The Mentor

Prior to doing my character sheet I did a little more research into the mentor archetype. At first I wasn't really sure what archetype would suit the rough outline I had already made for my character but, I think the traits he has do fit the role of a mentor. So, I found quite an interesting blog that give nice snippets of information along with existing characters that fall into the different profiles. I found this quite helpful with trying to build a more in-depth piece of writing for my character sheet because I had examples to work with. 

With my character, I tried to stray away from both perfection and stereotypes with the archetype by giving him interesting and contradicting flaws in relation to the role he is suppose to fulfill as a mentor. I think a important part of creating characters is to make them imperfect and to give them relatable traits so audiences can feel an instant connection with a certain character. Within a story this is vital because the characters drive the story giving both light and shade.

http://www.thewritingnut.com/ramblings/mentor-archetype/

Character Sheet: Samien

Name: Samien.          (Pronunciation: Sa-migh-an).

Age: Late twenties (28?).           Job: Librarian.                

Rank/Status: The Librarian (Well of Knowledge).

Archetype: Mentor.

Primary motivators: New knowledge, Discovery and purpose.

Appearance: 
Samien has quite shaggy, mid-length hair painted in a mysterious royal blue. He has beautiful yet, contrasting orange eyes. They are a mysterious and curious colour but, seem to offer warmth and sincerity to those he gazes upon. And to tone down the bright colours of his piercing eyes and bold hair, he has a very dusty but rich skin colour.

He wears a lot of loose hanging clothing such as a cloak and shoulder drapes, adding to his already mysterious outlook. His robes are a combination of both tonal colours and blues.

The reoccurring use of the colour blue symbolises his devotion to the people ("true blue") and the tonal colours represent his struggle to find identity and purpose.

Personality:
Samien is first and foremost very intelligent but, he does sometimes find it hard to recall specific lumps of information because of the vast amount of information he's taken in over the years.  To go hand-in-hand with his high intellect, he is extremely well mannered and considered to be somewhat of a gentleman. As for his emotional disposition, he is very calm and collected with a hint of optimism, making him a suitable mentor.

Working as a librarian, he has picked up a obsessive-compulsive disorder in terms of organisation. Although his place of work looks a complete mess, he knows the location of everything, having read all the books countless times. The library is what you would refer to as a "organised mess".

His communication skills are not as sharp as you would imagine, despite the fact he has been devoting himself to help others. From being alone for the most part of his life, he developed a bad habit of talking to himself out loud so it's difficult to grasp whether he's already engaged in a conversation or not. He also talks to the books sometimes as he regards them as friends.

Background: 
Samien is in fact an orphan. He found his love for books because for him it was a means of escapism in which he could live another life in another world. He eventually lost himself in the books and shut himself off from the outside world hence his lack of communication skills. As he grew up and all the books had no more adventures to offer him, he started to realise that the well of knowledge he had gained couldn't fill the gap of being without a family. So from here, he decided to make something of himself by offering to share his wisdom with others by re-opening the library he found as a child and devoting himself to help those in need. 

Likes: Learning, History, Books, Nature, Mystery and Children.

Dislikes: Noise, Distraction, Disrespect for books, Crowds, Being in the wrong and Bad manners.

Final Idea

On Friday we had a final crit, in which we were split into groups and presented our work to each other. We usually present to the class but, I think the small groups really helped because, you get more of a in-depth conversation, which really helps develop your idea in terms of suggestions.

During my presentation, I didn't get as much feedback as I would have liked but I thin that was my fault. I didn't really have much to present in terms of my idea because I was really unsure which direction to take, making it very confusing for my peers to understand. When I realised that it was getting a bit confusing for people I just narrowed it down to two ideas, characters or levels in which I would compose for. Conversation got rolling and I got some helpful feedback that helped me choose the final idea I'm going to go for, which is composing character theme tunes. I chose this based on people saying that character design is one of my strengths and that I should play to it and they also said it's a more sensible project in terms of time.

A valuable lesson to take from this is to be more organised with what i'm going to present to avoid confusion and if in doubt, ask questions.

---------------------------------------

What to do now?

The first thing I need to do is very quickly come up with a story and character design which I then can compose for. I want to take credit for the design aspects and such so I will do all of this on my own but I don't want the final concept art of my character to be done by me. Prior to this, I have briefly spoken to Sophie and she's kindly agreed to do the concept art for me. Concept art isn't really my thing so, I think it's only fair to give that out to someone who's interested in that so they have something else to put towards a portfolio.

Successful Networking!

I'm really happy to say that I actually got in touch with a graphic designer who created the "Sound reactive toys" that I took interest in. They kindly gave me some time to answer some questions and told me about their inspirations and reasoning behind the project. 


Both graphic design and music are Bene's two loves in life and making a project combining the two just seemed right. She basically wanted to create something audio reactive because it's disappointing to see visuals that don't really connect with the music in some shape or form. 


She also feels it's impotant to have some level of humour in her work so they are fun to work on and to look back at. The characters were created with this in mind and their designs were based on the different sounds themselves such as Bass and treble. This is a really nice personal touch and I'm very feeling very inspired by this concept~
Although the work I requested more information on was an old piece, the software mentioned might be worth looking at since it's free and because i'm new at this sort of stuff. If it's easy to navigate and understand even better~

Sound Reactive Toys

Sound Reactive Toys  is one of the things I found in conjunction with sound responsive characters. These lovely characters have been coded in such a way that they respond differently to different kinds of tracks.

Benedetta is very much a designer in lots of different areas and I'm really interested to know what fuelled this particular project. It was a self directed project in which I believe there was outside collaborations for the coding but i'd like to know more about the work process and inspirations. I have contacted Benedetta and hopefully I get some feedback. 

For me, the use of characters is the element I was looking for, because with something like this I can establish a link between the area I want to explore and the transmedia aspects of the project. Despite my interest in character design, I'm still unsure which direction I want to take this project.

Pulse

Pulse is a first-person game made by Team Pixel Pi. They have cleverly incorporated the concept of echolocation to hep you navigate the world making this game a very sensual experience. They have used sound to help create a visualisation of the world but what you see isn't necessarily what is actually there so you really have to rely and depend on your senses. This also offers both challenge and discovery throughout the game.

During the game there are both characters willing to help you and also vicious beings who you need to avoid, so you are in a constant state of concentration to listen out for what is around you. I think this is one of the beauties of this game, because your sense of awareness of the world around you is developed significantly.

This game is similar to one of my ideas that I have considered for a project which is to create a level in which you navigate through sound. I never really knew what to offer as visuals to accompany this idea and pulse has opened a door of opportunities.

Vanishing Point

Vanishing Point from Takuya Hosogane on Vimeo.

Previously I had done a post on a video that was inspired by this and because it holds some relevance to my project i'm going to dedicate a post to the original master piece. This is motion graphics piece by Takuya Hosogane and it's just amazing. The piece incorporates both sound and visuals in a really stunning way. The transitions used throughout are really clean and sharp and the movement in sync with the music is incredible. It's also visually attractive in terms of colour and because there's so much going on it keeps you captivated. The choice of music a really bouncy and quirky, the isolated sounds really help the visuals in terms of movement.

For my responsive brief, this is the kind of thing I imagined doing, obviously not at a professional standard like this, but everyone has to start somewhere. I think both visuals and music can tell a story and that together, should be substantial enough to fulfil this project.

Creating Sound Effects

After doing a little bit of research on making sound effects, I need to put my creative head on and think of different ways of representing the sounds I want to create. For this, I need to think about what kind of sounds are needed and the rest is down to careful editing. Overlapping sounds and distortions can be useful for me to get an end product.

So, I need to consider what things I need to gather to produce the sounds and I also might require booking out the boom mic. Obviously I can't really do this on my own if I do require booking equipment so I also need to find some willing volunteers to help me out. First of all though, I need to do some more research and gather ideas on how to tackle various sound effects and more importantly, I need to ask people what kind of things they're after so I have a list to work with.

As for how to distribute my sound effects, I'm going to create a library in which people can pick out which one's they want to use in their work because there's no point repeating the same thing over for each person.

Audio Spectrum Used in Music Video

I love J T's music but little did I know he made a really beautiful music video by using the audio spectrum. I really love the way that the spectrum shifts and morphs creating different images. I think t's an extremely interesting way of visually representing something as well as carrying through the beats of the song. This is yet another promising example of how responsive audio can be used in other forms of media, in this case, a music video.

Motion Graphics Audio React

This is an example of a beautiful motion graphics audio react which was made through after effects and the trapcode form plugin. Visually this pice is stunning and the simple choice of music with the elegant movement is really something. This has definitely inspired me to give this a try, but there's only one space in college which has the plug-in needed for this type of work. This is a little frustrating because, it'd be difficult to experiment and such because there isn't much space available with students coming in and out to use that room. After doing a little more digging, it seems the kind of effects I want to create are pretty reliant on this plug-in so, I need to go down and figure out when the room is free.

I think learning how to create various different ways of visually representing music and sounds will be important in terms of presentation so I really need to find time to practice this.

Bit Trip Beat

As part of my research I've been trying to find a way so make a link between responsive audio and other kinds of media. For gaming, I found lots of different ways in which audio reaction is incorporated into gameplay and this is one of them. Let me introduce you to Bit Trip Beat. The structure of this game  is very much based on responsive audio because by deflecting the objects, sounds are created on impact resulting in a song. Some of the visuals also replicate the audio spectrum which is quite interesting. This game displays a really simple yet effective way of combining both music, gameplay and visuals. The visuals of course, match the kind of sound effects/music which is created when you go through the level. The gameplay and visuals also remind me of the famous Pong, but generated for single player mode.

I'm really glad that I remembered this game because I think with this kind of gameplay that I can establish a link for the transmedia section of my current brief.

Responsive Brief

After coming up with my initial ideas, I had a discussion with one of my tutors about how to expand on it and the pros and cons to my idea. Because the responsive brief gives me the opportunity to explore the areas I want to I forgot about the underlining subject of transmedia and that I need to somehow apply that to my work.

My idea was to originally work with audiovisuals and responsive audio which would involve motion graphics and sound design. However, this alone s a really difficult body of work to make links to transmedia with. So, my tutor suggested to create a story for something in which I can then translate into other media. I think this is a great suggestion because stories can be transferred over into an array of media but I will still be able to work on sound engineering. Since I am also interested in character design, the most logical answer would be to create themes in which the stories for these characters could shape.

This also opens up some opportunity for collaborations for any script writers or concept artists. But I have to be careful of taking on too much and working with too many people because everything can get confusing and I might not have time for my own project. This, for me, is my biggest worry because I'm aware that people have put me down for sound design in the collaboration section of the proforma we filled in so I might have a lot of requests.

As for a starting point for my exploration into sound, I need to research how to create music and sound effects because my knowledge as it stands, is very little and even the basics still need to be covered. As for getting use to software and recording equipment, I need to book in some time with James in the IT department. My tutor also forwarded a movie that I should watch called 'man with a movie camera'. This movie is quite dated but the interested spin to it is that the score for the film was remade for the film in 2003 and despite the date, they work perfectly together. Following this, I need to research cinematic orchestral works to go hand in hand with the film and I might also try re-make my own score for a piece of moving image. I might also do research into how you can tell a story through visuals and look into VFX/motion graphics a little bit.

Responsive Proposal

This is the brief that I've long been waiting for but now it's come around I'm a little stumped as to what I want to focus on. I have however over the last few modules developed an interest in working with sound and haven't had a great opportunity to explore that during this course so far. Some of my ideas include a combination of areas that I am interested in which include character design and VFX.

Here are the ideas I have considered:

• Lip syncing -Character design/Voice acting (Collaboration)
• Audiovisuals -VFX/Sound/Coding
• Navigate a level through sound - Level Design/Sound effects (Collaboration)
• Music Video - Film/Sound/VFX (Collaboration)
• Typography -VFX/Sound
• Re-make a score for moving picture -Sound/Editing
• Character Design collaboration with Fashion -Photography/Character design

The idea that I have decided to go with is the audiovisuals idea, because I believe as an individual, I could learn a lot more about sound engineering through this project. It also doesn't require much, if any outside help in terms of collaboration so I could focus on the entirety of the project a little more. Considering I've never worked with sound in this way before I think that more personal involvement is fundamental. This is not to say that I will not work with other people. I do plan on working with others on top of doing my own personal project. I have already asked and been asked by some of my peers to have a go at designing sound effects and possibly music for various games levels. With these sound effects, I will reuse them for my own project so I can test the visuals and programming along with my own sounds.

So, all in all this is a break down of what I will be doing:

• Research into Sound Engineering and Audiovisuals
• Creating my own set of sound effects and samples of music
• Learn about coding in relation to Audiovisuals
• Improving and learning VFX skills

Apofiss

Apofiss is a deviant artist that my sister showed me and I really love his work.  There are so many pieces of his work that I love so I found it pretty hard to choose so I just picked out some nice environment stuff because it's more relevant to my course. I tried to pick ones that have different colour schemes on them because one of the things I love most about Apofiss' work is his amazing understanding of colour theory. By picking two different works that are based in different colour spectrums it's easier to show his skill with colour.





















The image on the left is called "Blue Forest" and the one on the right is called "Light Flow". They were both speed painting which were done with a combination of Photoshop and Paint Tool Sai, both of which I'm familiar with. Maybe in my own time I'd like to have a go using the combination of the two programs because I've seen a lot of great artists using this combination in particular now. There are different features and tools that are exclusive to certain software but, some programs are also better at doing things than others. For me, I find Sai is better for doing the line art and photoshop is better for brushes and colouring.

Back to the pictures...

I really love line-less art. I think it has a better sense of realism and the colours just blend and flow into one another. Line-less art is purely dependant on the artists understanding of light and shadows because this is how you give objects outline without using a big fat black line. The highlights on both of them are really nice especially on the trees and the bubbles and obviously the beautiful rays of light on "Light Flow". The rays on "Light Flow" are so soft and feel warm and the particles really complete the whole vibe you get from the picture. It's very welcoming and refreshing to look at and the red colours and hints of glowing make it feel even more warm.

Overall Apofiss' work is so inspirational and demonstrates so much skill. I recommend looking through his deviantart gallery for all those aspiring concept artists and illustrators. Here's the link.