Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/83694
Gaming n n n n video game. The technology elements had to be rewritten, and that required an enormous ef- fort," says Kraus, noting that the company spent nearly a year and a half working on the produc- tion tech. "The touch interaction, the graphics design … all this had to be restructured." In terms of building assets, the processes of editing them, exporting them, and pulling them into the runtime engine are basically the same as with any game. According to Kraus, there are four steps to creating game content us- ing React's technology. First, of course, involves authoring the assets for the character animation and music/sound. Here, teams can use vec- tor images or hand-drawn art that is digitally scanned into the computer. Using the React au- thoring tool, users then create and load the vari- ample, in the first scene, if Edgar moves too far forward too quickly, Sylvia backs away." From a modern production perspective, studios likely will create the imagery in a vec- tor animation system, like Flash, Toon Boom, or their own proprietary software. Cecropia, meanwhile, had hand-drawn every frame of The Act and later scanned them into the com- puter—230,000 drawings in total, and React had to come up with a solution for compress- ing all that artwork while maintaining its high visual quality. proprietary platform, and React continues to look for opportunities for the tech suite, such as in professional animation studios where the artists could quickly and cost-effectively pro- As Kraus points out, this is a completely noting that one of the more powerful aspects of The Act is the sound—the system triggers music to coincide with the game states. "Many classical animations are tied to music themes. That relationship is very important," he adds. Kraus believes that if The Act, which was re- leased at this year's E3, had come out a year and a half ago, most phones wouldn't have been able to push it. "Now they can, for the most part," he adds. React hopes to tune its technology for other delivery platforms as well. Again, it's all about timing. Kraus contends that because of the way the characters are drawn, the iPad is especially conducive to this type of game experience. "We were ecstatic when the iPad came out. We believed that was where Edgar and Sylvia would truly shine, and we were right. There is so much depth and rich- ness to the original color scheme. The fluidity and transitions … you fast become the charac- ter. The suspension of disbelief happens quickly. Our biggest challenge was to make sure the user experience was as beautiful as it could be." Despite using all the inherited artwork for the game, some additional graphic design was needed to fill in gaps left by the new technol- ogy, and Khudari made sure that the crew re- mained true to the spirit and intention of the game as established by the Cecropia team. Kraus points out the obvious, that mobile games have grown in epic proportion, and adds, "This is a new genre of mobile game, building on the legacy of Dragon's Lair. It's a character-fo- cused game with much more interactive game- play [than most current mobile games]." Khudari's vision, a few years ago, was for ous scenes, define the sequences, and build the logic between the characters. Next, they export the data, and then the runtime engine loads the game logic, assets, and so forth, which enables the triggering and interaction. The runtime engine is a compositing system with an integrated game engine that combines backgrounds with various characters and trig- gers music and sound effects. The biggest dif- ferentiator in React's technology is in the ad- vanced state-defined editor, which is designed for 2D artwork. "Specifically, the system allows you to draw characters and character interactions, and express those and interrela- tionships between two characters," Kraus says. Kraus explains the way the engine handles two characters meeting. "You have two sets of character loops containing actions and inter- actions. Each loop you create contains a few hundred frames, and the engine ties those loops of action/reactions together according to the logic that is assigned," he says. "For ex- duce and deploy interactive 2D titles or de- velop interactive episodics. Scene IV: Mobile Debut So, what made Kraus and Laferrière decide to embrace classical animation in the age of C GI? Kraus says there are two reasons why this style works and pulls people into The Act. First is the animation itself, which was created by the original artists—the simplicity and elegance, the beauty and motion that goes beyond 3D. Second is how the game is played. Rather than moving between scenes, in The Act the player is moving the character's posi- tion. This is done simply by swiping left or right on a tablet or iPhone, or via a mouse for the Mac version—the controls are so simple, Kraus says, that a five-year-old can learn how to do it in a matter of seconds. "You are con- trolling the position of Edgar during the game, and by that interaction, you cause dynamic interactions with other characters," he says, The Act to be a game for consumers, and React was able to adhere to that vision, albeit on tab- lets and the iPhone rather than a coin-operat- ed machine. So while the game's hand-drawn animation style may be traditional, it certainly looks in vogue on these new platforms. "We are excited about what the authoring pipeline can let us do in terms of expanded content for serious production, and how that opens the door for cloud-based gaming," Kraus says. So it seems that the sky is potentially the limit for hand-drawn animation. Or, at the very least, React has opened the door once again to this traditional art form. "Omar's ini- tial vision was that 2D would become inter- active, and you could preserve the legacy and extend it to other genres. We agree, and with The Simpsons and Family Guys of the world, there are many possibilities." n Karen Moltenbrey is the chief editor of Computer Graphics World. August/September 2012 23