Production Pipeline - Design Document

3-4 Paragraph Narrative:

The idea behind the animation is a simple narrative following a warrior and a dark mage (any spell caster that isn’t focused on healing but rather attacking) who encounter two enemies: a slime creature based on the Dragon Warrior game for the NES and a Mimic from Dragon Quest or even Final Fantasy. The battle system is based on Final Fantasy X and explains what the audience sees as opposed to what the two characters see.

The characters aren’t aware they’re a game; rather, the audience is to believe they are in control of the characters and are actively interacting with the game world. As the battle continues, the characters make increasingly intuitive choices as to distance the user from the role of ‘God’ and hopefully make the characters seem more personable to get the audience to sympathize and perhaps incorporate themselves into the characters. Thus, when a character is damaged, the audience should feel as though they were damaged too.

To achieve this, the camera will take on several different perspectives but towards the end it will seem more ‘first person’ as to achieve that connection I seek. The idea is to have the audience determine, “is this character me?” or “am I controlling this stage and all its players?” The real interesting part is to see what role they play: are they warriors who step into battle with the characters or are they mages who sit back and observe from afar? Ideally people will take one of the other sides but not both and, on that same note, hopefully the room will be split on its decision.

In the end, the characters are victorious in their battle and the audience should be joyous…until there is the twist of the treasure chest not being a prize, but rather a trick to the audience to test their sense of adventure: “be ready for anything/be prepared”. The Mimic is the surprise element to keep the audience engaged and reward them for paying attention. After the Mimic is defeated, the party rejoices (as should the audience) and the animation is through thereafter. Simple and short but with what I hope to be a somewhat profound and entertaining clip at Live Action Role Playing.