14/8/2013 Storyboards & Mockups

Storyboards

(Trailer)

I've created some mock-up shots in Photoshop for the ARC40K trailer. These are basically intended to show the general shot composition, aka element position, lighting, tone, foreground/background.
As many of the layer blending effects and filters in Photoshop easily translate into After Effects, many visual effects I'm wanting to incorporate are represented here too.

In addition to being visual shot references, these mock-ups show the chronological progression of the trailer.

(Briefing)

When creating the Storyboards for the Mission Briefing I skipped straight to After Effects to start playing around with some of the different visual effects I could achieve using the in-built Active Camera and various layer blending and filters.

The Camera in particular offers up an exciting array of possibilities when combined with 3D layers (featuring 2D images). The rudimentary beginnings of these can be seen the mock-up video (namely panning, zooming, rotating)

The video also shows a sneaky look at what a hologram overlaying the battlefield might look like...

Game on,
Mo.

3/8/2013 - Meeting with Dan

Trailer - In the Mix

It's all about a balance of what's new and what's familiar for the trailer! Dan expressed his desire to see the following points touched upon:

- New Venue: Phoenix Park Community Centre

- New Points (limit): 1350 points

- New Weekend: Feb 1st/2nd 2014

- Same Traditions

It goes without saying that these details will occupy a segment of the trailer each, and will combine nicely with the other "zoomed-in" shots I'll be creating.

Dan also came up with a new way of titling ARC40K. Where previously the title would be ARC40K 2014, Dan wishes to assign a roman numeral to the tournament. A minor detail, to be sure, but it actually got me thinking:

This...

...will be we easier to work with (animate, cram textures onto) than this...

Briefings - Inter-ARC-tivity (forgive the pun)

Onto the mission briefings, I presented to a quick series of images showing what we could do as far as breaking down some established preconceptions for wargaming briefings!

Following on from this (Dan had to change his pants) we discussed the possibility of interactivity into the presentation. 

Dan is big on the idea of randomising the missions, so that the order of the missions is not concrete. One of the intrinsic acts involved in playing 40K is rolling dice! Ironically dice rolling is a great method of randomisation!

The idea we had was to get an audience member to come up to the stage and rolls a dice. (sidenote: we could even have a live camera feed showing the audience the result!). The audience member then inputs the number into a digital interface (my initial assumption was to use ActionScript/Flash to achieve this) which plays back the relevant mission briefing.

One small catch: Dan wants to keep the final mission fixed, so that no matter what the audience member rolls, they can never activate the final mission (grandeur and all that)

Pretty basic coding involved here, just have the interface display the input number next to a fixed mission title and play the video!

Both Dan and I are happy with how things are progressing, exciting times ahead!

Game on,

Mo.

3/8/2013 - Holographic Imagery

I've been trawling the web to assemble some striking examples of holograms and holographic imagery which might provide some inspiration to the briefing battlefield for this project.

Building: Stargate Universe (2012)

Battlefield Overview: Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones (2002)

Geographic Survey Display: Avatar (2009)

 Geographic Scan Display: Prometheus (2012)

Galaxy Map: Prometheus (2012)

3-Dimensional Street View: Iron Man 3 (2013)

"DRADIS" HUD Display: Battlestar Galactica (2004)

2/8/2013 - Getting this beast off the ground

I met with Mark Power (my unit coordinator) during Studio today to discuss the scope and general concept of this video.

The potential scope for this project is a trailer for ARC40K and video mission briefings for the tournament itself, utilising some video footage (interviews, a "drive-thru" tour of the new venue), photography (miniatures, battlefields) and heavy motion graphics (special effects).

Having booted up the Google machine and had a look at some of the imagery currently up on the web to do with Warhammer 40,000 (herein referred to as 40K). We discovered that there are a great deal of bird's eye perspective photos of 40K games in progress or miniatures on tables in general.
Quite natural, considering most 40K tables are knee/waist height.

This presents an exciting opportunity, from a multimedia perspective, to tackle breaking the Fourth Wall and using some motion graphics and crazy camera angles (View Point came to mention)

Some examples:

ref. segments representing troop movements in the Generals of War video

ref. the motion graphics utilised in the title sequence of the HBO TV series, Carnivale

We also discussed the possibility of a HUD-style to the mission briefings (holograms, wireframes) with intermittent battlefield footage (troop-eye perspective, aerial perspective). I even threw around the idea of the trailer featuring various battle scenes that eventually zoom out the reveal the battlefields are all a part of the ARC40K logo itself!

Mark and I love the ideas, especially breaking down the norm of a static perspective and giving 40K miniatures some real immersion and dynamism. 

Next stop, storyboards!

Game on,

Mo.

2/8/2013 - Project Conception

Today I come to my Studio class armed with an idea.

I've been approached by my old boss, Dan Attril, who is organising ARC40K 2013.

Quickly, some fun facts:

- ARC40K is a Melbourne-based Warhammer 40,000 tournament, the largest in Australia

- Warhammer 40,000 is a war game played on a tabletop with hand-painted miniatures, in essence a more immersive evolution of chess

Dan's idea is to introduce a level of immersion and interactivity to ARC40K that had yet to be seen in previous ARC40K events or indeed tournaments in general.

ARC40K features 6 games, played out over two days. One of the great perks of ARC40K are the themed missions, often featuring a truly colourful and humorous introduction, or briefing. These briefings were then distributed to the tournament players via a printout, which they could then take to their game as a reference.

In the past, this has proved a double-edged blade. Whilst the crowd of gamers is thoroughly entertained,   time can become an issue when the inevitable questions arise from the audience, as well as the time needed to pass these around the audience. Minor complaint, but in a game of this nature (where games are often not completed due to time constraints) every minute counts!

Dan's question to me is, can a multimedia presentation help this problem?

I thought, here's a great excuse to crack out AFTER EFFECTS!

In short, game on.

-Mo