Tuesday, 25 February 2014

Game Art and Machinima Research: Inspirational Films

By Meg Sugden

After looking at a number of different games that inspired me during this project I also wanted to look a few films that not only inspired me, but my team and also the character creation as well as these films are just fantastic at what they have produced.

The Lone Ranger
The first film that I wanted to look at is The Lone Ranger by Disney. This is a fantastic film that stars Johnny Depp and Army Hammer playing Tonto and the Lone Ranger as they roam around the barren western lands in adventures, searching for the outlaw Butch Cavendish, who's killed John's brother. The whole setting for the film is really nice as we are looking at western's ourselves and want to be able to get this theme across, which a slight hint of crime detective at the same time. The film as a whole is really nice to look at as it shows this vast land, that doesn't have a lot in, but at the same time who it can include so much drama. This is a really nice film to look at for inspirational settings, and although we already have our initial idea about where we want the cut scene to be set, the idea of the environment could be changed slightly and fitted into something based off this film; for example based on a train, in a cave or in a small town or Indian/Australian settlement.




Pirates of the Caribbean
The next film that I wanted to look at is Disney's Pirates of the Caribbean. This again is another fantastic film, again starring Johnny Depp along with Orlando Bloom and Kiera Knightly. The reason I wanted to look at this film is obviously not for the setting or environment, but for the characters. The characters that are portrayed in the film are absolutely brilliant  and all have there own unique characters in which inspiration can be taken from any, but no one could be the wicked charm of Captain Jack Sparrow. Throughout the design of our character it could be seen that his influence will be included as he is such an iconic character that has such a unique personality; managing to captivate people and make them question everything he does because it is so bizarre, but really works well and I can definitely see influence into our own character, especially the duck-billed platypus.


Kung-Fu Panda
Probably one of the biggest influences from film for us as a group is Kung-Fu Panda. With an all-star cast Kung-Fu Panda is an exceptional film and of such a high comedy value that it stands up above most other animated comedy's. It takes everything and every joke to the next level, but does it in a way that never fails to make you laugh, no matter how many times you've seen it, and this is what we aim to achieve with our own cut scene. This film has a very simple concept of a rather overweight panda trying to learn kung-fu after being selected as the Dragon Warrior and it follows his journey in doing so. Like a lot of the games that I have been looking at this film features anthropomorphism, something that we want to feature in our own cut scene, and this is one of the few films that really works while doing this. The character all have there own unique personalities and wear clothes relating to who they are, usually Asian themed as they live there, but they all reflect the individual personalities of the character present and is a huge influence to our own cut scene.

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