I’m known to be able to talk without any punctuation but this is ridiculously. As you can see, we have a problem with wordpress – I’m still trying to figure out what exactly is wrong and how to fix it. It seems that the bug But the timing for that problem couldn’t be worse.

BECAUSE, this week is FMX week – and Shift! – Tales of the Sentinels is proud to be a part of it. If you are at the FMX2014 you are not only able to meet us there, but to see some artwork at an exhibition in the ground floor and listen to a presentation of both Sabrina and I.

Also we will be part of this years “Internationaler Comic Salon Erlangen” and the “Dragon Days 2014″ – but more about these two events, when I’m finish cleaning this bug-mess up. 

It’s been a long time since there has been any activity on this blog. That doesn’t mean that there was no activity. Nothing could be further from the truth.

February has been a real busy month, as it was the final sprint. A lot of nightshifts (no pun intended), a lot of coffee and blood, sweat and tears there was march. And march was the month of my final exam.

Well, to cut a long story short: We did it! Although the first episode of Shift! – Tales of the Sentinels is not quit finished, my study at the Filmacademy Baden-Württemberg is. I earned the right to call myself “dipl. Transmedia- and Gamesdirector”, thanks to a great team. And as of now, I have to think about the true horrors – like insurances and financing my daily bread.

What happens right now is that we try to finish the artwork as soon as possible and to have a fully functioning prototype. Everything we can present as a showcase is still pretty work-in-progress’ish. In the end, the diploma was just another step in the process of making “Shift!”.

But to show you guys some stuff, (and specially for all of you German speaking readers) here is our German experience trailer. Have fun and stay tuned for more updates coming your way!

ExperienceTrailerGerman

A new year, a new post by yours truly. A lot happened in the last weeks. We have made a lot of progress in the different departments. Some parts of the story changed drastically. For my diploma, the first really, really important deadline is something like 8 weeks ahead, I’d like to give you a brief overview over all the characters you will find in the first episode of Shift! and tell you something about them.

You can see them in the picture, and I will describe them from left to right.

Click on the picture to get a full screen view on the chracters of Shift!

So we start with our hero Adam (17). Although he looks like your everyday teenager, he is everything but ordinary. The other teenagers at school would call him weird. That’s because he has another view on the world. Normally he tries to stay out of trouble. But he has a crush on Ronja – and Ronja means trouble.

Ronja (19) is a punk-rock girl. She has a strong opinion of the world and has no problem to fight for what is right in her opinion. She doesn’t hide her attitude, even though it could get her and her surroundings in big trouble. She knows something is wrong in the world and wants to change this.

Regina (49) is the loving and caring mother of Adam. She is a pretty tough power woman, the real head of the family and a typical greenie. Her biggest fear is losing one of her children.

Erik (51) is the father of the family. His mind is worried by the troubles of his job: the current financial crisis rocked his construction company and he has to fire some employees. But who do you let go?

Mimi (5) is the youngest family member. She has a strong connection to her older brother Adam. But just like Adam, she is everything but ordinary. Her drawings are showing events she couldn’t possibly remember – or which haven´t happened yet.

And now (since we call Shift! the “tales of the sentinels”) we continue with those special persons, who are able to shift between the layers of our world – the sentinels.

The first one is the cute Pudel (18) who has a “Girls just wanna have fun” look and attitude from the 80’s. Her name comes from the German word for “poodle”. You might think that she has the name because of her curly hair, but that is just secondary. She is named like a dog because of her unstoppable thirst for knowledge and her track hound behaviour.

The opportunistic and sometimes cowardly Wiesel (23) is in his opinion too cool for school. He is a real hustler, earning his money by doing small crimes with his abilities – and not only the police has a problem with that fact.

The colossus next to him is Tavarish (20). You could call him a big friendly giant type of guy. He might be the strongest guy, but he is not the brightest light – always pointing out the obvious.

Prediger (50) is a member of the high council of the Sentinels and a real powerful authority figure. He has seen things and knows stuff about Adam that even the teenager doesn`t knows. But the mysterious man has a hidden agenda, and Adam doesn’t fit in his plans. At least for now …

And there is the mysterious Schakal (43), but you already know about him, don’t you?

Hope you’ve enjoyed our characters.

When we read stories, we get instantly images in our mind – but in every head, the images look different. Comics are a bit different since they are (at least in my opinion) the perfect hybrid between written stories and animated film. Comics are a visual medium and visualization auf the story is probably the most important step.

Felix and I take the exposé of the first episode and we make a storyboard out of it, as you would do for a film likewise. This means, we do not work with the typical panel-in-panel look you normally have in comics.

While making the storyboard we ask us different questions for each panel/frame: What can the user explore? Do we have a foreground? Did we consider the golden ratio? Where is the light coming from? Is there a way to keep the amount of panels smaller so we can concentrate more on each panel until the deadline? Is there animation to consider?

In the end, we will have scribbles of each panel of the first episode. In my opinion that is the most important milestone: Not only are we able to make a to-do-list with every single task that is left to do but we can also use these scribbles to test stuff. We can scan the scribbles and load them into unity. With our prototype of the comic we will see if our ideas make sense on its final device and if the flow of the story is right. I’m excited.

Felix and I take the exposé of the first episode and we make a storyboard out of it, as you would do for a film likewise.

As a Motion Designer your field of work tends to be quite broad. I always took an huge interest in interaction design. I`m fascinated by the new layer it adds to the challenge of creating a unique design. Design of course is always user-oriented. Still I have to create something that can easily be decoded by anyone and be unique at the same time. In the Shift-project I saw the opportunity to try to live up to that challenge. Furthermore it was clear from the beginning that the whole team (especially Marcel) took an huge interest in creating a whole Shift CD (Corporate Identity) package.

But first things first. To create a consistent look we wanted to make sure to start at the core of a coporate Identity, the logo. There is a myth out there that logos are done quickly. All I can say is, don’t believe in fairy tales!
Looking at a logo – it might look like a tiny thing that can be finished in a few days.. drawing an simple apple that someone took a bite from, easy! First, creating a minimalist design often proofs to be much harder that bombastic ones. But let´s pause a second for what a single logo should be able to do, it should  represent the idea in an abstract way. It should represent the philosophy and feeling of the project. Not so easy to press all these fancy words in just one logo. But when it is done you kind of feel like having given birth to something new, something amazing.

Designing the Shift logo

When I started to think about the logo for Shift, I had just finished reading Paul Ekmans Unmasking the Face: A Guide to Recognizing Emotions from Facial Expressions. In his book Ekman often states that with each facial expression – no matter how focused we are – there is one layer that we are aware of showing to our environment and one that is hidden beneath but can be detected by some people with kind of “special powers”. Most of the time it is only visible for a millisecond, but it´s still there.

some early sketches for the logo

The story of Shift for me had a similar core idea. The astral world is a world where emotions come to life, making them visible for those who possess special powers. For the logo I wanted to visualize this idea. I definitely wanted to include psychology into my concept. This made me think about the Rorschach test often referred as inkblot-test. In that test the personality of a patient is released simply by showing him ten inkblot, and letting him tell you what he sees. He projects his emotions onto the inkblots, making them “visible” for his environment.

And this turned out to be the core concept behind the logo. Next to the psychological part, I also wanted to make sure to display the two layers of the Shift-world. The human side on the one hand and the astral-layer on the other, reaching out for each other, overlapping and together creating the universe of Shift.

Rohrschach logo sketches, getting closer .. but the outlines are just not right.

But as it is a logo for a comic after all Marcel wanted to make sure that it had a kind of icon/symbol style and that it could be reproduced by fans. We also wanted to make sure that it had a recognizable shape. So we decided to lose some of the details and shift it to a more minimalistic style.

And after a lot of time of fine-tuning (I felt like I tried every combination of colours possible) we finally created a logo that somehow combined the whole philosophy of Shift.

Looking at it again and again I tend to find new associations  for Shift that I originally never intended to create. Throughout its abstract shape it somehow develops/evolves itself by reflecting the emotions and ideas of the audience.

Iris Schwarz – Motion Designer

As someone who has a huge interest in motion controls I was very happy to be chosen as the Lead Programmer of Shift! – Tales of the Sentinels. But why?

As a passionate comic and manga reader myself I’ve already tried lots of different so-called “interactive comics”. I was somewhat disappointed regarding the interaction between the user and the comic itself. Despite having badass graphics, most of the comics seemed a bit “off the way” to me.

Why?

Motion controls and tablets deliver all kinds of different input methods.

Why stick with a basic comic behavior?
Why use touches only to swap between pages?
Why use motion controls to somehow achieve an 3d-ish effect?

Being able to reimage these mechanics in Shift! is something i really enjoy.
The idea of experiencing the story not just through artworks, but also through
controls and input methods solely designed to discover new and awesome stuff
hooked me immediately.

But what about implementing it? In order to ensure a productive workflow for artists, creative directer & engineers we chose Unity.

Here’s some background information on how we achieve these goals:

Comic frames resemble a stage scenery. While each individual plane is still a two-dimensional sprite, the scene itself remains in 3D.

By rotating the camera in a circular / elliptic way around the center object e.g. Adam,  the user is able to grasp a glimpse behind objects.

Whether it’s an old thrown away newspaper  or a dictaphone,
lost by an unknown person, the user is able to discover new aspects of Shift.
And this is the point where Shift exceeds other interactive novels and follows its own
path.

While the camera movement itself is done through the motion sensorics of the iPad,
the screen can be used to interact with the current comic frame.
I am really glad to be involved in the thought process behind this project and I enjoy developing new interactive aspects of Shift throughout the entire production phase.

Stay tuned for new updates and (better) screenshots!

Florian Schuttkowski
Lead Developer