feel like I’ll spend too much time with it and lose time probably needed for storyboarding and animating. To ensure I do enough research, I’ve decided I will still do the interviews, as I want to get some research based in reality to have a balanced idea of how my story could turn out. I also need to start thinking about recording equipment so I can figure out how to connect it to my animation software before I reach the actually animation, in case there are any problems I need to fix. I would like to start my preproduction within the next 2 weeks to ensure I don’t lose too much time, as I’ve already lost 4 days due to sickness.