I reconsidered my initial idea for this project as I may have A) gotten carried away with the visuals and B) interpreted them too literally. I'd still like to explore the theme of video games as childhood comfort, as I think it's an interesting personal angle from which to approach the overall theme, "Relationship between the human and digital worlds". In how I'm imagining it, this piece will be like therapy. My submission will be a short sequence/teaser/sketch for what could be a much more developed project that I'd like to work on over the summer. The visual references from my last post still apply.
My idea is to have the two screens on top and bottom, resembling a Nintendo 3DS, as this is the console I had for most of my childhood experience. They will be embedded into what looks like an actual console, POV of the child playing it. The game will be inspired by Animal Crossing, Stardew Valley, Pokemon, Undertale and other "casual" life simulations/RPGs. It will be an amalgamation of games I've used as comfort and escapism throughout my childhood and adolescence, represented though a short journey of connecting with my inner child, hopefully beginning to heal them. I might take some creative liberty and apply a more old-school 8-bit pixel art effect to more clearly convey the childhood nostalgia and virtual vicarity aspect of it. I will likely take the 2D looping parallax background technique from platformer games and other sidescrollers so that it's easier to animate in my timeframe but still conveys the message clearly. In an ideal world with more time, I would design & draw all the assets myself in Photoshop, but to save time I will find & edit (stylise) most of the necessary images and draw basic character designs to then import them into AE, where I will puppet pin the avatar character PNG unless I have exported it as a GIF beforehand, before setting up the backgrounds and NPC villager characters. I will download an appropriate video game-style font and use reveal text animation effects for the dialogue boxes that it will appear in. I will use the raindrop effect to signify the child crying onto their bottom screen, as something has upset them and urged them to play their console for comfort - this will make the bottom screen more dynamic, clue the viewer in to the meaning and better connect the metaphorical relationship between the human and digital worlds. One detail to include could be a slightly wobbling background pattern on the bottom screen, like the Animal Crossing: New Leaf gingham pattern moves constantly. I could use a script expression to achieve this?
Plot/written storyboard:
A 3DS start-up sequence plays on the top screen, followed by the stylus tapping a non-descript game icon and loading up the game. The child's avatar "awakens" in a house setting at sunset (top-down view), whereupon they walk to the wardrobe (opening an avatar customisation window on the bottom screen), choose to equip some over-ear headphones and head out of their room. They walk past two characters that resemble their parents arguing in the kitchen and head out the front door. From now on, the game is in a side-scrolling view - the parallax background is a rural forest village setting. They then walk steadily as they encounter 5 static anthropomorphic NPC characters in their virtual village such as fishing/picnicking/stargazing villagers, food vendors and construction workers, who tell them short lines of dialogue to break the fourth wall and reassure them in their situation. This might seem eerie at first, before the viewer learns that this is what the child would like to hear from a real person at that time in their life, and what they subconsciously interpret from playing the game as a form of escape. Eventually, they reach the end of the parallax and enter a new screen, showing a beach area. They walk along the pier, take a short pause, then a speech bubble icon pops up above them and one last dialogue box shows up on the bottom screen, which reads: "You're safe here." The child's avatar has walked as far away as possible from the house they initially woke up in, physically and metaphorically distancing themself from their situation. Gradual shaky fade in blur as if the POV child's eyes are welling up again, a few quick fades-to-black to simulate blinking, teardrops fall onto the bottom screen, then film fades to black.
Here are my initial sketches and ideas:
Text to appear from NPCs:
- "Welcome back!"
- "Did something happen again? Is it all feeling wrong?"
- "Do you want to escape?"
- "It's not your fault. Everything will be okay."
- "Things will get better. Just keep playing."
My next steps are to find the necessary assets and finish designing characters, then assemble them into Photoshop layer documents which I can import as compositions into AE.
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