RED SKY INTERACTIVE CREATIVE GUIDELINES
by Joel Hladecek
Redefine the “Standard” (or Excuse me, your “multimedia’s” showing! )
Make the concept, interface, art and animation support and drive the interactive experience- Don’t rely on the development programs to do it. Any fool can set a Director transition. Immerse the viewer in your world.
Also, don’t buy into industry interface conventions- most of them were developed by some data engineer named “Earl” with a pocket protector and bad hemorrhoids. Red Sky pushes harder than our competitors to raise the quality beyond what the rest of the industry settles for. In other words, as an artist working for Red Sky, don’t ever say “We did it that way at (my old company), it’s a standard”, or you will be tarred, feathered, cast out and publicly humiliated. SET the standard.
Example: Don’t settle for simple “up and down” button graphics just because it’s commonplace in most multimedia and/or easy to do. Consider creating smoother or more expressive buttons with more frames of animation to further support the metaphor. If memory is an issue- cut something else damn it.
Embrace the limitations.
Understand the technical constraints and turn them to your advantage. Everything does something very well, identify what it can do and don’t bother forcing it to be something it isn’t.
Example: Turning Star Wars into a quicktime movie is gonna suck, but make the quicktime into a “TV with lousy reception” and you’ve got something!
Example 2: Emulating real life motion (a person walking) using gif 89 is usually going to result in slow, jerky motion, or as it’s called in any other animated medium: BAD ANIMATION. The web is FILLED with animation attempts like these (how many corporate sites have you seen with jerky, rotating logos? Avoid this temptation at all cost.). However, animating a neon sign with a gif 89 embraces the low frame rate nature of the technology. Whether you animated the neon sign using a gif 89 at 3 fps, or on film at 24 fps, it behaves the same. The weakness in the technology does not show through the content.
Suspend the Viewer’s Disbelief by Justifying the “Magic”.
“Magic” is what we call it when the metaphor breaks the rules of nature or machines and does something fun, unexpected, gratuitous, and/or impossible in the real world. This kind of “Magic” is why Interactive is a cool and fun way to get information and be entertained. The use of any magic in a Red Sky piece must be supported strongly by the concept and/or art direction. Frequently this means grounding the magic with some sort of contextual or visual logic or explanation. By doing this, the magic becomes a natural law– a logical and integral element in the project. Justifying the “magic” has made Red Sky Projects stand out as seeming “richer” and more developed than our competitors. Lazily justified “magic” is the easy way out and is just bad multimedia. Yeah, this is a fuzzy Guideline, and frequently very subjective, but maybe this will help:
Example: Lazily justified magic might be a “metal text plate” where the changing text, engraved in the “metal”, pops or cuts from one line of text to the next- the problem here is that metal is unchanging and can’t do that. In this situation the developers have given no programmatic or artistic attention to the follow through of the concept. So either the metal concept should be dropped in favor of something that CAN cut from one line of text to another, or a solution must be developed where the rigidity of metal is embraced. Of course if this metal were “magic metal” and you wanted it to cut or morph, that would be fine so long as the overall metaphor clearly supported that behavior.
Make it live – The Red Sky High Idle.
No Red Sky Interactive piece should ever be “dead” or still, unless it’s a conscious decision There must always be some indication that the piece is “breathing”.
Example: Something as simple as a small animated element in the interface rotating or flickering is all you need. A moving logo treatment, or a button that blinks on it’s own- or possibly even a random audio loop. This can be as subtle or as rich as you want.
Animate motion smoothly. (or go back to film school)
Consider more frames of in-betweening and a higher frame rate, or if fewer frames are desired, use motion blur to smooth it out. If the animated graphic files are too big- they’re too big; you gotta come up with a smaller solution (see “Embrace the Limitations” guideline #2). The only reason anything should move jerkily is if it’s an artistic decision, and supposed to move that way.*
Justify Motion.
It’s not enough to “make something move”, it must move in a justifiable manner. There should always be some thought put into the “cause” behind the effect. In life, things move for a reason, that reason will imply a manner in which it should move.
MECHANICAL: If it’s “mechanical” let us see or hear what’s moving it. The more inner workings we can see or hear, the stronger the motion is justified.
Example: A small gear seen through a hole in another part of the screen might be enough to justify some larger mechanical effect.
NATURAL: If it’s something moving under the forces of nature (i.e. wind, gravity, etc.) -there’s no easy method here- it must look NATURAL. Poorly animated natural forces run rampant in our industry- because it’s hard to do. The more realistic the motion- the stronger it is justified.
Example: I get sick of seeing poor attempts at the animating of objects falling or colliding (like logos or letters or spaceships or whatever) where the objects look more like they’re suspended in a web of rubber bands than acting under the forces of momentum and gravity. Confused about how something moves when it falls? DROP SOMETHING AND WATCH. That’s what it should look like when you animate it.
FLY-THROUGH: If it’s a P.O.V. fly-through, decide what kind of vehicle we’re in and embrace the natural and mechanical laws surrounding that vehicle. Beware of the flying-camera-vehicle trap, nothing moves that way, it’s just easy, sterile, and lacks character. Choose vehicular behavior from the real world and commit to it.
Example: A jet, a zero-gravity spaceship, a hang-glider. Even a cannonball would work. This is not to say that it must be a vehicle you’ve seen before either, make one up, a balloon with a jet engine attached perhaps? Just make sure that the moves are true to your concept and that it obeys the natural laws.
GRAPHICAL: If the concept is graphical and/or significantly stylized, a more “stylized” interpretation of the motion could be explored. Make sure in this case that the concept and art direction are consciously driving and justifying the nature of the animation.
Example: In some cases some appropriately funky music might be enough to justify some rather funky animation.
Nothing is Perfect – make it irregular.
The easiest thing to do in any art program is to draw an absolutely perfect square. The easiest type of animation moves the square in a perfectly straight line at exact and equally spaced intervals. Are you yawning yet? Red Sky has a reputation for imaginative irregularity. Things flicker, squeak, and wobble. Look for the opportunity to borrow from nature and give the smooth surface a wart. It adds Red Sky character.
Audio must end gracefully. (Don’t let it cut)
I’m frequently surprised by interactive artists lack of attention to this detail. It’s a basic and accepted requirement in any other timebased medium; a sign of professionality and showmanship.
In general- four things can happen to end a sound once it has been triggered:
- The sound plays it’s duration and concludes naturally.
- The sound is programatically faded out.
- A new sound interrupts the first one, disguising the fact that the first one did cut off.
- The sound is interrupted midstream and cuts off like a light – to silence.
Number four, in almost all cases, is unacceptable in a Red Sky piece. Whether it is the audio loop that has been playing in the background or an incidental sound effect, attention must to be given to every sound to conclude it gracefully.
If there is a hard and fast technical limitation which demands the abrupt cutting of the sound, see guideline #2. Audio may cut off only if it’s a deliberate, artistic decision.
This guideline is broken rampantly in the interactive industry- fall into that trap… and die.
At least one final, integral aspect of every project must be exceptional.
It may be the richly animated buttons or the highly responsive and well recorded sound, but every Red Sky piece must have at least one exceptionally well conceived and rendered element. In a perfect world every aspect of every piece would be spectacular… and while the world isn’t perfect, one particularly strong element will give the piece it’s own unique character. This is not to say that the rest of the project can suffer, rather the other elements must still pull their weight, but they do not have to be the primary project focus.
The thinking here is that if every aspect of the piece is simply rendered in an “acceptable” manner, the overall piece generally comes out rather dull.
In a forest it’s the trees that are in some way exceptional that catch our attention and interest. Twisted, fused, or taller than the rest- make yours the one that stands out.