Julia Pott - Your World Only Better - Task One

As part of my Responsive brief I stated that I wanted to complete Julia Pott's 'Narrative for Animation' course which she produced and shared on the learning platform Skillshare. 

I have been an avid follower of her work since I was 14 years old (so that's a good solid six years of obsession, and calling her my number one role model/animator/illustrator/human I don't know in real life), so when she announced she was doing this course I was beyond excited to enrol and suck up all her juicy knowledge.

The way Skillshare works, is the teacher/professional uploads a series of videos, and with each video sets a task for the student to complete (and share with the other members of the class if they wish to do so for feedback). In the next few blog posts I will share my work created for each task, aiming towards the development and completion of a script for animation.

(A picture of Miss Pott)

Task 1: Initial brainstorm

The first task was to create a spider diagram on what inspires me. I found this task actually really difficult, as I take my inspiration from a whole variety of sources, so I stuck to the headings Julia Pott suggested. 

Mood Board - two

We then made a second mood board of games and illustrations with the aesthetic style we enjoy. 

Mood Board - one

Once we had discussed the last two mood boards in depth, and found each of our individual interests, we made a couple of mood boards of games which had certain elements we were interested in. 

We primarily looked at pixel art games, and then early 3D work which was still blocky. 

We all really liked the game FEZ which combines both perfectly, and allows you to switch between playing as a 2D sprite in a flat platform game, to the world around you spinning and turning into a 3D model. This concept really sparked off ideas between us, in the idea of two worlds. Ash then remembered in Zelda: A Link Between Times, there is an interesting game dynamic, where you can switch from playing as a 3D character, to merge with the wall and become a strange cave painting style 2D character to help solve puzzles. 

Style examples

From the basic theme ideas we started to think about how the game would look aesthetically. As part of the brief we can't have a flat platform game (unless that is only for a section of the game), and we needed 3D rigged characters. However we were all interested in 2D pixel art and looked into how we could combine this with the mandatory aesthetic outcomes.

Basic Ideas

After the briefing, we looked at previous work completed for this module from the year above, and looked at each output we need to complete. After this presentation we split into our groups and had the rest of the day for development. 

We first did a spider diagram of the three themes we have to work under, and different game concepts for each. We found we were drawn to the topic challenge the most as most games could fit under this theme.

Module Information - with notes

Module Overview - with notes