What did I think about framed Ink

That Rhymes!!
I started reading a book called framed ink, by Marcos Mateu-Mestre a week ago. I bought it because I wanted to know more about storytelling with images. This book is all about that. Too be honest, It's has been worth every minute reading it. I feel like I've learned very much.
Mateu-Mestre gives clear examples supported with great black and white images.

He talks about: Composition, Lighting, Camera angles and movement, scale, continuity  and all kinds of things I never even thought about before.

Some examples. The most important character or object (the focal point, the most important part of the image or shot) in a scene can get the attention by for example hitting him/her/it with light, by facing him/her/it to the camera and make other characters look away. By putting the lead character on an eleveted position, or by creating a visual path that leads the eye to the character.

A focal point can be also be made clear by doing a color variation that makes the focal point stand out. Or to increase or decrease the values on and around the focal point (higher contrast, lighter, darker)

Applying composition techniques to my own paintings

In this image I made a while ago, the focal point is recognizable (I hope so). I tried to make it even more clear by making the structure almost spiral into the focal point. Starting in the far left corner and ending in the lightest part of the painting. other elements of the painting point at the small characters in the lower part of the painting, creating some kind of story between the big structure and the characters.

Fibonacci grid

I used a fibonacci grid for my composition (almost literally). The grid is being used for a very long time now. The old painting masters used it, and modern filmmakers also use it for their shot composition.





In film a focal point and good composition is most important, a spectator needs to see what's going on in a matter of seconds before the shot is over.  If the composition is all over the place the audience can't figure out what the shot is about. Or they might miss the important part of the shot.

In film, composition is used to give the audience clear and readable shots. In art it's used to make the viewer look at it as long as possible.

So composition is an essential part of images and storytelling with images.
Lighting is also an essential part. Mateu-Semestre uses an example: If you have to make two movies: one disturbing horror film and one childrens movie, and the only set you have is one room with a table and two chairs. The only way to make that work is by using lighting. Darkness automatically suggests a more dangerous situation than a nice sunday afternoon, with light falling through the windows.

Anyway. I could go on and on about this book, about camera angles, and continuity in images. But I'll save that for a next post.

Reading this book was defenitely usefull. The important question still remains: Can I use storytelling with images when I want to face players with tough situations. Will images help with that? Or can a game do without? Can one do without another, or are artworks just a nice visual layer to the story. Does the game rely on art?

I'm going to find out in the next few weeks when testing a few prototypes.

Faster than light

It's been a while since I posted anything for my graduation project. I have been busy though! A lot of reading for the most part. I have read several books in the past 2 weeks.

-Framed Ink by Marcos Mateu - Mestre
-Understanding Comics by scott Mccloud
-Dream worlds by Hans Bacher
-Color and light by James Gurney
-And several art books from movies and films I had laying around. Not too much text, but nice images and designs with commentary!

I've also been watching some movies and Tv series that deal with tough settings and choices that have big concequences.

 The walking dead for example. More about that later.
First something about a little single player game that I spent some time playing.

FTL or faster than light is a game made by Subset Games and focusses on space combat, strategy and making choices.
 There's a big arsenal of ships you can choose. Each one requiring different strategies and focusing on different weapons. Missiles, beam weapons, lasers. You name it. That's not important though. At least not for my research.



The fact that it's a tactical strategy game which requires planning and managing is interesting. The fact that it's in space, even more so.

So in this game you start out with a spaceship with a few crew members (which you can name yourself) You jump through hyperspace in different star systems. Each location you jump to will give you a randomly generated situation. A merchant selling his wares, a pirate with the intention to steal your liver, a rebel fleet that's right on your tail or a slave ship trying to sell you some crewmembers.

Take for example the last situation, a slaver ship is currently waiting in the location that you jumped to. They give you a few choices, ignore them, buy one of their slaves, shoot them to bits or try to teleport onto their ship to free some slaves and quickly fly away. The last option is available when you have crew teleporter on your ship. Which can be bought, though some ships have it installed by standard. When you decide to attack the slaver ship they might try to give you a slave for free if you leave them alone.

The point is, each situation gives you a certain set of choices. You can decide to help a ship to get rid of a giant spider infestation. Either by attacking them with you crewmembers or burn them out with a fire bomb. The last option only being available if you have a fire bomb weapon installed on your ship. If you try to attack the spiders with your crewmembers you risk losing them. But if you use the fire bomb you risk destroying the whole ship instead of only the spiders. So choices have concequences. And choices made previously in the game can give you more options later in the game.

You gain scrap by solving situations or destroying ships. You can use the scrap as currency to buy upgrades, helping you jump through other star systems untill you have to defeat the Rebel boss ship.
You can't buy every weapon in the game so you have to think about your strategy while playing. 
 

The fun bit though. I had my crewmembers. My Pilot named Cpt. Indecent for example. He's my tough leader. My crewmember handling the guns named Feng Zhu and a few other crewmembers. All with a lot of experience and skills in their own field, going on a space adventure together. This is what happens I run into a small mining colony currently facing an unknown disease. I can either choose to send my crew in and calm the sick people down, or choose to ignore it and leave. I chose to help the colony, like the hero I am! I sent in my crew to tend to the sick people and prevent them from rioting. I succeeded but the game told me I lost my beloved captain Indecent. So the choice I made had a very big concequence for the rest of my playthrough. with Captain Indecent (with maxed out piloting skills) gone, who was going to pilot my ship? Without him my ship would be vulnerable to enemy firepower. I found a good replacement eventually by hiring a mercanery with good piloting skills. I had to pay a price though, and he was nothing like captain Indecent. I felt a little sad afterwards.

Another example. I made a ship with boarding capabilities. I teleported my 4 crewmembers to the enemy ship. It was a Lanius ship though. The Lanius don't breath, instead, they suck all the air out of every room they're in. They also had a stealth system installed on their ship. I thought: If I'm quick I can take their crew out before I run out of air. Nice plan you would say. It all went well for a bit, the enemy crew was almost dead but I was running out of air so I decided to teleport my crew back to heal them in my medbay. Just when I pressed the teleport button the enemy ship booted up their stealth system. I wasn't able to teleport my crew back because I couldn't see the enemy ship! I lost all 4 of them and I was basicly done for the rest of the game. It was a terrible experience. I killed my crew because I thought it would be a good idea to teleport them to a ship without air support. I'm now thinking twice when faced with a situation like that.

The randomly generated situations part is a great thing about this game. It's a single player game though. Can it be played by multiple players? More people discussing about choices and decisions?
Probably! It's a real time strategy game though, so one player has to do all the moving around and management of the ship. The situation is a bit similar to this war of mine, the game I talked about a little while ago.

Still usefull to me in terms of gameplay and situations. The game is also really well written, resulting in funny situations. Choices you make during the game usually have concequences for the rest of the playthrough, and that's nice. Even if you plan your whole playthrough from start to finish there is still a big chance that you will randomly lose your crewmembers or get an insanely strong weapon that changes your entire strategy. So it's mostly improvising in the end!

Can I make such an experience for multiple players? I'm also writing a little playtest as we speak dealing with situations for multiple players. So more on that later.

That thing called guilt

After a day of researching I feel quite guilty. I haven't created anything today. Not a painting, not even a pencil scrawl. And that kind of makes me feel sad. It's very hard for me to research without creating anything.
I'm sure some of my classmates feel the same. So usually my way of creating things is either building a 3D model. Paint on paper. Or create something with photoshop.

But can I use that for my research. Can I tell stories with my images? Are my paintings quite good enough. In my opinion I still have much much to learn. Composition for example. When you look at movies no camera angle or arrangement is a coincidence. There is a whole theory behind composition. The old masters did it and people are still doing it. Even in games. A good composition can tell the story for itself. And that's a thing my paintings lack. So can I learn this? Because that is what I really want. After school I'll probably try to become a concept artist or someone who creates worlds for videogames or film, so I need to make my work stand out. A graduation research would be the perfect opportunity to research these things. But I still need to keep interaction in mind though! Because just images will never be enough.

So this would be a question to ask myself

How can I pull people into my game without using spoken word. So how can I make visuals speak for themselves?

I'll probably have to change my thesis again. But this would be a good place to start, when I learned a thing or two and practised a bit (there is the fun part) I'll try to come back to my initial question.

How can I make people interact with eachother and face them with tough choices that can possibly have negative outcomes for the rest of the group.

And how can I make people interact with eachother without using too much spoken and written text.

So the use of visuals is a must for me if I really want to function in this project. Some people research by reading articles. And some people just need to create things.
So lets make some fun and something good will hopefully come out of it.

After practising, sketching and reading, I'll probably need help from my friends to see if the images tell their story without me having to explain what's happening.
Afterwards it's up to me to come up with some core gameplay elements, keeping interaction between multiple players in mind. Then come up with a clear visual style that I can use for production.

So it's on to research, composition, color, light, values and shapes to tell my story.

It will probably be pretty hard. But at least I'm researching while creating things. And that makes me happy.

The one ring and tough times

It's so hard for me to stop painting and drawing all day and actually do research. I'm very lucky I have some good books to read and some games to play because looking at articles all day long is really not my thing.

So about games. Every once in a while I visit the van Melle family, to play a pen and paper role-playing game called the one ring. Most of you must have heard of the concept pen and paper role playing games. If not. I'll try to explain very briefly.

A pen and paper Rpg when you sit around a table, playing as a character, with one person being the game master. The players play as their characters and the game master is the narrator as well as every other person in the world we're playing in. Our adventure takes place in Middle-earth (the hobbit, the lord of the rings) A little while after the battle of the five armies. My classmate Ernst-Jan is the so called game master, or dungeon master. The storyteller basicly. His brother and sister, his dad and me are the players. We are  basicly a mismatch of characters (a dwarf an elf and two humans).

Our choices and actions our being resolved by throwing the dice. So if I want to jump off a cliff (which would generally be a stupid idea) I would have to roll the dice to see how dead I am. Bad example but gets the point across I hope.
Anyway, we're playing the game for about two years now, and each time it's incredibely exiting. Because it allows us to create our own story. Our choices affect the world of middle-earth as well as all the people in it. But the best thing about it is that we each have our own vision about what the world looks like. Just like reading a book. We're basicly creating whole worlds in our heads. Would the game be different if each situation was described by a very detailed artwork. Yeah it would probably be different. Instead of imagining what it should look like we basicly get it presented on a silver well drawn plate.

Because I'm into painting environments and stuff I decided to sketch out one of the evil castles where my poor character was being held captive and tortured for over 2 years.

The funny thing was, this was totally different from what the other players and Ernst-Jan had in mind. So it's safe to assume that everyone has another image in his head while reading of playing the same story.

Still. Pen and paper roleplaying is a perfect example of working as a team but still keep your characters personal interests in mind. The good part of roleplaying is, you can literally do anything. within the setting and the rules of course. I mean if my friend would say. Im going to fire this nice bazooka. The game master would say: dude, we're in Middle-earth. So what the hell?
Also, the game master can basicly do what he like. Is a player acting like a douche? The game master can simple decide that two nearby trolls can't really cope with the existence of the tough acting character and resolve this problem by simply pulling him apart. Bye player character. So there is a lot of freedom in roleplaying games but the fun factor and the immersion of the game kind off depends on the game master. We are lucky to have Ernst-Jan as a game master as he does a great job at this. But a game master can ruin the game for you if he doesn't know what he is doing.

It takes a while to get started. There are all kinds of forms and statistics to be filled out before the fun starts. And there are always the rules that sometimes hold you back.

So basicly. A pen and paper roleplaying game give you a set of rules and statistics but otherwise complete freedom to create stories together within a setting.

On to the questions, because a pen and paper roleplaying game needs a game master.
Can the game do without? Can a computer system do what a game master does? Can players make their own story? Can they work as a team to reach their goal?

I still want to make a game where players are being faced with tough choices, without having to go trough all the rules and statistics that come with a pen and paper roleplaying game. But can I make them interact with eachother just like in a roleplaying game? And can I manipulate their choices by visualising the situations they're in with artwork?

I'm reading a book called framed ink. It's about drawing and composition for visual storytellers. So can I tell my audience a story with visuals? How can I do that? I'm sure this book will give me some insights about that. 

to summarize about roleplaying games:

Pro's: Great way to imagine stories. Working as a team to solve problems. A lot of freedom
cons: Heavily dependant on the Game master. And there are a lot of rules to keep in mind.

Tomorrow I'll talk about Telltale games. Probably about their game of thrones game because they are releasing episode two tomorrow.

New paintings and some time off

I made these two paintings while taking a break from research.
I've been watching some documentaries and youtube shows and I read some interesting books.

I focused a little bit more on storytelling with environments.

Tomorrow I'll try to share my experiences with a pen and paper roleplaying set in the Lord of the rings universe. It's very intersting for me because we are conjuring up stories without looking at visuals while playing. Why does this work and why doesn't it? I'll try to go a bit more in depth about that subject tomorrow.

Soft Reset

Thinking about interaction between players so much made my brain hurt a little. Was this really the thing I was looking for? If I want to answer all those questions I asked in my previous posts, I'll probably have to go back to the basics first. What do I love to do most? How would I want people to recognize me after my graduation.

I love to create images. And I want to make feel like they're there. Creating worlds for people to wander in. That's what I like to do most. So back to basic's with the question,

How can I make people feel like they're part of my worlds.

If I'm looking at it with my painter's hat on, I'd probably have to search for books about color and light, and books about composition and storytelling. How can I make believable worlds and paintings. This also has a lot to do with design, shapes, color, light and mood.

Most of my paintings are based on weird looking shapes. Interesting to look at (subjective), but lacking of a good story most of the time. So my paintings need story, something exciting happening. Something believable. I'm going to read some books about dynamic composition (Framed Ink) and a book about color and light (color and light, james gurney) To see if I can get some interesting insight about storytelling with images.



Because that's the thing. The first question I had to answer after my presentation was: Well do you actually need visuals to achieve your goals? My answer would have to be no. You don't need visuals to force people to make tough choices. But that's the thing. Creating worlds with visuals is what I like to do most. So soft reset. Not saying that my previous findings were useless. I still want to create a game that forces people to make tough choices. But visuals need to be a part of it somehow.

Because not using what you've learned for the past few years is like learning how to play the violin for years and years, and then play an instrument you've never played before on your final exam. It may be a bad comparison but I hope that makes sense!

The first thing I need to do right now is, gather information. There are lots of articles regarding storytelling out there. Lots and lots. And I have some books to read, and some movies to watch.
It doesn't really feel like starting over. I just need to take a few steps back and start with pure fascination.

There are some movies that make you feel like there is something evil, something monstrous out there, without showing it, creating so much suspense!! That's a sidenote though. There are some movies that did a great job doing that. Cloverfield for example! I'm going to watch that movie right now.

Signing off.

Tomorrow some more games that deal with storytelling, choices, concequences and visuals. 

This Research of mine

I was talking to my classmate Joost Bos about choices and consequences in games.  He said: you want to play a game which does this well? Play this war of mine. And I bought the game, because my classmate Joost is super trustworthy.

So this war of mine is about civilians in a war torn environment. Desperately trying to survive. The grim situation is perfectly reflected in the art style. A dark and moody painting style with rough, animated textures. It instantly gave me the „this is not a cool place to be in” feeling.
my three characters. first needed to clear their refuge of rubble and find all kinds of stuff. Some food, some medicine that might come in handy later. Well it did come in handy because one of the first things that happens to me, ten minutes in game, two little boys knock on my door, asking for medicine for their poor, sick mother. That’s a tough choice. I mean, we are all trying to survive right. But those boys seemed desperate. I might need those medicines later but those boys seemed desperate. So I decided to give them the medicine, only to find out that one of my characters fell ill a little bit later. Did I really have to give away my medicine? What if one of my characters dies because of my decision. I was lucky. My character was able to sleep it off. Could have been worse. But the game already faced me with a tough choice.




At night I got the opportunity to scavenge for some recourses and building materials. I took my tough looking girl and went looking for supplies in the nearby supermarket. I was being told that the supermarket was under military control, dangerous, but my characters were hungry so I had to take the risk. I took a shovel with me in case I had to dig through a pile of rubble or something. Arriving at the supermarket, I spot a girl. looking for supplies. She didn’t notice me because I was looking through a keyhole in the door. All of a sudden a heavily armed guy showed up. Clearly military. He was asking her name, trying to be nice and such. The girl didn’t really want to talk to the armed man. Just looking for supplies she said. The guy didn’t really like the reply. Don’t you want to come with me, have a good time? It was clear to me that the girl didn’t really want to have a good time with the tough looking guy. He asked her a second time, aiming his weapon at her face. I had to do something right? I didn’t really think about the risks, but I decided to help the girl. That shovel I brought might come in handy. I kicked the door open and charged the guy before he had a chance to shoot me. Quite a hit. But the man recovered and punched me in the face. „wounded” said my status bar. Ouch! I was able to hit him once more. Dead. I just killed a soldier. Shit. I have to get out of here before his buddies notice there is something wrong. The terrified girl already ran away, without saying thank you. I looked through the soldiers stuff. Machine gun? I instantly took it, might come in handy later when we need to protect our house against raiders. He was also carrying cigarettes, some booze and some bandages. Score! But with this impulsive action I might have caused some serious problems with the military. I hoped they didn’t see me.
When my character returned home her status bar said: Content. My character did something rather heroic by saving that girl from that monster with an AK-47. And I, the player felt pretty good about the whole thing too.



The choices made in this game our tough. Choices about life and death. In a situation like a war, everything could mean the end of you and your group of survivors. So the whole situation made choices even more tough. Give those meds to the little boys and lose one of my surviving characters to the flu? Life and death.

Such a setting might make choices even harder for players. And even more so when their choices could mean the end of the other players.
So if I want to face the players with tough choices and consequences I might want to think about such a story.

To summarize this game here are some pro’s and cons about it.
Pro's A tough setting that can make it extra tough for the player to make choices. Brilliant art direction. Sometimes you have to make sacrifices or even do illegal things for the sake of your own group of survivors. Moral choices! I felt kinda sad after robbing an old couple of their medicine and food.

Cons: It’s too bad that this game is single player only. If this game could be played with more players, each looking after one survivor, choices would be even harder to make. Who deserves that bandage more? Players would be sucked into this game as a group and would probably discuss things with each other while playing the game.

Maybe an alien attack like in war of the worlds. Where poor Tom Cruise had to survive while protecting his son and daughter. He also faced dilemma’s and tough choices. Because every wrong choice could have meant the end for poor Tom.
It’s probably up to me to come up with a captivating world, where the whole situation forces the players to make such choices.

I’m working on a paper prototype at the moment, where a story takes place in a city attacked and destroyed by extra terrestrial life-forms. 4 characters with different backgrounds have to survive in this world that became their nightmare.

In the next post I’ll talk some more about other cool games with branching story lines and random encounters.
I’ll also talk about lightning and mood in movies and games. As well as lighting and mood in paintings and images.

ps. to summarize what I’m doing at the moment: I’m trying to figure out how to create a game in which players have to face tough choices. Interaction between players is a key factor that I want to research. Can players interact with each other in real life to make decisions in game?