VR Trailer Task 2

The next step in creating our live action trailer we had to look at creating the logo and final decision of title. My job in this task was to create designs for the logo, title and costumes for Zachary Creer to wear, as he will be the main actor. When looking at the different name options that we had thought of before, we decided to go with Blitzkrieg as it is an synonym for attack and it has a striking sound to it, suiting the action effect we want for this arcade game.

To match the neon style of our video game trailer, I looked at various neon/ futuristic titles of current video games (Half Life 2, Tron and Halo) and drew a selection of six designs. From looking at these chosen designs, I noticed that basic shapes are commonly used, especially circles and squares. As well as looking at these designs I looked at the concept art of my other team mates, this included the turret design from Thomas Duncan and weapon design from Zachary Creer.

The first designs I created was inspired by the gun grip on the red assault rifle Zachary Creer created, however I reduced the blocks from 6 to 3 to make the logo more compact. The second and third logo ideas came from the combination of the traditional pause, play and power button icons. I attempted to simplify the third logo to just a few simple shapes, resulting in the fourth logo. From looking at the researched logo, I wanted to develop the ‘Destiny’ logo, which we can see on number 5. The last design was based on the prototype turret design Thomas Duncan was working on, however I simplified it down as the final design would be made from neon lines, much like Tron as I believe it would match the style of out trailer nicely.

Once I drew out all the designs, I got my team (Zachary Creer, Matthew Roberts and Thomas Duncan) to select what design they thought would be best for our game and they luckily all chose the sixth design, the one that I thought was the best one too. The reasons why they preferred this one over the others is because “The fifth one looks too much like Destiny”, “The sixth links to the enemies of the game, the same way Tron incorporates the neon disc weapon into their logo” and “It would be easier to work on simpler designs because of the neon line choice”. Following their choice I then developed that idea into 6 additional ones on another page.

I attempted to make a few designs based off the turret design and some of them worked particularly well, however it was pointed that the fourth design looked very similar to a ‘pokeball’, an item used in the anime ‘Pokemon’. One other logo that my team didn’t enjoy was the sixth one as it does appear to look like a door key hole and it doesn’t resemble a turret very well. The two designs chosen by myself and my team were the second and the fifth as they are a modern design with not too much detail.

https://kcimgdthomasduncan.wordpress.com/2017/02/05/vr-game-bot-first-prototype-design/

After getting the final chosen idea onto paper, I then opened it up in Photoshop 2015 and created a few more selected logos, however varying in colour and combining the two chosen icons so then we could see what it would look like with all the key parts of the chosen two logos. I decided to create 3 colours that are commonly used in neon logos; white, yellow and blue, I personally believe that blue would be the best colour for our logo as it is more softening of a colour compared to yellow and the white doesn’t glow as much as the other two colours. I used two different sizes circles in the middle of the logo to use variation for my team to look at, however they preferred the larger circle as the smaller one appears more like a target. The final chosen logo was the combination of the two drawn logos with a blue glow as it still resembles the original turret design, but still having a minimalistic design. To choose a text I looked through Adobe Typekit for a mixture of fonts that had outlines and thickness to them, the three I chose were ‘Acier BAT (Text Noir), ‘Acier BAT (Text Gris)’ and ‘Bungee Outline’. I applied the same simple glow technique to all three, matching the colour of the logo, and I asked my team mate Thomas Duncan what one he preferred and we both decided on Acier BAT (Text Noir) as it had both outlines, block chunks throughout the text and it stood out more compared to the other two. For the more intense glow I went to the tab Filter> Blue Gallery> Field Blur and tilted the circle up to 24 (still maintaining both the text shape and original colour).

As a costume designer I had to create the shirt that links back to the video game to the game so I was considering getting a design to do with the concept art already created, whether it be turret design, gun sketches or even just the logo. As I had a few different ideas for the merchandise Zachary Creer would wear during the trailer, I drew them down in my sketch book as well as a few other ones. I tried to incorporate the design of the logo that I had created, the gun concepts of Zachary Creer and the turret concept by Thomas Duncan. I came to the conclusion of three designs that I then created on Photoshop 2017, personally I prefer the pocket shirt as it’s more subtle compared to the other two and due to it being a dark colour more people would wear it because in today’s culture black and dark colours tend to be more popular in fashion. The materials used to paint on the logo was simple acrylic as this would be easiest to dry, if I had access to material paint it would be better as then the design would stay on longer and it would be less likely to crack and fall off.

The next costume I had to design was the gaming suit that Zachary Creer wears during the larger trailer. I wanted to use the fitting body suit of all these ideas as well as the toning design (making some parts of the costumes darker to make the characters they have a stronger/ muscular figure). My first design was heavily based off Tron due to the neon strips and scientific fiction style we want to achieve, the second design had the same idea behind it however I wanted to add padding so it appeared that the player had extra protection over the bots.The last design was a mixture of Laser Team and 208’s Fantastic Four as they are superheroes rather than just a varied design in one franchise, that and people would feel more confident playing a game knowing that they have an appearance of a superhero. After showing the rest of the team (Thomas Duncan, Matthew Roberts and Zachary Creer), they all decided that the third design would be best as the neon on the suit may distract the player and may cause difficulty when hiding in an actual robot invasion.

Even though the controllers won’t be a main part of the trailer, they could work as additional props to show that research went into the interactive game, much like the ones we see on the HTC Vive and the Oculus Rift. On the top let of my page I took notes of some of the most popular wireless handheld controllers and tried to use some of the key features such as grip, joysticks and back triggers with my controller design. My team noticed that the idea numbers 2 and 4 resemble the Nintendo Wii controller too much so that was eliminated for the final choice. For innovation and practicality we decided that the fifth design would be best as it would be easier to hold (cylindrical rather than cubed) and it does resemble the science fiction gun that is used by the character Tracer in Overwatch. Much like the casual outfit, the gaming controllers will disappear once the player enters the game and then will transform into the in-game weapons. After choosing the final controller design I then developed that design into 3 different ones including colour and padded areas. After showing my team the newer designs we decided as a team that the second design was better as it wouldn’t be access weight plus it looks like a gun that would be used in the actual game.

As our teaser trailer is going to be a short period of time, there wasn’t much of a need for several storyboards, unlike some previous ones such as my ‘Warburtons Advert’ or the previous task, ‘Film Noir’. The idea behind my storyboard is that the player will just be exiting the game, with the slight glimpse of the end screen as the player draws the headset off of their head, this will act as a teaser when the other players are watching the trailer. After that, there will only be one camera that shows the entire room and the player shutting down the game and walking away, however the headset will start to rattle as a robot will emerge from it, observe it surrounding and then destroy the camera that the players are looking through, breaking the fourth wall of cinematography, much like the movies ‘Ferris Bueller’s Day Off’ and ‘Deadpool’- audiences are more appealed to a piece of media if it appears that the actors or objects are interacting with them directly. The phrase “Humanity Needs You” will appear followed by the title and “coming son”. Additionally chaotic sounds will be added once the camera falls indicating the danger than is the bots and almost appears that the players have to play this game to prevent this from happening to them. Certain things may change during the creation of the trailer, such as the location, title and end-game screen however I do believe this is a good start.

For our longer trailer I did take a lot of inspiration from these following trailers, there are some shots of virtual and augmented reality that I believe would be really interesting to use so players could see how they would react with certain elements. One key feature would be animating several bots to come after humanity rather than just one, there will also be the addition of costumes, extra actors, props, different camera shots and new environments.