Excalibur Publishing Project

In an effort to defy procrastination and laziness, I'm taking to this project for the great company Excalibur Publishing.

Initial thoughts? It's going to be nearly impossible to advertise their products seriously. They have titles like 'Farming Simulator 2011' and 'Street Sweeper Simulator'. It's going to be difficult to walk the line between not displaying the product in such a serious manner that it becomes ridiculous how straight it's played, and outright mocking the products to the point where it loses any appeal.

I've rolled through a few ideas that were either too straight or too mocking, and I've arrived at one I think is just about balanced on the line.

Procrastinate Properly

The games made by Excalibur are somewhat unique in that they're halfway between a casual game and a proper game, with an audience far different from most. Most games are played as procrastination, I'd imagine, to put off a more difficult task. The concept behind this campaign is that if you're going to waste time instead of being productive, you might as well do it properly.

The project brief, too, is to make the advertisement viral. This is the single hardest hurdle. Viral advertisements propogate mainly through YouTube, Facebook, and all your other miscellanious social sites and word of mouth. The games made by Excalibur Publishing I doubt have the core demographic of people who are highly active in such circles.

The basic concept to be fleshed out for PP is a 30s commercial slot. My time breakdown is currently looking like so, and the concept can be applied to several different but similar advertisements (allowing viral potential)

0-15: Video of person procrastinating in a boring manner. Minesweeper, Freecell, doodling in the side of a worksheet, anything. This will be the main viral-enabling portion, so gets a bit more screentime than is really neccessary.

15-25 : 'Procrastinate Properly' transition. Current concept is a soundbyte signature to the game currently advertised and movement onto displaying footage, with voiceover advertising game.

25-30: Excalibur Publishing ident on full screen, along with information on where to submit your own procrastination.

The viral part would come in an open competition with a prize for used content, with open invitation to submit a 15-second clip of 'procrastinating'. The interpretation of this would be left mostly open, and submitted entries could be viewed to find the best to make into the next iteration of the advertisement with the submitting user getting a prize (Some amount of money and, say, a gift redeemable on Steam for the collected Excalibur works. Or a tractor. Dunno.)

Going to get to work on the 5 second final part in 3dsMax, as videos will be more easily made when I return to Uni.

Disaster

It seems 3ds Max decided to forget how to save following 10 hours solid work, and I now have a corrupt file.

A lesser man would be deterred. Let's see what a single day solid work can get me, from pretty much scratch.

Keep 'dem Shoggoth's rolling'

The enclosure is completed using a different technique to how I was previously planning.

On the image:

Left: The mostly-finished enclosure. It's subject to being altered in shape later to appear more rock-like, but for now it's close enough to the final shape to focus on more important things.

Right: The inside of Area A (the first large cave). The feeling of still-claustrophobic size and transition into a very claustrophobic tunnel B is coming along nicely. Working on adding the pit props now; getting into the detail work over basic formation.

More progress

Making the cave up, finally building the enclosure. Going a lot more smoothly than I expected so far.

Hi ho, hi ho, Y'gs'lg C'thulu n'gnlo

What do you get when you combine the Great Old Ones and their tentacly appendages and consuming madness with the already creepy location of an abandoned mine?

Let's find out.

Rollin' rollin' rollin'.

This work bought to you by a bowl of pasta and cheese, and my beautiful new second monitor, tall enough to use four-screen modelling on, making my tasks much easier. Been told I should be documenting my work progress better, so hopefully this counts.

Minecart - Initial Design

Here's a thingy.