Senior Thesis Project : October 2013

Wednesday, October 9, 2013

Sources/Bibliography

Works Cited

DUBSTEP GUNS. Dir. Corridor Digital. Perf. Mike Diva. Youtube.com. Corridor Digital, 19 Aug. 2011. Web. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hDlif8Km4S4>. A good example of composited effects with live action actors in combat.

FireBall In You Hand Tutorial Using After Effect.wmv. Dir. Hardeep Singh. Perf. Hardeep Signh. Youtube.com. N.p., 25 Feb. 2012. Web. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_HZW2LeU4dA>. This tutorial taught us how to make a realistic looking fireball in After Effects.

Flower Warfare. Dir. Freddie Wong, Mr. Perf. Freddie Wong. Youtube.com. N.p., 27 July 2010. Web. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=031Dshcnso4>. Freddie Wong began as a an amateur on Youtube and has posted videos for a few years showcasing his talent with 3D effects and video compositing. Flower Warfare in particular, uses After Effects to create the blooming flower effect on the gun muzzles throughout the video. We will also be using After Effects to composite realistic looking effects into our video sequences.

Fujishima, Kosuke, San, and Yoshito Higuchi, San. Tales of Vesperia. Tokyo, Japan: Namco Bandai, 2008. Computer software. The Tales series has always combined immersive interactivity with deep and well thought out story telling elements. Tales of Vesperia in particular had such a rich story that it was made in two different story telling mediums. It started as a video game and was then made into a movie.

Hasekura, Isuna. Spice & Wolf. New York: Yen, 2010. Print. Another light novel series turned into an anime. This one, specifically, has been released in English, so it is easy for us to access the books. It also adds another layer for us to look at - translation, and how that is handled.

Kawahara, Reki, Sensei. Accel World. Tokyo, Japan: ASCII Media Works, 2009. Print. Another Light Novel turned anime that influences our writing and the transition between two mediums of storytelling.

Kawahara, Reki, Sensei. Sword Art Online. Tokyo, Japan: ASCII Media Works, 2009. Print. SAO is a light novel from the perspective of a 16 year old boy who, along with 10,000 other people gets trapped inside an MMO. They cannot escape and if their health points ever reach zero the game system will kill them. This story provided a wealth of inspiration to our writers. Both the perspective of the story and the over lying themes are very similar. In addition, this is a great example of extensive text turned video. While SAO started as a light novel it was later fully animated as an anime.

Martino, Mike D., Mr., and Bryan Konietzko, Mr. Avatar: The Last Airbender. Nickelodeon. Burbank, California, 21 Feb. 2005. Television. Avatar's use of psychokinetic elemental combat was a big influence for the action throughout our story. We also looked to their art direction, as far as the elemental manipulation goes, in order to influence our own art direction for the video portion.

Narita, Ryohgo. Durarara!! Tokyo, Japan: ASCII Media Works, 2004. Print. Durarara!! has a large following, and more than that, it's set in a very similar setting to our story. This allows us to get a feel for the description of a crime-ridden city. It was also translated from words to pictures to movies, same as many of our other resources.

Skyrim Badass. Dir. Freddie Wong, Mr. and Brandon Laatsch, Mr. Youtube.com. N.p., 26 Apr. 2012. Web. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-SEuoEJkODE>. Well choreographed combat with effects.

Type-Moon. Fate/Stay Night. 30 Jan. 2004. Visual Novel. Japan. Fate/Stay Night was a great example of a long novel accompanied by visuals. Throughout the game, there is a background to the screen that is an illustration of the current location in the story, as well as an illustration of the character(s) that are talking to Shiro, the main character. This is a great example of the idea we were trying to recreate, essentially a visual novel. Fate/Stay Night was also adapted to a full length anime, as well as a whole movie. This series is a great case study for us to look at when moving from text to visuals to video.

Yamaguchi, Noboru. Zero No Tsukaima. Tōkyō: Media Fakutorī, 2006. Print. Yet another light novel turned anime. This is one of the older ones, and actually showed us something a bit different. The original illustrations and the anime style varies hugely between the two sources. Therefore, it gives us more perspective on the creative freedoms between the two different media.

Fireball test

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zFLBJ54lKlc&feature=youtu.be

Early writing sample

“Huh.” A long sigh and a quick yawn as the young man sits up from his bed. He looks around to notice the same four barren walls he had woken up to every day for the past 20 years. “I’d rather wake up in a random alley way than have to spend another month in this hell hole.” Of course it wasn’t the worst of living situations. He had a nice bed and a small television, and the room was just big enough for him to practice free weights without punching the walls every time he attempted to do shoulder flies, if just barely.

He stared out of his small window and noticed the monolith of a building that stood across the street from his loft. “You just keep covering that wide open blue sky; you won’t tower over me forever.” He said as he rubbed his eyes and slid his hands down his face. “Welp, gym time!” He immediately perked up and bolted out the door. He was able to work up to a full sprint rather quickly on his way to the gym; he may as well have been mid workout already. Without skipping a beat he rushed through the door. Overly fatigued gym goers dropped their weights or slowed their cardio to stare as he ran right up to his favorite machine and proceeded with quick repetitions adding more and more weight with every pump.

“Geez that guy doesn’t slow down does he?”

“I’m pretty sure he’s actually gotten faster.”

“That’s insane!”

“You’re telling me. He comes in here everyday and makes the rest of us feel awful, I can never figure out how he does it.” The young man glanced at the two gym goers who were gossiping about him but quickly shook his head and turned his attention back towards his workout. The pain of fatigue was clear on his face but anyone could tell that as he continued, the more he did, the harder he pushed himself. It was as though instead of tiring out, he actually received more stamina with every expenditure of energy.

“No limits, not even the pain will stop me.”

A look of excruciating pain lingered on his face as he began to run back home. Just then his cell phone rang.

“Engine.” A deep voice called out from the phone’s speaker.

“Yeah?” The young man replied as he jogged in place.

“We have a job for you. You will be receiving a picture of a warehouse on the west side of the city. Go there and crush anyone you find. No questions, just swiftly carry out your orders.” A look of contempt came across his face. He swallowed heavily and did not respond assuming that his silence would suffice for obedience. After receiving the picture, the man headed towards the west side of the city and entered a dimly lit warehouse.

“I hear they’re sending the little engine after us.”

“So what if they are?! He’s nothing but an obedient little dog. If we intimidate him enough we should be able to overwhelm him.”

“We can’t intimidate the engine, he’s unstoppable!”

“I don’t care! We’ve been on countless heists and have almost nothing to show for it. I can’t put up with it no more, I want out!”

“We’re with you man but…I don’t know, Gin could easily kill us.”

“You know, you’re so right, I definitely could and guess what the really funny thing is…that’s exactly what I’ve been told to do!” The young man rushed towards four shadowy figures standing in the warehouse.

“Stop Gin!” One of the men stepped forward and pulled out an assault rifle. “Gin, I don’t want to shoot you…b-but if I have to…I will.”

“Fire as many bullets as you want; my fist will eventually find its way into your face and trust it will impact much harder than your bullets ever could.” The four men in the warehouse began to open fire on Gin who began to serpentine around the warehouse. A bullet whizzed through his left shoulder and yet another one through his right forearm and though he screamed in agony and his blood started pouring out he only moved faster and persisted in his pursuit. The change in speed was slight but it was enough to buy him enough time to run out the magazines on all four rifles before the bullets tore him apart. As the four men in the center of the warehouse started to reload Gin let out a battle cry and clenched his left hand into a fist. He impacted the first man and sent him flying towards the back wall. He lunged at the second man with a head butt allowing him to clasp the rifle with his hands before it could be fired and throw it at the third man whose finger was on the trigger of his newly reloaded rifle. The thrown rifle gave Gin time to sweep out the third man’s legs while ducking to the ground in order to avoid the volley of bullets that was coming at him from the fourth man. Gin stared down the one remaining man. He was halfway done reloading his gun again when he called out in a panic.

“Gin, l-let’s talk about this okay? It don’t have to be this way. Why you gotta listen to them huh? They aint done good for no one!” The man continued to call out in a panic frantically attempting to ready his gun so that he may save his own life. Gin was too far away to catch him with a lunge and had since lost his momentum from standing still for too long. He stayed silent and pulled a cestus out of his back pocket and slowly walked forward. Gin placed the cestus over his hand and clenched his fingers to ensure the fitting.

“Fire.” Gin called out.

“You want me to kill you?”

“Just fire.” Gin eyes were fixed on the barrel of the gun. The man before him was shaking all over, so much so that he nearly fell to the ground from sheer nerves. He closed his eyes tight and pulled the trigger. The barrel of his gun was wobbling wildly as the bullets sprayed out, not one of them was heading towards Gin. He took a deep breath and then thrust his shoulder into the path of a stray bullet. He screamed and felt adrenaline surge through his every cell as he leapt forward and struck the man with his cestus.

“It is done.” Gin picked up his phone and reported the success of his mission.

“Good engine. Now why don’t you go get yourself a nice refreshment...on us.” The deep voice from before replied from over the phone and started to chuckle as Gin hung up the phone.

“Of course it’s on you, when isn’t it?” Gin walked out of the warehouse and headed back towards his loft stopping at a convenience store along the way. As suggested to him, he was looking for a nice refreshment to cool down with after his intense ordeal. The store was fairly empty save for the clerk and two young looking boys in the back by the canned foods. One boy had his nose in a physics book and refused to look up. The other boy was checking soup labels.

“Eh, they don’t have the kind we like man, let’s go check somewhere else.” Gin noticed one boy calling to the other as he walked towards the area where the drinks were. He chuckled inside when he heard such a childish comment and looked backed towards them as he reached into the fridge for his favorite soft drink.

“All right yeah, let’s go.” Said the boy holding the book; he never looked up as he started to walk away. He clenched the book between the thumb and index finger of his left hand and turned the page using his thumb. Gin noticed the boy’s free arm stretch back towards the canned soup his friend had just put back as he swiftly pocketed it.

Wow, they’re not actually going to take that are they? Gin thought to himself. The other boy replaced the soup can on the high shelf with his right arm and swept a can from a lower shelf into his pocket with the left. There is no way they’d get away with this. Gin observed in amazement as he paid for his drink.

“C’mon bro, I’ll race you home!” The taller looking boy called out and ran ahead of the one who was holding the physics book who had placed the can between the pages that he was holding with his thumb and index finger.

“No fair, you got a head start.” The second boy swatted at his brother’s back side playfully with the book but in actuality it was to conceal the soup can sticking out of his brother’s back pocket. Just like that they were gone.

Gin cracked a huge smile as he walked towards the door to leave. “Smooth boys, very smooth.” Gin headed out and walked on into the night.

-Return to Stray-

Senior Thesis Proposal

Our group brings together various interests within the realm of possibility for IMM. We have aspiring writers, film directors, editors, and web designers. When we brought all of our respective talents together, we came up with a project that would allow us to test our respective abilities and put our prowess on display. What we came up with was a light novel including video elements that would all be displayed on an interactive, web based setting.

As in most light novels, there are often illustrations in a select few places throughout the text. In order to allow us to fully express our creative vision and utilize all of the skills that we bring to the table, instead of bland illustrations throughout the story, we will have professionally shot and edited film segments that includes composited effects. The writers are free to get as deep and ambitious as they wish with the story and are able to select the most epic or dramatic moments to cement in reality making the scope of the project much more manageable.

The story will be presented on a custom built web page in order to bring interactivity to the project. The web page will be displayed as a crime scene; the most prevalent element of which will be a map of the story’s city setting with a matrix plotted over it. Below the matrix will be a clickable item, a memento from that segment of the story. The reader will click the item and that will bring up a text box. The reader will scroll through the first chapter until they reach the video piece of which there will be at least one for each segment of the story. After the video has played, the reader is free to end that segment of the story. Polaroid of a moment from that segment will be pinned to the first part of the matrix at which time a new item will appear in the room that will allow the reader to access the next segment.

Outline and Production Schedule

· Finish a chapter every 1.5-2 weeks. Writing must be finished before the beginning of next semester.

· The plan is to have about 1 video per chapter. There will absolutely be no more than 10 chapters, if the story goes that far.

· Selection of filmed shots and storyboarding will begin as soon as a chapter is finished. Plan to storyboard first three videos by the middle of November.

· Filming of the first video will begin by the middle to the end of November. Must select actors around the end of October through the beginning of November.

· Production of web based layout will begin by the middle of October. Hopefully have a solid design by the end of the semester.

· Web based layout will be completed by early March.

· Planning on finishing all filming by the end of February. Editing should be complete by the middle of April.