Reverse-engineering 'The Godfather' For Gaming

"The Godfather" is a type of movies that lots of people watch over and over and over again. But Jenny Ryu might well have seen the Oscar-successful picture more than even any of its rabid followers. As the lead character designer on Electronic Arts' "The Godfather" sport, Ryu was in charge of making the dozens of characters that seem within the adaptation. And alongside the way in which, she had to observe the movie day in and day out for almost a year.


Video: Trailer of 'Godfather,' the game EA replicates appear and feel of unique mob flick.
That is as a result of, not like with many movies that are made into video games, "The Godfather" is so outdated--it got here out in 1972--that its producers at Paramount Photos could not give Ryu and her staff the high-resolution digital property they wanted as references from which to animate about 60 characters together with the Marlon Brando, James Caan and Robert Duvall look-alikes for the game.

And thus, Ryu needed to create the animations manually, a process that required her to sit down in front of a Television watching "The Godfather" scene by scene, again and again, till she had a feel, not only for a way the characters regarded, however how they moved and for the expressions they made.

"I wanted to observe the movies quite a lot of occasions," Ryu stated. "I wanted to find out the characters' traits, shapes, expressions and...sense of temper. That's a real problem to me--but the great thing, as a result of I watch a lot of the movie, I can get the correct sense of the traits."


"The Godfather" is expected to hit retailer shelves on March 21.
Some segments of the film industry may recognize Ryu's experience, as a result of in many circumstances it is necessary for animators to craft characters' photos and movements by hand from reference materials. Though much animation and results work is done using motion capture--a course of the place animation is created from base footage of actors wearing particular outfits studded with reflectors--some manufacturing houses can't use such a process.

For example, said Jeff Paul, an animation instructor on the Art Institute of California, San Francisco, animation studios like Pixar Animation Studios or PDI work manually.

"If it is a movie like any of the Pixar films, or 'Shrek' or one thing like that, then that's all hand animated," Paul stated. "Movement capture works very well if you've obtained human characters with human proportions. But if you happen to exaggerate the proportions, motion seize breaks down."

At the same time, he mentioned, some films are likely to make use of both movement capture and manual processes. He pointed to a film like "Spider Man" through which some pictures have been achieved by hand while others have been based on footage of lead actor Tobey Maguire in a "mo-cap suit (being) recorded whereas he leaped around doing all his Spider Man stuff."

Within the digital era of video games, however, Ryu's process of watching "The Godfather" repeatedly is uncommon because most film-primarily based video games are put together aspect by side with the film production.

"If you are producing a (film) sport proper now, they probably have the motion seize actors working right together with the film production," Paul said. "So I think (EA's 'Godfather' process) is unusual as a result of you could have so many video video games being produced in conjunction with the films they're from."

Nonetheless, he mentioned, there are different previous films being was games lately, equivalent to 1979's "The Warriors," which was adapted final yr by Rockstar Games.

In any case, Ryu mentioned, although Paramount Photos wasn't in a position to give her group the digital belongings she would have preferred, they did help in some methods.

For instance, she explained, she and the "Godfather" game's artwork director and two different lead artists visited the studio for 3 days to analysis movie references. Paramount additionally gave her staff greater than 20 packing containers with film belongings, as well as black-and-white and coloration prints and slides that she was able to scan.

"They have been actually useful references for characters, and background, as effectively," Ryu mentioned. "But (they're) 3D characters, so I determined to maintain watching and watching 'Godfather.'"

Practically talking, she defined, that meant examining the movie scene by scene, wanting intently for the little particulars, like the peculiar approach Brando seemed all through the movie as though he had stuffed his cheeks with cotton balls.


After all, creating the characters by hand doesn't mean Ryu or her colleagues had been .
As an alternative, she stated, as she compiled a list in her head of character parts she wanted to incorporate, she would work on her computer, creating 3D models and textures.

Cap Manufactureris absolutely necessary, as a result of it has all sorts of lighting and temper and shadows," Ryu said. "The pc is a really good instrument, so I don't need to use pen and pencil in my sketchbooks."

Ultimately, she mentioned, every of the 60 characters from the film that she imported into the sport required about per week of watching the movie and animating on the pc. Thus, that meant spending a couple of yr glued to her television and pc just making an attempt to create the characters.

But while Ryu was the one sitting instantly in entrance of the film day after day, she was certainly not the only one for whom "The Godfather" served as an all-encompassing background to life.

She explained that in the course of the making of the sport, the movie was playing 24 hours a day on monitors situated in EA's studio.

Nonetheless, whereas Ryu might well have watched the film extra times than anybody else on Earth, she is not dreaming its dialogue every night.

"Once i watched the film to make characters, I often turned the quantity down," she stated. "At EA, it is all cubicles and desks."


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