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.
