Borderlands - Sketchy Scruffy Cinematics

Borderlands has always been a personal favourite of mine from the moment I first played it. The way that the story string itself together along with the play style and all around game genre is just what I look for in a game. However its not just the game play that I love about Borderlands, its also the art.

The reason why Borderlands attracted me was due to the style that its presented in. The heavy cell shading gave this game a air of surrealism rarely seen in the modern game so it was nice to feel like I was playing a more retro looking game. When I decided upon doing a game cinematic I knew that the opening cutscene of this game would be one that I would reference.

Unlike Guild Wars 2 who's cutscenes focus on more fluid animating of the concept art involved in the video, Borderlands has static pictures that appear to have been scribbled onto old paper, much like map drawings. The cutscene itself focuses more on the transitions from scene to scene rather than the actual animating of the concept art which I found to be interesting and surprisingly engaging.

I think that the reason I like this cutscene so much is that it has the ability to be extremely interesting and attractive yet it lacks any true form of animation past the movement of the scene transitions which proves that it does not always take a huge action packed cutscene to attract the viewers attention and sometimes it can be as simple as feeling like you are reading a book.

Although I'm aiming for a more dynamic and animated cinematic I will certainly keep this cutscene close at hand for future reference if I do more animatics. I love the style that this cutscene is portrayed and I will certainly be developing this style of art for future projects to come.

Diablo 3 - Stationary Movement

Diablo III is a game that I've adored since I first got my hands on it. The game play itself I thought was interesting but overall average for the diablo series. What attracted me the most about this game was its art and cutscenes. 

What I find most interesting about Diablo III is the way that the game combines absolutely stunningly detailed cutscenes that sport fully rendered and animated models with the sketchy ancient concept art feel that reflects Diablos time period. 

The cutscene shown above is an example of how concept art is used in Diablo III's minor in game cinematics. I love this cutscene for the subtle combination of stationary concept art coupled with animation of the same concept art in later scenes, the way that these two factors come together gives the entire animation the feel of being in a magic storybook of some sort and its this style of animating that I would like to look further into in the future as well as learning more about how the effects are made (presumably in After Effects) and how to get such fluid transitions in my own projects in the future. 

The colour of this cinematic is also something that I have now begun to consider with my own prospective animations as prior to using Diablo III as reference to my work I had only considered to use intricate colour theory as shown in Guild Wars 2 cinematics, until now I hadn't considered giving my projects the feel of looking at an old painting or map so I've found this to be an extremely useful reference to have so far. 

Watching the Diablo III cutscenes has also spurred me on to trying to find other cinematics that share similarities in style and colour, two that I know of being 'Borderlands' and 'Sonic and the Secret Rings.'

I will continue to look further into this style and presentation of cutscenes and will consider developing this style further in the future.