Week 5: Colour Palettes and Pixels

Before trying to draw my sprites I looked at the origins of pixel art and how game sprites were built.

Due to restrictions with technology at this time game creators were limited with the detail they could put on their sprites. They had to create with pixels, which is basically a block of colour; which when composed together with other pixels can be used to create an image.

Tv's at this time had a low resolution which also impacted the amount of detail and colour that could be produced. 

One of the most iconic Mario sprites from the game, Super Mario Bro's (1985).

Technology also restricted the colour palettes in some of the first video games, as shown in the Mario sprite above. Mario consists of two colours, Brown and Red. Due to the low variety of colours to pick from the designers had to be smart with where they used certain colours, to avoid Mario's arms blending in with his body when he walked they placed red over-alls on him. This meant when Mario walks you can see the arm movement.

Having this much of a close look at the Mario sprite allowed me to see just how each pixel was used to make up the sprite, although it used very simple shapes, they are very distinctive and are very similar to how Mario is shown today and throughout the eras. An example of the simplicity in the way the pixels have been put together is in Mario's foot/shoe, which is made up of four pixels on the bottom row, and three pixels on the top row.

Example of colour palettes from Super Mario Bro's

Week 5: Retro Game Characters and Scene Design

Part of my advert would be based around 80's retro games, such as Mario Bro's and donkey kong. I plan to draw and animate a sprite in a similar style, using just pixels to create the sprite, backgrounds and title screens etc.

I found articles online that explained the basics to designing your own retro games. They explained all the technical elements such as softwares to use, measurements/dimension and preferences, and also how to animate your content:  
 http://gamedevelopment.tutsplus.com/articles/going-old-school-making-games-with-a-retro-aesthetic--gamedev-3567
http://design.tutsplus.com/articles/learn-how-to-draw-hand-crafted-pixel-art-in-photoshop--psd-5284 
http://design.tutsplus.com/tutorials/how-to-create-an-animated-pixel-art-sprite-in-adobe-photoshop--cms-20428

I found this particular section very helpful, it shows you how you can replicate the same aesthetics as you would see on screen when actually playing these games in the 80's on a CRT (Cathode ray tube) TV. These are definitely techniques I will be experimenting with and applying to my own work.

Week 4: Characters

 After story boarding I moved onto character design, starting with the 1930's disney inspired animation which would be one of the first scenes of my advert. I started with this first as I thought this would be one of the more time consuming parts of the project.



I drew a character directly inspired from one of Walt Disney's first animations, 'Oswald The Lucky rabbit'. I tried to keep a simple shape and outline, an innocent look for the character and also a basic face; such as simple black eyes etc.    

This is one of my initial sketches of my first character, however I was unsure on the look as although I was going for an innocent looking character, I thought this character looked a bit too childish which is not want I wanted. 

I then re-drew the character in a way I thought would appeal more to an older audience, as this advert would be set to broadcast on BB3, therefore would need to be age appropriate ranging from teenagers to adults.  

I tried to re-draw my character in a vector form, just to see what it would look like. However I did not like the aesthetics and use of colour.

Next I focused on re-working my character in order to make it have a less childish appearance and appeal. I made the head less rounded and gave it more hair so that it did not look like an actual baby, I also looked at facial expressions and eyes and how they change the aesthetics of the character, this allowed me to create a more refined and final design.

Week 3: Story boards

With my research complete I moved on to creating a brief storyboard to plan out the order in which my advert would run, but also to make sure I got the order of events and technology correct. I also used this to brainstorm my initial ideas of what could happen in each scene.

Next I made more detailed storyboards of each scene, this allowed me to explore the different options I had for the narrative direction and try and tackle any physical or technical obstacles I may come across. I was also able to think about what techniques would be best in producing each scene, and consider the time frame I would be working with.

Creating more detailed storyboards abled me to visually see what would happen in each scene and also allow me to branch out from my initial ideas of what would happen in each scene, and consider other possibilities/outcomes.

Visual representation Ideas

(Advert for clothing line: Black Pyramid)

I want to create an advert the very literally shows the evolution of technology through time and demonstrates how the media and techniques can be combined.

This short advert for a clothing brand 'Black Pyramid' has a very retro/analog look to it. It like something you would see on an start screen of an old video game- an NES is even shown at the beginning before the black pyramid screen is shown, I think this is intended to give us a sense of what era this is based/set in, which also corresponds with the quality of the graphics used.

One thing I really like bout this this is the way it's cut, I like the flashes of static/interruption and how it is used to cut to another scene. Seeing this gave me the idea to use something similar in my own advert, as a way to jump from one scene to another and portray the idea of a new era of technology as well as the combination of different techniques.