Dream Team

During my years of study in university, one question I've been asked on multiple occasions by friends, acquaintances and art enthusiasts alike was; "What is the best part of uni do you reckon". My usually enthusiastic response is that you meet a lot of new people along the way.

Not just the kind of friends you have in high-school where you end up banding together with certain people purely cause your the odd balls of a popularity-driven society but because you actually are compatible with them as a person with similar enough interests.

As the quote goes; "When spiders unite they can tie down a lion". As this project is possibly my lion, I've decided to reach out and gather some of my more trusted friends and acquaintances to help me work through and polish this assignment to as high quality as a bunch of student might be able to get it. Although the list of my willing team members is somewhat unfinished, I think we have enormous potential going forward as a group.

I have a unofficial list of my potential team members currently but I will be remaking it to look more legitimate in the near future.

Informal list of my team members

Horror aspect brainstorming

I want to explore both sides of horror psychological and physical in order to try and figure out what element will likely be more suitable for my potential game. Currently I think steering my direction towards to a more fictional spectrum where you as the player and my character grapple with more than just normal people and soldiers.

So far I've been looking more of the happenings of that time to see what I can put in there and under those extreme (slightly exaggerated) scenarios and get away with it. 

Mutated enemies and their origins?

During my studies, I have actually come across something incredibly disturbing yet attention grabbing. During the 1930s Japan has been dabbling with chemical warfare and it seems although they never got as far as the use on terms of destructive capabilities it was the matter of their test subjects that was disturbing. I read from several sites that apparently Imperial Japan used many P.O.W and civilians inside occupied zones as test subjects as the Nazis did.

Moving away from the more grueling and gory side as I don't wish to show that in my assignment. it kind of hit me. Why don't I make a fictional bio weapon project that gives birth to new horrors in my game that involves the mutation or a development of anomaly on victims that twist them and turn them into something dangerous. 

Last Of Us actually has done something like what I have in my head already and they draw from a natural fungus/ virus called 'Ophiocordyceps unilateralis' which latches onto insects, drastically affecting their behavior which leads to their eventual deaths in an ideal area for the fungus to sprout and grow. And their main statement behind this thought was "what if this insect-based parasite moved to humans". And I found this whole concept incredibly gripping and this decided to explore through this idea more as well except its origin is not from a nature based fungus but made in a lab engineered to affect humans.

Creatures of myth and legend?

Another idea I've been tackling with is whether if I should move away from that whole side as it will be tricky to not dive into sensitive territory if I should venture more into the fantasy alternative which was the monsters and creatures of Korean myth and legend. It has a lot of potential just that it will be hard to see another artists' interpretation of those creatures as I haven't seen many popular examples.

If I don't base the examples off Korean culture one decent example of a semi-realistic but fantasy based world would be the CD Projekt red's 'Witcher' franchise where throughout the three games, you can repeatedly have run-ins and witness the Nordic mythical creatures. 

The 'Infected' from the Last Of Us

Art of a lab from the game 'Call Of Duty'

Korean's Haechi a creature typically associated as being a protector against ill omen

As I'm currently still review and discussing possible directions with others, I will have to see which is the best course of action to take.

Character Brainstorming

I've been getting started on doing a little research on regards to character design and how my character might be looking age wise and aesthetically.

Luckily for me, I don't have to look very far as there's one prime source of what Koreans may have looked like and that source is kdrama. They have an extensive network of hundreds of drama series that involve being placed in old or ancient Korea whether it be fictional or based on true events, Koreans love to show themselves off it seems. So I will likely be scrolling through some of these dramas this year to get a better likeness of the fashion/ design sense.

There is a movie a chanced upon called 'A girl at my door' directed by July Jung. About a cop who is stationed in a rural country side town and she regularly interacts with an abused young lady. and it struck me. THIS IS THE CHARACTER. As soon as I saw the thumbnail of the young girl, I just about popped from my chair at the simple accuracy of what I had been thinking in my head. The actress, Kim Sae-ron is aged 17 now but she was cast as the character from that movie whilst she was 14 which checks in perfectly for the age level of my character I had been imagining perfectly.

She had the perfect amount of innocence in her appearance but at the same time, it wasn't the sweat and pure innocence typical for a girl her age. There was something a little darker and she looks quite intense. Perfect mixture in my opinion.

As for the costume sense, I will need to design her in a more traditional neat and tidy Korean garb as well as a makeshift more rugged look for when she is outside and after she has escaped her kidnappers.

Kdramas I will be focusing on for the aesthetics will be ones like Chuno that strongly show the older more traditional side of korea as well as ones like 'The pirates' where the woman warrior in that show embodies the kind of look I wanted my character to have.

As far as movies of the period I have in mind are ones such as 'The last princess' which perfectly encloses what everything looked like in that time period during imperial Japanese rule.

I want my character to be more innocent, and victimized in her origin but more harder and colder in later after she witnesses and experiences so much cruelty outside the walls of her small village.

Kim Sae-ron in 'A girl at my door'

This is the actress I saw and thought would be good to use a visual ref to base off for my character.

Lee Da-hae in 'Chuno'

This is how I would imagine she would start out. Innocent and unaware living in a village with her dad and younger sibling.

Son Ye-Jin in 'The pirates'

This is how I picture her to be when you are playing as her except she would be carrying more accessories befitting in 1935 time period for example, belts with pouches of ammunition from an Imperial soldier and a rifle.

First ever draft for my character done by my lead storyboard artist; Alexandra Mae Dela Cruz

A quick digital drawing my lead concept artist came up with along the reference lines I gave her.

Idea summarizing

Brainstorming session

There's no denying it, this is a pretty sizable project. Seeing as I haven't actually put my thoughts to words in this blog, I thought it would be a good idea to just start.

Logline: In a war-torn country, an innocent village girl, forcibly ripped from her family by her oppressors, eludes captivity and fights her way back home in a perilous trek across the broken nation.

Setting: My game/ idea takes place in world war 2 where Korea was forcibly occupied by the Imperial Japanese forces.

A little history of the influence behind my story setting: During World war 2, Imperial Japan violently expanded it's territory taking over many countries in the asia-pacific regions. And within those countries, unprecedented cases of acts against humanity were taking place as soldiers murdered, raped and stole at will. One famously documented crime was the one against women as many as many as 200,000 women were forced into sexual slavery in rape facilities all throughout asia.

What typically happened was upon capturing a city, many women were whisked off in truck loads and apart from that even after establishing laws and a local government, the Imperials would systematically go around; neighborhood to neighborhood forcibly removing daughters and young mothers from their homes to be sent to 'comfort' stations all throughout Japanese occupied territories. A movie released lately to show a typical scenario of all this happening is 'SPIRITS HOMECOMING' directed by Jo Jung Rae, to show respects to the Korean comfort women (whom of 40 are still alive today all aged well over 80).

Important notice: All of this historical backing is incredibly intense and I see it as quite a sensitive topic for many. Hence I want to emphasize the importance that I am not basing this on those events but merely being influenced by them. I don't wish to impeach any racist or sexist topics in my project and simply want to show character progression in an un-stereotypical environment.

Core elements:
           -Inspired off the hugely popular game, 'THE LAST OF US' My character is meant to be a survivor in a torn down, post-apocalyptic environment.
           -Horror elements; Currently unsure as to whether I would like it to be just psychological or if i want to actually include horror with a psychical anomaly.
           -Character development. I need to show her when she has everything and when she has nothing to draw in the audience's sympathy.

What I picture as the end product: 

-I just imagine her to be in an environment where she can interact with several environment objects (such as crafting an item) accompanied with a line of dialogue.

- She needs to be able to preform actions such as jumping, idle and attack animations.

- when she enters an important space, I want her to fight an enemy. (can be a mutated human or Japanese soldier)

- When she enters a certain area, I want a cut-scene to kick in showing her initially being taken from her home.

Example of key artist is Rodrigo A. Branco who has done something similar to what I would like to achieve.


 

(Last of Us art works)

Maya modelling exercises

Modelling some hard surface models last week for practice.

Artist Models

                                             Artist Models 
      (indefinite as I may be adding more to this list as time goes on)

Rodrigo A. Branco: A freelance artist working in misc projects as time goes on. I think he's been 3d modelling since 2010 according to his art station. I really love how detailed his work is. On the big overall picture, he's a little bit too over too the realism spectrum but I will definitely be taking a lot of advice from his works.



Travis Davids: A South African freelance artist who's been working in the graphic and entertainment industry since 2009. Now this guy is a definite team player as I always see him putting up really awesome tutorials so I will be hitting him up on some advice further down the line. His work is similar to Rodrigo's on the term that it leans in a little towards the realism side of things but very beautiful.



Marc Brunet: Is a Veteran Concept/ 3D artist who worked in Blizzard for many years prior to founding his own youtube channel as: Cubebrush. From here he steadily releases vids and tips on everything from being a freelancer to being a company artist. Love his work and will be purchasing his in depth 3d tutorial soon. His work unlike the other two I have posted, has an incredibly stylized approach to designs and that's all good but a tad far too stylized for my personal taste. But absolutely admire his ethic.

Stroke of brilliance

An interesting new proposal was brought to me by my girlfriend who suggested some rather fascinating ideas. Instead of going towards the stereo typical genre of the post apocalyptic american west that I was initially tailoring towards, she asked why not aim it towards your own culture.

That actually got me thinking as I don't think I've seen much if any material that covers old war-torn korea entailing the days during/ straight after the hostile Japanese takeover. There's a lot of positive aspects to this idea as it could really draw in people's attention and draw their interest but unlike the usual western references that i usually draw from(which are in abundance) I would have to go to different sources to design my characters and their world.

The reason why this idea excites me is that theres so much potential in the design capabilities of Korea during the 1900s (which was during the Imperial Japanese rule) as unlike the modern Korea most people associate my country with today, back then, it was incredibly economically underdeveloped. So much so that many were still wearing similar appearing garbs that ancient koreans had worn. Many houses were still constructed out of mud and many of our villages looked rather unchanged from the days of old. 

I'm still unclear how much I'd be able to develop in order to show/ include in my final portfolio but I actually think it's worth a shot. 

Research

Annie: Origins

A new and really interesting style of animation I saw today created by Riot games for their league of legends champion; Annie. the techniques used for it are these flat 3d models with painterly-like textures. It had cell shading added on top of it as well as visual effects to enhance the appearance of the animation. The result was a unique kind of animation I haven't seen elsewhere.

All rights of these animations and such belong to Riot games as well as the respective animators and creators.