Experiment Away
Once again we were invited to create animated graphics for the biggest game hackaton in the planet: The Global Game Jam!
Most of the feeling we had by participating on the GGJ event ourselves, was the sense of experimentation, playfullness and raw creativity. For this year teaser we wanted to explore this concept RANDO BANDO style, jamming all our creativity inside an Erlenmeyer flask, stiring it up and sharing the results of this test experiment with the world.
Most of the feeling we had by participating on the GGJ event ourselves, was the sense of experimentation, playfullness and raw creativity. For this year teaser we wanted to explore this concept RANDO BANDO style, jamming all our creativity inside an Erlenmeyer flask, stiring it up and sharing the results of this test experiment with the world.
Employees of the month
Dr Jill and Gloo are gamers and mad scientists. She never told our staff if Gloo was one of her creations, but we leave it for you to guess.
We changed Dr Jill colour a lot along the way, and preserved its evolution in some artworks here just so you could see the actual creative process.
We changed Dr Jill colour a lot along the way, and preserved its evolution in some artworks here just so you could see the actual creative process.
We first had an idea of exploring a daylife of a game jam event, making a diverse line of game jammers with all sorts of backgrounds, participating in the same event. The concept on the far right caught our eye and connected with some of our creative explorations about experimentation, so we decided to sketch some ideas of how it could look like.
Mad science
We have done sketches that turned into color concepts, that turned into scene ideas, that turned into color keys. The creative process for this animation was a mix of visual development and production design that we tested out for the first time after watching an interview with Justin C. Harder of CLAUS, where he talked about creating frames even before the storyboard, and composition studies from animations we love.
Also, here is a shoutout to the filthy lasso tool photoshop plugin by Ben Eblen that was awesome to create these concept pieces quickly.
Also, here is a shoutout to the filthy lasso tool photoshop plugin by Ben Eblen that was awesome to create these concept pieces quickly.
Eureka!
With our sketches and concepts in hand, we started collecting everything we had created so far in the same document to find connections between our drawings, scratch out scenes, and bounce ideas over.
Once we had a sequence, we tested it in a boardmatic, which is basically dropping every thumbnail in a timeline, with the same duration and with a placeholder sound.
Once we had a sequence, we tested it in a boardmatic, which is basically dropping every thumbnail in a timeline, with the same duration and with a placeholder sound.
After a couple more drafts and sessions of pitching board ideas, we were ready to turn it into an animatic where we could test camera moves, timing, composition and some rough animation on top of a place holder soundtrack. After finishing it we numbered the animatic and separated each scene for the art and animation stages, and sent it to our sound engineer.
Behold! It is alive!
Buckle up, because we reached art and animation stages! With the animatic poses, we created some pencil tests of the most complex scenes, vectorized the characters key poses and expressions in Illustrator, and the backgrounds are a mix of vectors, paintings and straight ahead animations in Photoshop with the timeline tool.
Then we moved every vector inside Illustrator with the help of BattleAxe's amazing plugin Overlord, and imported the sequences done in photoshop.
Our intention for the animation was it to be very snappy. With every layer beautifully named and separated in after effects, we just keyframed inbetweens using the interpolation inside After Effects, messing with holdframes and with posterize time.
Having a rough pass of the character animations before doing them in After Effects helped us a lot to create consistent and dynamic shots quickly, and this is something we learned during the process of GGJ 2023 teaser.
At this stage, now we also have new music and sound design! The original sound signature created by Ventura Sounds for last year edition, had its appearence in GGJ 2024 with a new look, and we were so happy with it. Every sound and music created specifically for this event was on point, and it is half the fun when watching the whole animation.
Here is a comparison of the previous animatic with the animated scenes + new audio, so you can see how all the process above evolved into the final result.
Global Community
On early stages of the animation production we asked GGJ participants and community to send their versions of Dr. Jill and Gloo (that is why she does not have yet her characteristic magenta colour, but there are some rumors she likes to somehow dye her skin with new colours from time to time).
Of course we could not help ourselves but to join the fun and create our own alternate versions for them. These shots were featured during the official Global Game Jam keynote, and we hope to collaborate on more ideas with the GGJ community in future editions.
Of course we could not help ourselves but to join the fun and create our own alternate versions for them. These shots were featured during the official Global Game Jam keynote, and we hope to collaborate on more ideas with the GGJ community in future editions.
It is difficult to showcase and describe eeeeverything we have done when creating this piece, but we tried our best to share our processes and experiments, hoping it inspires your original creative work somehow.
It was a challenging project, with new ideas and decisions popping in the middle of the process, but we are so glad to have gained creative trust from the GGJ team to try out new things every time.
If you have any questions or words you would like to share, just reach out here in the comments or in any of our contact pages below! Thanks for following this far on our work!
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Client: Global Game Jam | Year: 2024 | Service: Teaser Animation, Illustration, Character Design, Graphic Design
Creative Direction: RANDO BANDO (Bebeto Canali, Luis Naza) | Art & Animation Direction: RANDO BANDO (Bebeto Cahali)
Character Design, Storyboards: RANDO BANDO (Bebeto Cahali, Luis Naza) | Sound & Mixing: Ventura Sounds
Visual Development: RANDO BANDO (Luis Naza) | Graphic Design: RANDO BANDO (Bebeto Cahali)
Motion Design & Character Animation: RANDO BANDO (Bebeto Cahali, Luis Naza, Mateus Klein)
Special participants / GGJ Community artists: Paulo Belarmino
Character Design, Storyboards: RANDO BANDO (Bebeto Cahali, Luis Naza) | Sound & Mixing: Ventura Sounds
Visual Development: RANDO BANDO (Luis Naza) | Graphic Design: RANDO BANDO (Bebeto Cahali)
Motion Design & Character Animation: RANDO BANDO (Bebeto Cahali, Luis Naza, Mateus Klein)
Special participants / GGJ Community artists: Paulo Belarmino
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