Unit 7 - Collaboration Unit
- Jesse-Phoenix
- Feb 6
- 8 min read
Herds Digital
This unit, my course, instead of collaborating with other disciplines we were collaborating with an industry partner: The Walk Productions, who made the puppet Little Amal.
We had to create a pitch to them about digital media that they could include within an app to highlight the problems with global warming and our own impact in that.
I was put into a group with Claire, Tati and Jing, people who I knew of but hadn't really spoken to before. So we all got together after being grouped together we talked about what we wanted to pitch to The Walk Productions.
We discussed a few options, like a short animation, a QR code poster, 3D interactive biome amongst others but we eventually we decided that we would do a VR experience because we wanted to challenge ourselves.
As a group we then had to keep up a narrative for the VR which was a little bit of a struggle because at first we were unsure on how to broach the topic of global warming on such a wide range of ages for our target audience was 5-17. So we decided to use our own target audience within the target audience given to us from The Walk Productions, which was 12+.
After a few discussions we came up with this idea of a VR experience where the player traverses a rainforest in the Congo.
Logline:
Player traverses the Congo Basin in a VR game-like experience, as either: an elephant, a bonobo, a pangolin or an okapi, and are informed of the horrific environmental threats that humans inflict on their home
Outline:
Different animals in a game like start - viewer picks which one they want - Bonobo, African forest elephant, pangolin, okapi, for immersion. Character is then thrown into the environment and is given time to look around before a spotlight (sun) is shown near the character
Pop up of info to each section - e.g. logging pros and cons
Character walks through each ‘section’ to learn about the impact these things have on the environment.
Logging:
Piles of logs
Bulldozer
Lorries
Chainsaws
Tree stumps
Bleeds into roads
“Logging, while having many benefits such as timber harvesting and job opportunities for locals, has more detrimental effects. These include habitat and biodiversity loss; decline in rare animal species, and contributions to climate change and global warming.”
Roads:
Due to logging
To get the logged trees out
Dirt tracks
Concrete slabbed on
Bleeds into the agricultural aspects
“The construction of roads in the rainforest paves way for human activity, but most often for industrial selective logging. This causes habitat loss and fragmentation as well as exposing the surrounding area to invasive species.”
Agriculture:
Logging occurs first - the logged areas are cleared out
Plants put in - corn
Cows
Cattle
Tractors
“While agriculture production allows for the growth of crops, it is responsible for 80% of deforestation. The loss of land for native species leads to them finding farm animals and catching their diseases. These practices also introduce biocides thus contaminating the soil and water.”
Wildfires:
Illegal logging (bad people)
People burn things
Burnt
Sparks
Smoke
Fire
“Wildfires are often caused by illegal logging. Greenhouse gases are released into the atmosphere weakening animal and human immune systems. The after effects are extreme and it could take 50+ years for the forest to fully regenerate.”
As the player goes through the wildfire, the oxygen bar on the side starts to decrease until its empty, leading the player to pass out. After this there’s a cut scene.
The camera will blink showing beautiful green trees and luscious bushes. The camera, which is the character the player picked at the beginning so it is still 1st person POV, will get up and start walking until it reaches a puddle or pond and looks down at the water. The audience will then see the reflection of the character they picked in the beginning before the screen goes black, the only thing on the screen are the words: ‘Is this a dream…or reality?’
Research:
We decided to base our VR experience in The Congo. Which meant we had to research the different animals that live there that we could use as the characters. We were originally looking at just a monkey, at first we picked the proboscis monkey because we weren't aware that we had to pick animals from the stops on the route that The Walk Productions are taking. We also thought that just one monkey was not enough and added 3 others instead so the player could pick the character they want. We felt adding additional characters would make it more immersive.
Tati did the research on the environment as we wanted to include the appropriate types of flora within our 3D environment ant concept work so that it reflects what can be found in the rainforest of The Congo Basin.
Claire did the research on road construction and what it takes to make the roads and what happens before they can start constructing the roads. Roads are usually constructed to help with logging and with agriculture.
I did the research into agriculture and how that affects the different flora within the rainforests and how invasive species take over and steal the nutrients that the other flora needs. 80% of all the world's deforestation is because of agriculture.
Jing worked on the wildfire section of our research and she learnt that in the Amazon, a lot of the wildfires that happen there, happen intentionally, so we decided to use this aspect into our storyboard for the Congo.
Jing and I then started working on the storyboard while Claire and Tati were thinking and researching into what the style of our VR experience could be.
I then added the last few panels to the storyboard as we were having issues trying to come up with an idea that kept giving people hope at the end as at first, after the first faint it was like 'Game Over' and it felt just like a punch to the gut with nothing to do with this 'punch'. So we came up with this idea that the character was just dreaming about the horrors of global warming and human interference. I also came up with the slogan at the end of 'Is this a dream...or reality?'
Once we had the storyboard down, I was tasked with designing the characters which would be seen at the 'Choose your character' section of the VR experience, which we have named Code Purple.
We had all decided that the style would be similar to Ozi: The Voice of the Forest. Through researching we also saw this YouTube clip of someone playing a VR game, what drew us in was the use of colours and we came up with the idea that the environment would have purple, pink and blue hues throughout it to give the illusion of a dream, since dreams in animated and live action film usually have some sort of purple lighting within them to signify dreamland rather then real life.
At first I was just doing headshots of the animals, I even did a purple rendition of them for the colour scheme, and realised when I was three quarters finished that the designs I had done didn't fit with the style we wanted so I ended up ditching them and spent a day researching by looking at how different animations had stylised animals.
After my researching I then got back to work designing the animals we wanted for this and came up with these:
I'm actually really impressed myself with what I was able to accomplish with these character designs as it has been something that I have struggled with in the past.
I then started designing the QR code poster we needed for our Winter Festival to show the public and other courses what we have been doing on this Collaboration Unit.
At first I came up with this design and the elephant didn't feel complete so I added legs and a body:
I then sent this to the rest of my group to see what they thought about it and like me, they felt like something was off with it. I think that the elephant just looks too out of place and the background looks too simplistic compared to the realism of the elephant.
So back to the drawing board I went and came up with this idea of a bonobo's hand being the centre focus of the poster, being surrounded by a wild fire.
This was the sketch I initially made so I knew where the hand was going, where the trees were so I could put the fire around them.
I think this poster catches attention which is what I was hoping for when creating this poster as I want people to have their eyes drawn to it, intrigue them if you will.
We then decided to change the design collectively to show off some of the blender renders. Claire took the render and added the font while I drew the fire onto the render and added an overlay layer to make it look like the poster looked like the fire was reflecting on everything.
I then realised that although this showcases off the rendered environment, the composition is quite boring and doesn't really focus on the importance of interactiveness and character selection. Consequently, I spoke to Molly asking for some guidance with help on the composition of the poster, so that the focus was on character selection and this is what we came up with.
I then decided to make some concept work for the start and 'choose your character' section of the came as we didn't really have designs for this. I thought it would be good to quickly design something to show we have thought about game-play features.
I did this by using renders from our blender file of the environment and just drew on top of it for the start button, for the character section I just copy and pasted the character designs from a different file into a new one to create the 'Choose your character' screen. I added borders and text before removing parts of the characters that didn't fit within the borders.
I then started to collate all of our work into Premiere Pro so we code use for the pitch bible as well as what the QR Code in our poster would show people when they scan the QR Code.
I realised it was 7 minutes long and decided to cut it down to just the Previs, which Claire had done, as this is what most represents what our project is all about. I then cut this down to the first 16 seconds of the Previs as we could only use 25MB for the QR code.
I collated everyone's work into Premiere Pro so that our pitch was easier to be seen rather than pages and pages of work for someone to view.
Pitch Bible:
I feel like even though we've all collaborated well, I haven't given enough into this project compared to the others. I know I did half of the storyboard, the character designs and then the poster we didn't use, but that's it, everyone else has made this project be what it is, to the standard we wanted. I feel like I could've done more, asked anyone if they needed me to take over something for them since I had done everything I needed to. Maybe this could've helped everyone feel less stressed about what they were doing. I think that was my downfall within this project, not using my initiative to help us progress and keep the stress everyone was feeling, lower.
As a group though I feel like this collaboration was a good team effort and we worked well together to get what we accomplished done. However, there were times where I didn’t know if the others were coming in or not and was then the only one in. I had assumed that everyone would come in when we were timetabled to be in. I had said previously to everyone, that whenever we are timetabled in, I will be in, and I’ll let you know otherwise. There were times where someone would message in our group chat about who’s going to be in to get no response from some members of the group. I just felt that if we as a group communicated better there wouldn’t have been the confusion over who would be in and who wouldn’t. Periodically, there would also be messages to the group chat to say that people were working from home. This just got, for me, annoying and tedious as if we, those of us that were in, had discussed anything that needed to be changed we’d have to reiterate that in the group chat but trying to explain somethings over text is difficult, especially if people had any problems or confusion about decisions that were made. Regardless of these issues and miscommunications I feel like we have a project we can be proud of.
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