Final Crit

Issues:

• who is it aimed at?
• flick books could be smaller
• try a square
• cut neater
• better stock for flick book
• try something thicker for the stand

Action to be taken:

• reprint boxes for each flick book to make them abit more uniform
• remake the original game boxes for the consoles.

Repackage

Now that i have decided to go along the path of gameboy's i created the flick books for the original gameboy bootup and the gameboy advance startup. I then included the two video game startup books as these where made into advanced games so i didn't want to waste them.

I needed a way to present these as some kind of celebritive product and figured a tray with die cut sections to stand the boxes in would be best as it shows the dates along the top to remind people.

The tray when finished could be made from acrylic plastic to add strength.

I repackaged the books to have a pull tab to yank them out of the flush covers and allowed for a smoother and more slick style.

The books fit nicely into the cut sections.

Packaging

Already creating two of the flick books which took alot more effort and time then first expected. The layout for the covers where quite simple however.

The net was a simple measurement of each side along with a tab to stick and then slide over the flick book.
The best style i managed to create was by having the original box art as previously explained.

i included the year that the game in the flickbook was from and it all began to take shape.

 The covers i felt added to the real feel of the project people where quite happy to slide them off and play around with them. People knew what they where going to expect when taking them out.

I attended a crit where the feedback was very clear. the problem and solution wasnt very clear. no one knew what they where really trying to achieve. I took the feedback to the design sheets and realised that what i was trying to create was really unreachable as each flick book took double what i had planned to make and where really to large to use. 

The next plan was to move the development further. 

I went back to my questionnaires where i remembered how people used the Gameboy more than any other console. This sparked an idea and i felt stupid for not seeing it earlier in my work.

I will focus on the Gameboy and the parts which where significant for example the creation of the gameboy. Moving onto the Gameboy advance which revolutionised the handheld market.

I looked into the Gameboy and created a sheet describing the different types upto current day where i decided to stick with the Pre DS stages of the console.

As i had already made the two flick book for the video games i realised that they had also been made as games for the Gameboy so a simple repackaging would be suffice.

I looked into the startups of the Gameboy consoles and realised that was a clear obvious change for each handheld as for every new ere of gaming it updated the boot up screen. To my relief each startup video was also only around 4 seconds max which meant the size was no longer an issue !

After following the steps i took to create the huge flickbooks this felt a lot easier and meant i could have the transaction really smooth without it being massive.

As you can see from the video the playback of the startup video works so much better.

Cutting down videos

I had to come to create a flick book to show as a prototype. I took a video from YouTube i found of a good quality and started to cut the video down into frames.

The video was 14 seconds long and after i decided to cut it down into 20fps i set out the layout and printed them off,

This is how i set out the flick book to make sure i used most of the stock and made cutting easier.

I came to a problem when i printed a video. I had to cut out 28 pages worth of screens each having 12 screens on each page.

The total of the flick book came to 336 whilst this wasn't a problem for cutting out it was very difficult to think of how to bind such a amount of card along with the ability to flick through it being compromised.

I drew up some design sheets to try and conquer the way i could bind these together.

I came up with the way to hole punch my way through the pages in sections.

By hole punching 20 pages at a time i managed to keep a consistent way of getting a hole through the whole item.

I tried to use string and stitch the book up but it was too thick that anything i tried would snap or not hold them together good enough. I ended up using an elastic band strung through and tied around the other side. This allowed for an amount of stretch to be applied when trying to flick each book but it wouldn't snap like the previous tried and tested methods.

After i  figured out how to bind these together i started to think about how i could package them with a sleeve rather than a box as these where really quite large and where almost unusable.

I drew up an example of what it could look like including a date stamped onto the top to allow people to see the progress throughout the years.

Knowing how large these where going to be i decided to look into how i could package them all together and include a poster where i could have the flick book put in front of the poster to complete the bar chart and add abit of extra interactivity to the mix.

The elastic band worked really well to hold them all together.

The width wasnt so much of a problem as it took on the shape of one of the retro style boxes quite well.

the thickness of the flick book was really not useable and ruined the  idea to an extent.

The flick book however do work pretty well when flicked through but then again i have quite large hands.

The above video shows me using the flickbook and i figured it would still be worth the try to package the flickbook.

Design Sheets

I set down to try create some idea sheets to help me come to terms with what it was i needed to create.

In this sheet i decided to think about what size and style i could produce on every flick book. 

Throughout the sheet I thought about how i could package a flick book. At the time i figured a flick book would be around 1cm wide and could be packaged in lots of nice ways with the format of it being square or rectangle.

1. Recreate my own style of box art
coming back to the earlier research i could create a nice fitting flick book box like the old retro games came in. Each both would be a replica of what it used to be on a smaller scale allowing the user to open it and relive what they did as a kid.

2. Cartridge Style
perhaps make a cardboard cartridge that when the flick book was inserted it completed the look of the cartridge along with the sticker it would have come with.

Moving on to decide on the style later i thought about how i could package the items. Making a box with a lid which could be removed easily to then show each individual book on show ready to be flicked by the user.

Possible Outcomes

I had a thought about how i could start to use the information i have received to help me with the 100 brief.


1. Create a music CD with instructions how to compose the users own theme music from a collection of music notes and sounds from the old games.


2. Create a book showing box arts from the 80's to till early 2000's 


3. Create a video which can be downloaded which shows the intro's for the games best liked.


The above ideas where all really good and i felt would tackle the brief's problem well but asking around the class and to friends everyone said the video seems most up to date and re-useable.


I took into consideration the new age media of videos and how people access them. The top results for video playback was as shown:

1.Youtube

2.Download

3.iTunes

4.Mobile download

5. Purchase from retailer 

I researched into YouTube and many videos are available of game intros already but at a very poor quality and i thought about creating a group for souly high quality game intros. The problem came back when i was thinking it through and realised it would be going away from the old school almost analog feel of the older games.


My second creative thought was to have available iPhone videos for people to keep on their portable device and watch whenever they wanted. The problem with this was how to package or instruct the user on where to go and how to use the item along with many people perhaps not owning an iPhone.


The last of my ideas was to try out flick books. I have wanted to practice with these for along time and after considering videos it came to me that i could try out a method of cutting down videos to make flick books to play the video back.

Box Art

I have decided to look at different box art from different consoles to prehaps create a book of covers going from the 80's to the 90's:

Looking at the above examples of box art it shows that the nintendo box art seems to have the most consistency throughout its boxes which would make documenting and re creating my own boxes abit easier and look nicer. 

After finding more of these box arts i realised how diverse they all are and when looking into the games created from 3rd party developers the style of each box moves even further in an opposite direction.

This fact meant i wouldn't be able to keep all the images consistent and would start to look out of place and this isn't how i like to see design at all. 

I may return to this section and re use some of the facts ive found out to help me along with a different part of this brief.