How i have reached my concept from My Image

It might seem like im steaming ahead away from the brief slightly so this is a post to show my journey from my image to my concept.


When i first received my image i was pretty sure i wanted to move away from the obvious, i could have made a game just from using the aesthetic style of modrians work but instead i wanted to branch out and research into Modrians life, work and interests to find my inspiration.

I looked at a wide range of his works and found that his style has completely changed from when he began to his later pieces. He started out as an Impressionist artist and gradually through the years his work became more cubist, fragmented and deconstructed to the object or scenes basic form. Reaching his final years and his boogie woogie paintings he had created and evolved his own style, a non-representational form which he termed Neo-Plasticism. These images were stripped of all repetition and reality and created his own representation of the world around us which was inspired by sound and light as well and physical form.

My concept is derived from Mondrian’s journey, my main character Colin Zeal is my Mondrian if you will. Colin Zeal (the evil rich boss of Zeal Corp) buys a planet which is completely deserted apart from his head quarters (a blank canvas ready to be painted). He decides to go to another planet near buy and take apart the pieces and objects which he likes and wants and ships them back over to his own planet to build up his world just like Mondrian does with his paintings, he finds a visually rich scene and deconstructs it, removing pieces to leave just the basic form or shell for his painting.

My link to the brief is that from my image I have used the journey in which Mondrian took through his life in art and the journey and process for how mondrian produces or deconstruction an object or objects, pulling them to pieces and creating something new; his own vision of the world. The aim of my game is for you and your character Mr Jingo to stop your planet from being taken to pieces (deconstructed, fragmented).

Stella, Mini Milks and wine for the ladys.

Just look at this fine piece of work, my new guitar the Fender CD-60CE Sunburst thank you very much. i have been in my garden drinking stella and playing guitar like the good old days, wine for the ladys and mini milks for all; Bring on the summer.

Character Design - Mr Jingo

Character Design - The Rat Packers

Character Design - Colin Zeal

Character Research - Protagonist

Theres something very comical about baked beans, Ive just eaten some and i think it could prove interesting if i make a nice blend of baked beans and the characters from dumb and dumber, originally i wanted my character to have the same kind of personality as crash bandicoot, cool, fearless, one of those bandicoots who gets all the Lady's with his swish sun glass's and spiky hair (don't you just hate them). instead i thought it would be more interesting and comical if Mr jingo was really quite stupid and clumsy and you have been given the village idiot to save the world, from zero to hero.

Character Research - Villains

For the Colin zeal my villain character, i want him to be mix between terry thomas's character Ivan in tom thumb and Marlon Brando's character Don Vito Corleone in god farther. I want portray terry Thomas's quirky, always scheming mentality and also stupidity with don Corleone's presence, being wealthy and authoritative nature, also combining there looks as well.


For the Rat packers, the henchmen, i want to show the classic cartoon henchman, big body with a little brain aproach. Peter Sellers played a brilliant character in again tom thumb, a pretty dumb, gormlous looking character who follows his boss whatever the objective. The villains in tom thumb are brilliant together, this is my main insppirasion for design my villanous characters.

Aesthetic Research 3

Fur Fighters
The game was designed very much as a standard third person shooter, but used a world populated by cute little animals as its setting. As a result, the game's depiction of violence is very cartoon-like without losing any of its intensity.

Aesthetic Research 2

Trap Door

The Trap Door is a claymation-style animated television series, originally shown in the United Kingdom in 1984. The plot revolves around the misadventures of a group of monsters living in a castle. Although the emphasis was on humour and the show was marketed as a children's programme, the show drew much from the genre of dark fantasy. The show has since become a cult favourite and remains one the most widely recognised kid's shows of the 1980s.

Aesthetic Research

Stop it and tidy up

Stoppit and Tidyup was a British children's animated cartoon series originally broadcast by the BBC in 1987. The series was created by Charles Mills and Terry Brain, the duo previously created a claymation called The Trap Door which will be in my next post. Apart from the main characters Stoppit, a red ball of fluff, and Tidyup, a gherkin-loving purple lump, the supporting characters included Comb Your Hair, Wash Your Face, Hurry Up, Go and Play, Calm Down, Not Now, Bee Have, Bee Quiet, Go to Bed, Don't Do That, Take Care, Eat Your Greens, Clean Your Teeth and the big, bad I Said No, not to mention Say Please And Say Thank You. There were also extra characters called Naughties and Sit Downs, and they all lived in the mythical land of Do As You're Told. The series was very experimental with music and character design which, perfect inspiration for a quirky slapstick game like mine.

Mr Jingo in the world of pieces kicks off

I'm gonna go ahead with this idea because i think its a really nice simple concept for kids, really slapstick and will be fairly enjoyable world to create. I defiantly want a slapstick approach to the game and a generally all round laugh to play for children the age of 7 to even adults as there will be influences from the 1940-50s. Next stage is to find my visual aesthetic.

Inital ideas 3. Fragmentation

another idea is to make an adventure game which would be point and click. i remember playing a game when i was a kid called Gabrial Knight 2 : The Beast Where you were a detective who had to solve a mystery by talking to characters, finding clues and picking up objects which would be of use later on as evidence.



My concept is called fragmentation, you are a detective in the new york police department and are given a job to investigate a murder in Broadway, you have to navigate around using the point and click method and find clues to try solve the murder, as the game goes on the whole world begins the look strange, the walls are beginning to fragment ( looking like some of Mondrian's earlier impression st paintings) as you continue on in the game the surroundings get worse and worse until your basically in a world of abstract images and color with no explanation.you continue looking for clues and find that the killer is a link to a bigger picture, an underground experiment where time is being stopped so terrorists can bomb new york and and rest of America, your job is to stop this.

the idea is still in its beginning stages but i think my kids platform game is stronger so i might leave this and go for that one. i dont think my music game is right for the brief either because its not really as game, more of a piece of software.

I wish it was FIFA part 3

Inital ideas 2. Mr Jingo in the world of pieces

This is my idea for a kids platform action game with a similar game play to the likes of Rayman and Crash Bandicoot, a simple story with the fight between good and evil.

How Ive reached my idea is not solely on the visual aesthetic of the Broadway boogie woogie painting, instead Ive researched into Mondrian himself and how he has developed his style over the years and how it has changed dramatically from his first pieces to his last. my concept is based on a previous post from this blog titled Mondrian's Distinct Style Change Over Time. He began his career as a teacher in primary education, but while teaching he also practiced painting. Most of his work from this period is naturalistic or impressionistic, consisting largely of landscapes. These pastoral images of his native Holland depict windmills, fields, and rivers, initially in the Dutch Impressionist manner but slowly he became influenced by other movements such as pointillism, the vivid colors of fauvism and most of all cubism. his art became more fragmented to the point of his subjects being completely unrecognisable.

i was also influenced by my blog post entitled Luminance and equiluminance, i found that when the saturation is turned to grey scale, the yellow disappears and blends in with the grey. the idea of having objects disappearing or being taken away, then having to retrieve them came to mind.

With my research in mind i have come up with a concept for a kids game with an age guidance restriction for 7 years old and above. My concept is to create a 3D Platformer game which is lighthearted, comedic, flamboyant and incredibly fun game which ultimately is a fight between good and evil.

The storyline(characters names are not confirmed)

Main Characters

Evil Colin Zeal, the boss of the Zeal Corperation

The Rat Packers, Colin Zeals Henchmen

Mr Jingo, your character (possibly and animal or alien)

Evil Colin Zeal is a very rick buisness man who owns zeal corperations and buys a planet which is bare (planet Zeal), no landscape, no civilisation. As Zeal is so "EVIL" he looks through his telescope and sees a planet he likes and decieds hes going to take all the pieces from that planet and plant them onto his planet. oh so "evil!!!"

The planet in question is where Mr Jingo lives (planet Mondo), nobody special but hes a guy with guts and determination with the personality of Crashbandicoot. Colin zeal and his henchmen (Rat Packers) come onto planet Mondo and begin to start packing away the landscape, once they have packed away all of the pieces they keep them in a cage ready to take back and plant on there planet.

the aim of the game is to finish the levels whilst its still being packed away and get to the end of each level, killing the baddies as you go to reach and unlock the cage and retrieve the pieces. there will be loads of levels from the different places on the planet mondo, eg a jungle level, ice, volcanic, underwater, mountain and even a sky level where the henchmen are trying to pack away the clouds and you have to fly a plane and shoot down the Rat packers.

once you have conquer and retrieved all of the pieces from the levels then you go to planet zeal and work your way into the zeal headquarters for the final showdown with Colin Zeal.

the gameplay will have a very slapstick aproach, especialy the Rat Packers as they will be like the stereotypical stupid side kick. when the world is being packed away it will happen in a very cartoony unrealistic manar, when the rat packers come onto the planet the will carry suit which will seem to be bottemless as they take down trees and put them into suitcases playing on the clasic gags from tom and jerry( and loony toons and will also have a very strong new york broadway feel to Colin zeal and the henchmen characters.


this video is music from tom and jerry, the ending will be the Rat Packers theme

Inital ideas 1. Music generator game

an idea taken from Mondrian's musical influence painting/game was kind of a music maker/manipulator, kind of like those step dancing things but more an interactive graphic/music manipulator thing. If it were for the Wee then you could use the controllers to mover the grid around to make other compositions through creating graphic compositions on the screen.

different shapes would correspond to different instruments with the color of the shape to the type of sound within that instrument, the basic diagram below shows the basic idea behind the way sounds and notes would be created. the sounds will be placed inside a blank 3d environment and basically you will be able to make musical compositions by sculpting the shapes, this could be done using a Nintendo wii for example with there interactive controller.

Images from unknown source









review of an early music generator game for the playstation

Whether you're a beginner or a whiz, you'll amaze yourself with your homemade tracks. Experiment with 1500 riffs and 3000 instrument sounds and enhance your music with cool effects like chorus and reverb, creating infinite music possibilities. Then make a matching 3-D video and save it all on your memory card to play to your friends. It's music creation for the PlayStation...and it rocks. So will you.

Oooooo jazz

Mondrian was also very passionate about jazz which opens doors to a possible music theme, he painted many of his work whilst listening to jazz and greatly influenced broadway boogie woogie

Broadway

Modrian was inspired towards the end of his life, the bright lights and busy atmosphere is seen in my image, also a very good location for a game. the obvious aproach would be to make a retro game because of how abstract the image is with its flat texture with a only a few colours. dont really want to go the retro root though but its another path to look down.

Luminance and equiluminance

The yellow and grey areas, easily distinguished in the colored image, cannot be distinguished in the black and white image. The yellow and gray areas have been painted with the same luminance or brightness

We distinguish adjacent objects if they have different levels of brightness. Our brains cannot position the yellow and gray areas accurately in the painting because they have the same brightness. That is the origin of the jittery motion we seem to see in the painting.

The Color of my pants is?

Color attributes were first understood by 19th century physiologist Ewald Hering, who made the color charts below. His charts show how all colors arise from a combination of green-or-red, blue-or-yellow and brightness. (In his diagram, the green-neutral-red is vertical, and blue-neutral-yellow is horizontal.) The left circle shows relative mixtures of color attributes. The right circle shows what we perceive when these attributes are mixed.



The artistic term “hue” is the edges of the square (the outside of Hering’s circle); “saturation” represents where the color is placed between grey middle and the colored edge; “value,” also called “brightness” or “luminance,” is the intensity of the color and is the third attribute.



Newton set up a prism near his window, and projected a beautiful spectrum 22 feet onto the far wall. Further, to prove that the prism was not coloring the light, he refracted the light back together. Light enters the prism from the top right, and is refracted by the glass. The violet is bent more than the yellow and red, so the colors separate.

Artists were fascinated by Newton’s clear demonstration that light alone was responsible for color. His most useful idea for artists was his conceptual arrangement of colors around the circumference of a circle (right), which allowed the painters’ primaries (red, yellow, blue) to be arranged opposite their complementary colors (e.g. red opposite green), as a way of denoting that each complementary would enhance the other’s effect through optical contrast.

I wish it was FIFA Part 2

Mondrians Distinct Style Change Over Time

Mondrian didn’t start out painting squares and rectangles growing up during the tail end of Impressionism, Piet Mondrian’s first paintings were consistent with that time period, as well as the Post-impressionism of Van Gogh. Later on he also took cues from Braque and Picasso, although he soon formed a very distinct style all his own.