A Rakes Progress - The Isane Tom's Viewpoint/Game Over

*EPILEPSY WARNING: Thought I might as well put a warning since the killscreen text can mess with the eyes a bit.*
This was created as one of the later scenes to show Tom's view when he's been driven insane.
The screen is literally a decent into video game hell, with red spirals, the dreaded 'Game Over' text and the corrupted text from the Pac-Man killscreen.
The scene version is a still image, but I created a version that is animated.
I was posting the scenes in order (Barring the first.), so I'll just post the animated one for now.

Tom's Insane Vision - A decent into video game hell.

A Rakes Progress Character - Major Oak

In my version of A Rakes Progress, Tom was the hero of the video game Rakeman Jr, with the villain being a hulking anthropomorphic tree called 'Major Oak'.
He served as the villain of the game, kidnapping Sarah Young in-game, standing at the top of the screen, shaking his branches and raining the leaves down on Tom, in which he has to rake.
Outside the game, Major Oak is actually a good person, despite his monstrous appearance, caring for the other people in his game and only being evil during the game time.
He would accompany Sarah Young to confront the drunk Tom Rakewell, with Tom dismissing him as "A giant walking broccoli."

Major Oak - A giant talking tree.  Genius.

A Rakes Progress Character - Heroine

In my story of A Rakes Progress, an enraged drunk Tom takes to the streets of hubville and begins smack-talking people, one of them being a heroine from a shooter game.
The heroine ignores Tom's insults, but then Tom throws a rock at her visor, shattering part of it and showing her eye.
Nicola Shadow, who was in the form of Tom's hat for this duration, corrupts the heroine, turning her eyes into the trademark purple haze and forcing the heroine to attack Tom, destroying a lot of the area in the progress.

The Heroine, she's supposed to look like your average shooter game character.

A Rakes Progress - Rationale

Rationale – Rakes Progress – Daniel Allen
What I plan to do:

·         Fifteen Scenes portraying the story from start to finish, fully coloured and shaded with annotation for speech.

SCENE 1 - Tom explains his game whilst a screenshot of his game is in the background.

SCENE 2 - A disgruntled Tom is confronted by Nicola Shadow.

SCENE 3 - Nicola Shadow shows Tom his hidden wealth, and urges him to take it.

SCENE 4 - Tom leaves his game and heads to town, whilst Nicola devilishly ponders.

SCENE 5 - Tom buys his hideous suit, much to the disgust of surrounding characters.

SCENE 6 - A partying drunk Tom is confronted by Sarah and Major Oak, but he dismisses the two in a drunken rage and leaves.

SCENE 7 - After staggering into the street, Tom starts a drunken fight with a heroine from another game, but Nicola Shadow corrupts the heroine’s code and attacks Tom.

SCENE 8 - After the fight, Tom is cornered by Bug Hunters, virus hunters in the game world who threaten to strip Tom's hero status and wealth, remove him from the game and reduce him to a glitched piece of code. Sarah Young stops them but the Bug Hunters already strip Tom of all his money and leave him broke, much to his disparity.

SCENE 9 - Tom strikes a deal with a villain called Babaturk, in which Babaturk falsely attacks hubville, Tom stops her and they divide the income. A fight ensues in the town.

SCENE 10 - An overly greedy and gambling Tom refuses to give Babaturk her share, resulting in Babaturk showing her true form, Nicola Shadow, the mysterious virus that had started the mess.

SCENE 11 - Shadow explains her backstory. She was a fifth Pacman ghost who was supposed to show up on the final level of Pacman, but due to a problem, she created the infamous Pacman 'Kill Screen'.
She managed to escape the game, but her influence still exists int he game.
Because Tom was ungrateful for what he already had and all Shadow wanted all her life was to have a game to call her own (But could not due to her virus status), she targeted Tom for this reason.

SCENE 12 - Nicola infects Tom with her virus, completley destroying his mind and code through torturous images of pleading NPCs and overpowering responsibility, reducing him to a bumbling glitch, and soon he was taken away by the Bug Hunters, as Nicola Shadow fades away, her work done.

SCENE 13 – The scene is Tom’s vision, which is now a spiralling purple cascade of broken code, glitched sprites, ghost-like images of Nicola Shadow and the infamous Kill Screen from Pacman sprawling across the screen.

SCENE 14 - A glitched Tom is locked in a glitch vault, Sarah approaches to see him but told that contact with him would glitch her, so teary-eyed, she bids her former suitor farewell and leaves.

SCENE 15 - Years later, a new game called Rakeman 3 is released with a new hero. Sarah and Major Oak were given salvation into the new game, but as the game starts, Sarah looks to the hill and see's a re-purposed Tom, now the penultimate villain of the game and completely oblivious to his past life.

·         Character Designs for most of the main cast.

Main Protagonist - Tom Rakewell/Rakeman Jr
Secondary Protagonist - Sarah Young
Main Antagonist - Nicola Shadow
Anti-Villain – Major Oak
Anti-Hero - FPS Heroine
Secondary Antagonist - Babaturk the Hag
Plot Point – The Bug Hunters/Baliff.

·         Rough Story outline

The basic plot I have now is that Tom has inherited his dads fame and fortune with the release of Rakeman Jr, a successor to the recently discontinued Rakeman.
The game consists of Rakeman Jr, fighting leaves with a rake and saving Sarah from an evil tree called 'The Big Oak'.
Tom isn't fond of the idea of spending his life raking leaves for peoples amusement, and the fact he's already rich from his inheritance made him question why he should continue being the hero, and during a day of gaming, a new character appears, calling herself Shadow, she tells Tom that wallowing in the game isn't worth it, and that a world of self-indulgence lies beyond the game walls, so Tom leaves the hero role and heads into a nearby video game town with his new found riches, ready to flaunt and spend.
He does it all, buy tacky clothing, throw money at poorer video game characters, intimidate other game heroes in drunken brawls, have some 'fun' at video game whore houses and so forth.
Eventually, the game is threatened with shutdown, and whilst Sarah and the Big Oak has been promised salvation into the next game in the series, Tom was facing termination, and when the bug finders try to strip him of his status, Sarah uses her accumulated riches to pay them off for a few days, but it's too late, Tom is losing his hero status and slowly, his mind.
In an act of disparity, Tom comes to an agreement with an old hag named Babaturk, who's a villain of another video game, Piccolo-Zappdee. (A fake game, Babaturk is actually Shadow in disguise.)
In return for a cut of the riches, Tom would defeat the hag and reclaim his hero status.
This plan would've never worked, Tom was only a hero for defeating the Big Oak, but some of the people were suckers, and paid into Tom's scheme, but not at the rate of his old role.
His downfall came when he refused to pay Babaturk her share, so she confronts Tom at a gambling house, saying if he wins a simple game of cards, she'll leave the Rakeman alone, but if she wins, she'll strip Tom of his money and reduce him to a glitchy mess.
The game is rigged, and Tom undoubtedly loses.
To further torture him, the hag transforms into Shadow, and surrounds Tom with pleading NPCs, all wanting him to help them, but under the pressure, Tom's code breaks and he becomes nothing more than a broken glitch in the code.
The bug handlers apprehend him, and put him in a 'Madhouse' for failed game heroes and glitches.
Sarah approaches the madhouse, still not giving up on Tom, but the bug handlers warn her that contact with him would break her code too, so teary-eyed, Sarah bids farewell to the broken Tom and goes, leaving a broken Tom glitching and shouting.
Years later, Sarah is in a new game called Rakeman 3, with a new Rakeman as the hero who loves his job, but as Sarah monologues about the moral of the story, her visions pans to the Great Oak, who now has a new partner in crime.
A dememnted, unrecognisable Tom Rakewell stands above the tree, cackling and completley insane and repurposed for villainy.

Research:

·         Disney Animators (Wreck-It Ralph etc)
Seeing how Wreck-It Ralph is one of my biggest inspirations for this idea, I could look into how the characters were designed and if there was any early ideas and concepts.

·         Don Bluth
Don Bluth is arguably one of the greatest animators of all time, and his artwork shows this. (He’s also ex-Disney animator.) I can look into his preliminary sketches and his films.

·         Video game artists
I’ve been looking into Charles Zembillas so far, who created initial concepts for the characters of Crash Bandicoot and Spyro the Dragon.
He owns an Animation/Character Design school in California.
I’ll also look at some other game artists too.

Materials

·         Traditional Drawing (Paper, Pencils)

·         Adobe Photoshop (Colouring, Shading)

·         Wacom Bamboo Graphics Tablet (Input)

A Rakes Progress - Scene 4

This scene is the one I'm proudest of so far, I love the shading on it and the original drawing and photo were much better than the previous scene.
I also like the lighting effects in both the scenes, with the glowing from the coinpurse in Tom's and the shady smoke in Shadows.

Original image drawn on paper, photographed, imported into Photoshop and coloured and shaded using various layer tools like Multiply.

SCENE 4 - Tom leaves his game and heads to town, but Nicola Shadow declares the downfall of the Rake has begun.

A Rakes Progress - Scene 3

This scene didn't turn out as well as I hoped, the initial drawing was done late at night when I was tired and the photo quality was awful.
I fixed this in the next scene, but lets just say this scene was experimental.

Original image drawn on paper, photographed, imported into Photoshop and coloured and shaded using various layer tools like Multiply.

SCENE 3 - Nicola Shadow shows Tom his hidden wealth, and urges him to take it.

A Rakes Progress - Scene 2

I'm uploading the scenes I've made so far, and whilst I haven't finished the first scene yet, I'm starting with the second scene.
I like the lighting in this one, it's foreboding and Nicola Shadows silhouette is recognizable.
Plus, the game posters on the wall show Tom's envy for other game heroes.

Original image drawn on paper, photographed, imported into Photoshop and coloured and shaded using various layer tools like Multiply.

SCENE 2 - A disgruntled Tom is confronted by Nicola Shadow.

A Rakes Progress - Character Design: Nick Shadow (Nicola Shadow)

Onto one of the more obscure characters, Nick Shadow.
We was given two variations of A Rakes Progress, one being Tom inheriting his fathers wealth, getting drunk, hiring whores, losing everything and becoming insane by his own hand, but in the other, a character called Nick Shadow tells Tom he has a vast fortune from a dead uncle, and Nick Shadow aids Toms rake lifestyle and leads him to his downfall.
Since I really liked the original paintings story, I'm sticking with that variation, but Nick Shadow was such an interesting character that I couldn't leave him out...or should I say her?

Nicola Shadow, the mysterious entity that aids Tom in his downfall.

Why a female? Nick Shadow was a male in the play.
This was something I thought about in the early stages.
I noticed almost everything that goes wrong during Tom's progress is somehow related to a woman.
He dumped Sarah Young, went to whore houses who stole his valuables, married an old hag just for money, and was comforted by Sarah as he laid in insanity.
This made me think, if Nick Shadow was to aid Tom in his downfall, they could be a woman to tie into it.
Plus, as a character that pracitically seduces Tom into being a Rake, a sultry shady female character seemed to fit perfectly.
Also, her name is changed to 'Nicola', which is just a female variation on Nick.

Nicola Shadow's Headshots. I tried showing she has eyes under her bangs and also a glimpse of a teaser for a twist near the end.

Why is she a Pac-Man ghost on the headshots? What's that about?
The big twist.
There's an infamous bug in the game Pacman, where if the player managed to reach the final 256th level, half of the screen would be nothing but scrambled digits, broken sprites and code.

The Kill Screen from Pac-Man. The level can still be completed, though it takes a lot of practice and has only been done a few times legitimately.

No-one knows why this happens, not even Namco.
Because of this, I've had an idea that could be a really big twist in the story.
Nicola Shadow was originally a 'fifth' Pac-Man ghost, intended to be on the final level of the game.
She would have moved faster, been able to pass through walls and have been a 'Final boss' of sorts, but due to the limited memory and the unique code of the character, she made the game buggy and unplayable.
She was to be removed, but she had already caused damage to the level, but since it was so far in game, the developers let it slide since they thought no-one would play that far.
Because the world this story is set in was self-aware characters, when the developers tried to remove her,
She escaped the game, and over time developed into the glitch she is today that caused many glitches over the cause of gaming history for kicks, but usually nothing major and her influence was short-lived.
Tom's downfall by her hand is to be her biggest corruption to date.

A Rakes Progress - Character Design: Tom Rakewell/Rakeman Jr

I thought since I'm getting into the meat of this project now, I should start explaining the origins of my character designs and what they were inspired by.
The first character is the lead role, Tom Rakewell.

Tom Rakewell AKA Rakeman Jr

What was the main inspiration?To start with, I was thinking Tom Rakewell was going to be a robot that had a message of "No matter how much you upgrade your appearance, you're still the same nuts and bolts on the inside."
This was scrapped and I started thinking about characters I know and began crossing similarities between them.
One character that seemed like a perfect match for Tom Rakewell was the character of King Candy/Turbo, from the Disney film Wreck-It Ralph.

King Candy from Wreck-It Ralph. (One of my big inspirations for this project.)

The similarities were startling, from them both becoming something they're not (Tom becoming rich and Turbo becoming the ruler of another game), both going from an average person to someone of regal standing and wealth (Tom becoming a rich rake and Turbo becoming King Candy), and both becoming somewhat insane by the end. (Tom becoming insane in poverty and King Candy becoming the demented Turbo again.)

My design of Tom Rakewell was based around King Candy, but I've attempted to take the design in my own path, with a design that resembles King Candy and other game characters on the aesthetic level but can also just seem like my art style.
I've also based Tom's insane/glitched form from the end of the story on the character of Turbo, which is who King Candy was before he hijacked Sugar Rush. (And debatably insane himself.)

Turbo, the character King Candy was before he became the King, which I thought is similar to what Tom Rakewell was like, though Turbo is forwarded by his ego, unlike Tom who's forwarded by his wealth.

A Headsheet for Tom Rakewell, where I've still sticked with a similar look to King Candy, but now with more of my style and a touch of game characters from the time period.

Why 'Rakeman Jr'?In video games, sometimes a sequel to a video game will be "*First game name here* 'Jr", which usually stars the son of the hero of the first game, a popular example of this is Donkey Kong with Donkey Kong Jr, Pacman with Pacman Jr and more closer to my inspiration, Fix-It Felix Jr from Wreck-It Ralph.
The idea seemed to fit since in the paintings, Tom inherits his wealth from his father, which in the game sense, the fathers wealth is his video game.
The name 'Rakeman' came from the idea I had of Tom Rakewell literally 'Raking' in his game, which gives him the Rakeman title.

A Rakes Progress - Scene Test

SCENE 2 - A disgruntled Tom is confronted by Nicola Shadow.

This is the Second scene of my adaptation of A Rakes Progress, and I've developed this scene first as it is the first scene that is drawn, as the first actual scene sequentially is sprite art.
I've drawn the original picture on paper, and after photographing it, put it in Photoshop and used layer tricks and 3D shading to create the colours and shading of the scene.
The Mario poster was added as a cameo.

Reflective Practice - #3

Course so Far:
The course has sorta been a rollercoaster since my last Reflective Practice.
I'm enjoying Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays, and I'd enjoy Thursdays if I was allowed to develop my artwork for 'A Rakes Progress', and with only three weeks of this project left, I can't afford to loose a single session of drawing time if I want to complete my objective.
But apart from that, I'm enjoying the rest of the week quite a bit, I'm allowed to use my laptop and illustration skills to my advantage in those classes and every session has me working on my final outcome, which has really helped get my mind back on track with where I am on this project and I'm working steadily towards my outcome.

A Rakes Progress
I'm really enjoying this project now I have all the basic design and story down, and am now working towards my final piece.
I've finally got back on track after losing my way when told to experiment, the experiments were refreshing at first but I became lost after a while, especially because I had such a great idea for the project, which I've returned to and will develop over the coming weeks.

A Rakes Progress - Animated GIF Test

Just testing to see if Animated Gif files work on Blogger.
The animation is the villain from Rakeman Jr doing a basic idle animation.

A Rakes Progress - Up, over and gone.

From Left to Right: Tom Rakewell (Rakeman Jr), Major Oak, Leaf and Sarah Young.

I've developed more sprites for the fictional game 'Rakeman Jr', these sprites are to be used in the first scene I develop, as the visuals is Tom showing the viewer his game.

A Rakes Progress - Its a secret to everybody.

I've been thinking what to do for my outcome piece for this Project, and what I'd be developing over the next few weeks and the Christmas holiday.
I've decided to draw key scenes from my version of A Rakes Progress, each scene acting like a storybook page and telling the story as it goes on, which ties nicely into illustration and also will tell the story I've been incredibly eager to tell.

SCENE 1 - Tom explains his game whilst a screenshot of his game is in the background.
SCENE 2 - A disgruntled Tom is confronted by Nicola Shadow.
SCENE 3 - Nicola Shadow shows Tom his hidden wealth, and gives him it before fading away.
SCENE 4 - Tom leaves his game and heads to town, bidding farewell to his game.
SCENE 5 - Tom buys his hideous suit, buys pointless crap and spends his unlimited money.
SCENE 6 - A partying drunk Tom is confronted by Sarah and Major Oak, but he dismisses the two.
SCENE 7 - After staggering into the street, Tom starts a drunken fight with a heroine from another game, but Nicola Shadow corrupts the heroine and nearly kills Tom.
SCENE 8 - After the fight, Tom is cornered by Bug Hunters, virus hunters in the game world who threaten to strip Tom's hero status and wealth and reduce him to a glitched piece of code. Sarah Young stops them but the Bug Hunters already strip Tom of all his money and leave him broke.
SCENE 9 - Tom strikes a deal with a villain called Babaturk, in which Babaturk falsely attacks hubville, Tom stops her and they divide the income.
SCENE 10 - An overly greedy and gambling Tom refuses to give Babaturk her share, resulting in Babaturk showing her true form, Nicola Shadow, the mysterious virus that had started the mess.
SCENE 11 - Shadow explains her backstory. She was a fifth Pacman ghost who was supposed to show up on the final level of Pacman, but due to a problem, she created the infamous Pacman 'Kill Screen'.
She managed to escape the game, but her influence still exists int he game.
Because Tom was ungrateful for what he already had and all Shadow wanted all her life was to have a game to call her own (But could not due to her virus status), she targeted Tom for this reason.
SCENE 12 - Nicola infects Tom with her virus, completley destroying his mind and code through torturous images of pleading NPCs and overpowering responsibility, reducing him to a bumbling glitch, and soon he was taken away by the Bug Hunters, as Nicola Shadow fades away, her work done.
SCENE 13 - A glitched Tom is locked in a glitch vault, Sarah approaches to see him but told that contact with him would glitch her, so teary-eyed, she bids her former suitor farewell and leaves.
SCENE 14 - Years later, a new game called Rakeman 3 is released with a new hero. Sarah and Major Oak were given salvation into the new game, but as the game starts, Sarah looks to the hill and see's a re-purposed Tom, now the penultimate villain of the game and completely oblivious to his past life.

A Rakes Progress - Outfit Smouchfit

I've thrown together a comparison sheet of my outfit designs next to the character the outfit is based on.

A Rakes Progress - When can I see you again?

After my absence from College, I've done my first drawings since I came back, which are head shots of my A Rakes Progress characters.

Tom Rakewell, Nicola Shadow and Sarah Young.

From this, I think I need to practice drawing the characters more so I'll be able to create the scenes I have planned easier.

A Rakes Progress - The Progress of the Rake

The Progress of the Rake - Rakeman Jr, to the posh Rakewell, and finally the insane and glitched Tom

I created these sprites as a way of portraying what Tom could look like inside his game.
The sprites are in three stages, the Rakeman Jr outfit, the Rakes over the top suit and the final insane glitched Tom.

A Rakes Progress - Press Start (Back 2 Basics)

First off, I'd like to say sorry for the lack of updates recently.

I've caught a flu that's pretty much screwed me up physically and mentally, so I've had little to no drive to create art until now, and the flu is still there, I'm just surprisingly ambitious today, which is odd since I'm feeling worse today than I have for the past few days.
It's kept me away from college too.

Anyways, I've been exploring different ways of showing my version of 'A Rakes Progress', but something hasn't clicked, which I'll explain after showing off this drawing, where I experimented with drawing the main character in different styles:

Next, I need to admit something.
The video game idea I had for A Rakes Progress was perfect in my eyes, I had a well thought out story laid out, interesting characters ready to be drawn, ideas out the wazoo and I was prepared to explore into other things, as long as it stayed within my pathway. (Combination of Digital and traditional Illustration.)
I'm enjoying the exploration into stuff like costume design, as that can be tied into the game theme through Cosplay and soon I'm going to try and do some world designs and objects, but I'm not enjoying being told to do something else because "I'm too used to the medium I'm using." (I thought a Pathway is using the things you're talented in and use them to your advantage in the project, so in the Pathway stage I'd use my pathway.)

The costume design I did to break up the character design a bit.
I imagine them being either part of a play based on the game or three Cosplays, which is something I'm into.

Digital illustration in Character Design is my Pathway, and while I don't mind exploring in my pathway (I'm fond of the idea of trying object and landscape design), I'm not going to change my pathway entirely by using a medium I dislike. (Like being told to use paint when I could spend that time developing something new for my current idea using my Pathways tools.)
I was once asked "Are you going to do anything else this year besides game design?".

Yes, I intend to explore different Illustration styles such as movie, TV show and comic book character, object and landscape design later in future projects, but for this project, I've settled on a video game theme as its what I could see Rakes Progress, and the idea that's the strongest so far. (In my honest dangum diddly opinion.)

The characters I had designed so far, Tom Rakewell, Sarah Young and Nicola Shadow.
The comments I got on these characters when displayed to my friends and family yielded strong results and cemented my focus on this as my final idea for this project.

I'm sticking with the game design idea for A Rakes Progress, and using illustration to convey my idea.
I'm really optimistic about this idea and have a ton of ideas to use, and I intend to explore too into object, clothing and landscape design.
After this project, I won't use game design again unless I have a really strong idea for my FMP.