Act SPRITELY!
Lesson 3 (Part 1)
A few years ago a Swiss artist named Guillaume REYMOND created a number of videos that used real people in place of pixels to create what looked like old 8-bit video games. Employing stop-motion animation, people moved from seat to seat in an auditorium mimicking the movement of early computer graphics. Here is an example of a car racing game called Pole Position.
When you create your own games, you will be placing and then directing small images on the screen called sprites. The cars in the above video are examples of these. Today you're going to have your own go at directing and filming a scaled-down version of a human video game, based on an old classic computer game called Snake. Have a go at playing it now... (NOTE: Only play for 3 MINUTES!)
To make you're own Human Snake Game Artwork...
create a grid of four by four chairs (16 chairs in total). Make sure they are close, but the same distance apart and as neat as possible,
label the grid by placing sheets of A4 paper above the seats (the X axis - label 1, 2, 3, 4) and to the left running down (the Y axis - label 1, 2, 3, 4),
a student (or a team of students) should direct the game, using the coordinates on the seats to do so,
if you are filming it set up a camera (or phone) on a tripod in front and as high as you can,
set up a frame at a time, beginning by having one person as 'snake food' and two people as the initial snake,
to move the snake, every person should move a seat along (or around),
every time the snake eats food, add another person to the end of the snake's tail to make the snake longer,
simulate 'food' being eaten, and lay more 'food' as you go along,
the game ends when the snake gets so long that its head cannot move without running into its body,
remember - don't point to seats, use coordinates to refer to where others are moving to!
When the game is finished compile the images into an animation using an online program such as Flixier or on PhotoShop.
If your Human Snake Game Artwork is done go either take a look at another introductory exercise (about variables)
or get into today's lesson which contains the preface for TinkerGen Go Game.