Under Investigation
Introduction:
For this project we worked in teams to uncover clues from a "Mystery Box". We used these clues to form a fictional crime or mystery story in the Film Noir style. We took on the role of the Scotland Yard investigating a case. We outlined our story, each created a character sketch and bio, each contributed scenes in a story board, then individually created movie posters and animations of the character we had focused on.
Materials:
Adobe Photoshop Sketch, Adobe Photoshop CC, Adobe Illustrator Draw, Adobe Illustrator CC, Adobe Comp, Adobe Fuse, Adobe Mixamo, and Adobe After Effects.
Step One- "Mystery Box" Contents and Story Development:
This is the exterior of the bag as it was found.
Pocket containing two ziplock bags of cocaine as well as one ziplock bag of marijuana.
This object lay at the top of the bag. It was an empty container for scotch.
Below the bottle more evidence is visible. Here we see the map how it was originally placed in the bag. We note that it was placed near the top and folded in such a way to isolate a specific area in northern Canada where a location is circled. Also the map is partially torn suggesting that he may have needed to refer to this portion as well.
Here we can see the torn portion of the map as well as the circled location: Moose Factory.
We found car dice from Las Vegas and, at the bottom of the image we caught a glimpse of a coaster from "Pennant Hills"an Australian Golf Club.
On the back of the Coaster we found the location circled on the map written down.
Other evidence we initially saw Includes golf shoes, a pool ball, a bandana, cards, a rubber duck, and a Book with an articled folded and stuck in the centre.
The single pool ball was found sitting in one shoe.
Here we see golf shoes. The scuff marks indicate that he does in fact play golf however he is not wealthy and has likely owned them for a long time. We also note the labels "L133" on each shoe.
This rubber ducky is another interesting item. It could belong to a child or could even be an object John may squeeze for stress relief although our theories are still under development.
At the base of the duck we see some discoloration.
We found one full deck of cards.
We discovered this pair of glasses and cassette. The cassette along with the date of the publication of the book he carried has helped us to set the time frame of our story as well as the age of the main character.
This bandana was found folded like so.
The writing and images allowed us to connect this bandanna to a biker gang from the US. The confederate flag suggests that it is also a racist gang.
This gold case was another important piece of evidence.
This image shows the contents.
This business card led us to connect our character to a prostitution organization.
This business card is less significant. It is for a motel which simply supports the theory that our character was on the road.
This matchbook was kept although the matches we used which indicates that the information on it was significant to our character.
This information seems to be in relation to law and drug-related offences.
Each poker chip was the same with the word "BICYCLE" on it.
Underneath the business card we found two cookie fortunes. Also we found a hair underneath them that could play into the story of John's conviction.
This was found in the bag it is a book on psychology and we suspect he is reading it in the hopes of improving his ability to read opponents when gambling. Below we have photos of the spine and back of the book.
This stain stood out to us. It seems like it could be the same substance as what we found on the duck. It could be lipstick, blood, or any number of things.
This image shows the folded article found inside the book. It may have been used as a book mark although the state of the paper suggests it has been read it more than once. The article is mainly about Marijuana and also helps to further depict our character's relationship with the drug. Below are photos of the front and back.
Once we had unpacked the contents of the bag we began collaborating to develop a story. We used the date the book was published along with the cassette tape to set a date for the story. We used various items to tease out the personality of our bag's fictional owner (e.g. the scotch bottle, the self-help book, and the rubber ducky) and with more specific clues (e.g. the location written on the coaster, the circle on the map, the drugs, and the business card) we began to form a story about the crimes he had been involved in. Once we figured out the details we pitched the story, received feedback, and edited it accordingly. Below is a link to our story outline we created on Adobe Spark.
https://spark.adobe.com/page/Vw5TxIGDvFlUK/
Step Two- Character Sketches and Bio's:
Name: Jacob Williams
Age: 40
Place of Birth: Australia
Occupation: Unemployed
Height: 5 6"
Weight: 160 LBS
Eye Colour: Dark Brown
Special Features: A deeper voice, average personality, smart on his feet, good with cards.
Accessories: Round Sunglasses
Hobbies: Gambling, Drinking, Travelling
Bio: John Williams was born in Australia, a 41 year old man who likes to travel. John has a criminal record from his hobbies which includes gambling, alcohol, and drugs. John falls for a girl named Diana at a Golf club called Pennant Hill that hosted illegal card games. John finds himself in a situation where he wants to give Diana a new life, but for that to happen, they would need money. John finds a solution that is dangerous and involved picking up drugs from the Moose Factory in Ontario, Canada. John has to "buy out" Diana from the brothel house organized by Madame Elise Fleur before time runs out.
Name: Diana Banks
Age: 27
Place of Birth: Australia
Occupation: Prostitute
Height: 5'5
Weight: 143.3 lbs
Eye Colour: Green
Special Features: Beauty mark under left eye, bold red lips, braided half-updo hairstyle
Accessories: Rose hair pin
Hobbies: Swindling money from clients, smoking, drinking
Bio: Diana is a femme fatale character who seduces John into a life of crime. She turned to a life of prostitution after a rough childhood and is working under Madame Fleur. She swindles money from her clients and she has turned to John to further her schemes. She poses herself as a helpless damsel in trying to escape the clutches of her madame and convinces John to ask Madame Fleur for a job and once they've earned enough, they would elope together.
Madame Elise Fleur
Age: 48
Date of birth: December 13th 1945
Place of birth: Montreal QC, Canada
Occupation: Elise manages criminal operations involving prostitution, drug trafficking, and gambling.
Height: 5'9
Weight: 145lbs
Eye colour: Grey
Hair colour: Dark Brown, shoulder length
Special features/ accessories: Elise is usually seen with her hair teased in the back, side swept bangs, and thigh high black boots
Hobbies: Elise is an avid reader, her favourite genre is true crime. She also enjoys trying to read others which is what lead to her interest in poker and gambling (both playing and organizing illegal games for high rollers).
Bio
Elise was born in a rough neighbourhood in Montreal. Her parents were involved in petty crimes and drug use leaving Elise to fend for herself. She quickly learned that there are losers and winners in the world and decided she would do whatever it took to come out on top. She was always intelligent and began running scams as a kid to provide for herself. As she grew older she developed a taste for analyzing others and using what she saw to her own profit. She escalated and began bringing others into her various operations. Her main hustle was running a network of prostitutes in the Montreal which eventually even broke out into an international operation. Through her girls and the contacts she met through them she also distributed drugs and began running under-the-table gambling events for the upper-class clientele.
Name: Derek "Big Gunz" Smith
Age: 46 years old
Place Of Birth: Tide Water, ON, CA
Occupation: Runs illegal distribution of narcotics for Hells Angels
Height: 6'5
Weight: 251 Ibs
Eye Colour: Brown
Special Features: Deep voice, short range of vocabulary, aggressive, long grey beard, tattoos on both arms of a gun, a heart that says "mom" and the words " BIG GUNZ"
Accessories: Bandana on head, sometimes chain in pocket for wallet, possy of goons at his disposal
Hobbies: Drinking, drugs, selling drugs, long motorcycle rides along the concrete highway
Age: 46 years old
Place Of Birth: Tide Water, ON, CA
Occupation: Runs illegal distribution of narcotics for Hells Angels
Height: 6'5
Weight: 251 Ibs
Eye Colour: Brown
Special Features: Deep voice, short range of vocabulary, aggressive, long grey beard, tattoos on both arms of a gun, a heart that says "mom" and the words " BIG GUNZ"
Accessories: Bandana on head, sometimes chain in pocket for wallet, possy of goons at his disposal
Hobbies: Drinking, drugs, selling drugs, long motorcycle rides along the concrete highway
Bio: Derek "Big Gunz" Smith is the leader of the Hells Angels biker gang in Moose Factory, Ontario, Canada. He sells drugs and participates in other illegal activity. Derek is only in the story near the end. He creates conflict with the main character John who is sent to him to pick up drugs for Madame Elise Fleur. Big Gunz is a greedy guy so his plan was to kill John and take the money and the drugs leaving him with double the profit.
Step Three- Storyboard Development:
The image below is a very rough drawing our group made to help clarify how we would break the story down into individual scenes. Once that was done we simply divided the scenes between us and independently worked on our part.
Scene 1. The scene begins in South New Wales Australia where John is admiring the view contemplating about life.
Scene 2. John attends an underground poker game hosted by Madam Elise Fleur at Pennant Hills Golf Club. While gambling, John looked over and his attention was drawn to a beautiful woman (Dianna) who was working as a prostitute. That night they hit it off and their romance began.
Fang Connett
Scene 3. John and Diana wanted to create a fresh start together, so they made a plan. Diana would ask Elise (the woman she worked for) if she had any work for John and once they had enough money, they planned to leave and start over.
" Madame Fleur, i think i may have found a new runner for you. He is incredibly smart and athletic. He can do the job in Moose Factory, ON, CA for you!"
Heather Stevens
Scene 4. Elise had a job for John. She offered him half the profit, but it was dangerous. John had to do this if he wanted a fresh start with Diana, so he took it. The job was to pick up drugs at Moose Factory, Ontario, Canada from a local biker gang. John goes to Moose Factory and meets the bike gang. The tension in the air is thick. Somethings not right, and John can feel it. They start screaming at him to give them the money. Next thing John knows is there are guns being fired and he is hiding out.
John has to think quick. He is cornered with no way out. What options does he have? He must fight them of for his new love Diana so they can be together!
Scene 7. John has disarmed Dianna and shot her in the arm. He paused as he tried to build the courage to kill her when suddenly the Scotland Yard burst in.
"Scotland Yard! Put your hands up!"
Scene 8. As Dianna and John are arrested and sent to prison the story shifts focus to the detectives. As they piece together the evidence they reveal details the audience couldn't see from John's perspective such as when Dianna had begun her plan, what happened between Dianna and Madam Fleur while he was dealing with the bikers, and when the police first started to follow their case.
Step Four- Poster Rough:
For this part of the assignment were tasked with creating a poster for our crime stories in the "Film Noir" style. I researched other posters in the genre and found some similarities I chose to apply:
Backgrounds- I saw some backgrounds that looked like coloring with some variants in hue. If that doesn't make sense you can just look at the background of my poster- that's roughly what I was trying to explain.
Foreground- I found almost all posters featured a main character or two so I decided to focus on Dianna sine she's probably the most visually interesting character. I found an image on google of a girl with a gun that I thought could represent Dianna and since most examples I saw were done in a cartoon style and featured dramatic shadows I made a simple graphic outline. Then I duplicated my drawing, colored it in, and arranged it in the back slightly to the side to create a shadow effect.
Coloring- I found most posters used yellow, black, red, and blue colors.
Fonts- I saw mostly thick lettering with one shade as the fill and another for the outline. I also noticed that they were often curved or slanted so I experimented with that and thought it brought things together nicely.
Step Five: 3D Character Development & Animation
Below you can see my 3D model of Elise. I created her on Fuse by selecting a similar body and face and then adjusting to make her as similar to my character sketch as possible. I changed the bone structure in the face quite a bit as well as body proportions then I adjusted her age, skin texture, complexion, and makeup. Once I had finished that I simply chose the best outfit and hair for Elise from the selections available.
In the video below you can see one of the "action" options available for characters in Maximo. Once I had sent her to Maximo I simply experimented with actions, speed, perspective, and took several screen recordings of it to work with after.
This clip is the final product. I brought my best video clip into Adobe After Effects and cut it to the length I needed. I put an image in a layer underneath to be the background and selected Elise's body to cut out the background of the original recording so that the photo could show properly. Then, I duplicated the video/Elise layer and used it to create a shadow. After checking the individual frames to make sure they were consistent I simply saved the clip and converted the format in another program.
Conclusion:
I really enjoyed this project and I think I learnt a lot in the process too. I was able to work on something with a group over a longer period of time than I have before which is a really good experience for work, school, and even personal life. This project also really stretched my creativity while developing the story, it was great to be able to work on images and whatnot that were based on a fully fleshed out story. I also really enjoyed getting the chance to learn how to make the video even though it was the most challenging part for me. I had never used Adobe Fuse, Maximo, Adobe After Effects, or really done any type of animation or video editing. Although I didn't fully explore everything the programs are capable of I feel like I got a good basic understanding and it's always exciting to learn a new form of art to experiment with.
-Lucy McCaw
