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Chop Chop Inc.
Chop Chop Inc. is a touch-based interactive tree-cutting game. Aiming to promote the risks of illegal logging, deforestation, and environmental health, the player takes on the perspective of a lumber getting a big gig for a big company to cut down the forest in three locations; Finland in Europe, Amazon in South America, and a part of the African Savannah. The player will start off in Finland as the first level, and "progress" to the other locations. Chopping down trees will make your boss happy however its direct consequences will directly be shown through the environment.
Along with eight other students in a collective, Chips for Dinner consists of one sole engineer, myself along with two other designers, and five artists with each specialized role. This eight-week project was done for a showcase at Oyfo Techniekmuseum in Hengelo, The Netherlands at June 2020, however the event was cancelled due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
Being a project centered around deforestation and environmental health, our designers put a lot of effort into researching the different aspects of the topic, as well as finding as much inspiration as possible to create the different mechanics to put into our touch-based game. We then decided to attempt to deliver our message through the direct effects of illegal logging to our game environment by creating chaos from the trees, fleeing and crying animals, and the slightest change in color scheme to convey and deliver the change of mood to a darker tone.
Audio, audio, audio. Can't stress enough how much this aspect is crucial to a game. Working on a 3D game environment, we applied adaptive 3D audio to the scene to create more immersion for the players. Being the foley artist and audio designer, I spent most of my time creating and editing sound assets for pretty much every thing in the scenes. From walking animals all the way to falling trees, strolling around the forests and vastness of Finland, Amazon, and The African Savannah is quite breathtaking. It is unfortunate for me personally however, due to the pandemic limiting myself as a foley artist to be able to have the freedom to go out and travel to different places to capture authentic sounds.
With our group being quite uninformed about the necessity of creating a trailer for the project, I took on the bold move of creating a gameplay trailer within two days. With my first time touching and learning about Cinemachine in our preferred game engine, Unity, I've managed to create something presentable for our final pitch. Creating all the B-Roll from the scenes within Unity, but further complex effects, audio work, final color grading, and exporting are done in Adobe Premiere Pro.
Chop Chop Inc. Trailer
Not fully satisfied with the end result, I set out to attempt to create another one. There's less cinematic shots than I desired therefore I've been driven to create a new, more cinematic-focused game trailer. This trailer turned out to be one of my personal portfolio work and is made way after both the project and the event ends. However, this personal satisfaction project turned out satisfactory enough for me!
I set out for this trailer to speak more towards the narrative that I personally think the first trailer could improve on. The main idea for a trailer for Chop Chop Inc. is to put the viewer in the shoes of the main character, the lumberjack, who finds himself in a conflict between personal gain and nature preservation. This perspective puts the lumberjack looking at the forests he's going to cut down with two very different stories; the trees that give him the biggest profit and the animals dying off of his doing. I then came up with a concept of narration where the exact same sequence of video, if narrated and brought into the viewer differently, could show a whole other story.
I went ahead and created a storyboard out of this concept. While the plan was to show the same video sequence twice, it means that I only technically need to draw half of the video. While it doesn't look like the most elaborate storyboard out there, this actually was quite a personal goal for me as the process took way too long and complex, as there were lots of revisions, feedback responses, and even more revisions based on those feedback. But this was the general idea where it would show off the unique animals of a region, (spoiler alert) a shot of a tree falling towards the animal, while transitioning towards the next region, in which it would show the same concept, which will then again be played as a whole through a different narrative.
With the storyboard made final and out of the way, that took like 20 hours btw, I set out to start gathering footage. Within Unity, using the Timeline, Cinemachine, the Animator, and a bit of scene modifications, I gathered hours of footage from B-roll to gameplay and dumped everything to Premiere Pro to be edited and graded. Here's also the phase where sound design is applied. A lot of audio effects were considered to help bring the narrative to the viewer, also the music choice to help with the sense of setting.
People say I ramble too much sometimes. You know what? Go ahead, it's down below. Let me know what you think when you get the chance. Enjoy!
Chop Chop Inc. Cinematic Trailer
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