Slowly Building Something Worthwhile cont.

At the end of my article titled Slowly Building Something Worthwhile, I pondered what the video game equivalent would be of a song (or any other work) that slowly and steadily builds up to its grand climax. I noted how there's an inherent problem with finding a video game equivalent because of the interactive nature of video games. When players input, the output is quick to follow and from there we move on with the rest of the game making many more inputs and witnessing many more outputs.

I proposed that the gaming equivalent would have to have core mechanics that are inputted over an extended period of time before repeating the action or processing and reacting to the results/output. Some of the Wii Fit exercises and games instantly came to mind. But it wasn't until recently that I came up with the perfect example.

Back when I was in high school, I had created 3 short films to be shown during one of my orchestra concerts. One of the songs for that concert was Adagio for Strings by Barber. While rehearsing this song I, along with many others in my class, grew very impatient. After all, it took us about 14 minutes to get from the start to the finish at practice speeds. Just before the concert, I developed a great appreciation for this song that seemed to take all the time it needed with good reason. But I was worried that the audience might become impatient, or worse; bored.

So, to match Adagio's long, culminating impact, I crafted a short film around one continuous camera shot of a person who stands up in his room and starts walking out his house and across the city with an art pad in hand. As this character walked, he drew a picture on the art pad, which I sped up in editing. In tiny little sketch marks, the character slowly etched out the image. At first it was impossible to tell what it was. Then a few distinct features became recognizable. A shoulder. An ear. A nose. Soon, everyone realized that the picture was of a praying girl with angel wings. And before anyone realized it, 14 minutes had passed, and the character in the film placed the picture at a grave having walked from his house all the way to a cemetery.

If you've ever watched anyone draw, paint, or create anything slowly right before your eyes, you know what a time lapsing and mesmerizing effect they can have. Thinking back on how the elapsed time drawing in the film matched so well with Adagio, it hit me all of a sudden. Slowly etching out an image in Picross is the video game equivalent of a slowly building work like Adagio for Strings. In the free modes of Picross in particular, there is no instant positive or negative feedback for making a move. Instead, players are free to mark up the squares however they want. Only when every space is marked or unmarked correctly does the puzzle end and the image is revealed. In this way, solving a puzzle in Picross is like one drawn out, continuous action that has a response at the end that's the culmination of all the steps you took to correctly uncover the picture.

So if you're curious, try listening to Adagio here while watching any or all of the videos below. Be sure to turn off the sound on the videos below.

Reflection on Kinou's Journey

I finished watching the 13 episodes of Kinou's Journey about 2 months ago, and since then I've been sitting on mixed feelings about the show. The dialog is too polite, too stiff, and there's too much of it. Books and films are most effective at showing not telling. Instead of centering around charactes and meaningful actions, Kinou's Journey tells all through dialog. You can really tell that the series was created from novels. The art and animation quality are on the low end of the scale; just enough to be pleasant to the eyes at times, holding you over until something cool happens possibly soon. But it never did.

Each episode is short and disconnected because Kinou, the main character, journeys around from place to place rarely staying in one location for longer than an episode. Kinou is a somewhat stoic character that lives by a set of rules with one of them being that she never stays in a place longer than 3 days. This rule puts a considerable restriction on the show's ability to craft larger story arcs and ideas. The result is a journey that's filled with trivial encounters; encounters that communicate ideas that are cold and aloof as if bemused or presented instead of lived. No matter what happens in the story, like Kinou, we're forced to leave it all behind, forgetting it and moving on to something potentially worth the small bit of time we have to give.

Kinou is a main character who is stuck between unsolidified and uncertain ideas. She's a girl with an ambiguous appearance, and she has the fighting prowess of a more combat oriented anime characters. On the other hand, she's a polite little girl with an odd attitude doing little more at times than asking people a lot of questions.

Despite all of these issues I have with Kinou's Journey, I found the series to be far more substantive, concise, and to the point with its ideas than many movies and tv shows, which is simply pathetic for those other shows. Believe it or not, there's an art and craft to storytelling in any medium. If you choose to ignore developing characters, respecting the setting, and binding the actions and events to space and time, then the best you can hope for is some interesting content.

Kinou's Journey is more of a show about pondering ideas than anything else. It doesn't have much of a story or a singular focus/point. For if episode to episode, your character can be anywhere, talk to anyone, and leave without strings attached or changing in some way, then your character is someone that I simplly cannot relate to. We, humans, are bound by space and time and because of that and the slow way we move through each, we are irrevocably attached to any and everything in our proximity. This is the basic substance that makes up what we think of as our lives. Understanding this is what creates the foundation of stories. It's something deeper, richer, and more complicated than arranging ideas side by side.

A list of my favorite episodes of the bunch.

• 02 "A Tale of Feeding Off Others -I Want to Live-"
  "Hito o Kutta Hanashi" (人を喰った話)
• 03 "Land of Prophecies -We No The Future-"
  "Yogen no Kuni" (予言の国09)
• 05 "Three Men Along the Rails -On the Rails-"
  "Rēru no Ue no Sannin no Otoko" (レールの上の三人の男)
  
• 09 "Land of Books -Nothing Is Written!-"
  "Hon no Kuni" (本の国)
  
  

Skittles & The Weird pt. 4

Don't forget part 1, part 2, and part 3 of this series.

For the final part of this Weird Skittles series, I wanted to first say a few things about the Skittles commercials that I don't like so much.

The kind of "weird" in these commercials isn't a very meaningful, poignant, or relatable kind of weird. Therefore, I'm not a big fan of it. Essentially, this kind of weird is about surprising the audience by showing the unexpected. Unfortunately, like so many jokes, the value/effect of the commercial wears off over time and after repeated viewings.

• In the sheep boys commercial, the two sheep boys discuss the unconventionality of the blended flavors in the Smoothie Skittles while unadmittedly represent two uniquely blended creatures. The farmer at the end tells she sheep boys to "stop that jibberjabberin;" a line that entertains but offers little to no real substance.

• Mr. Extreme in the commercial above is all about shock value. He looks crazy, wears an albino boa constrictor, rides a tiger elephant, and wields a flame staff. Somehow this man enters the scenario, and he leaves abruptly on a helicopter. I can't think of any common life experiences that I can relate to the events in this commercial. I think the only take away is that the Skittles are extreme and so was the weird style.

• The elements in this tropical Skittles commercial never came together for me. A random rainbow in the hallway becomes a portal to a tropical island where a strange and friendly man shares some of his candy. After the boy gets the Skittles with the "three new flavors" he leaves the rainbow portal only to find a girl waiting for him back in the hallway. How is any of this relevant or similar to common life experiences? What's the message of the commercial? I don't know.

Now I'll close out this series with 2 good commercials. The difference should be clear.

• The message in this one is simple. Don't judge people by their looks. When the office worker hit the piñata man with a bat, he was simply acting under the principles of "form fits function." While this principle is essential in video games, it doesn't directly apply to life. Discrimination is an ugly thing.

• This commercial plays off of the mysteriousness of dreams. To get away from his current classroom situation, the boy drops a handful of Skittles into his mouth. The candy wisks the boy off into a day dream like place. In the dream, the boy impresses the angel with his ripping muscles (literally). Unfortunately, the Skittles effect wears off and the boy snaps out of his day dream. Eager to continue where he left off, the boy quickly gobbles down another handful of Skittles. This time things are different. The angel flexes her incredible muscles right back and they form a majestic rainbow power fist together. Like with real dreams, it's hard to resume a dream after being woken up. Such is life, like Skittles; different every time we try. 

And that does it for Skittles & The Weird. I hope you got something colorful out of these mini analyses.

If you have any commercials you would like my feedback on, feel free to send them my way.