Once Upon a Time there was a Circus of Death

The final part of the assignment was to create two game trailers in the form of storyboards from the characters we had made. I split my characters evenly (two for each idea) and started planning out some ideas for each. It didn't take long for two ideas to emerge - My first idea was a game based on children's nightmares and bed time stories. This eventually became the idea for 'Once Upon a Time' in which Lily and Jimmy (two of my characters) were trapped in a bed time story themed nightmare.

My second idea was a creepy carnival with scary monsters in it. This eventually became the idea for 'Ninette & Simone et le Cirque des Mort' (which translates as circus of death, i used French purely because things always sound cooler or creepier in French :P).  Here are some planning sketches for my second idea:

This idea for a monster was scrapped

                                     

A Yeltie :O?

 As time went on i started to neglect my first idea a little bit. I was really into my second idea as it gave me an opportunity to go wild with character design- something this course rarely lets you do. My first idea suffered due to this and you can see it didn't get as much love. I present to you 'Once Upon a Time' :

This game trailer starts like a fairytale with the words once 'upon a time' and then after every line a still from the game is shown until some music kicks in and the shots get faster. The game would mainly be about you and your brother/ sister (depending on which character you played as) trying to escape your nightmares and reach the end of the book. This story didn't get enough attention and turned out to be pretty cliche and followed the same sort of story as 'The Pagemaster' film (although i didn't realise that at the time). If i were to redo this assignment, this story would most likely be scrapped and redone with the same characters.

Like i said, i enjoyed my second idea much more- the characters were much stronger, the story was better and i could actually picture a game coming from it. It's no surprise that because of this my second storyboard was much more colourful and interesting. Here is my second game trailer, with some close ups of the most interesting shots, I present: 'Ninette & Simone et le Cirque des Mort'.

The game trailer would give a brief outline of the current circumstances by a voice over. The voice explains how the circus used to be a big family but then death visited the circus and cursed it, which turned almost all the performers into hideous mutated killing machines. Only two people remain sane- the circus master Ninette and a juggler named Simone.

The trailer features some of the enemies you face including a confused mutated animal trainer, a skeletal lobster man, a deranged trapeze artist and a soulless pair of contortionist, psychic twins. The aim of the game would be to survive and try to free your friends from the deadly curse. I liked this idea much more and if i were to redo this assignment i doubt anything other than a few minor tweaks would be changed.