Creativity Boost: Summer Wars

Last night, I finally got around to watching Summer Wars, an anime film released in 2009. I've been keeping my eye on it for a while and finally bought the Blu-ray version.

After watching the film, I had a crazy idea on this new 'column' of sorts. Dubbed Creativity Boost, I want to try and showcase various items such as film, video game, and comic design accompanied with a short review. This will both help myself develop skills as well as sharing some tips I've picked up over the years for concept art.

First off, the plot is both a bit stereotypical of anime in general and unique. I know it's a little contradictory, but just bear with me. Kenji, our protagonist, is both a math nerd and socially awkward. He gets thrown into a bit of a derivative situation when his friend Natsuki asks him to head into the countryside for her granny's birthday party. It's not until he gets there that she shoots him the kicker, that he has to pretend to be her fiance for the weekend. I think that this part of this sub-plot of sorts is real dumb, but necessary to kick off the main plot.

Kenji gets a text in the middle of the night with a complex math problem to solve. Of course, he solves it, but the next day, everything is out of control when OZ is hacked and Kenji is to blame. OZ is an internet service that the world uses for everything from shopping to economy to traffic control. It has billions of users that log in and cyber commute, run government agencies and offices, and regulate public services. Soon a rogue AI starts taking over accounts and does what it wants.

The rest may be a little easy to guess but I'm not spoiling anything here. The art is what I'm after, and Summer Wars doesn't disappoint. The animation is smooth, the action is stylized, and the character design is    some of the best I've seen.

Each of the 30+ (yes, thirty) main characters may be difficult to name due to the intentionally short and hurried introduction, but that doesn't take away from the fact that they are recognizable in the crowd and fully rounded individuals.

It gets better, since the world uses OZ with everything. As a result, each user has an avatar that is fully customizable. From Kenji's personification, King Kazuma (a champion fighter), and some of the family members' job-related avatars, every avatar that is ever visible in the film is completely unique. Even the rogue AI design is great. It starts as a vandalized version of Kenji's original avatar and evolves into a fierce warrior and then a silhouette of that warrior as it hijacks and absorbs avatars. The complete flexibility that Oz gives its users is reflected in all of the various art styles and archetypes seen in OZ.

Environmentally, the film takes place either in OZ or on the enormous Jinnouchi family estate in the Japanese countryside. Still, the film always seems to take place in different locals. The estate is filled with unique rooms and the events of the film bring in different set pieces such as a ship, military radar, and a supercomputer. The 'real world' in Summer Wars is grounded into reality with the inclusion of branding. Usually, I'd take this as a sign of advertising, but here it works beautifully. Mazda coupes, Nintendo DS Lites, various mobile phone brands, the iPhone, Sony and Dell components, and many others work well to make it all believable.

As was the case for the avatars, OZ is equally flexible. It features many different visualizations of computer systems, filled with data to make it seem real. The visualization of traffic, for example, resembles a sliding tile puzzle with road maps. The AI pushes over a single file, which dominoes across the entire network as it absorbs all that information. Touches like that kind of remind me of the Tron films in a way.

Now for the nitty, gritty part: lessons learned from Summer Wars.

I can imagine that all of the work that went into the concept art was long and hard. But that's how it works when you're in that line of work. It starts with an idea and develops, eventually, into a finished design. I think that the hardest part is coming up with that initial idea, especially if you are the only one generating ideas. Without a collaborator, or even someone to pitch ideas to for a half hour, it can get pretty draining considering that one person has to write, edit, design, and eventually produce something. At the very least run everything by someone in your family to see what they think.

The thing with Summer Wars is that the avatars are naturally going to reflect their real world counterparts. Sure this is usually the case in our society, but the fact that OZ is so permeated in theirs that people work, shop, play, and do everything connected to OZ, almost ensures that the avatars are going to match. Natsuki's avatar has the same facial features and hair style. She is also wearing more traditional clothing reflecting her ties and feelings to her family. Kenji's original avatar is a highly stylized version of himself with mouse ears, especially reflective of his personality. As I stated earlier, Mansaku's is a pill, Kunihiko's is a dog dressed as a firefighter, and Katsuhiko's is a robotic fire rescue member with a fire ax (all indicative of their personalities and real world professions).

Naturally, you want characters that people can relate to so that the viewer doesn't have to force interest upon themselves. That's why we all have stereotypes in media, sure it's wrong, but that's how it kind of works. I'm speaking for myself here, but I think that media won't really outgrow stereotypes, but it can work around them. Characters that break stereotypes are especially powerful, but especially hard to design and implement properly. The way I like to get around it is starting with a character that may be a stereotype, or have more than desirable character flaws, like Kenji, and throughout the project, craft a story or circumstances that the character would have to change or be molded into the ideal. Starting Kenji as a math nerd, perfect family, and making him socially savvy would just be boring. I love seeing characters develop, and had Summer Wars started that way, I may not have finished it. By the end of the film, he is definitely not the character that we were introduced to. He learns, he changes. That is the great secret behind character development in media, that as artists and producers of media, we often forget to realize. We can even see it Kenji's posture throughout the film. Subtle things like that do wonders visually that sometimes go unnoticed.

Summer Wars does the same for environments. The Jinnouchi estate is large, full of rooms, corridors, and spaces that give it a sense of character. After the supercomputer is brought in, they need to cool the room with ice because of the lack of air conditioning. Kazuma is holed up in a tiny closet while he escapes the real world and enters OZ. The dining area is large and open, but everyone is crowded around a dinner table. Environmental concept work is easier to do when you have a lot of details to work with. This may mean taking reference photos of random everyday objects and average housing. Photography is our best tool for this stage. Any camera will do, it doesn't need to be a Nikon DSLR, it just has to be good enough for you. If that is a Poloroid camera, then so be it, but make sure it suits the needs of your art generation methods. Personally, I prefer my iPod, since I usually have it with me, it's small but has a good enough resolution so that I can capture what I need. For example, I'll take a photo of a landscape. Taken with an iPod, the details won't come out as clear, but that's perfect. The details I need from the photo are the light angle, general geometry, and proportions. I can make up the details as I go. In another example, I'll take a photo of a building under construction. Again, it won't be as clear to get everything, but I'm looking for atmosphere and ambient effects such as dust, light contrast, and basic details. Since I'm not that familiar with what the inside of a wall looks like, the photo will give me a pretty good idea of what I should include.

Well, I'm certainly impressed. I didn't expect to get this much content, but I hope it gives you something to think about when working on concept development. That's it for Creativity Boost. Oh, and go watch Summer Wars.

Claptrap Figurine Part 1 - Initial Carving

After stumbling upon Volpin Props, I decided to make a wooden figurine of the iconic Borderlands character, CL4P-TP (for those not in the know, Claptrap). I absolutely loved the original game and sank at least 60 hours into my first character, and seeing this character figurine in my mind as I imagined all of this was great.

So, I did a little digging around for a fairly recent issue of Game Informer (specifically issue 207) that I remember having an interview with Gearbox Software's own Lorin Wood, creator of our star character. It had his original sketch, some conceptualizations, and the full high-resolution 3D model. I used that model to come up with the 10-minute design sheet I always start a build with.

I knew I wanted to make the figurine at least 6-8 inches tall without the base and arms, so I hit up the local Utrecht art supply store and got a couple of 4 x 2 x 12 inch architectural basswood blocks. I glued them together with some generic wood glue and clamped them together to cure for 12 hours (overnight).

I do apologize for the garbage quality images, but my camera is being temperamental and my iPod had to do in a pinch. The finished glued block is 4 x 4 x 12 inches, the size I wanted. I do realize that I could have just ordered a block of basswood that large online, but it would have been only slightly cheaper.

After a bit of deliberation of how I wanted the base to look, to sketched the basic front and side profiles onto the wood.

Then I grabbed my basic wood saw and small hobby hacksaw to cut out the basic rectangular shape of Claptrap and drew the outline with a marker.

I'm no advanced wood carver or anything, but I think the base has been coming along nicely. My plan is to have Claptrap standing on a bed of rocks or cracked desert earth. I've also started to hack into the side to make the necessary angle while finding the best technique to make the sides go by faster.

Just a close-up of later on in the side panel. I've found a pretty efficient technique for it, but it still takes quite a while to make any progress without proper carving tools (I'm using an x-acto knife with a curved blade to not crush the grain in the wood).

Benihime Sword Prop

Back in 2007, my friend came to me with a ticket for Phoenix Comic-con saying his sister couldn't make it. I gladly accepted but it turns out the con was in a day. That's not exactly the kind of news you want to hear when you are a cosplayer.

Luckily, I had some leftover wood from another build and decided to put together a Kisuke Urahara costume with some older martial arts gear I had lying around and a store bought Urahara hat. Being pressed for time, I didn't really have any time to make this as nice as I wanted or take any pictures of production.

I started the build by drawing the sword's outline onto 1/2 inch MDF I had in the garage, and drawing the hilt on 1/4 inch MDF. I cut these out with a jigsaw, and made a duplicate of the hilt. Using wood glue, I sandwiched the 1/2 inch MDF between the two hilt pieces and clamped it to dry. After it dried, a little power sanding was used to dull the edges and round the grip enough so it was comfortable to hold.

After the sword was built, I cut the designs and hilt flourishes out of craft foam and glued them in place. When that was dry two coats of black gesso was painted on. In any other case, I might have added another coat of black paint, but the gesso turned out just fine. I masked off the hilt and blade to paint the silver and gold touches on the sword.

The rest of the details were pretty simple as well, especially in a pinch like this. The tassel was a red curtain tassel I found at a craft store attached with a gold eye screw. The loop at the top of the grip was made of braided red needlepoint thread, and the gold triangle chain was made by folding paper footballs and painting them gold. They are attached with fishing line under the red loop.

Playstation 3 Joysticks

I built these fight sticks when I learned that Super Street Fighter 4 would be released in March of last year. They are both 1 1/4 inch poplar frames with an inlaid 1/4 inch MDF panel for the controls so the finished product would be light. I drilled holes in the panel for the joystick and a six-button configuration based on the layouts I found at Slagcoin. I cut out the shape for the joystick with a Dremel tool.

Since I was using a six-button configuration, I needed a place for the other five buttons and decided to put them out of the way on the top of the frame facing the screen.

Some of the wiring work. At this point in the build for this stick, I was impatient and forgot to drill the holes for the extra buttons in the top. Good thing I used zip ties and quick disconnect terminals for all the wiring. The second stick build went much more smoothly. The wiring was made simple due to the fact that the Playstation 3 Sixaxis controller uses tech similar to a standard PC keyboard, with the clear plastic contact sheet. The go-to place for American and Japanese arcade parts in the US is, hands down, Lizard Lick. I got both sets of Sanwa and Seimitsu parts from them, as well as a couple of octagonal gates for the joysticks (because I like them better than square gates).

Lizard Lick also supplies the heart of the whole project, the Axisdaptor, which is a pre-fabricated chip to wire the components to a ribbon cable that plugs into the controller's circuit board. Once the wiring was complete, I fed a 6 ft USB cable from the controller through a notch cut with my Dremel and hot glued the connector to the board and the wire to the notch with a healthy dose of hot glue. The last step was to secure another panel of Lexan to the bottom so the circuitry was visible (a design choice really).

I made some art in Photoshop CS and printed it at my local AlphaGraphics (back in my Arizona days), as well as had them laminate it to protect it. The art was then sandwiched between the MDF panel and a Lexan acrylic panel of the same size. I then cut the holes with a curved hobby knife and installed all the arcade components.

A pretty simple Vash the Stampede Photoshop job, with an admittedly not so good rendering.  I went with a off white cloth texture for the background with bright red components for this one.

The Sonic stick turned out better than I thought it would. I did some quick sketches of Sonic, Knuckles, Tails, and (of course) Vector the Crocodile in Photoshop and replaced the black color of the sketch with their respective colors and putting in blue, yellow, and red components to match Light, Medium, and Fierce attacks.