Cartoon Cinematic

I've had an idea for a short Unreal demo in my head for a while and finally took some time to develop it. I prototyped the gameplay and it felt solid and fun. But there was this feeling that it needed an introduction cinematic to establish the characters and set the tone.

So, I created a rough draft or "pre-visualization" in one day, and I was happy with it. It contained every scene I needed to tell the story, and I threw together scratch audio all at once, to get the timing right.

Then came the decision to commit to the rough and actually illustrate and animate it. I have this nagging feeling that, with the rise of AI-generated content, this type of hand-made animation will become a thing of the past. But I embraced it and gave it my all.

Here is a video of the rough next to the final. I'm very pleased that the original timing and framing of shots survived.

It's helpful for me to keep track of how long things like this take to do. So, I logged the hours:

• Rough Draft: 6 hours
• Final Illustration: 115 hours 😅

*Quick note: The music is a temp track that I do not own the rights to. I plan on re-doing the audio before putting out a playable version.

This was just a quick look at the cartoon cinematic process. I'm not announcing the game yet, but I hope to have an early access version to post soonish. Here's a sneak peek at some of the game levels in development:

My Game was at the Cannes Film Festival ^_^

 Wow, this year is really flying by.

I'm happy to share something I've been working on with iNK Stories NYC. Our game, Lili, was recently featured at the Cannes Film Festival!

Screenshot from Lili, read The Guardian article here.

It's been really interesting to lead the game design effort on such a unique title. Lili is a "screenlife thriller" meaning all of gameplay and storytelling takes place on a virtual desktop, and you (the player) take on the role of a modern-day hacker, breaking into systems, solving puzzles and driving the narrative choices.

Lili has to be one of the most exceptional game design challenges I've had the privilege to work on. We're using live-action video feeds from multiple camera angles (allowing the player to spy on other people), while presenting time-sensitive hacking challenges, and a variety of story-telling devices.

It's common in game development to work on something in the shadows for a long time without the opportunity to share. But amazingly, Lili was featured in the Cannes Film Festival immersive competition, as the first video game ever to be showcased in this category.

Additionally, because the story off Lili is a modern adaptation of The Scottish Play (Macbeth), we have partnered with the Royal Shakespeare Company to produce their first video game ever!

"Lili makes Cannes history as first ever video game to be showcased."

- Royal Shakespeare Company

It has been an incredible honor to work on this project, and I hope to have more news in the future. Thanks for checking in.