FINISHED - Rule

Woo! done. Here is my experimental animation made completely in Jason Rohrer's Sleep is Death.



youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Czf4nvI-jTQ

Mid Point Update

I think I'm about 60% of the the through now. I've got 3 more full days I can work on it before hand in, so it's going to be pretty intense. Things are speeding up though, as the 2nd half of all the shots are adaptations of previous ones, which is a relief!
Here's one!



This weekend I'll tackle music and "animation". Due to coming up with this technique so late in the game I'm handing mine in Monday rather than the due date Friday... While awesome this means that all my fellow animation students are going drinking Friday as a little hand in ritual, while I will be slaving away in the lab.
I've been listening to This American Life podcasts while I work, it's been great!
Tomorrow I am going to try recording the creation of a scene, then I can create a time lapse video so you can see how tedious it can be for such a simple scene.

logistical issues

I have spent some time now messing around with the editors seeing what kind of results I can get, I have discovered there are a few logistical complications I have to deal with.
For starters, it's going to be a challenge getting the footage I need at 1024 x 768 resolution, due to the nature of the game and interface. I also need to figure out a good system for capturing the footage, because currently the images I do capture are strangely dark. This might be as simple as tweaking the image settings in the final edit to make it more vibrant.

To capture the footage I think I'll need to do the following:
Run the game at a really high resolution on a computer that can support that, then capture the non widescreen footage of the game and interface and crop the footage just around a widescreen portion of the game window, cutting off some of the image. This means that when I create my sets I have to be aware of that cut off and mentally frame it with that in mind.
It's also going to be interesting creating the images themselves, as it isn't as simple as just drawing it in. Just to create a character you have to do it on multiple layers and combine them.

Here are some initial character style tests.

(I only made the characters)

This guy is made up of 7 elements. Head, chest, legs, shoes and 2 arms. You have to create these parts separately, so in a different window from the other parts. It's pretty cool though, because it means you can customise and easily recycle character pieces.

I get that I could get this result from an animation package (and probably more easily), but I enjoy the challenge of adapting software beyond it's initial intention. Also it's a neat way to get a video noticed!

How to do it

Ok! All systems go with this new animation, I have one week to do this thing and I'm generally excited to give it a shot.

As of now this is how I plan on creating it:
The animation style is going to be SUPER limited, if any movement at all. I will do some experimentation if I can get some actual animated character movement in, but at the moment it might be as simple as static shots.

So how can I make an animation using the indy game Sleep is Death? Within it I can:

• Create stylised pixel characters and backgrounds
  
• Music with a very simple editor
  
• Some degree of character movement and text

I will create sprite sets and characters that I can arrange shots and scenes with. The convenience is I can easily reuse and recycle them, like lego.
Here is a shot of the editor. I plan to use it to make much more visually interesting scenes than this...


It will probably make more sense when I start showing some of experimentation.
I've got a narrative idea, which is partly inspired by Jason Rohrer's Passage (he is also the creator of Sleep is death!) This is a play through of it:


And SuperBrother's Design Reboot HD (I'm a huge fan of his pixel style)


It will be a simple story chronicling the life and death of a King. I've always been interested in the concept of a nobody becoming King (ala Conan) and the weight of it. The actual themes present will be of attempting to achieve something in your life time, and ultimately how the overriding factor and importance (even being king) is living and dying. Here is a drawing of mine on the very subject! Click it for full resolution.


So imagine this but in an exciting stylized pixel form!

I always do this

So I was just watching a little tutorial video on using these graphic editors within this really neat little indy game called Sleep is Death by Jason Rohrer. It's basically a simple online interactive multiplayer story tool. What made my brain spasm was this tutorial on one of the graphical editors within the program.



I am a big pixel art fan. Last year I made a pixel art music video for the band The Model School|.

Check it out HERE! (Stupid thing can't be made small enough to fit into this tiny blog)

And I got thinking about experimental animation. It's user experimentation and medium experimentation. I must say I have been experimenting with this stop motion stuff, more as just an exercise in new mediums, but it wouldn't be experimental for the viewer. SO. What if I made a really experimental animation, using all the graphic editors within Sleep is Death? Captured digitally, then edited into an animated narrative? That would be experimental... It would be like a crazy retro pixel Machinima film. OK! I'm going to mull this over today. But I think it would be a really neat thing. Heck. I'm a digital baby. Who reads the paper anyway?