#stick to stop-motion and 2D animation kids.

[gbirrd]

[takes your hand] join me and together we will destroy all 3D softwares

If I never touch blender again in this life it would be too soon

[mx-ishikawa]

All The Animates Self Ship Asks with Emmet and Rex?

OwO that’s a lot!! XD challenge accepted

1) Show me some concept art!! How different do they look in comparison?

the concepts for the LEGO Movies were wo wildly different from what we actually got that it’s honestly kinda hilarious lol. just look up the script, it’s a completely different movie lmao. Emmet’s concept never looked much different from the final product (though he apparently went through over 200 hairstyles before he finally settled on his current hairstyle lmao)

Rex’s concept art, on the other hand...

basically a different dude altogether. LOL

2) Is your f/o more realistic or more cartoon-y looking?

I’d categorize them as cartoony because LEGOs??? but the movies stick to the minifg mechanics pretty well so?? maybe it’s a little bit of both lmao

3) Which medium is your f/o animated in? 2D, 3D? Do you think they’d look better in a different one?

the movies are computer-animated, but they were purposely animated in a way that mimicked stop-motion animation, and I think that’s pretty ingenious honestly. though they’d both look good in the style of that new Monkey Kid show 👀

4) Which “era” of animation is your f/o from?

well the first movie came out in 2014 and the second one came out just last year so,,, modern era?? lol

5) Does your f/o have their own song or any singing roles?

well Emmet sings parts of Everything is Awesome in both movies, but sadly Rex doesn’t have any singing parts 😭💔

6) Is your f/o present in any sequels or in many episodes of their respective series?

I’m blessed to have two movies with Emmet, and Rex was technically only present in the second movie but y’know... technicalities. XD”

7) Does your f/o’s color palette mean anything to their character?

kinda yeah. I’m pretty sure Emmet’s color scheme was just supposed to resemble other construction-worker outfits, but Rex’s vest is a dark blue specifically because it’s the opposite of Emmet’s bright orange lol

8) Does your f/o have any animation trademarks/”ticks”?

that’s a good question honestly... in terms of trademarks, Emmet’s animations are usually bouncy and energetic, hell he basically skips when he runs lol. his eyes also do this a lot, especially in the second movie

as for Rex, the second movie took more liberties in terms of minifig mechanics, making the characters move in ways that would require disjointing irl, and it really shows in Rex lol. he’s supposed to be a confident, cocky dude, so he puts his hands on his hips a lot, something that minifigs can’t do on their own

9) Do your recognize your f/o’s voice from other productions?

man, Chris Pratt is everywhere. XD” hell, he voices three of my F/Os in total, lmao ^^’

10) Would you want your f/o’s source to be rebooted, or made into a live action production?

Since Warner Bros made a deal with... I think it was Sony but I can’t remember for sure?? that basically sold the rights to the LEGO Movies to them, a third movie is unlikely... but it would be awesome if we did get one! but please,,, no live action,,, that might be cursed ASJKDHJGKFGDS

11) What role would your s/i play in your f/o’s arc?

well I have a bio for my LEGO Movie S/I here, but basically I’d be a master bulder in-training who ends up in the fight against Lord Business in the first movie and grows close to Emmet by the events of the second movie, so much that I’d go after Emmet when he takes off to save his friends, thus meeting Rex which turns everything around lmao

12) Is your f/o from an obscure media or are they from A Classic?

it’s,,, kinda obscure?? at this point most people have heard of the movies but they’re nowhere near as popular as other things and the fandom’s pretty dead right now whoops XD”

13) Is your f/o well remembered in general fandom or are you the only one who loves them (I know the struggle)?

well, seeing as Emmet is the hero of the series and Rex pretty much stole the show in the sequel, I’d say they’re pretty well-loved lol <3

[scrawnydutchman]

Why ‘Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse’s Animation is So Amazing

So those followers of my blog may know that I posted a full film review of Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse rather recently. You’re welcome to go check it out if you haven’t yet, but the short version of it is that it’s my favorite movie of 2018 and is, in my opinion, the best comic book film ever made. But I wanted to address something about the film that I keep seeing coming up. I’ve been watching a handful of reviews for the film online and in a great deal of them I hear people bring up how they were skeptical of the animation style when they first saw the trailers because it “looked choppy”. One film critic in particular by the name of Roger Moore actually still held that critique against the film even after seeing it when he posted his review of it. Most people have come around to enjoying the films animation and have put the idea of it being choppy at the backs of their heads. But what did they mean initially?  The problem with a lot of film critics when it comes to judging an animated feature is that sadly they can come from a misinformed place about the medium and create this negative stigma around a film that isn’t justified. Animation is already fighting a number of prejudices (people saying it’s only for kids, saying it’s a genre and not a medium and any other amount of reasons why they may think they are above it) so this added one does not help what is easily the most spectacular animated film of 2018. But I myself am an animator, so I feel I can come from a place of explaining the visuals in a way that may make the still skeptical viewers more appreciative of what the film is trying to accomplish. With that in mind, here’s why the films animation works so well.

Animating on 2s, not on 1s

When it comes to animation, whether it be 2D or 3D, audiences are typically used to a consistent and fluid motion where there is virtually no break in the motion of a character or object. Simply put; it’s as fluid as fluid animation can be. In these cases, this is because the animation was done on “1s”. But what does that mean?

With a few exceptions, it’s a universal rule that animation runs at 24 frames per second. That means every second of footage you see of an animated film can have as many as 24 unique drawings or adjusted poses in them. That’s a lot of work, but animation legends like Richard Williams (director of Who Framed Roger Rabbit?) are famous for having classical animation of this stature. However, just because you CAN fill each second with that many drawings doesn’t mean everybody does. Alternatively you could have 12 drawings in each frame and just double the amount of time you see them go by. When you do this, it’s called animating on “2s”. It’s half the work for a result that may not be quite as fluid as animating on 1s but still looks convincing enough to deceive the human eye. You could even go as far as animating on 3s and animating on 4s, but the higher you go the more you increase the risk of your animation looking “choppy”. Spider-Verse in particular has most of their frames on 2s, with a few exceptions being when the characters have to keep up with complex camera work and so they go back to 1s. So that would explain why a lot of people initially thought the animation was “choppy” . . . .but are there any advantages to doing animation this way aside from having less frames to fill? Indeed there is. When you increase the exposure of any frame, the layout and composition of said frame as well as any small details has a greater chance of sticking out in the viewers mind. Spider-Verse takes exceptional advantage of this fact because every little action in this film is like a beautiful work of pop art. There can be other ways you can inject great appeal in your animation besides making it “fluid” like making every drawing crisp and full of detail and if you’re a skilled enough animator you can make your animation deceive the eye through a number of other tricks which we will go into in a bit. I can’t think of a finer example of this point than Legendary indie animator Bill Plympton.

Bill Plympton is famous for having his drawing exposures in the 3s and 4s, having every drawing have vivid detail with complex shading and sketchy lines, but he still manages to create believably moving and behaving characters and set pieces in spite of this limitation.

So how is it done? How does an animator make convincing and appealing movement with a decisively limited amount of drawings? Let’s start with good posing.

Posing

I’m of the opinion that Spider-Man lends himself to good animation more than any other superhero. Because of all superheroes, nobody has as many interesting poses, weight shifting and as much natural progression between actions as the web slinger. His main mode of transportation is swinging around, using his weight distribution and kicks and lunges to propel himself in any direction he wants and as he tries to make a turn he has to push himself into another direction, fighting the force that pushed him the other way to begin with. Contrast this with Superman who can just fly right over to where he needs to be without much movement of his arms and legs and without much struggle with incoming obstacles (fun fact, the whole reason Superman can even fly in the first place is because it’s easier to animate than have him leap everywhere). But anyway, back to Spidey. In most animation you develop key poses. Key poses are the main storytelling positions a character may have just to communicate the idea that they’re doing whatever it is they’re doing. So for example if you were to animate a jump, you would start by drawing the position of your character bending their legs to launch themselves up, then you would have them in mid air, then you would have them land again.

Once you create poses that tell the story well enough, you would fill in the rest between. But the key poses are VERY important to get right. To make sure there couldn’t possibly be any confusion as to what the characters are doing or even who they are, animators often ask themselves “would I know what’s happening here even if I put it in silhouette”? To add to the fluidity of the animation in a way that doesn’t compromise the chosen amount of frame exposure, poses also tend to follow a “line of action”. Basically the whole body follows the direction of a drawn line and maintains it’s course in order to really sell the action. It helps for exaggeration and for developing after aspects like arcs.

Now as I said before, Spider-Man is a particularly advantageous character when it comes to this stuff. Because he’s acrobatic. He’s shifts his weight a lot. His most iconic poses as a character lend themselves greatly to silhouette. Also, he happens to be very easy to draw. Even if all you did was draw a red stickman with spider eyes we could instantly tell who it is.

The animators for Spider-Verse knew exactly what kind of beast they were dealing with and MAN OH MAN did they have fun with it. Not only did they perfectly capture the way the classic Spidey moves, but they also gave every different Spider-Person their own take on it. Spider-Gwen moves with the grace and elegance of a ballet dancer, Noir Spidey has a less ambitious and more straight forward way of moving around (kind of “old school) if you will. Then of course you have Peni Parker recreating the anime aesthetic and Spider-Ham with all the elasticity of a cartoon.

*here’s a little Spidey animation I did a while ago.

Squash and Stretch, Anticipation, Overlapping Action, Follow Through

If anybody takes an animation class or tries to learn animation on their own, chances are Squash and Stretch will be the first animation principle listed. It’s exactly what it sounds like. Animators will often contort the model of their character to give whatever is happening more elasticity and to fill the gaps of an arc if drawings are a considerable distance away from each other. It helps the human eye track where an object is going and it can also help with principles like anticipation and follow through. Anticipation is the build up to an action. Think bending your knees before you lunge yourself upward for a jump. Because that momentum has to come from somewhere. Then there’s overlapping action, which is when dragging items on a character’s design such as clothes, capes, long ears, tails or what have you, are trailing along and need to catch up to the rest of the body. Spider-Verse does great with both these principles, especially with Spider-Ham and Noir Spidey. Spider-Ham is obviously influenced by Looney Tunes and other cartoony inspirations so he’ll be prone to doing a lot of squishing and stretching, where as Noir Spidey has the long trenchcoat and hat and you can bet that they’ll always be the last part of him to reach his destination (as well as be the most susceptible to wind). And of course, every character in Spider-Verse has great anticipation  . . . as well as what I think of as anticipation’s opposite, follow through. When an action stops, the body needs a moment to adjust itself into the resting position. Think catching yourself with your legs after a jump, crouching down and then standing back up again. Just like how momentum has to come from somewhere, it has to go somewhere when the action is over.

Appeal

So everything I covered thus far is stuff that’s universal across all forms of animation. But What does Spider-Verse do that makes it special? What separates it from other animated films in the theater? The answer is appeal. Appeal is just having a style and aesthetic that’s pleasing to look at . . . and man does Spider-Verse ever cover that. The film goes so far out of it’s way to look like a comic book that every texture has ben-day-dots so it literally looks like a comic print. Every Spider-Person has their own way of moving, their own way of behaving, their own sets of priorities when it comes to the 12 principles of animation. But the film also has a lot of really clever cheats. One of my favorite examples of this is how the film cheats forced perspective. There are many shots in the film where Miles is falling through the city as the buildings rush past him. The animators actually skewed the models of the buildings for these shots to imitate depth, as when they tried it without the skewing it didn’t looks like they were falling fast enough. They also implemented more classical cheats like smears, basically an animators method of imitating motion blur.

I could go on and on with the animation lecture, but honestly, I covered what I wanted to cover. I just wanted to showcase to anybody who may not be aware that animation is more than just “fluidity” and a seamless framerate and that there’s more ways to create appealing visuals than just that. If you haven’t seen it yet, go see Spider-Verse. It is a masterpiece.

[hoodiegal]

I'm not an animator so take this with a grain of salt, but I think puppet animation is a great way to create a baseline understanding of animation. I spent hours as a kid playing around with a stick figure animation software. It was approachable because I had my canvas with one or more stickfigures where I could easily see how they were positioned in the (2D) scene, it showed me where all the joints were and it was very inuitive to manipulate them. It helped me understand how the illusion of movement is created, how framerate affects the perception of movement, and what goes into making a realistic-looking movement.

Actually now that I think of it, maybe that's more like stop-motion animation than puppet animation? Anyway.

They really went there huh.

[robbiejohnsonyr3ax3021]

AX2001 - University - 2 Minute Film Pre-Production - My Approach to My Project “Fitting In”

After ­debat­­­ing over which of my i­­deas I should try and create for my 2-minute film project, I have decided to go with the 3D animated project “Fitting In”. The plot of this story is as follows, there is a large club that everyone is going too for a night of fun and socialising, however the building does not have any doors leading into it, but holes cut in a variety of shapes (squares, triangles, ovals, etc). We then see a few sentient cubes enter the club through the square cut out, following closely behind them is a pentagon who cannot fit in the square cut out. Stuck outside the building the pentagon tries multiple ways of getting into the building, from trying to change his shape by holding his breath or trying to make his own cut out with a chainsaw. When the pentagon starts to give up, a bunch of spheres help him get inside the building, they are successful and as the camera pans out, it is revealed the building itself was in the shape of a pentagon.

This idea came to me after the first few weeks of this semester as I was feeling nervous at first about meeting everyone (we couldn’t last year due to COVID-19) and feeling like I might be some what of an outcast in group, but if I keep trying to mix in with the others any way I could, I would be included eventually. This was my thought process at the time, and I thought that this could work as a short film

Due to my other ongoing projects revolving around 2D animation and stop motion animation, I want to try and make this project using 3D animation, so I can feel comfortable that I have involved myself with all three animation types throughout this year, as well as trying to improve my knowledge and skills from the previous year as I feel I still have a lot to learn. One of the main aspects of 3D animation I felt I struggled with the most was rigging my characters bodies, so I feel to get the best results from this project, I should try to simplify my character designs and whats simpler than basic shapes. My current approach to the character designs were based of well-known animated characters and mascots over the years, with their character designs being based mostly on a single shape, some examples of these characters include Pacman, the Red and Yellow M&M’s, Sponge Bob Square Pants, Bill Cipher, Chuck (the yellow Angry Bird) and the list goes on. As for the club itself the current idea for the entrances for the building being shape cut outs was inspired from toddler toys, specifically a shape sorter. This comes usually in the form of a box with shaped holes cut around it for kids to places the correct shapes inside.

Overall, I am feeling quite good about this idea, sure there is a long road a head from development to production, but if I can stick as close to the core aspects of the plot, I should be able to get through the pre-production with a complete plot, script, storyboard, etc.

[theantisocialcritic]

Archive Project - March 12, 2014 - Mr. Peobody and Sherman Review

For the past couple of Animated Features i've seen in theaters there has been a trailer for this "thing" called Box Trolls. This movie is apparently being made by the production house behind Coraline and ParaNorman. That fact alone, more than the trailer itself, makes me want to go see this movie. Whoever these "Laika" people are they are insanely talented with stop-motion animated. The insane level of detail that goes into their movies is terrifying to comprehend. So with that in mind, the philosophy for trying to sell this movie to audiences was to apparently show the movie's production… instead of the plot or characters. They just released a second trailer for this too… and this one also doesn't tell us anything about the box or characters. It works almost as a before and after shot. All the cool things they bragged about in the last trailer are shown in full force and it LOOKS good. It strikes me that there is a lack of confidence that people would be interested in the story they have to tell given how odd it looks. This assumption wouldn't be too out there as ParaNorman didn't actually do well when it was released, sadly. Maybe i'm wrong, heck I want to go see the movie cause I know it's full of a lot of talent. Who knows… ONTO THE REVEIW!!! ————————————————————————————————————————— ————————————————————————————————————————— Mr. Peabody and Sherman, 2014. Rob Minkoff 92 Minutes Watch the trailer here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aMl2tTVwsZA ————————————————————————————————————————— ————————————————————————————————————————— Famed animator Jay Ward is a critical figure in the history of cartoon animation. His work in the 60s brought forth a lot of major television cartoons and helped bring animation, which had previously largely been reserved to theaters due to it's high production costs, into the homes of everyday people. His work during this time comprises a list of some of animation's deepest roots: Rocky and Bullwinkle, Dudley Do Right, Fractured Fairytales and of course Peabody's Improbable History. In the latter of the list: Mr. Peabody is the world's most intelligent dog. He adopts a human boy in a witty role reversal of the common "Boy and His Dog" trope and then uses his intellect to build a time machine known as the WABAC machine to give as a gift to his boy, Sherman. Peabody's Improbable History was usually incorporated into Jay Ward's Rocky and His Friends, a half hour collection of animations from his catalog that ran into the mid-1960s which was later renamed The Bullwinkle Show. Peabody's Improbable History died with Rocky and Bullwinkle and was never successfully revived. Flash forward to the 2010s. Director Rob Minkoff, famed for his masterpiece The Lion King, decides he wants to do a passion project for one of his inspirational childhood cartoons. He manages to get the rights, the funding and does it. The result is an updated version of Peabody's Improbable History, titled Mr. Peabody and Sherman. I will give this movie credit where it was due. I went into the movie expecting it to be bad. The trailers didn't impress me at all and I wasn't excited to see one of the cartoons I loved as a child repurposed into disposable children's entertainment. Upon seeing it I can now say this: Mr. Peabody and Sherman was not as bad as I was assuming it was going to be. It however isn't a great, lasting or even very memorable film though. Its just really dull and inconsistent. One of my biggest fears going into the film was that the characters were going to get butchered and made stupid. Mr. Peabody sounded ultimately dumb as a character in the way he was described and Sherman looked like an idiot, hyper active kid with ADHD and voiced by a terrible child actor. Surprisingly  most of those things never FULLY came into fruition. I mean you can definitely tell Sherman is played by a kid who has never voice acted before but the things that would have bothered me weren't sharp enough to bother me. The opening scenes of the film play out as a… oddly morbid and dark, but clear homage to the original episode of Peabody's Improbable History with a lot of the same story beats being reenacted into horrible 3rd dimensional animation (i'll get back to that..). Even some of the cinematography is meant to evoke the original show which is facisnating to behold. This strikes me as a reassuring pat on the back to fans that the people behind this did their homework and care enough to try to make this for fans, by fans. Which I would appreciate, if I considered this film to be anything special Something that really bothers me though is the way the story plays out. There are a lot of plot threads that pop up that don't make any sense in the context of the movie. For example, it's implied throughout the movie that Peabody and Sherman as going through effectively, daddy issues given that Peabody can't admit he loves his Sherman and such. But that defeats the entire purpose of why Peabody adopted Sherman in the first place; he did it so that he could give Sherman the love and support he never got as a child. From the way they interact in the first scenes and throughout the movie, its clear that they have a healthy relationship with each other. Peabody takes care of Sherman, provides him with everything he can and teaches him everything he can. What is the point of sticking daddy issues into the mix? Especially when another story plot deals with Peabody having to prove to the government that he is a good father figure, which by rights he already appears to be. The ONLY evidence that Peabody might be a bad father is that Sherman bits a kid a school for picking on him which is implied to be somewhat justified…? It just feels like outside of the main story involving time travel, all of the treads are messy and inconsistent. Also they try to evoke parallels Doctor Who by making the WABAC perform and evoke visual similarities to a TARDIS… Who wants to be original with time travel when they could just invoke pop culture imagery more for less effort? Also the logic behind the time travel doesn't make any sense.. It didn't in the original show either but that was part of the joke.   I must also complain about he sound design in this. It was horrible… Theres a scene early on in which Peabody and Sherman are riding on top of a wave down a sewer and the sound effects, other than being much quieter than they should have been, sounded like they were panning wave sounds up and down. It sounded cheap and didn't evoke what should have been the appropriate sounds for this scene. Overall, three works really strike me about this movie. Those words are: "Missing The Point". Peabody's Improbable History was a fun show, not because it was well animated or slick, but because it was well written. The people who made this show had limited time and money to make these cartoons and couldn't afford the same animation houses that made classics like Tom and Jerry or Looney Tunes. They had to compensate for that by making the writing pick up the slack for everything else. It had to be fun and witty and it succeeded in doing so. Peabody's Improbable History was intelligent and was meant to teach kids about history in silly ways. Mr. Peabody and Sherman doesn't teach kids very much, other than a historically inaccurate retelling to the French Revolution. This movie has it way too easy. With the ease of computers nowadays entire animated movies can be made quickly and cheaply. Thats why so many 3D animated movies are awful nowadays. 2D animations and shop motion ones take a lot more work and have a different feel to them. It feels like with those that there are people working on them. When you get a modern 3D animated movie in the hands of people who aren't creative or innovative enough to make something interesting with it like Pixar, Dreamworks or Disney are then the end result is garbage like Ice Age 4 and The Nut Job… I would have at least preferred this movie if the people behind it made it 2D to be more respectful to the source material. Heck, Rob Minkoff made the best 2D animated movie of all time! He could have made something great! Thankfully, Peabody's Improbable History isn't some great thing that needed to be preserved creatively. It wasn't something great like RoboCop or Total Recall that didn't need a reboot. I'd be all for it if Cartoon Network or Nick managed to secure the rights to reboot the Rocky and Bullwinkle show in a new format if the right people were behind it. This movie didn't ruin anything by being dull. Considering some of the other horrible movies based on the Rock and Bullwinkle show that have been released like Rock and Bullwinkle… Dudley Do Right.. and Boris and Natasha… I think I can forgive this film for a lot!   My Recommendation: The original episodes are Peabody's Improbable History are still floating around Youtube nowadays. The original 5 minute episode tells the exact same story as the movie. No I don't support internet Piracy, so I wouldn't recommend that you check out the original 5 Minute episode on youtube which can be found in the link below. I would not recommend you click that link and watch it instead of paying to see the movie in theaters. Do so at your own risk! :P http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=owB6zFSZbng ————————————————————————————————————————— ————————————————————————————————————————— Mr. Peabody and Sherman is now in theaters. Thank you for reading! Live long and prosper!

[jacobsmith321]

Aardman Style and Campaigns

Aardman has been around for a very long time but they haven’t just stuck with movie or TV shows and bringing along new staff members they, they’ve introduced new styles of animation and still used their iconic Plasticine and character style.

Change 4 Life: Cube Invaders

This has been a very long running advertisement to encourage the healthiness and fitness of not only children but adults as well. 

The animation is hand made and stop motion with Plasticine models, though there it appears to be mixed media as there are there are 3D models and potentially 2D drawings added in. 

The characters are very simplistic like stick figures with no eyes, noses or eyes, apart from a mouth. This mouth applies a very unique character trait to show how the Plasticine model’s main focus is what they should eat and their movement, as well as subtle actions can showcase their emotive and physical language.

The style is bright and colourful with the main cast having subjective colours to show they’re different people (sizes indicating age of little kid, teenager or adult), with the background and objects looking as if they where drawing in fine liner then coloured with markers.

This advert’s artistic form and playful, child like design shows how this is teaching kids to be healthy and not eat in a bad way, as well as giving adults a reminder too that it’s not just their kids health but their own at the same time. Aardman. (unknown, unknown unknown). CHANGE4LIFE 'CUBE INVADERS'. Retrieved September 30, 2020, from Aardman: https://www.aardman.com/work/cube-invaders/ (Image source)

[coolanimationcompanies]

Different Types Of Animation

There would be rarely any individual who does not such as animation and also animated movies. It takes a lot of hard work and ideation to produce excellent computer animation which we see on screen. A task of an animator is amazing and innovative.

If you are checking out for options for an occupation in computer animation, you ought to have a fundamental understanding of what are the sorts of computer animation are. 3d Animation studios Even if you are not thinking about seeking an occupation, and also simply passionate about this art, these are the following kinds of computer animation:

Flipbook computer animation: This is among the earliest means of computer animation, and also you need not require multimedia training courses to learn this type of animation. Simplicity is at its finest with this, we all should have had a flipbook as a kid. All you require a pen, as well as a pile of documents, preferably a note pad or stick-on. Take advantage of your creative thinking and attracting abilities and appreciate it! VFX Studio in Delhi NCR Although this is a primitive method and it is not possible to make correct animations such as this, it is a wonderful thing for sheer fun! Just area your character at different locations in each of the pages as well as go flipping to see your character move!

Stop motion: This is the strategy of using real things for computer animation. As an example, typically toys are made use of for this purpose. In the beginning, pictures are clicked of the things from all the angles. Then they are animated using software and later the animations are put together into a motion picture. The animations look rather real on display as they are actual things but it is a tedious job to click images and animate them individually. It is extremely time-consuming. Likewise, if the animated personalities are needed for extensive tasks like that of flying or swimming is challenging to portray utilizing stop motion strategy.

2D & 3D: These are typically utilized computer animation methods. For 2D, you need to be reliable in using computers as well as the various software applications. Realistic Animation india It is only the electronic variation of a flipbook with the exception of the attracting been done on computer systems with the help of software. The cartoon collection we see is 2D animations. 3D computer animations are 3 dimensional as well as the animations are reasonable. A lot of motion pictures are made with this method nowadays. It is preferred as it has a reasonable method. It is costly as well.

E-mail: info@citrusinkstudios.com Address: Citrus Ink Studios Pvt. Ltd. D-59 Defence Colony, 2nd Floor New Delhi, India Phone: +91-88000-02583 +91-11-49873516 / 49873517 Website: http://www.citrusinkstudios.com/

[scyrel]

A 2D-Bendy Illustrated Fanfiction

Inspired by @squigglydigglydoo and @shinyzango, Written and hand-drawn by myself. Enjoy!

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER 2: Part 1

    Henry lay square on his back, looking up at a deep tunnel of flickering lights above; ink droplets stung his face. He let out a loud sigh, afraid to move, thinking a fall like this could have seriously broken his back. Henry stayed there a moment longer, contemplating his options.

    “That last step sure was a doozy, eh?” Squeaked a little voice out of the blue. Henry’s eyes darted around, trying to find this familiar disembodied voice that he’d been hearing. The voice became impatient, “Are ya just gonna lie there all day or are we gonna get going? Can’t say now’s the best time for a nap!” This made Henry sit up, not realizing his back didn’t even protest at the speed in which he moved.

    “Who’s there?” He growled in an exhausted tone. “Come on out, I’ve heard your little voice all day and I don’t have time for this!” There was a clear snap like a pair of fingers clicking together; the little paper in his front pocket trembled.

    “In here, Chief!” Henry fumbled for the paper sticking out of his pocket, pulling it out to look at the little Bendy drawing. The old man couldn’t believe his eyes, the doodle started to move. Performing a quick smear before his big key action, Bendy dropped low on the page and then jumped up, waving his gloved hands and shaking his little head and tongue. “BOOOO!” He shouted, almost giving Henry a heart attack. Startled, Henry dropped the paper onto the ink stained floor. He must have really hit his head this time. He sprang up, rubbing his face vigorously and smearing ink up and down his cheeks and brow.

    “Ey, DOC! Don’t leave me down here!” Bendy pleaded, “I promise not to spook ya again, just get me off the floor!” Henry looked down to see the living doodle trying to avoid the dark spots of ink seeping into his little frame. When Henry picked up the paper, Bendy twisted his hands behind his back and rose a little foot, cocking his head to look at Henry in a most charmingly cartoonish way. “Gee, thanks! You’re a real pal!” Said the little devil. The dark ink blots seemed to fade away from the paper as Henry held it.

    “How’s… this possible?” Henry asked, turning the paper over and sideways in his hands. Bendy protested, his body bouncing along the edges of his invisible white box.

    “Whoa there! Don’t you see this is my space? Yer throwin’ me around too much!” He wrinkled up a pair of black sleeves against his black arms, throwing up his dukes and puffing out his chest. “How’d ya like it if I gave ya good wallop, huh?” The inky demon hopped around like some silly bird displaying a mighty dance.

“Alright, alright. Take it easy there.” Henry gestured a stopping motion with his hand. Bendy stopped his fighting dance to bring his legs at attention, arms folded and face sporting a heavy scowl. “I’m a bit nervous, okay? Being trapped in the studio is not what I expected to happen to me today. Also, I’m not accustomed to my drawing’s animating themselves…” Bendy softened his face and took a little bow.

    “And it’s a nice new design of me too, thank you!” Henry made a light chuckle, this was quite surreal. Bendy stood back up and snapped his little fingers again, the paper trembled. “Look there, Buddy! You might wanna take that axe on the wall. I spied it when you dropped me on the floor!” Henry looked over and lifted the dusty thing off its plaque. In front of him was a door heavily boarded up with wood. “Chop, chop! There’s no exit in this room!” Bendy whistled, clapping his gloves together. In his left hand, Henry held a talking doodle of Bendy and in the other a small wooden handled axe. If there had been a mirror in the room, he would have a chance to see if he looked as crazy as he felt.

THUNK, THUNK, THUNK!

The axe came down heavily on the planks of wood blocking his path.

    “Gee, you got a real swingin’ arm there!” Bendy cheered him on. Henry skillfully kept his hits centered with each strike and pulled away any board fragments that may be in the way.

    “Well, when you’re as old as me, you pick up a few things.” Henry opened the door and made his way down the long stairwell into the basement. The wooden boards protested with each step and the air seemed to get a little thicker and cooler as he descended. “How deep does this place go?” Concern was coming through Henry’s voice. “I could’ve sworn there was a small basement we kept the music department in, but this many floors down seems ridiculous.”

    “Can’t really tell ya.” Replied Bendy. “Most of my eyes are upstairs. I can see some stuff down there, but not so much.” Henry thought a moment.

    “So you really were watching me through all those cutouts. That’s creepy, kid.” Bendy giggled.

    “I liked your dance.”

    Henry opened the door he thought was the entry to the basement and stopped before entering half-way into the room. A black pentagram scrawled in ink was on the floorboards, surrounded by candles and two coffins. His heart skipped a beat.

    “What– what’s going on down here…?” He struggled to get the words out. Bendy’s smile wavered only slightly.

    “Looks like someone’s been a bit of a busy-body!” Bendy appeared unphased.

    “Shit.” The little demon was suddenly taken aback. Sweat beaded above Henry’s brow, his eyes darting side to side, waiting for something to come out and jump him. “I don’t understand what’s going on.” Henry’s voice was beginning to shake. He brought Bendy up to his face, frustration and fear etched into the weight of his brows and the corners of his mouth. “Do you have ANY idea about what’s going on here? The letter from Joey, the fact I’m talking to a toon right now, this–… this… ritual crap?!” Bendy’s black eyes seemed to shrink till the majority of his face appeared to be white; a little sweaty ink bead dripped down his forehead. The toothy smile on his face seemed uncertain whether it should move up or down. “Tell me I’m crazy…” Henry’s face fell in defeat. He was trying way too hard to understand his predicament.

“You’re… crazy?” Bendy raised a doubtful finger, not sure where to input some comedic humor. It came off incredibly awkward and more so when Henry made no facial expression. The little demon cleared his throat, pretending to fiddle with his bowtie. “Tough crowd.” He thought.

    Henry threw up his arms suddenly, waiving poor Bendy and his axe like a madman. “I’ve LOST my mind! This has got to be a dream right? So if anyone’s going to jump out at me, do it NOW! PLEASE! I am too old for this!!” He strode into the room with the pentagram and jumped up and down on the graffiti. The old man didn’t notice the rumbling surrounding him.

    “Hey! LOOK OUT!” He heard the little voice of Bendy cry out, but not in enough time before something hard knocked Henry squarely in the back of his head.

    Everything was foggy for a moment; the pain in his head seared the back of his skull, rippling forward into his eye sockets. A weird flavor sat on his tongue, iron mixed with something else familiar. Henry spat a mix of blood and ink to the floor. Reaching back to the tender spot on his head, his hand pulled away with blood.

    “You okay?” Came the little familiar voice.

    “Oh, it’s you.” Henry groaned, “I’d hoped that hit would’ve knocked some sense into me.” He chuckled slightly upon getting up, readjusting his glasses. He walked back towards the stairs, just hoping that maybe there was some kind of exit back the way he came. To his dismay, the entire stairwell had collapsed from the weight of the ink pouring from the machine upstairs. It dribbled and pooled under the swollen planks of wood. Henry said nothing as he passed Bendy’s piece of paper lying near the coffin on the floor. He picked up the axe, throwing it over his shoulder.

    “Where ya goin’? Bendy asked. Henry’s hand was gripped around the knob of another door. He paused.

    “This is really happening isn’t it?” He spoke in a low resolute tone. “You really are alive on that piece of paper… talking to me.” Henry turned to look down at the paper. His face showing his age. Bendy stared back from his sitting position, his grin now a small dot on his face.

    “That I am.” Getting up, he was like a perfectly animated cartoon of Henry’s, all on his own. Henry sighed, then bent down next to the cartoon.

    “Well, seeing as I wasn’t fully understanding of what transpired, let me properly introduce myself. Name’s Henry; I used to work here as an animator when I was a young lad. Me and Joey both had a hand in coming up with you and your little friends when the company got started.” He gently placed a finger against the paper near Bendy’s gloved hand. The little demon looked at the finger a second, then back up at Henry. In one unimaginable moment, two worlds came together as creator and creation. The old man could feel a slight contact with the paper from Bendy’s gloved hand touching him back.

    “Bendy… Bendy the Dancing Demon. But… you already knew that.” The little devil replied with a genuine smile and look of awe. He plopped down on a thin line just under his shoes as Henry picked the paper up off the floor.

    “I know you don’t want to be cooped up here any more than I do, so lets find us an exit.” Henry smiled.

They descended even deeper into the basement, but this time it appeared as if the rooms were a little brighter from all the candles glowing within. The hair prickled along Henry’s arms and neck again, seeing the Bendy cutout next to what looked like a makeshift altar using a shelf. All around them the walls groaned; the sound of steady dripping could be heard somewhere in the ceiling. Looking through the rest of the room, there was another set of coffins and pentagram nearby.

    “Okay,... those coffins. Who’s in them and are they ritual offerings? Henry faced Bendy towards what he was seeing.

    “Um… I’m not really sure. I don’t really like looking at those.” Bendy tried to shy away from the sight. Henry walked quietly around the room, making sure no one was waiting around the corner.

    “All these pentagrams look like summoning circles. Are you part of any of this or a byproduct?” The look the little devil gave him seemed like he recoiled at the word. “What I mean to say is, when did you become conscious? You weren’t jumping off the page on your own while we were still making the shows.” The little demon shook his head.

    “I dunno. Funny thing is, I have flashbacks of moments of a time when… I think you and the studio were still in operation. The attention meant everything to me. I didn’t realize then as much as I feel it now, but I knew people were watching me. It’s like, going from observing everything mindlessly and then suddenly… poof! I can think for myself!” Henry could see an actual white sparkle twinkle on the side of Bendy’s eyes. A squeaking noise above forced Henry to pick up his pace and get farther from the room with the coffins. “Henry?” The old man looked down at Bendy sitting on his thinly drawn line. The demon’s face was more serious than before. “Why did you leave us?” Just before them, the phrase, “The Creator Lied to Us”, was scrawled hastily in ink along the wall. Henry’s mouth fell agape. Bendy’s posture looked like that of a child trying to understand. He twirled the tips of his fingers together in his lap.

    “Bendy...–I, I went off to serve. I didn’t want to leave.” Sudden footsteps that didn’t belong to Henry seemed to draw near. Running to the nearest door, Henry hurriedly jiggled the knob, but it was locked. He moved towards another until Bendy directed him to an unlocked door on the other side of the hall. He slipped in and closed it quickly, holding his breath to listen to the footfalls pass by. The little room in which he hid was crammed with a tiny desk covered in papers, a small old radio and a tall, but thin cabinet full of Joey’s attempt at promoting a line of Bacon Soup using Bendy’s face. The footsteps passed the door and down the hall, but Henry wanted to wait until he could hear them no more. He looked down at the desk where Bendy sat quietly on the edge of the paper. He appeared to be deep in thought. “Something on your mind kiddo?”

“Did... you want to come back?” Bendy spoke almost too softly for Henry to catch. The old animator thought about this one a moment, pulling out the wooden chair as quietly as possible and settling down.

    “I would have loved to.” Henry began. “But, times changed. I suppose you don’t completely understand the business in which we work.” Bendy shook his head, yet seemed afraid to look directly at the old man. He drew his legs closer to his chest. “You see,” began Henry. “There’s a big difference between the folks who do the creative work, versus those who strictly run the business. If those guys on top don’t get enough money, the creative fellows struggle to continue what they love doing.”

    “Then… Joey was one of them?” Henry paused. “I remember, something about the liveliness of this place. It... started to die, my world, everything I loved, ...crumbled and decayed.” Bendy’s little frame began to droop. “There was a lot of yelling, anger... rushed shows that made us look and feel… crummy. Like we weren’t our true selves anymore. Then, people started to disappear. Everything simply stopped. We were abandoned.” Bendy hid his face from view. Henry couldn’t believe how innocent his character sounded. Then again, Bendy was designed with children in mind. Had the toon existed in three-dimensional space, he would have patted the little fellow on the head.

    “I’m sorry.” Henry spoke after a time. “I never really thought about how fragile life can be, especially for a cartoon, where all you’ve known has been drawn within strict limitations.” Henry noticed Bendy seemed to be either crying, or melting. Ink was slipping off his body into a pool underneath him. Concerned, Henry moved his index finger over to the demon’s shoulder and tapped on it gently. “Hey now, don’t melt on me, Buddy. I’m sorry things were so rough, but if you help me, we can both get outta here. You’re my toon, after all, you got a little bit of me inside of you.”  Bendy turned his head, the dripping ink receding back into his body. The little cartoon wore a look of astonishment.

    “I have some of you… inside of me?” Henry gave him a soft smile and the little demon’s face brightened. “And, you promise to take me with you?” His hands clasped together, looking like a little black angel.

    “As long as you can help me get out of here, yeah.” Bendy’s eyes widened with excitement.

[edcitizen]

What are your head canons about Ed?

Well I don’t have much for him, since he’s very open and transparent most of the time. Though I’m actually coming up with some for my AU, so I’ll try my hand at it right now (this turned out longer than I thought, so you get a cut here):

- Out of all the kids, Ed is the one that dreams the most at night. His dreams are completely out of touch with reality, and he often gets nightmares. We’ve only seen him wake up from a nightmare once, but that wasn’t the first time his friends found him struggling in bed.

- Ed often draws inspiration from his dreams. (Don’t we all?)

- Jib wasn’t his only “imaginary friend”. The monster costume he wore in “The Day the Ed Stood Still” is actually based on a drawing he did when he was younger. The creature kind of acted as his imaginary friend and would always let him ride on its back.

- Despite whatever she does to him, Sarah is still his favorite family member. He will do absolutely anything for her, even when she isn’t bossing him around. (this is pretty much canon tho lmao),

- Ed got Eddy his toddler hat on his birthday. Eddy loved how “fly” it was, so much it even had a propeller!

- In the future he and Sarah will escape from their mother and be roommates in an apartment, even if for a short time. (I just want them to get along, ok?! ;-;)

- May will eventually get over her creepy obsession with Ed and offer him her friendship. After some reluctance and a whole lot of making amends, he will accept. They will be movie geeks, have movie nights where they torment their friends with the cheesiest movies they can find and attend film panels together. (I don’t know why but I like them together, though platonically)

- Ed’s interest in cartoons will only grow bigger as time goes by, and he will evenually get into animation. He likes classic 2D animation the best, claymation and stop motion at a tie in the second best, and 3D CGI the least. He loves horror movies, sure, but the creatures in them are supposed to be scary. CGI is creepy to him without intention. (Uncanny valley, anyone?)

- Ed is fandom trash (primarily cartoons, video games and comics):

● His focus is at peak while he’s playing video games. He loves the classics, but will often join MMORPG servers and can play for hours. He even managed to get his friends to play alongside him a bunch of times. Edd wasn’t into it at first, but proved himself to be very efficient especially in battle strategy, if they can stick to it, that is. Eddy just enjoys fighting, looting and the female characters…

● Ed usually chooses the warrior or the tank, Edd is either the support or the mage, Eddy is the sniper or the rogue, with a slight leaning on warrior. Wouldn’t be too surprising, eh?

● Ed absolutely loses himself in comic cons: He will always be in cosplay, even during the rest hours. He will find the booths of every artist and developer he’s a fan of, and will practically raid them. He attends fandom events and demands pictures with groups of cosplayers. Nobody wants him out despite all this, just because he’s so damn lovable and adds a lot of heart to the place. Edd and Eddy had to collect him from the hotel room where he passed out from exhaustion a few times, and now they make sure at least one of them goes with him. Sometimes Sarah and Jimmy will join him.

● Ed isn’t a comic book collector, he s a comic book hoarder. He has the entire golden and silver age series of superhero comics, as well as sci-fi/horror comics. Nobody knows where he even gets them.

● Ed does fan art for his fandom peers, but is too pure to ask for anything in return most of the time. He only accepts money for his work when the more considerate members offer it. Edd helped him with his crowdfunding profile.

- Ed manages. Like, in general. He manages.

Over-the-top a little too much, but do you really expect less from Ed? ;D

Also I’m like 99% in sync with these headcanons. Ed is practically me right now xD

[reneeacaseyfl]

How a small team of artists conceived Sony’s Concrete Genie

Concrete Genie is a kind of psychological journey, played out on the canvas of a video game. A young artist named Ash escapes his troubles by painting spectacular living landscapes in his abandoned hometown of Denska.

But the neighborhood bullies menace him and ruin his work. Ash’s internal drama is externalized as he fights to restore color to the drab world of Denska.

This heartwarming parable comes from an unlikely game studio, Pixelopus, a small team that has been working for 4.5 years on the title at Sony’s studio in San Mateo, California. I played the action-adventure game, which comes out on October 8 for $30 on the PlayStation 4.

You use the motion controller to paint the world, interacting with dream-like genies who live in the concrete and wood of the walls of Denska. It is a unique art-driven video game where you can express your own creativity. You can also enjoy a virtual reality version with the PlayStation VR.

After the demo, we got a tour of Pixelopus’ offices at Sony’s U.S. game headquarters in San Mateo, California. I interviewed Pixelopus creative director Dominic Robillard and art director Jeff Sangalli about the making of the game. They told me that the idea was born in their art department, from a visual effects artist named Ashwin Kumar. They were tossing around ideas after they shipped Entwined, and they came up with this concept of a young boy artist being bullied. And Sony liked it so much that they let the team run with it, and now here we are.

Here’s an edited transcript of our interview.

Above: Concrete Genie creators Jeff Sangalli, art director, (left) and Dominic Robillard, creative director.

Image Credit: Dean Takahashi

GamesBeat: How long have you been working on this now?

Dominic Robillard: We started the very first concept in the beginning of 2015, so four and a half years. Just over four and a half years by the time it comes out.

GamesBeat: Is the VR element part of your work, or is that another team?

Robillard: That’s a different team. We invited some friends of ours to come in a couple of years ago and look at the game. We had wanted to do VR, but at the time we had to make that decision, there were only 12 people on the team. It was too much for us to take on along with everything else that’s in the game. We showed these friends of ours, Jeff and Dave, the game, and they had this awesome pitch for what they would do if they had a chance to work on a VR version. What if I could paint and then step into the painting and go into the world of the genies and paint in 3D all around me in VR?

We loved that so much that we actually managed to hire them and built a small team around them. They’re just around the corner from the studio. They’ve been working on that for about two years now.

GamesBeat: I saw that first last time, the VR version. It looked very different from this more story-based adventure.

Robillard: It’s funny. When you have to describe all the painting in the VR version, it gets a bit confusing. But when you’re painting on the walls in VR, that’s all our tech. As we’ve been building the brushes in the main game, that’s piped through, because we all use Unreal and we share all the tools and the tech. That’s all the same. Also, in the free painting, as you get all the free paint locations in VR, all the brushes you find in the main game are the ones you can use in the VR free paint. It’s connected like that. But stepping into your painting and into the genie world, that’s all the new parts they’ve built, all those 3D VR brushes.

Above: Ash has to deal with the negativity in the town of Denska.

Image Credit: Sony

GamesBeat: Are the environments very different than the town you’re in, or where you’re out in the fields?

Robillard: When you’re in the world of the genies? That’s when you’re in their work. If you remember, where you start the VR version, it’s the lighthouse. In the bit you just played, where you picked up the brush, that’s the location where the VR begins. Then you step into their world, essentially. That’s why it looks so different.

GamesBeat: Where did the original idea come from? It seems like the kind of pitch that you couldn’t communicate to somebody in words.

Robillard: You’re on the money. It literally didn’t begin as a traditional pitch. When we finished Entwined, we had a moment to spend some time concepting what we wanted to do next as a team. One of our favorite things about working in small teams is you can have a completely flat hierarchy. We had a chance to say to everyone on the team, “Everyone come up with game ideas for what we want to do next.”

The original idea for Concrete Genie came from Ashwin Kumar, who’s our VFX artist. That’s why he’s called Ash in the game. The first thing he did to communicate this idea was painting a picture of a small boy being bullied and painting these huge characters in a wall. He was imagining that they were sticking up for him. That was the very first beginning. It wasn’t a written document or anything. It was just that picture. This concept — the bullying and the idea of an artist using art to cope with some of the things happening to him — was there from the first moment.

GamesBeat: What influenced how it came to look and play?

Jeff Sangalli: After Ash generated that first piece of artwork, the whole art department started to build imagery around that concept. At the same time we had decided that we would use Unreal as our game engine. We started to use more complex lighting in our concept art, trying to come up with a style that would be more dramatic lighting-wise and have, hopefully, a better emotional connection because of that.

Then we started thinking about — we were all inspired by the lighting in stop motion. We wanted the world to feel handcrafted. We tried to break down what we were responding to about stop motion. That was another big inspiration for the 3D world. That inspired some of the stuff you had a chance to see today: the keyframe animation, the face illustrations. The 2D world was really inspired by children’s book illustration, and by urban artwork as well.

Above: Ash’s face is hand-drawn on a flat piece of paper, and then wrapped around a 3D object.

Image Credit: Sony

GamesBeat: Cleaning up the city, is that something like Flower, or other games that are out there?

Robillard: We love all of those games. The other thing that was connected to that, there was an environmental theme in some of the other concepts that we’d developed when we were looking at doing Concrete Genie originally. It was the moment when Jeff and I realized that that group, that team, has a natural instinct for expressing ideas that have a heart or a message or a meaning to them. Every single — we came up with seven or eight different game ideas, and Concrete Genie was one. But all of them had that in there, which was really interesting, that there was this intuition for that from this group of kids. Or I shouldn’t call them kids anymore.

GamesBeat: You mentioned you have a pretty young team, though.

Robillard: Yeah, yeah. Most of that team, this is their first job in the game industry. But there was an environmental theme in one of the other ideas. When we were developing the painting mechanics, of which we did several iterations — the version you just played is the third version of the painting mechanics.

GamesBeat: With the motion controls, being the center of it?

Robillard: That was a part of it. The other versions were interesting, but they didn’t go far enough in terms of expression. We had some basic versions of stenciling. There were ones where you threw paint splats on the wall. But it wasn’t until we did this version where you could much more carefully author exactly what you wanted and grow that into something beautiful that we made that connection for players, to feel connected to their artwork.

The other thing that came with that was the ability to paint anywhere. That only came in the last version. This idea that suddenly everyone’s version of the town would be unique and different was where we started connecting it to an environmental aspect as well. Using that ability to paint everywhere and bring some of it back to life came from that. It was a natural fit for the story and the level progression in the game.

GamesBeat: Painting is, by itself, fun for some people. But how to you make painting fun all the time in a game like this?

Robillard: Nobody’s phrased it like that, but that’s exactly what we’re trying to do, make it fun all the time for everyone. From the moment that we wanted to try to have art as a mechanic, the idea that we would try to make anybody feel like they could be an artist has definitely been our central gameplay fantasy. In terms of how it’s meant to feel, we just knew that if we could use the motion controllers to let anyone make marks and gestures in the wall, and then just get the amount of assistance that the game gives, just the right amount so that it doesn’t feel like it’s doing too much — if you do that, it doesn’t feel like your artwork anymore.

Getting that balance from the gameplay, agency versus assistance, getting it in just the right place, and then having a lot of sophisticated stuff under the hood that layers everything correctly for you, or tries to connect the elements you’re painting together — we draw ground around the things that need ground. There’s a lot of light touches in there that help compose the image for you, but never change it or add too much so you feel like it’s not your artwork.

Above: Concrete Genie has spectacular art.

Image Credit: Sony

GamesBeat: It’s hard to mess up your art. It reminds of Spider-Man that way, where it was hard to mess up swinging around.

Sangalli: We wanted to make sure you didn’t feel like you were being penalized for painting the way you want to paint. We’ve seen some kids that just want to paint rainbows all over the entire city. It looks really beautiful, actually. Who are we to judge their paintings?

Robillard: The game never judges you. That’s why we have the light strands, because that’s just to say, “We want you to paint here.” We don’t tell you what to paint or how to paint. We never judge it as good or bad.

Sangalli: We spent a lot of time tuning the city as a palette, so that the paintings really look dynamic. The glow we spent quite a bit of time on, to make sure that they feel like they’re really an allegory for Ash’s imagination. They should be as dynamic as what he would see through his own eyes.

GamesBeat: At some point, I don’t know which act, all of this switches into something ugly and dark. You kind of start with something ugly in the beginning, but you get to darker creatures and stuff like that. Why did you want to make that kind of transition.

Robillard: That transition, that twist at the end, was there from the very first prototype we ever did for this game, all those years ago. We’ve been working on it ever since then. I think what happened when we decided that we were going to try and tackle bullying as a theme — we researched it, and we knew we wanted the finale, the climax of the gameplay and the narrative, to be focused on the darkness, that negativity itself. We wanted a way to synthesize and personify the emotion as a thing that you could tackle and deal with.

We always wanted to get that in there as a way of tackling the negativity, and not about the kids. One thing you’ll see when the game comes out is we do show the backstories of those kids as well, to try to explain some of the reasons why they’ve turned into the kids that they’ve become. That twist is really about keeping it focused on the darkness itself.

GamesBeat: It reminds me of Sea of Solitude, if you’ve seen that.

Robillard: We’ve been following that, but it was released while we were in Europe last week. I can’t wait to play it.

GamesBeat: It’s a unique name. How did you come up with that?

Robillard: It was there from the beginning as well. Originally it was a working title, but we fell in love with it. It does still describe one of the key things in the game, which is the moment when Ash touches the walls and the genies come to life. That was where that came from. It just seemed like — it’s catchy, and we liked it. We became very attached to it.

Credit: Source link

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[velmaemyers88]

How a small team of artists conceived Sony’s Concrete Genie

Concrete Genie is a kind of psychological journey, played out on the canvas of a video game. A young artist named Ash escapes his troubles by painting spectacular living landscapes in his abandoned hometown of Denska.

But the neighborhood bullies menace him and ruin his work. Ash’s internal drama is externalized as he fights to restore color to the drab world of Denska.

This heartwarming parable comes from an unlikely game studio, Pixelopus, a small team that has been working for 4.5 years on the title at Sony’s studio in San Mateo, California. I played the action-adventure game, which comes out on October 8 for $30 on the PlayStation 4.

You use the motion controller to paint the world, interacting with dream-like genies who live in the concrete and wood of the walls of Denska. It is a unique art-driven video game where you can express your own creativity. You can also enjoy a virtual reality version with the PlayStation VR.

After the demo, we got a tour of Pixelopus’ offices at Sony’s U.S. game headquarters in San Mateo, California. I interviewed Pixelopus creative director Dominic Robillard and art director Jeff Sangalli about the making of the game. They told me that the idea was born in their art department, from a visual effects artist named Ashwin Kumar. They were tossing around ideas after they shipped Entwined, and they came up with this concept of a young boy artist being bullied. And Sony liked it so much that they let the team run with it, and now here we are.

Here’s an edited transcript of our interview.

Above: Concrete Genie creators Jeff Sangalli, art director, (left) and Dominic Robillard, creative director.

Image Credit: Dean Takahashi

GamesBeat: How long have you been working on this now?

Dominic Robillard: We started the very first concept in the beginning of 2015, so four and a half years. Just over four and a half years by the time it comes out.

GamesBeat: Is the VR element part of your work, or is that another team?

Robillard: That’s a different team. We invited some friends of ours to come in a couple of years ago and look at the game. We had wanted to do VR, but at the time we had to make that decision, there were only 12 people on the team. It was too much for us to take on along with everything else that’s in the game. We showed these friends of ours, Jeff and Dave, the game, and they had this awesome pitch for what they would do if they had a chance to work on a VR version. What if I could paint and then step into the painting and go into the world of the genies and paint in 3D all around me in VR?

We loved that so much that we actually managed to hire them and built a small team around them. They’re just around the corner from the studio. They’ve been working on that for about two years now.

GamesBeat: I saw that first last time, the VR version. It looked very different from this more story-based adventure.

Robillard: It’s funny. When you have to describe all the painting in the VR version, it gets a bit confusing. But when you’re painting on the walls in VR, that’s all our tech. As we’ve been building the brushes in the main game, that’s piped through, because we all use Unreal and we share all the tools and the tech. That’s all the same. Also, in the free painting, as you get all the free paint locations in VR, all the brushes you find in the main game are the ones you can use in the VR free paint. It’s connected like that. But stepping into your painting and into the genie world, that’s all the new parts they’ve built, all those 3D VR brushes.

Above: Ash has to deal with the negativity in the town of Denska.

Image Credit: Sony

GamesBeat: Are the environments very different than the town you’re in, or where you’re out in the fields?

Robillard: When you’re in the world of the genies? That’s when you’re in their work. If you remember, where you start the VR version, it’s the lighthouse. In the bit you just played, where you picked up the brush, that’s the location where the VR begins. Then you step into their world, essentially. That’s why it looks so different.

GamesBeat: Where did the original idea come from? It seems like the kind of pitch that you couldn’t communicate to somebody in words.

Robillard: You’re on the money. It literally didn’t begin as a traditional pitch. When we finished Entwined, we had a moment to spend some time concepting what we wanted to do next as a team. One of our favorite things about working in small teams is you can have a completely flat hierarchy. We had a chance to say to everyone on the team, “Everyone come up with game ideas for what we want to do next.”

The original idea for Concrete Genie came from Ashwin Kumar, who’s our VFX artist. That’s why he’s called Ash in the game. The first thing he did to communicate this idea was painting a picture of a small boy being bullied and painting these huge characters in a wall. He was imagining that they were sticking up for him. That was the very first beginning. It wasn’t a written document or anything. It was just that picture. This concept — the bullying and the idea of an artist using art to cope with some of the things happening to him — was there from the first moment.

GamesBeat: What influenced how it came to look and play?

Jeff Sangalli: After Ash generated that first piece of artwork, the whole art department started to build imagery around that concept. At the same time we had decided that we would use Unreal as our game engine. We started to use more complex lighting in our concept art, trying to come up with a style that would be more dramatic lighting-wise and have, hopefully, a better emotional connection because of that.

Then we started thinking about — we were all inspired by the lighting in stop motion. We wanted the world to feel handcrafted. We tried to break down what we were responding to about stop motion. That was another big inspiration for the 3D world. That inspired some of the stuff you had a chance to see today: the keyframe animation, the face illustrations. The 2D world was really inspired by children’s book illustration, and by urban artwork as well.

Above: Ash’s face is hand-drawn on a flat piece of paper, and then wrapped around a 3D object.

Image Credit: Sony

GamesBeat: Cleaning up the city, is that something like Flower, or other games that are out there?

Robillard: We love all of those games. The other thing that was connected to that, there was an environmental theme in some of the other concepts that we’d developed when we were looking at doing Concrete Genie originally. It was the moment when Jeff and I realized that that group, that team, has a natural instinct for expressing ideas that have a heart or a message or a meaning to them. Every single — we came up with seven or eight different game ideas, and Concrete Genie was one. But all of them had that in there, which was really interesting, that there was this intuition for that from this group of kids. Or I shouldn’t call them kids anymore.

GamesBeat: You mentioned you have a pretty young team, though.

Robillard: Yeah, yeah. Most of that team, this is their first job in the game industry. But there was an environmental theme in one of the other ideas. When we were developing the painting mechanics, of which we did several iterations — the version you just played is the third version of the painting mechanics.

GamesBeat: With the motion controls, being the center of it?

Robillard: That was a part of it. The other versions were interesting, but they didn’t go far enough in terms of expression. We had some basic versions of stenciling. There were ones where you threw paint splats on the wall. But it wasn’t until we did this version where you could much more carefully author exactly what you wanted and grow that into something beautiful that we made that connection for players, to feel connected to their artwork.

The other thing that came with that was the ability to paint anywhere. That only came in the last version. This idea that suddenly everyone’s version of the town would be unique and different was where we started connecting it to an environmental aspect as well. Using that ability to paint everywhere and bring some of it back to life came from that. It was a natural fit for the story and the level progression in the game.

GamesBeat: Painting is, by itself, fun for some people. But how to you make painting fun all the time in a game like this?

Robillard: Nobody’s phrased it like that, but that’s exactly what we’re trying to do, make it fun all the time for everyone. From the moment that we wanted to try to have art as a mechanic, the idea that we would try to make anybody feel like they could be an artist has definitely been our central gameplay fantasy. In terms of how it’s meant to feel, we just knew that if we could use the motion controllers to let anyone make marks and gestures in the wall, and then just get the amount of assistance that the game gives, just the right amount so that it doesn’t feel like it’s doing too much — if you do that, it doesn’t feel like your artwork anymore.

Getting that balance from the gameplay, agency versus assistance, getting it in just the right place, and then having a lot of sophisticated stuff under the hood that layers everything correctly for you, or tries to connect the elements you’re painting together — we draw ground around the things that need ground. There’s a lot of light touches in there that help compose the image for you, but never change it or add too much so you feel like it’s not your artwork.

Above: Concrete Genie has spectacular art.

Image Credit: Sony

GamesBeat: It’s hard to mess up your art. It reminds of Spider-Man that way, where it was hard to mess up swinging around.

Sangalli: We wanted to make sure you didn’t feel like you were being penalized for painting the way you want to paint. We’ve seen some kids that just want to paint rainbows all over the entire city. It looks really beautiful, actually. Who are we to judge their paintings?

Robillard: The game never judges you. That’s why we have the light strands, because that’s just to say, “We want you to paint here.” We don’t tell you what to paint or how to paint. We never judge it as good or bad.

Sangalli: We spent a lot of time tuning the city as a palette, so that the paintings really look dynamic. The glow we spent quite a bit of time on, to make sure that they feel like they’re really an allegory for Ash’s imagination. They should be as dynamic as what he would see through his own eyes.

GamesBeat: At some point, I don’t know which act, all of this switches into something ugly and dark. You kind of start with something ugly in the beginning, but you get to darker creatures and stuff like that. Why did you want to make that kind of transition.

Robillard: That transition, that twist at the end, was there from the very first prototype we ever did for this game, all those years ago. We’ve been working on it ever since then. I think what happened when we decided that we were going to try and tackle bullying as a theme — we researched it, and we knew we wanted the finale, the climax of the gameplay and the narrative, to be focused on the darkness, that negativity itself. We wanted a way to synthesize and personify the emotion as a thing that you could tackle and deal with.

We always wanted to get that in there as a way of tackling the negativity, and not about the kids. One thing you’ll see when the game comes out is we do show the backstories of those kids as well, to try to explain some of the reasons why they’ve turned into the kids that they’ve become. That twist is really about keeping it focused on the darkness itself.

GamesBeat: It reminds me of Sea of Solitude, if you’ve seen that.

Robillard: We’ve been following that, but it was released while we were in Europe last week. I can’t wait to play it.

GamesBeat: It’s a unique name. How did you come up with that?

Robillard: It was there from the beginning as well. Originally it was a working title, but we fell in love with it. It does still describe one of the key things in the game, which is the moment when Ash touches the walls and the genies come to life. That was where that came from. It just seemed like — it’s catchy, and we liked it. We became very attached to it.

Credit: Source link

The post How a small team of artists conceived Sony’s Concrete Genie appeared first on WeeklyReviewer.

from WeeklyReviewer https://weeklyreviewer.com/how-a-small-team-of-artists-conceived-sonys-concrete-genie/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=how-a-small-team-of-artists-conceived-sonys-concrete-genie from WeeklyReviewer https://weeklyreviewer.tumblr.com/post/186652375672

[weeklyreviewer]

How a small team of artists conceived Sony’s Concrete Genie

Concrete Genie is a kind of psychological journey, played out on the canvas of a video game. A young artist named Ash escapes his troubles by painting spectacular living landscapes in his abandoned hometown of Denska.

But the neighborhood bullies menace him and ruin his work. Ash’s internal drama is externalized as he fights to restore color to the drab world of Denska.

This heartwarming parable comes from an unlikely game studio, Pixelopus, a small team that has been working for 4.5 years on the title at Sony’s studio in San Mateo, California. I played the action-adventure game, which comes out on October 8 for $30 on the PlayStation 4.

You use the motion controller to paint the world, interacting with dream-like genies who live in the concrete and wood of the walls of Denska. It is a unique art-driven video game where you can express your own creativity. You can also enjoy a virtual reality version with the PlayStation VR.

After the demo, we got a tour of Pixelopus’ offices at Sony’s U.S. game headquarters in San Mateo, California. I interviewed Pixelopus creative director Dominic Robillard and art director Jeff Sangalli about the making of the game. They told me that the idea was born in their art department, from a visual effects artist named Ashwin Kumar. They were tossing around ideas after they shipped Entwined, and they came up with this concept of a young boy artist being bullied. And Sony liked it so much that they let the team run with it, and now here we are.

Here’s an edited transcript of our interview.

Above: Concrete Genie creators Jeff Sangalli, art director, (left) and Dominic Robillard, creative director.

Image Credit: Dean Takahashi

GamesBeat: How long have you been working on this now?

Dominic Robillard: We started the very first concept in the beginning of 2015, so four and a half years. Just over four and a half years by the time it comes out.

GamesBeat: Is the VR element part of your work, or is that another team?

Robillard: That’s a different team. We invited some friends of ours to come in a couple of years ago and look at the game. We had wanted to do VR, but at the time we had to make that decision, there were only 12 people on the team. It was too much for us to take on along with everything else that’s in the game. We showed these friends of ours, Jeff and Dave, the game, and they had this awesome pitch for what they would do if they had a chance to work on a VR version. What if I could paint and then step into the painting and go into the world of the genies and paint in 3D all around me in VR?

We loved that so much that we actually managed to hire them and built a small team around them. They’re just around the corner from the studio. They’ve been working on that for about two years now.

GamesBeat: I saw that first last time, the VR version. It looked very different from this more story-based adventure.

Robillard: It’s funny. When you have to describe all the painting in the VR version, it gets a bit confusing. But when you’re painting on the walls in VR, that’s all our tech. As we’ve been building the brushes in the main game, that’s piped through, because we all use Unreal and we share all the tools and the tech. That’s all the same. Also, in the free painting, as you get all the free paint locations in VR, all the brushes you find in the main game are the ones you can use in the VR free paint. It’s connected like that. But stepping into your painting and into the genie world, that’s all the new parts they’ve built, all those 3D VR brushes.

Above: Ash has to deal with the negativity in the town of Denska.

Image Credit: Sony

GamesBeat: Are the environments very different than the town you’re in, or where you’re out in the fields?

Robillard: When you’re in the world of the genies? That’s when you’re in their work. If you remember, where you start the VR version, it’s the lighthouse. In the bit you just played, where you picked up the brush, that’s the location where the VR begins. Then you step into their world, essentially. That’s why it looks so different.

GamesBeat: Where did the original idea come from? It seems like the kind of pitch that you couldn’t communicate to somebody in words.

Robillard: You’re on the money. It literally didn’t begin as a traditional pitch. When we finished Entwined, we had a moment to spend some time concepting what we wanted to do next as a team. One of our favorite things about working in small teams is you can have a completely flat hierarchy. We had a chance to say to everyone on the team, “Everyone come up with game ideas for what we want to do next.”

The original idea for Concrete Genie came from Ashwin Kumar, who’s our VFX artist. That’s why he’s called Ash in the game. The first thing he did to communicate this idea was painting a picture of a small boy being bullied and painting these huge characters in a wall. He was imagining that they were sticking up for him. That was the very first beginning. It wasn’t a written document or anything. It was just that picture. This concept — the bullying and the idea of an artist using art to cope with some of the things happening to him — was there from the first moment.

GamesBeat: What influenced how it came to look and play?

Jeff Sangalli: After Ash generated that first piece of artwork, the whole art department started to build imagery around that concept. At the same time we had decided that we would use Unreal as our game engine. We started to use more complex lighting in our concept art, trying to come up with a style that would be more dramatic lighting-wise and have, hopefully, a better emotional connection because of that.

Then we started thinking about — we were all inspired by the lighting in stop motion. We wanted the world to feel handcrafted. We tried to break down what we were responding to about stop motion. That was another big inspiration for the 3D world. That inspired some of the stuff you had a chance to see today: the keyframe animation, the face illustrations. The 2D world was really inspired by children’s book illustration, and by urban artwork as well.

Above: Ash’s face is hand-drawn on a flat piece of paper, and then wrapped around a 3D object.

Image Credit: Sony

GamesBeat: Cleaning up the city, is that something like Flower, or other games that are out there?

Robillard: We love all of those games. The other thing that was connected to that, there was an environmental theme in some of the other concepts that we’d developed when we were looking at doing Concrete Genie originally. It was the moment when Jeff and I realized that that group, that team, has a natural instinct for expressing ideas that have a heart or a message or a meaning to them. Every single — we came up with seven or eight different game ideas, and Concrete Genie was one. But all of them had that in there, which was really interesting, that there was this intuition for that from this group of kids. Or I shouldn’t call them kids anymore.

GamesBeat: You mentioned you have a pretty young team, though.

Robillard: Yeah, yeah. Most of that team, this is their first job in the game industry. But there was an environmental theme in one of the other ideas. When we were developing the painting mechanics, of which we did several iterations — the version you just played is the third version of the painting mechanics.

GamesBeat: With the motion controls, being the center of it?

Robillard: That was a part of it. The other versions were interesting, but they didn’t go far enough in terms of expression. We had some basic versions of stenciling. There were ones where you threw paint splats on the wall. But it wasn’t until we did this version where you could much more carefully author exactly what you wanted and grow that into something beautiful that we made that connection for players, to feel connected to their artwork.

The other thing that came with that was the ability to paint anywhere. That only came in the last version. This idea that suddenly everyone’s version of the town would be unique and different was where we started connecting it to an environmental aspect as well. Using that ability to paint everywhere and bring some of it back to life came from that. It was a natural fit for the story and the level progression in the game.

GamesBeat: Painting is, by itself, fun for some people. But how to you make painting fun all the time in a game like this?

Robillard: Nobody’s phrased it like that, but that’s exactly what we’re trying to do, make it fun all the time for everyone. From the moment that we wanted to try to have art as a mechanic, the idea that we would try to make anybody feel like they could be an artist has definitely been our central gameplay fantasy. In terms of how it’s meant to feel, we just knew that if we could use the motion controllers to let anyone make marks and gestures in the wall, and then just get the amount of assistance that the game gives, just the right amount so that it doesn’t feel like it’s doing too much — if you do that, it doesn’t feel like your artwork anymore.

Getting that balance from the gameplay, agency versus assistance, getting it in just the right place, and then having a lot of sophisticated stuff under the hood that layers everything correctly for you, or tries to connect the elements you’re painting together — we draw ground around the things that need ground. There’s a lot of light touches in there that help compose the image for you, but never change it or add too much so you feel like it’s not your artwork.

Above: Concrete Genie has spectacular art.

Image Credit: Sony

GamesBeat: It’s hard to mess up your art. It reminds of Spider-Man that way, where it was hard to mess up swinging around.

Sangalli: We wanted to make sure you didn’t feel like you were being penalized for painting the way you want to paint. We’ve seen some kids that just want to paint rainbows all over the entire city. It looks really beautiful, actually. Who are we to judge their paintings?

Robillard: The game never judges you. That’s why we have the light strands, because that’s just to say, “We want you to paint here.” We don’t tell you what to paint or how to paint. We never judge it as good or bad.

Sangalli: We spent a lot of time tuning the city as a palette, so that the paintings really look dynamic. The glow we spent quite a bit of time on, to make sure that they feel like they’re really an allegory for Ash’s imagination. They should be as dynamic as what he would see through his own eyes.

GamesBeat: At some point, I don’t know which act, all of this switches into something ugly and dark. You kind of start with something ugly in the beginning, but you get to darker creatures and stuff like that. Why did you want to make that kind of transition.

Robillard: That transition, that twist at the end, was there from the very first prototype we ever did for this game, all those years ago. We’ve been working on it ever since then. I think what happened when we decided that we were going to try and tackle bullying as a theme — we researched it, and we knew we wanted the finale, the climax of the gameplay and the narrative, to be focused on the darkness, that negativity itself. We wanted a way to synthesize and personify the emotion as a thing that you could tackle and deal with.

We always wanted to get that in there as a way of tackling the negativity, and not about the kids. One thing you’ll see when the game comes out is we do show the backstories of those kids as well, to try to explain some of the reasons why they’ve turned into the kids that they’ve become. That twist is really about keeping it focused on the darkness itself.

GamesBeat: It reminds me of Sea of Solitude, if you’ve seen that.

Robillard: We’ve been following that, but it was released while we were in Europe last week. I can’t wait to play it.

GamesBeat: It’s a unique name. How did you come up with that?

Robillard: It was there from the beginning as well. Originally it was a working title, but we fell in love with it. It does still describe one of the key things in the game, which is the moment when Ash touches the walls and the genies come to life. That was where that came from. It just seemed like — it’s catchy, and we liked it. We became very attached to it.

Credit: Source link

The post How a small team of artists conceived Sony’s Concrete Genie appeared first on WeeklyReviewer.

from WeeklyReviewer https://weeklyreviewer.com/how-a-small-team-of-artists-conceived-sonys-concrete-genie/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=how-a-small-team-of-artists-conceived-sonys-concrete-genie