Stories of Port Waikato
Roles: Game Art Motion Design
Employer: ARA Journeys
Timeframe: 2 months (for my involvement)
Stories of Port Waikato is a piece of content for Tuwhiri that tells the tale of the waka Te Winika - history that spanned over almost 200 years. My task was to create an impactful, respectful, yet cost effective animated trailer (shown inset) to promote the in-game story.
Game Art / Motion Design
Tools: Procreate Photoshop After Effects
Conscious of the need to be able to represent important cultural information within the indie production budget constraints of the project, I began with style exploration of the final shot from the trailer script. In Māori culture, identity is deeply intertwined with the intricate cultural patterns and woven garments - but this kind of detail is time consuming (thereby costly) to portray.
I needed to find a visually memorable style in which I could simplify or obscure detail unless absolutely critical to that particular scene.
Composition and lighting exploration for this new style, treating the waka, people, & environment almost as iconography.
Style progression from soft painted, to bold graphic shapes, to a less rigid, textured style to bring it more in line with the app’s organic style.
Colour exploration, to feel more cohesive with the app UI.
Animation test with the final style.
With the style nailed down, I was able to efficiently produce a sketch animatic for the full trailer, confident that the animation treatment would be transferrable to the final painted artwork.
The sketches produced for the animatic, and the animatic itself. The frame with the axe would be later replaced for narrative reasons.
The final painted still frames. Shown clockwise: the blessing of Te Winika’s tree before it was felled; the invasion of Rangiriri during the land wars where people were driven from their homes and anything ‘Māori looking’ was burned; the burial of Te Winika’s carvings to protect them from invaders; the subsequent re-carving during her restoration.
The final trailer (as shown top of page), and an example of how the artwork is featured in-game.
Public Speaking
In this talk from NZGDC 2022, I speak about the creative decision making that went into creating this trailer, and how we balanced the needs of the story with the needs of production.