Interactive Narrative - Character Design

The design of the main character is an important part of this project, as it should look good and appeal to the user. However, as the character will appear throughout the narrative I feel that simplicity will be the key to it's design, as this will make it easier to draw repeatedly if necessary. It will also help when it comes to animating the character as a complicated design would result in complicated animation.

First of all I decided to just start sketching out a few random designs for different cats using a graphics tablet. I love the way you can set the pencil mode to smooth the lines you draw in Flash, it just makes everything look a lot more clean and crisp.


Of course, these ideas are really just doodles, I wouldn't have the character actually looking like any of these in my final project.

I decided to try and develop the design of the cat drawn in orange, as this next image shows.
I like this last development of the kitty, he looks a lot sharper and more detailed, while still retaining the simplicity that I was going for. Here he is, full sized!
I need to add in some shading to the final version, but other than that this is the final design for Ry the cat as he will appear in his first adventure.

Pixilation - First Attempts

Over the last few weeks we've had some seminar sessions in which we've been creating and editing our own pixilation animations. Here I have three of my own attempts, though they are very short and hopefully my finished product will be a lot better.







The quality of these videos is pretty bad, they look so pixelated you can hardly tell whats going on. But nevermind, like I said, these are just first attempts. My finished animation will hopefully be better, and should be on here within the next couple of days.

Pixilation Stuff

I've been looking at a lot of pixilation animations since we started our small project on the subject for the narratives module we're doing. Maybe it's about time I actually put something about it here!

I love the stop-motion shorts created by PES. They have a lot of simple ideas but are executed in a really clever way. Western Spaghetti is a good example of this, using lots of really simple techniques to create something quite brilliant. The way they use everyday objects to represent something else works really well, such as the colourful pick-up sticks as a substitute for spaghetti, which then turn into elastic bands as the pasta is 'cooked'. Another little thing in this animation that's pretty nifty is the candy corn used as fire on the hob, I find it really visually pleasing. The animation titled Roof Sex is an amusing little short showing the secret sex lives of two armchairs. It's pretty clever in the way the chairs are shown to be performing different sexual acts and positions. The Human Skateboard is a pixilation animation showing a guy riding through the streets using another guy as a skateboard. Though I imagine it may have been pretty time-consuming to shoot this film, overall it looks pretty simple, though still effective.

Another interesting pixilation animation I have found is this piece titled Mirage. It is pretty simple, featuring people dancing in a natural setting. Although it is a simple piece of animation it has a somewhat surreal feel to it, created by some of the editing and effects used as well as the movements of the dancers.