Really enjoyed the season's opening of Walking Dead. Kinda makes me long for a zombie RPG a la mode de Bioware (or comparable/better ludonarrative-centric developer?) or, you know, what Dead Island should have been.
Though for all its awesome production value, strong cinematic style, and general nerd-bait appeal, there are a couple things that already bummed me out about WD:
- Rick. Specifically, the words he says. His opening monologue and the scene toward the end are eye-rollingly melodramatic. I like him enough as a character; father, unknowing husband to an adulterous wife, mostly-undisputed leader of the survivors—it's just that, compared to most of the other characters, a lot of his lines seem so unbelievable and soap operatic.
- Calling zombies "walkers." Just ... stop. Every time someone says "walkers," I expect a whip-pan to a horde of roundhouse-kicking Chuck Norrises. No one watching the show is going to get confused by the Zed word, and "walkers" just sounds so unnatural and corny.
- I could —and hope to be—wrong about this, but the last few scenes of S2E1 made me a bit suspicious that we're in for a "crazy religious people" saga. I'll hold out for next week's episode before getting too negative, but I'd consider it a triumph for the zombie/horror subgenre if we could leave out the community of over-the-top, KJV-spewing nutjobs who take in the survivors only to eventually blame them for bringing down "the wrath of God" on the world, and then try to kill them/kick them out. This tired trope is a facepalm circus, and actually a WAY less interesting side-plot than exploring how an actual, Biblical-literate Christian (or person of any faith for that matter) would act in a zombie-occupied world.
I've got high hopes for this season, and if I seem overly-nit-picky it's only because I like the show so much. I often find myself going back and watching certain shots because of their cool deep-space compositions or clever framing. And despite being something of a desensitized zombie media expert, every walker encounter makes me delightfully tense, and most of the character interactions seem fresh and genuine enough. The fact that the show is ABOUT the survivors and not just quip-laden, silly zombicide is really enough to get me excited about it. There's just enough drama to make the action exciting, and just enough gore to make the threat more threatening without feeling gratuitous. Bring on episode 2!
Might be a bit too soon to be thinking this cold, but I've been re-reading Emily Carroll's comics lately and find their beautiful, eerie, fairy tale quality extremely inspiring. I seriously can't describe the feeling of being spirited away I get when reading her stories. They're the kinds of enchanting tales one would expect to hear from an ancient, wandering storyteller; or find in an old diary, hidden in a forgotten cabin in the middle of a forest. If you haven't seen them before, check out Emily's web-oriented comics: http://www.emcarroll.com/comic
--
Got to play with a friend's Cintiq for the first time yesterday. I knew I wanted one, but now I basically MUST HAVE one. I love my Intuos3 tablet, but even with its generous size (12 x 9in) and my many years experience using a tablet to draw on, I have very little confidence in my line work and it turns any simple drawing into hours of perfectionist tedium, and I lose steam fairly quickly. It'll be a while down the road before I can afford one, but it's sure to be a fine day to look forward to.
Sketchbook Pro keeps proving how swell it is for drawing. There are, of course, some things it lacks that I'm used to with Photoshop, but overall, it just feels a lot more natural. Hoping to crank out at least one nice drawing once per week. That is, if I can ever finish Deus Ex: Human Revolution and have free time again.
Been doing more drawing on actual paper recently, so I haven't used the WACOM much for a couple months. After getting used to the control I have over a pencil on paper, it was tough going back to the tablet for any kind of decent line work beyond a rough sketch. Tablets have been part of my drawing arsenal for at least half a decade, but for some reason I don't feel like I have any more control, which is frustrating.
Anyway, I'm pleased with how this simple thing turned out, though it was difficult trying to make her not look like Rapunzel because my Art of Tangled book is sitting right on my desk.
Last week, the trailer for Dead Island hit the Internet and crashed like a tsunami on the unsuspecting shores of the gaming community. It presented a violent, emotionally charged, Memento-esque sequence leading up to, and simultaneously revealing the life, death, un-life, and re-death of a young girl on vacation with her family on an island during a sudden zombie outbreak.
At first watch, the sloppy mocap (all the more exaggerated by the slow-motion and reverse time lapse) was so distracting, that any significant emotional draw was almost lost on me. I know it sounds like a crude, elitist comment considering the impressive technical spectacle that is the trailer, but it's true. It was all I could see and it saddens me that even the tiniest bit of love from an animator was forgone in favor of "cheaper" performance capture and wiggly, wooden-faced humans that look more dead than the zombies they're fighting.
Trying to be less of a douche, I watched it again, ignoring the technical animation glitches. In short, it is really a great little piece of game cinema with a genuinely affecting tragic story, and some pretty intense, visceral action. The forward-backward reveal of a horrific tragedy the audience knows it can't escape is very clever, and the sorrowful score beautifully punctuates the theme of inevitability and loss. By the end, as the backward and forward timelines meet, and daughter and father reach out to each other hopelessly as time pulls them apart, it's hard to remember that this, in fact, a trailer for a video game. And a great deal harder to remain untouched.
This trailer has already gotten tremendous praise and (as of this post) nearly 3,000,000 views less than a week after being posted. I've seen a lot of people saying it could be the best game trailer ever made, and I'll say that if the game delivers anywhere near the emotional impact or heart-punching drama as hinted by this video, it could be a massive leap in terms of games as a more serious and meaningful form of entertainment. But that's the problem ... we all know it won't be.
Even though the games market is anything but lacking in terms of zombie-related titles, I would argue there is a great deal of ground left unexplored in the genre, as well as games as a whole, and I'll give a couple examples:
How about a zombie game not about killing zombies?
What if there was a game in which zombies exist, but blowing them up is not the objective? What if the zombie threat was ultimately inescapable, so rather than the focus being on the killing, it's your (the player's) job to find resources for a small colony of survivors by being using stealth and athleticism to avoid being caught/eaten by the roaming hordes?
Maybe it's your job to explore potential safe zones for your group of survivors, and after gathering enough resources and making sure the area is free of fatal security flaws, escorting your group to the next area?
The emotional cost of surviving.
I imagine being a survivor of a zombie apocalypse would be a hopeless, terrifying ordeal with loss and guilt being two of the most prominent personal issues one must face (aside from the zombies). If you are with a group, there is no doubt most--if not all--of you will have had to end the lives of several former people. Perhaps even close friends, family, women, and children alike. I've (thankfully) yet to play a game that required me to put a bullet through a child, zombie or living. Quite honestly, I don't know if I could. But how much more of an emotional impact would it have on an audience if that were (at least, apparently) the only option?
What happens when we build relationships with the other characters in our survivor group only to be confronted with a choice later in game as to who you must choose to save when something goes wrong? If there is an indefinite amount of time before one turns into a zombie after a bite, how would you deal with your friend if it happens to them? Do you end their life immediately, forfeiting another member of the team and sparing everyone a potential major liability, or do you keep them with you, perhaps in hope of finding a cure in time and risk putting your team in danger until you find medicine or the bitten comrade finally turns on you?
It just seems like these scenarios, so familiar to apocalyptic zombie culture, couldn't be more perfectly suited for interactive media, and yet they're easily the least-explored aspects of zombie games.
--
So here's where I'm a bit put off by Dead Island and its trailer. It's hinting at a very human story dealing with powerful emotions and dark subject matter, rarely dealt with in video games, especially through the gameplay itself. However, a brief look at the actual game from various Internet sources clearly illustrates that Dead Island is a zombie game about killing a lot of zombies. And doing so in extravagantly violent, in-your-face ways. The Wikipedia article mentions RPG elements such as experience, skill trees, stamina bars, and upgradeable weapons...(?)
I suppose there's no way I can make a solid prediction until we get more information, gameplay footage, or perhaps I play it for myself. But the RPG elements seem to indicate to me that the majority of the game is going to be just bashing, chopping, slashing, pounding, and decapitating zombies, since combat seems to be the only way to progress and earn experience in most RPGs. While I don't really have any problem with this system in RPGs, this paints a vastly different picture from the trailer. In which, the violence is rendered in gruesome detail, and emphasizes how desperate and immediate the danger is, and how much is at stake (as well what the audience knows has already been lost). Making the violence the primary focus of the game and sole means of interacting with the game world reduces the impact it has during the trailer and turns it and the death of a little girl by the hands of her own father into little more than gratuitous grotesquerie used to draw attention and an artificial emotional attachment to the product.
--
Saturday, I went to see the Illusionist. Been waiting a long time, and I wasn't disappointed. Really just a masterful presentation of pantomime and style. Every character on the screen was completely unique and you could tell them apart just by their personalities even while completely silent.
Tatschieff himself is a great character. From the very first scene, we can see the world no longer has a place for him. He doesn't fit. Literally. Everything is so brilliantly crafted to tell the story of wonderment leaving the world, and I can't imagine a medium better-suited for such a story than the waning art of traditional animation. If the movie plays near you on its tour, please go check it out.
--
Been practicing more with sumi-e ink during life drawing. Still barely getting the hang of it, but I'm enjoying it immensely. It's great for training control with a brush, though I'm guessing my posture is terrible because my shoulder is quite sore now.
Also listened to this great lecture from Doug TenNapel about his art and what it means for him to be an artist. The guy is basically turning into my hero. Since I can't figure out how to embed vimeos, you can find the lecture here.
Signed up for a storyboarding workshop by Louie del Carmen. It's something I've always liked to learn, and as a layout artist, I've become accustom to reading A LOT of them. Very cool to be able to see an entire movie before any front-end production. So yeah, it's been a pretty good day for inspiration.
Rounded off the day with some gesture doodles and sketches in the sketchbook with a sharpie and models courtesy of the Internet. Trying really hard to loosen up. I can feel myself getting trapped into the idea that doodles need to be polished or "finished" when that isn't the point. The sumi-e stuff and the sharpie definitely make it easier to get loose with the lines.
Was inspired by life drawing today. We were learning how to use sumi-e ink with brushes. It was way more relaxing than I was expecting and I was happy to feel like I was actually learning something as opposed to just being frustrated with the media.
I love Life Drawing class and am endlessly thankful for the art department for putting it on for us for free every week. It's an incredible learning and humbling experience and really takes us out of our comfort zones. I'm trying to get used to being around artists way more skilled and experienced than myself, and not feeling needlessly intimidated or competitive when we're all there to get better and learn from each other. It's going to take a while to get over that, but it'll be really freeing to not feel compelled to compare myself to others.
Anyway, here's some more crummy doodles. Some from reference.
Just a few head doodlies from Sunday. I so need to draw more. Have almost no discipline at all. Going to bed early(er) so I can make life drawing class at work tomorrow. =D
Early this week, a friend turned me on to a highly-praised Half-Life 2 mod called Dear Esther noted for its unconventional use of an interactive medium strictly to tell a story. This very much piqued my interest because some friends and I have been discussing doing this very sort of thing in our spare time, and were looking for inspiration.
From what I read on the mod before being able to install it, Dear Esther is an "interactive ghost story" using the Source engine as a vessel of delivery. Based on this description and the various quotes of praise associated with the game, I was about to experience a revelation regarding storytelling in games.
To spoil the end of my own post, I was sincerely moved by Dear Esther, mostly in ways I can't explain. There doesn't seem to be any way to describe my experience and reaction to it in a way that could convince anyone to want to play it.. Indeed I think most people would think they'd just wasted 15-30mins of their time if they played Dear Esther. However, it's been 3 days since my run through and I can't seem to stop thinking about it.
Anyway ...
There are plenty of other websites that describe the "story" and "gameplay" of Dear Esther, so I'll leave that to them. As far as what drew me to the game in the first place, I'm not sure that expectation was met. I was hoping to see an interesting example of good storytelling purely by interacting and exploring a game environment. But what I got were several fragments of well-performed and scored narrations of a vague, incoherent story I could only hear each piece of after being forced to slowly walk through a thoroughly uninteresting and poorly-designed landscape between each one. And that's about it.
I feel the need to clarify: I was completely immersed in the thematic elements of Dear Esther. As soon as the very first notes of the score began, and the narrator made his first monologue, I was hooked. Despair, isolation, mystery, and even fear all had their turns during the ~half-hour I spent wandering the island. What disappointed me was the feeling that all of the opportunities to make the most out of it being an "interactive experience" were completely wasted in an artificially-padded "journey" with only one outcome and zerointeraction. I don't mean that the mostly-linear path through the island is bad or ineffective because it's linear, but that the story wouldn't be any less vague by knowing more of it. Regardless of how many clips you hear, you never get more than a pale reverie from a man admittedly delusional from painkillers and probably madness.
If there was any need to require the player to interact ... some "reward" for exploring all the nooks and crannies of the island, then I would not have been so disappointed by the notion that this is a "game." I would love to have read this as a short story, or maybe even a short film. I appreciate what the creator originally set out to do. Dear Esther was so successful at grabbing me while pretending to be a terrible and ugly game. But I can't help but wonder how much more enjoyable (and accessible) it would be if it had chosen a more suitable medium to tell its story.
