Look and Feel of our 2-D video game

Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet is a great example of how we could take the look of Sci-Fi and Tadahiro Uesugi and make a video game. Flat 2D shapes, similar colors and strong paper cut out looking shapes.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V_RWBGhebrI&feature=fvsr

FYI.

I talked to Bobby after class asking about the assignment and he doesn't want us to do the 'each person assigned to something specific' thing. He just wants us to each do 10 concepts similar to what we did in class of anything we want, about as finished as he showed us. Environments, characters, you name it.

Astro Boy 2009 Movie Series

Hello Team 3! Just want to bring it up again. If you ever have an hour and half of free time, think about watching Astro Boy the 2009 movie series. Not only do I think it is a good movie, but I think we can also use it as a reference material for inspiration. The story line and the art work is somewhat similar to what we are doing. Anthony also mentioned that the artist style from Astro Boy may be useful to us on last Saturday's live stream. Astro Boy is on Netflix if you have an account, and I'm sure you can find it somewhere online for free if you know what I mean ;P Or if you ever want to come over to do work and watch it at my place, that is more than fine with me (: Alright, I'm looking forward to seeing what everyone is coming up with on the character concepts. GOOD LUCK AND GOD SPEED!

PinkOwl

MallariGeorge_Team3_References

Cameron Stradling: Retro Future Reference

Some other reference and terms to look up: Retro Scifi, Retro Future, Rocketeer, Sky Captain, Captain America, Iron Giant, War of the Worlds, Jetsons, Shorpy.com, Vincent Di Fate, Frank Kelly Freas, Forbidden Planet, Plan 9 from Outer Space, This Island Earth, Raygun Gothic, Streamline Modern, Cyberpunk, Metropolis, Flash Gordon, Buck Rogers, Dr. Grordborts, Limbo, http://retrofuture.soup.io/, Retropolis, World On A Wire, Retronaut, Starcrash

Ideas for Plot!

• ·         The era is World War II – during the height of the war.
• ·         Government hosted technology to simulate war – to train soldiers in warfare. Or could be primitive technology to infiltrate the enemies dreams – create an alternate reality – think Inception, but with war.
• ·         Possibly illegal technology – the designers of this simulation could be a conglomerate of aunts and uncles of the same family – they found a cheap and easy way to test it – on their own niece/nephew.
• ·         Idea: the technology gained self-awareness, possibly has an addictive effect – so that the person wants to keep going back to the alternate reality.
• ·         Another idea: the AI has taken form of several ‘aunt’s’ or ‘uncles’, scattered throughout the area. They each live in their own domains – they need to be stopped in order for the niece / nephew to be freed. Think maybe Wizard of Oz; this is basically the character’s mind and memories, this is their mind’s interpretation of their aunts and uncles.
• Maybe the two uncles who are in it for money - they want to sell this technology instead of using it for warfare - keep people hooked on this alternate reality - but there's a bit of an argument in the conglomerate of aunts and uncles - so this is more for themselves.

What do you guys think? I'm a firm believer that you need a stable plot in order to graft things around; it's fun to go out and explore our own ideas, but even for the concept, we need a basis for what these characters, in their rawest form, are. When George Lucas wanted a main villain for Star Wars III, he basically said "robot looking villain, he's evil, yada yada yada!". 

Team No Name - Story / Outline

Team 3 Story:
During WW2 the player was involved in military experiments where their consciousness is downloaded into android computer brains -but- there was a problem. The players brain fought the computer download and the player went into a coma and is being kept alive on life support. While inside his head he must find his way to the "money" which is a symbol for his sanity. If he loses this quest his consciousness will be lost inside the computer for ever.

Project: 2D Side scroller / Flash Style video game
Art Style: Flat 2-D shapes and Pattern (as in Tadahiro)
Design Motifs: "Retro" Sci-Fi and Surrealism

Creatures: Dogs with bird heads, characters: human bodies with computer screen heads, etc., etc.

Ricky's refs for Butcher Mr. Weiss

Song Lyrics

Hey guys I'm gonna post the song lyrics on here just so we have it on hand. I also broke it up into paragraphs according to the different characters for clarity.

Cemetery Polka - Tom Waits

Uncle Vernon Uncle Vernon Independent as a Hog on ice He's a big shot down there At the slaughterhouse He plays accordion For Mr. Weiss

Uncle Biltmore and Uncle William Made a Million during World War II But they're tightwads And they're Cheap skates
And they'll never give a dime to you

Auntie Mame Has gone Insane She lives in The doorway of an old hotel And the Radio's playing opera and All she ever says Is go to Hell.

Uncle Violet Flew as pilot He said there Ain't no pretty Girls in France Now he runs a Tiny little Bookie joint they say He never Keeps it in his pants

 Uncle Bill Will never leave a will And the tumor is as Big as an egg He has a mistress She's a Puerto Rican And I heard she has A wooden leg.

Uncle Phil Can't live without his pills He has emphysema and He's almost blind And we must find out Where the money is Get it now Before he loses his mind.


-Cameron

Ricky's Idea?

Sorry for the late post, but I've been slowly polishing up my story while it was still fresh in my head, so I am just going to let it pour out.

Our themes are Surreal, Sci-fi, and Tadahiro Uesugi

I envisioned our song like a "game", kinda set in the mood similarly to Alice Returns, those dark kinda moody ones.

It's also like a hack-and-slash, so our main character, our niece/nephew goes through stages, fights minions, and the characters described in the song such as the Uncles are bosses.

Basically the niece/nephew wants to know what happened to his parents, but his relatives won't tell him, so he has to "boss battle" them first to get the pieces of info from each relative and then piece them together to figure out what happened to his/her parents.

For our characters, we can use sci-fi inspired fusions, for example, I am concepting my character, Mr. Weiss(the butcher) as a general stereotypical "plump but sturdy" butcher, with a cyborg right arm (Treasure Planet inspired).

Then I needed to incorporate the surrealism, so I tried squeezing that into the slaughterhouse alongside with the sci-fi theme, ex: surreal creatures from the meet freezer, etc.

Lastly, I kinda thought for the tadahiro thingy majiggy, we can use the color schemes, which would basically harmonize the entire story's theme, so all 3 themes can be smoothly incorporated together synonomously.

Cameron Stradling: Reference Material

Hey guys. I already posted this on the class blog but I'll repost it here. It looks like some of us collected the same reference images so I guess that means we have a similar thing in mind.

Some stuff

These are my references. Nina I really like your idea. I actually envisioned your idea in the style of Tim Burton's 9 in the form of an fps. Not your typical looking game.

My idea was a full-scale city like new york, set in the 1950's post WWII. The streets are desolate and empty with people being controlled by a society of rulers that live in the sky in floating mini city/airships. Rich families live in the skies but the new generation are unaware of the situation. The ground is off limits. Main character is a younger male, around 18 years who was born into a family living in the skies. He takes a ship and is on his way to send a message to someone (details need to be tweaked or inserted) "he reads about the rebels in the message".

His ship crashes down into the city on the ground. Streets are empty. A factory has bright lights emanating from inside. People are working. They have little virus robot things in chipped in their brains. 

Young Male sees a robot-like creature watching over the people. Male kills it (details). People are ordered to chase after the male. Rebels come in from below and kill them all. The people are unrepairable because the robotic manipulation of the mind erases everything so the rebels have no choice but to kill them. Young Male joins the rebels and fights the sky society.

I don't know lol thats just a quick idea. 

Nina Modaffari Reference (once more!)

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Story wise, I was debating how we could go sci-fi, but still fit in the elements of the song that allude to an earlier period of time (two uncles were rich from WWII, etc.). Either we can go the Matrix-y route and say that maybe during WWII, Armistice Day or whatever,  a sentient group of machines trapped humanity in an alternate state where they experience the same day every day yada yada. Your character breaks free, has to proceed to kill the U.N.C.L.E.S and A.U.N.T.S (automated unified networking technology or some funky' little anagram of some sort) in order to free everyone else. This is just a quick rough idea I had, I'm sure that you guys may have something a bit better. I'm thinking FPS, kinda along the same routes as Mass Effect. What do you guys think?

This is a test for Group 3's blog! Let's get crackin'!