Unit 2 – Character Design

This brief is a 10 week project that will run along side the Narrative and Postmodern briefs intertwining in some areas.

Don’t really know how I feel about this brief, I didn’t get butterflies in my stomach or become hot/sweaty when Phil mentioned (the obvious) epic amounts of drawing will be needed. so thats a good sign!

Envelopes were passed around between us at the table. Each envelope contained a word for the type, setting or world which your characters are to take their form.

My word is Avian

First Impression

This brief is interesting, I’m still wondering how –if at all- I can use what is made here in Gunstar Heroes Resurrection, although, I doubt its possible.

The whole Avian thing sounds like Aviation, as in flight. So im wondering if the characters I design will be birdmen of some description, this is all speculation at this point.

Google roulette!

Spinning the google roulette wheel! The word on the ball is “Avian”. First stop Wikipedia, give me some basic premise for searching further.

“Avian” according to the amorphous blob that is Wikipedia is… oh, its has 4 things that I could mean

Avian may refer to:

1. Bird – (could be)
2. Avian (Band) <- American metal band (definitely not)
3. Avians <- a fantasy race in several fantasy settings (couldn’t be this one huh? 😀
4. Aviano <- a city in Italy also known as Avian

I’m guessing that it is the fantasy race option of those, so im going to head out now and try to interview one of these myself! Of course I’m kidding, let’s take a closer look!

After spinning “Avian Race” in the Google roulette, I took the option which looked the most promising; it linked me to what I assume is a online RPG website (no you can’t buy rocket propelled grenades LOL) called Aabahran.

There are lots of other links here, but most of them are to do with Avian flu, how to look out for it, how to treat it, etc.

It gives a short description of the Avian Race http://www.aabahran.com/?p=155

“Avians are bird like creatures that resemble humans.  They have wings that allow them to be in constant flight.  Avians have been known to travel great distances without needing a rest.  When they are not in flight, Avians are able to fold their wings and rest them on their backs.  Because of their dependence on the wind for propulsion, they have become sensitive to disturbances in wind speed and pressure.

 

Avians can be the following classes:
Warrior, Thief, Ninja, Battlemage, Invoker, Necromancer, Dark-Knight, Bard and Blademaster.”

 

 Also I took a look at the Dungeons and Dragons wiki, and looked for Avian in their races list, and I found a suitable page on this race. Following paragraph was taken from that page, i highlighted the important bits.

“Avians combine the features of human and raptor, having the build of a lanky humanoid but with talon-like feet and a wingspan equal to their height. They come in a variety of colors along the white, brown, and black spectrum, though some younger avians are known to dye their wings in exotic colors. Their heads remain very birdlike, with a sharp beak, piercing eyes, and tufts of feathers that are groomed into different styles. Their feathers cover most of their bodies. Though their feet resemble the tough claws of most birds of prey, their hands retain a more humanoid shape.

 

Avians are known to dress in light clothing such as cloth and silk. Their colors tend to match their surrounding environment so as to have constant camouflage when necessary. A common tradition among avians is a necklace that carries token feathers, normally no more than three, of significant family members, usually the mother, father, and spouse.

After hatching, avians remain helpless without a parent. They learn to walk around the nesting area around a year of age and are attempting flight by year two. They reach adulthood at about 16 and have lifespans similar to humans”

 

D&D passage on Avians, http://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/Avian_(4e_Race)

 

There were several illustrations of Avian people on the wiki showing the different D&D roles they can play.

this is how the avian race is currently depicted on a broad scale.

I did an image hunt for relavent images that could possibly help me generate ideas for the appearance of my 3 characters hero villain

top right: a common Avian design featuring a medievel war setting, characters head is totally birdlike, wings can be seen on his back

top left: a slight variation featuring a avian that looks to be set in a sort of egyptian era, waring golden coloured clothing, holding a stringbow and arrow

middle right: this is a depiction of a hindu god, unlike the other designs of avians that i had seen while searching this one had wings for arms instead of both, i thought this was interesting and worth noting as a possible alternative.

middle left: an avian magician of somkind, thought this was cool because i started to notice all the avians ive founs so far are depictions of real birds, this one looks more like an owl, which fits with the wizard archetype , of being wise.

bottom left: this looks very cool, an i had forgotten about this character in the X-men series, “arch angel” he retains all of his human atributes apart from his glorious white wings.

these 2 were my favouite pictures that i found while looking for inspiration for my hero character.

Right: a face off between an 2 avians. One the hero, the other the villain, the villain looks more emminent than the hero, having sharp black claws, a black horned head and bat-like wireframe wings. 

Found this picture on Deviant Ar, is my favourite depiction of Avian humanoids i have seen, features a finished battle between two avian characters, the hero triumphing over the villain and the hero is about to deliver the finishing blow, both men in th image are still verymuch humanoid, like Arch Angel they still have human shaped faces hands and feet, which are the things commonly addapted in Avian humanoid art.

I have never been a great fan of medievel style art or games, things set in the past are used too often and dont require enough imaginationto keep me sufficiently interested.

I want my Avians to be considerabley different, still maintaining a basic human shape AND facial features rather than them having a complete bird head, they will ware futuristic armour/clothing this will be to gain a fresh look on what Avians in the future could resemble.

wings and arms

i have been trying to understand the difference between the birds wing in relation to the human arm, since ive been having a bit of bother trying to figure out how exactly birds relax their wings onto their bodies, the reasons that this is casueing an issue is because ive been looking at the Avian race of humanoid birdman for a while, and they already have arms and so its threw my mind into the sky just trying to contemplate this odd imaginary being, also because my characters -save for Tairian- walk upright, and unlike birds that mostly walk with a mild hunch so again, the positioning of the wings on my characters has been a bit tricky 🙂 . Ive found some good resources. this website in particular I found to be very cool indeed.

http://www.aviary.org/curric/wings.htm

coupled with the following screenshot I am understanding a lot more of a birds actual physique but still having a little trouble understanding just HOW they do it, in what way do their wings fold? :s the following video really helped me in this respect, still looking for inspiration for my villain character I searching for big birds, or the biggest bird, and i found the perfect one, the Andean Condor is a giant black bird, largest in the world!

Still, it is cool to see the clear signs of evolution from these images, how every animal has the same bones we just evolved to need certain things from their structure.

Somthing I learned from the above link, is that the orginasation of a birds feathers is very important to their individual flight characteristics, which is somthing that we never really think about, we sort of just say “oh look a bird” because we expect it to have wings that are capable of flight, unless we see an ostrich or chicken, which have wings but are flightless.

another factor in the confusion is that in art of winged humans the wings very rarely are drawn practiaclly, and are always almost done soley for artistic value and thus the only thing needed to be understood about the image is that the person has wings, and we know in basic terms what wings look like so we dont think past the mere look of the art, where as id like my creations to actually have an artistic look and also be able to function as if they really existed. 

To get a closer look at the wing type for Yura I foolishly typed “Chicken wings” into google, HAHA, quite amusing because after realising what I had typed it was too late.

surprise level 0….. comedy level 10.

so I made sure to be specific and added “xray” to the end of my search, my hero characters pyhsique is based off the relative dimentions of a hen, very broad lower body and stumpy arms, however Yura can still fly unlike the Hen/Chicken. chickens flap there wings very fast when they are running around like a headless.. chicken, (ooh cruel joke there) so i thought of perhaps giving Yura the wings of a humming bird, that way she doesnt have to have absolutely giant wings on her back and can keep her relatively small frame,

Angels

Angels are an important part of the focus for my characters, since angels are winged humanoids also, at least in catholic teachings.

based on knowledge gained from this website: http://kimbasangels.com/hierarchy.html

Seraphim

Seraphim are the closest form of being to god out of all the types of angel that exist.

“According to Enoch II, the Seraphim have 4 faces and 6 wings. It has been written that these six wings represent the six days of creation. Depicted in Middle Age writings, the Seraphim are described as being red in color and brandishing flaming swords “

I dont want my villain to have 4 faces, but i do want him to have 6 glorious wings, somthing about having more than 1 set of feathered wings is just so cool. the four faces thin i didnt see in any depiction seraphim i found whilst searching for references

http://www.angelfocus.com/dionysius%20hierarchy.htm#Seraphims

like the other link, this one also contained information stating that seraphims are red and gold in colour and wield a flaming sword, i personally think there is just somthing much more sinister and menacing about an enemy who is capable and willing to pull you apart using his bare hands rather than a weapon.

ohh lucky! 😀 www.seraphim.com (who would have thought that they had their own website?)

“The only reference to the Seraphim in the Old Testament, can be found in Isaiah Chapter 6, verses 1 through 3, which details a specific vision the prophet had of these angels. The scripture reads, “In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord seated on a throne, high and exalted, and the train of his robe filled the temple. Above him were Seraphs, each with six wings, with two wings they covered their faces, with two they covered their feet, and with two they were flying. And they were calling to one another, holy, holy, holy is the Lord Almighty, the whole earth is full of his glory”.“

so he had a vision of god, and around god were the seraphim.

SCANNER HACKED! I WIN!

I managed to hack my scanner and get it to save my pictures! the end is closing in and i cant afford a new one. I will write about the images tomorow, there are still some more not up yet. also alot need to be edited in photoshop because of my light fingered “lets-rub-it-out-and-start-again” tactics its hard to see.

initial villain proportions

first sketches of the outline proportions for the potential villain character, relativley normal human build or long and gaunt looking human build with long arms possibly for longer clawing reach. inspiration was from the robots in Miyazaki’s Laputa: Castle in the sky, their arms almost touch the floor, they have slender legs and when there arms become wings they have a very broad span.

 initial Sidekick proportions

testing out proportions for the Sidekick character, short and scrappy, short round and fat, of huge and overbearing with tiny legs for comedic effect. also testing the hix of human and bird for the first time.

Villain Face 1

Further toying with the bird / human mixing, trying to figure out what way im going to take it, or how to make the face not look so evil, Birds have a very cutting and piercing stare to there eyes thats hard to remove and still make it look like a humanoid bird the way I want it to be.

Initial Hero line proportions test

this was a quick line drawing for what could possibly be the Heros basic dimentions and wingspan 

basic premise

to help in further drawing I made a small rule up. to make the Avian/human blend more original I decided to make a type of optical illusion with the head, where if you remove the lower half of the head it will resemble a bird, whereas including it will resemble a humaniod character. so i always start drawing the “beak” first as the shape of this normally defines the character that fits around it.

Villain

Posing and Villain’s first design

Seraphim villain 1

this is the first (very lightly drawn) image i did of my villain with 6 wings after researching Seraphim Angels in the catholic angelic charts. had a sort of idea to use a captain falcon type helmet and get the anular eyes in too, like captain falcon himself and the cartoon depictions of Batman.

test for Combat Egg – wingless villains mechanical suit idea

this idea sort of came out of nowhere after i had been playing a game whos main focus was on the use of airships / steel / iron and propellers. LOTS of propellers, so i thought since the design brief is Avian, and it can still technically flyid give it a go.

I like it, ive never drawn anything so odd before, however it doesnt really fit with the rest of my characters. it is a more steampunk idea which is retro technology.

designs for the villains helmet/face mask

I really like the idea that the villain wares a mask, not to cover up anything but just to make himself seem more special and fearsome so i tried some different designs for what his helmet could look like.

Birth of “Ceraphor” – Current Villain design

Pronounced Sera-for

Villain Synopsis

Ceraphor is a complete DNA recreation of Eiraien blood, born from the result of an experiment at a secret laboratory on the unknown Tier 9. Mixing the DNA of several Eiraien and Psyffiron specimens the scientists at the lab cared only about results in the search for the creation of the perfect being, any casualties were merely statistics. The scientists changed Ceraphor’s very core to one of seething hatred,  only moments after his birth from the incubation tank the scientists pitted him against a Psyffiron, a winged psychic quadruped, the result was deemed a success after Ceraphor tore the creatures left wing and leg from its body with its bare hands. Then with his own psychic ability Ceraphor ravaged the minds of all the scientists in the facility leaving them as simple hollow shells.

 Moments later an Eiraien female fell into the room through the roof, she stood up and grinned at Ceraphor, daring him to attack her instead of finishing off the Psyffiron, which he was only too happy to oblige, this Eiraiens wings were dwarfed in comparison to Ceraphors, however she was a hummer, and her wings fluttered back and forwards many hundred times a second, enabling her to get a height advantage on Ceraphor who was too large to take flight with the wings he had in such a small space. It didn’t matter much however, this Eiraien was almost unable to inflict any damage to Ceraphor and he repeatedly swatted her from in front of him, never staying down she stumbled back to her feet and pointed, laughing at the protective headgear Ceraphor had been born with.

 With one beat of his wings he was upon the Eiraien, In a black smear of movement Ceraphor raised his hand to deliver a final strike to the wounded Eiraien who dared to mock him, when suddenly a spiking pain filled his head, like somebody was angrily rolling a cactus onto his brain, the beast let out a ear piercing cry, and backed away from the Eiraien the pain was to much and Ceraphor swiped at the wall crumbling it to rubble, the green black pollution of the Drowning Mist moved began to flood into the room masking Ceraphor as he jumped out into the darkness.      

 Ceraphor stands at 9 feet tall with a wing span of 22 feet, he is normally in a poised position when at rest.  Ceraphor’s charcoal feathers aren’t as they appear, they are made of an unknown organic substance similar to bone only much denser enabling him to withstand enormous amounts of damage while still being light enough to fly.

man I love this drawing 😀 it is only small in my sketch book about 10 15 centimeters across, this is the position Ceraphor was in after he mauled Tairian and cried out to the sky and destroyed his creators minds. 

Using the line tool i traced over my sketch of Ceraphor, also giving him talons, this was done so that colouring Ceraphor could be done more efficiently

the colour pallete was kept as shady as possible, using dark shades of yellow for his hands and feet aslo his white neck is not pure 255 white, it is a light shade of grey, since he has been artifically created his skin is extremely pale, the skin around his neck would otherwise be pink. the only part that needed really stand out is his eyes which looked best in Yellow and Green

Between Green and Yellow I chose green since its my favourite colour (bit childish but oh well) either would be as good, plus the green stands out more on his figure.

Using the Letf orthographic view I was able to make a Top view too, and then referencing them together I was able to also make a Front Orthographic view.

  

Attempting Poses

picture of me posing for Ceraphor, this is a pose simulating Ceraphor attacking from above, his claws ready to do some serious damage. for this one I had to sketch from a photograph since unfortunatley I cant take a picture pose and sketch all at once 😦 

First I drew him without his wings to get the overall shape, then I added his wings afterwards, his wings are flattened to help him decend without hurting himself but while also keeping the speed up enough so he can destroy his target.

 

Again using Adobe Flash, i traced the sketched iage and made a good digital remaster in vector.

there are many types of angel, the one closest to God in the chart is the Seraphim variety, the seraphim is often depicted as a 6 winged angel, i have taken this and given it a twist creating somthing a little unexpected and cool at the same time.

Sidekick

current Design for the sidekick character, he is a cybernetically enhanced Griffon type creature called a Psyffiron.

Tairian

Pronounced Tai-ri-an

The sidekick of the plotline, Tairian is a Psyffiron, a fictional race I invented that is similar in most respects to Griffons or Hippogriffs, with a major difference in that they are powerful telepathic creatures and thus cannot speak using normal mouth speech. Communication is done solely through the use of telepathy, a unique racial attribute of his species. Tairian is a very rigid and serious-about-himself character however after spending so long with Yura his hard outer shell has softened and he will crack jokes with her on occasion however his facial expression will change very little, sometimes making him even funnier than he intended, or not funny at all. This also sometimes confuses Yura as it makes it hard for her to understand whether he is serious or not.

Tairian was rescued by Yura 5 years ago when the Psyffiron race was being hunted and experimented on by a small section of Eiraien scientists trying to extract and find out how Psyffirons are able to communicate with people’s minds directly in order to create the perfect being. he lost a wing and a leg in a fight with the scientists final creation as a test of its strength.  And then yura fell into the room from up above, and began to fight with the six winged demon. Tairian was surprised by Yuras ability to keep smiling even in the face of such evil, as he lay bleeding she smiled and told him “it’s going to be fine, you just relax there for a bit”. Perhaps a cruel joke on her part considering his condition.

Since the incident on Tier 9, Tairian became the first Psyffiron to enter the EAPA, he travels around the floating islands with Yura wherever she goes, and as her partner he does his best to calm her down should she become too excited, or back her up should any trouble arise. They are assigned to the Tiers 5 through 8, meaning they get to see the most impoverished  Eiraien citizens, and of course, some of the worst crime on Taerion. Yura doesn’t mind this however since she is able to visit her home often on Tier 5.

Tairian’s mind had been scarred by Ceraphor’s Psychic attack before Yura crashed in and despite being sent to find Ceraphor with Yura by the Eiraien Air Patrol Authority Tairian doesn’t ever wish to see Ceraphor’s huge evil figure ever again.

Sidekick’s cybernetic wing type 1 – Retractable Metal “Feathers”

with this i was looking at mecha anime type approach, like gundam, huge metal wings, however i decided to keep it simple, the ‘feathers’ can be tretracted when he doesnt use them. examples can be seen on this page http://www.stolaf.edu/people/vangtk/

Sidekick’s cybernetic wing type 2 – VTOL wing

Sidekicks cybernetic wing type 3 – Turbo proppeller based on the ‘Ospray’ transport.

Sidekicks cybernetic wing type 4 – VTOL wing 2 (based on the GDI Orca engine from Command and Conquer)

Orthographic sketches

Acurate Orthographic views taken from the above sketches.

here is an accurate version of Tairians Left wing replacement,

since this alone is not enough to provide enough lift there are trace elements of current day Grawway technology

Hero

female hero, current version (millitary police uniform)

Yura

Pronouced “You-ra”

Yura is a happy-go-lucky addition to the Eiraien Air Patrol Authority; she always gets things done despite her wishy-washy attitude towards her superiors and the strict upbringing of Eiraien’s in general. very rarely seen not smiling  often poking fun at her fellow Eiraien friends for being “so uptight”

Yura was an abandoned egg that was found by another Eiraien family, which was unable to have offspring of their own due to side effects of a malfunctioning Gravway Reactor, she was raised in a modest house hold on the 5th Tier, always taught to look forward to the future and never to fear it, she has taken this to the extreme possibly as a result of living with the poisoned lower levels it is uncertain whether she is completely sane or not, since no matter what happens she is always smiling and happy.

Yura is a rare white winged Eiraien, white feathers are found almost exclusively in the top 2 Tiers’s of the population. Yura’s parents managed to get her up a few Tiers and into the military police through connections her father had with certain influential people in the top 3 Tiers, since only members of the population in the Tiers 1 to 3 are allowed to join the police, together with her appearance she was allowed to join the Eiraien Air Patrol Authority.

Yura stands about 5 feet tall and has a 9 foot wing span, being a female means her lower body is much broader than that of a male and her arms are also shorter, despite this she is still able to hold her own with any other EAPA member because of her uncanny accuracy with a Talon blaster. After fighting with Ceraphor she brought Tairian to a biomechanist, who augmented Tairian’s body, fitting him with mechanical replacements for both his leg and wing. This was the only time Yura was seen not smiling.

For Yura, I had been looking at futuristic white armour and I thought of the clone and storm trooper from starwars. as well as the Combine Elite soldiers from the Half-life 2 game.

the colour white is important for the stereotype of being the good guy, however in starwars 4 -6 it was used to contrast with the dark lord darth vader, so that when you saw him for the first time you would instantly know “this guy is THE one”.

I wanted to keep the amount of armour light as the Eiraien’s have to fly with this stuff on, so I tried to base the EAPA armour from this, since being an airborne race they would still need to be quite agile. 

(ew, thats a little grainy….. ill change it later)

This is my housemate, whom I enlisted to help me with some poses for Yura.

Here she is full size!

First I sketched her body outline in blue pencil, then I adden the clothes ontop with a normal pencil, I put that into photoshop and corrected all the mistakes with the eraser then selected all the pixels that werent white and made them jetblack, with this i put it into flash and used the “trace image” tool to convert it into a vector outline so I could try out the colour.

after feedback from the first drawing of Yura, i decided to indeed make her nose/beak a little less pronounced since she is still humanoid and a female, so I decided to look at owl beaks, I think it fits a lot better for her overall.

I didnt want her to have giant wings like Ceraphor since Yura is a female i wanted her to have less pronounced wings, much like how her beak was previously too large. so instead of chicken wings like i had previously thought, i decieded on Humming bird wings. this means she can hover gently in the air andstead of vigourous flapping or circling in the sky. in reality this would mean she can not travel long distances without becoming tired very quickly, unlike Ceraphor who has giant wings capable of keeping him airborne with ease.

 

using these sketches I made clear Orthographic views in Flash using the line tool

 

Location

The planet Taerion in which my characters reside is now covered completely in water, due to extreme effects of global warming brought about by dangerous plantlife on the planets once lush green surface and the rapid expansion of the Eiraien people. Many millions years prior to the current day, Pre-empting the fall of their race the Ancient Eiraien’s built special devices under their settlements to literally lift them off the ground to escape the great flooding effects of the melting super glacier known as “kios”, these devices were the absolute pinnacle of Eiraien technology at the time and is known as “Gravway” technology, and the isles they support are known as Gravway Islands.

Many of these islands were once connected as one huge drifting land mass, however the malfunction of certain the Gravway reactors caused the Islands to break apart and is now a series of many hundred thousands of smaller islands and platforms, erosion and general ware and tare have left only the land masses closest to the Gravway reactors themselves still intact.

the Gravway reactors can be seen as cylindrical aluminium or copper structures with a large dome on its lowerside, the domed section of the reactors are extremely dangerous and will literally insta-crush anything that flys underneath it within its area of effect, which can be up to 25meters. The force under a Gravway reactor can be guess measured by looking at the size of the isle it is supporting, the resulting pressure of holding such a mass in the air stably has cut hollows in even the toughest rock face, revealing an perfectly smooth surface and in some cases, has created diamond out of the rock. flying underneath one of these would be like the island itself instantly landing on you full force meaning complete annahilation.

Eiraiens architecture ontop of the reactors to house themselves from the outside world, they are are aluminium and steel plated pyramids, built to increase their sturdiness and resistance to attacks from enemies and to show off the wealth of the owner, the isles are marketed by the age and number of the Gravway reactor which supports it, because this normally depicts the age of the isle and how likley it is to fail or not, failing Gravways are always replaced, but at great cost, since landmasses on the surfaces have become extict now the gravway’s are often checked, however the richest get the top priority and the poor have a tendancy to be forgotten, which some believe to be a good thing.

The isles have slowly drifted apart and now hang at varied altitudes, these are known as Tiers. there are 8 Tiers, the 1st being where the government and richest among the Eiraien populations tend reside and it gets poorer the lower down in the Tiers you decend. Until you get to the “Drowning Mist” a thick layer of greenish black polution that hangs just underneath the 8th Tier. The clouds in the 1st Tier are white and fluffy and like the economy, the lower in the Tiers you go the darker and more frequent the clouds become, the 8th Tier is always drowned in constant acid rain thunderstorms, from the polution of the uppermost Tiers.

Insignia for the Eiraien Air Patrol Authority.

—-

I was told my idea is kind of like the movie Waterworld, because in this film the planet earth is flooded completely in water, then I remembered that I have actually seen this film once I was shown the trailer for it.

Unit 1 – Narrative

today 21st of september marks day 1 on the UCA YEAR 2 calender. it was good to meet everybody again especially my good friend Tom.

after the brief, we were all split into our groups (because its a group project… duh). My group consists of

Me (Dii),

Zack Moat

Gabriele Maiocco

I think my group is awesome, none of us are really outspoken or demand alot of attention, nor do we force ourselves onto each other like brain sluts, idea whoring eachother till we end up playing russian roulette, we are all…. just easy going borgs. This is helped by the fact that none of us really know each other that well, i mean i hadnt previously spoken to Zack, even though we spent the best part of a year in the same room, and Gabriele is new in the group this year.

we decided to get straight to it, and began to brainstorm potential spoofable films or genres that we know well enough.

I suggested that we could do “Robocop” as a spoof,

I thought of Robocop simply because its a film that is in everyones heart, everyone knows robocop, i dont know a human alive who hasnt seen at least the first film, and even if they havent seen the film they know what he looks like. The release of the film is perfect for the age group of our year, a great 80’s movie.

All three of us literally fell in love with the idea’s we were churning out, so we turned over the page and put Robocop in the centre of the storm.

after we had done what we could think of on paper, I suggested that we each pick one idea and storyboard it for the next day so we can see if they would be anygood, Zack disagreed and said that we should wait it out a bit longer before jumping in just incase we miss somthing or get somthing wrong, which is true as has happened to me in the past. so instead he decided that we should think of 10 ideas that we could do for the Robocop spoof instead.

my ideas are.

1. Being a gillete shaving model, because he only has a chin left.

2. Having a intel inside sticker on his back or helmet

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

10.

its really hard to come up with so many more ideas when we wrote so many down already, and i dont want to step on anybodies toes by claiming gags that i didnt infact make, because its a team effort.

i shall fill them in tomorow. after i have seen what the team thinks, since its only a minute, we have quite a lot of stuff already that could fill that space, of course we need to wittle it down to the best ones, and make it have a beginning middle and end.

must think about sound too —

——-

ok so ive been thinking about it, i spoke with zack yesterday, (29/09/09) and he said that we should each take a 20 second slot of the final production, that way we each get to detail what we did in the project, as well as also having our own idea put into motion, no body is left on the sidelines to accept the will of the others. however after talking with Gabriele today, he suggested that we cut to having 15seconds each, so that we had enough time for an intro, and I agreed.

this means that it will lay out somthing like this

Intro – 15 seconds (robocop is fired)

Slot 1 –

Slot 2 –

Slot 3 –

Who takes what slots is I feel will be completely decided on how each of our gags play out, the strongest one should be last so there is a sort of build up, however the funniest jokes may not be the same for everybody we will decide the order after the “gag pitch” next week, asking which jokes they feel are the strongest and weakest. 

The underlying plot is Robocop has been fired from OCP and is in search of a new job. that will be the intro slot

Beacuse he is such an awkward character anyrole would be funny that entails normal things that are done in society, shopping, dancing, swimming? haha.

right at the start, itd be funny if we ripped some of the sound from the movie and made  a composit sound,

at the end of the film, the director of OCP shouts “nick..YOUR FIRED!” if we could take this and mix it with the name Murphy or Robocop then we could have a good begining to our show, “Murphy… YOUR FIRED”, and thus setting up the rest quite nicely as we follow him in his search for a new job. This is of course just my own thoughts, ive yet to take this up with the guys.

————————————————————————————————-

Robocop spoof 2nd attempt

ok, so going back and rethinking the spoof idea basics. I watched robocop again to see what could be done.

I still really like the idea of him being fired, but instead of him being fired before the sequence of things we would show, he gets fired after, so i am showing a possible ways for him to end up actually being fired from the police force, and i thought to do it in the style of a news broadcast, parodying the start of the actual film itself.

instead of: “this is media break, give us 3 minutes and we’ll give you the world”

id make it: “this is media break. give us 1 minute and we’ll entertain you”

which clearly is wrong, because the news is not rated on its entertainment value.

Top Story, Robocop

after Alan said we need to watch and think about what the film means, I figured its about justice over evil, but also about him following his 4 command directives, so I thought it would be funny if the reason he was fired was because he deliberatly breaks these bult in directives on more than 1 occasion.

The three directives

“serve the public trust”

“protect the innocent”

“uphold the law”

there is a hidden fourth directive, but since there is only three of us in the group and only a minute to spare, I thought this would be best left out

“protect the innocent”

robocop was fired from OCP today after continued direct violations of the law and his own command directives

*shows video of him shooting a civilian*
in an interveiw earlier today he had this to say

“good game”

Storyboard – “protect the innocent” 

Pwn’d, is another very popular online gaming slang used when sombody was dealt with in a way that they had no control over the outcome of their life.

“you got pwned”,  depending on the situation there are many extrapolations of this phrase that are used instead, such as “pwn, pwned, pwnz0r’d” etc

the “good game” quote is a very popular online gaming quote stated at the end of a senario or at the start of a new one as a form of good sportsmanship fo all sides, or as a general statement for the imminent victory of one side of the fight over the other. Normally abbreiviated as simply “gg”, it can also become “gfg” which means “good fucking game” obbviously a more extreme victory or “rape” of the other side leaving them no chance to win.

I thought to use this slang because it is snappy and quick, also he has a monotonous voice so it would sound perfect. the “GFG” version is far too extreme to use in this situation.

the “LOL” card that is attacted to the desk is a small comedic amplifier which fits into the language that both the male newsreader and robocop in this idea.

——–

Idea for – “Serve the Public Trust”

for this one I thought that “well if he is designed to serve the public, the public must believe what he says”

to spoof this i thought of a really simple idea, such as robocop deliberatly telling people incorrect information. To make this simple and less time consuming I used the example of directions on a street. having people come to him for directions and then him looking in the correct direction and then turning about face and telling them its in the opposite direction.

Female NewsReader: “undercover polive watchdogs posing as civilains  reported Robocop gave them false information on purpose
on multiple occasions, giving them incorrect navigational data for directions to places. telling them to
go the completely the wrong direction even when a street sign is in plain sight.”

*shows clip of him looking in the right direction first and then instructing them to go in the blatantly wrong direction*

Female NewsReader: “people that didnt comply with the given directions and argued with the supercop were subsequently arrested for “wasting police time””

*shows video of him putting a man in the policecar after he argued with him about the directions*

——– 

Idea for – Uphold the Law

this idea is self explanitary, in order to spoof this directive, we would need to have Robocop break the law in some way.

still using the news broadcast idea i had the plan that there would be a hold up of a late night shop of off liscence, and of course it would be Robocop as the enemy, i mean how do you say “no” to robocop, its not going to happen, the idea was that robocop was sick  of eating that paste that he gets fed, and thus goes out to aquire some better food, which of course is the different flavours of baby food, since he doesnt gat paid because as they say in the film “hes legally dead, we can do pretty much anything we want to him”, so he has no money, but he wants this food, so he takes a basket and fills it will the baby food and attempts to make a run for it.

*News reader is full in the right side of the frame*

Male News Reader: “Uncanny shock was all that one liquer store owner felt as he described an incident involving Robocop earlier today, Ms jones could tell us more.

*he looks to his left after he finishes speaking.

*the camera snaps to a full frame shot of the Female news reader*

Female News Reader: “The OCP legendary crime fighter Robocop seemed to have had enough of the food he was being given at his work place, the 7 foot machine wieghing — pounds is forced to eat a sloppy brown liquid wich looks like somthing I let go of not too long before we started airing…”

*she loses her trail of thought after that last disturbing relavation and looks down at her desk in restrained embarasment*

Male news reader: *coughs*

*she slowly brings her head back up and composes her self, then continues reading*

Female News Reader: …Excuse me… *ahem* When Robocop was refused food in the OCP cafeteria he left in rage, stating -and I quote- “thats racisism to cyborgs”, and that the cafeteria worker was -again I quote- “activley practicing technolocism in the work place” 

*camera snaps to the male reader. he is smiling looking off to the left of the shot at the female reader*

Male News Reader: “It was surprising nobody was hurt” 

*still looking straight at the camera she continues to report the news*

Female News Reader: “The supercop then proceeded to the nearest store and stole 84 dollars worth of baby food products and attempted to escape on foot”

*behind register cctv – shows Robocop stealing the baby food in the distance*

Male News Reader: “And with a top land speed of 2 miles per hour, it was quite the spectacle

*carpark cctv – shows Robocop attempting to make off with the goods*

 

Out of all the ideas I thought the last one was the best, it would make me laugh personally more than perhaps the second one, my first idea which is the “protect the inocent” directive spoof, now that i look back on it, I feel its really shallow humour, using the internet slang seemed really funny at the time but now its not so great.

———

I missed round three (tuesday and thursday) of last week due to a nut allergy that I underestimated… twice, I think I will just stay away from indian food forever tbh. I was pretty much unconscious although for the postmodern stuff i tried my best to put up with it, god it was hard, its easier when phil does it to when…the.. other people whos names ive forgoten did it last year. I had Tikka Masala, and it had to be finished, because I cant afford to throw anything away. I WANT MY LOAN ALREADY!

sooo…

round 4! FIGHT

This week is pretty much the week we need to finalise our ideas and move on to sort of Previz and cinematic stages, at first my group hadn’t really got a defined plan of action, since  we had had minimal contact with each other to discuss ideas and possible routes we could take as a group, which is my fault for not being in really, so we had been pretty much doing what we each thought would be a good direction to go in, which in a way is a -kind of- good thing since it means we are all free to think for ourselves and then bring it all together later.

I had been looking at the what Robocop meant to me, that being the 3 directives, and the news was a good medium in which to introduce this and split the work between the 3 of us so its fair.

Zack had been looking at advertising spoofs of popular brands like the Apple Iphone, he was trying to implement this as a spoof in our production and use it to try and “sell a Robocop”

Gabriele had been thinking in depth about how we could get a shortened version of the film, adding bits that would make it funny like gay police men, and then Robocop dresses as a gay policeman over the top of his armour saying “lets go fight some crime, baby”. which was pretty humorous I thought.

 
Allen said that mine and Zacks were more or less around the same area in the ways of, its being serious but there is an underlying stupidity going on underneath all the exterior, and that Gabriele’s was good too but we should try to bring all these together somehow. That’s pretty much what I had had in mind after watching Airplane i wanted to somehow capture a serious story with comedy within it, however -we felt a bit smoked out, having exhausted many ideas we thought were great and made us laugh gradually turned upside down and we’d return again to the drawing board.

After everyone had finished showing their groups new ideas and progress reports, we watched (something that I’ve forgotten the name of) which came in the form of a -very well filmed- fake news broadcast, that parodied the news and how serious it was beginning to take itself, especially spoofing the over-embellished graphical interludes that exist at the start of a broadcast and between scene changes.

While watching this, in a similar style to Airplane, it was being so serious about itself that it became funny. the fact that it took things that were stupid and made them seem common place was really good, like using a wild tiger to stop youths from playing there music too loud, this was said with a completely straight face and no other comical hits were given however I was laughing quite a lot.

After this had finished everyone was sat around waiting for time to pass so we could got and see the movie Up, Me Zack and Gabriele were sat staring into space with smoke drifting out of our heads. then Zack and Gabriele began to start over again, discussing ways to take this based on what we had heard. I asked if I could use Gabriele’s note pad to write something down and then i began to write a small script while Zack and Gabriele continued there discussion (I couldn’t hear what they were saying, I was concentrating, lol sorry guys), this is what I wrote.

On Gabriele’s Notebook

*News starts*
*News Reader Introduces themself*
*Terror in the School*
 

News Reporter: “31 children were killed today when a terrorist got into a school in downtown detroit, fortunatley Robocop was on the scene and made the child murderer pay for his crimes, John Doe reports”

John Doe: “once the place of a happy learning environment, now a blood bath. the knife wielding criminal was taken down by a fatal stab wound after he slipped on a pair of paper scissors and fell heart first, onto is own knife. the criminal successfully dodged 90 of Robocops bullets leaving the room in complete silence.

——–

After I finished writing this little segment i turned the pad around, Zack and Gabriele were still talking, it was like “…and your back in the room”. I asked them what they both thought of this and they read it (pretty bloody quickly imo) they both really liked it Gabriele like the “successfully dodged 90 bullets” part, and Zack seemd to like the idea that it was being serious and so made itself funny without realising it. I explained that we could incorporate Zacks plan to have an advert in the news as like a sponsor for the news, and the sponsor could be for the gun that is just being reported to have killed 31 children, (even thought this is never explained it is implied)

Zack then came to the conclusion after letting what Alan said sink in a while that we should stop trying to be funny, and be serious because it will set itself up to be funny anyway, since the entire idea of Robocop is so absurd we agreed that we were working to hard to make it funny when infact in todays cinema world it is already funny when looked at and analysed from a far. So instead of trying to be funny, we should go the otherway just like the fake news program we just watched and be serious about everything.

We then began to expand on this in an attempt to figure out the general spread of work so it was fair, but also to get a final part for Gabrieles section. Gabriele suggested a interview with robocop outside the school, where again, both the reporter and Robocop are being completely serious about the whole thing, however Robocop is actually covered in blood splatters, and has a childs disembodied arm from the elbow down just resting on his shoulder while he is talking.

In order to hide the fact that robocop kills the children we thought of having the reporter as a series of questions and then sombody offscreen hands robocop a wad of paper which on the back says “emergency script” this would only be visual for about 1 second, if that. at which point he says “thank you” in that robotic way he does at the end of the first movie.

John Doe: “do you have anything to say to the kids at home?”

Robocop: “…stay out of trouble”

Focusing the lens!

we are now done with the clear skys stage and we have bolted down a idea that we will carry foward to the end of the project, this idea was explained in my last post on this topic.

we have split up the minute into 3 main parts.

1. News Room (me)

2. Advertisement for Robocops gun (Zack)

3. Interview with Robocop at the scene of the crime. (Gabe)

Below is the storyboard for my part of the final production, spoofing the the overuse of graphics in media, also setting the key factors that will make up the main joke of the sequence, and that is the fate of the children.

through out you are told the children are shot dead, but the criminal in question you are told only has a knife, what happens to the children is left up to your imagination.

we decided to “do” children (lol) is because young people are much more close to our hearts than say old people, as human beings we look after our young probably the most out all other animals on the planet, so when bad things happen to children such as abuse, murder or other such catastrophies it really hits us as a sad terrible thing

A strong example of this feeling i felt can be had when watching this video on youtube.

now its not that we are trying to recreate the feeling of pure despair that this video brings me, since its supposed to be funny, but the sence that you are never told directly by anybody that robocop committed this unforgivable sin and murdered all the children in the room, it is strongly implied throughout the production, even in the use of the advertisement for the weapon he uses to do it. 

the main selling point of the joke will be the twitch which we hope to give robocop in response to the word “children or child” in which like the dogs in Disney Pixars “Up” to the word “squirrel” Robocop will become instantly alert and weapon at the ready.