Applied Nostalgia: That 1970s Look

During a discussion about the Scarfolk posters, top course tutor Josh Taylor persuaded me to investigate the ways of getting a period feel with minimal effort, using things like lighting or colour.

One pertinent example from recent weeks which generated a lot of buzz was Kevin Eldon's Amish Sex Pistols sketch, which recreated the infamous Bill Grundy interview of 1976 with unerring accuracy.

Click here;to see the It's Kevin clip;
You can also see a side-by-side comparison with the original here.

Of course, this isn't the first time that anybody has done this kind of thing.  But it serves as a good example to start the ball rolling.

Let's examine a shot from the TV series Look Around You, which spoofed 1970s education TV shows like Tomorrow's World and BBC Schools and Colleges.

Click here to see an example clip from the show.

Here's another example.  This music video was shot on a Liverpool council estate in 2007 but has been made to look as though it was made in the mid 1970s.

Sonny J's Can't Stop Moving video

Analysis

Let's analyse some of the semiotics being used here.  According to UCLan contextual studies lecturer James Battersby there are three main types of sign:

• ICON -- resembles its referent. (e.g. wheelchair image for disabled parking spot)
• SYMBOL -- related to its referent by convention.  (e.g. fast forward button on a DVD player)
• INDEX -- associated with its referent.  (e.g. flat line on heart monitor = death)

In these examples, the time period is predominantly communicated by index.  This is important, because it means that the viewer has to be familiar with the association, otherwise the sign is meaningless.

Signifier:	Faded colour
Why?	1950s to 1980s period.  (Colour photos/film were rare before 1950, and older images fade more, especially vibrant reds & blues.)

The following photo illustrates this well.  At first glance it's an old photo but it was actually taken by photographer Jon Nicholson in 2012 as part of a series of images for his book Seaside Polaroids.

Nicholson's images use traditional chemical methods, but they are intended to contrast with the famous Instagram "1977 Filter" which achieves similar effects by adjusting the image digitally through a series of stages:

• Adjust curves to "pull up the shadows", i.e. make blacks and dark greys lighter, reducing contrast.
• Overlay a mild pale green tint, affecting the darker colours more.
• Overlay a subtle "slightly scratched" texture, and slight blurring if wanted.

Signifier:	Brown & beige, and a bit of orange too
Why?	Fashion in the 1970s was unremittingly brown.  This re-occurred in the early 2000s but focuses on darker browns and creams.

There are exceptions to this, of course.  (For some unknown reason Star Trek: the Next Generation (1987) used tons of beige.)

Signifier:	Sunshine & lens flares
Why?	The summer of '76 is famous for being one of Britain's worst droughts, but for many youngsters the long summer school holidays and heatwave created a strong association with sunshine and the 1970s.

This also accounts for the washed-out shadows mentioned earlier.

Signifier:	Patterned wallpaper
Why?	Patterned wallpaper was nothing new, and had been a mainstay of Victorian fashions.  However, the 1970s saw an explosion of oranges, brown & white patterns adorning walls.

So, these are just a few ways to get that 1970s look!  I'll be examining other ways as I think of them, and looking at other periods in later posts.

Applied Nostalgia: Scarfolk

A recent article in The Independent led me to to work of graphic designer & illustrator Richard Littler.

Littler grew up fascinated by public information films & propaganda in the 1960s & 70s, and the way that they displayed "some quite outrageous societal attitudes toward race, gender, and children":

"I was always scared as a kid, always frightened of what I was faced with. You'd walk into WH Smith and see horror books with people's faces melting. [...] I remember a public information film made by some train organisation in which a children's sports day was held on train tracks and, one by one, they were killed. It was insane."

Littler has produced a series of mock posters based around the fictitious town of Scarfolk, in brilliantly accurate period trappings, parodying the genre.  Careful choice of muted & faded colours, typefaces and art style make these some of the best examples of this kind of thing I've seen in some time.

He has taken these ideas further to parody the cultural trappings of the period, making use of wonderfully inappropriate contrast or by highlighting the mundane nature of the original:

Postmodernism in game design

On the surface Littler's work doesn't immediately appear to have any links with video game design.  However, one of the main things I'm concerned about in my own project work is evoking period without transgressing trademarks or copyright.  For example, in early drafts of my Eggles game, I've used an LP cover for The Shadows' 20 Golden Greats -- iconic in its time and easily recognised.  Trying to get copyright clearance for this former EMI asset would likely be a nightmare (and costly).  So, at some stage, I'm going to have to adjust the LP cover to turn it into a pastiche of the original.

Littler's work here shows a way to make that step smarter, by extending it into the realm of parody -- something which adds value to the exercise.  Literary critic Fredric Jameson had particularly strong views on this:

"Pastiche is, like parody, the imitation of a peculiar or unique, idiosyncratic style, the wearing of a linguistic mask, speech in a dead language. But it is a neutral practice of such mimicry, without any of parody's ulterior motives, amputated of the satiric impulse, devoid of laughter and of any conviction that alongside the abnormal tongue you have momentarily borrowed, some healthy linguistic normality still exists. Pastiche is thus blank parody, a statue with blind eyeballs [...]" 

Having grown up coddled by TV comedy shows full of pastiche -- like The Two Ronnies or Russ Abbott's Madhouse (well, it all seemed funnier when I was under 10 years old) -- I find myself in agreement with Jameson.

This is a great example of the reasons why game designers need to take a cross-disciplinary approach.  The lessons learned from Littler's work will have an effect on aesthetics within my game.

I believe there is a lot of potential in using parody rather than pastiche, where possible, to enhance the nostalgic experience ... so long as it does not undermine the familiarity of the artefact, or the affect which  I am seeking to exploit.

Applied Nostalgia: The Witness

The following image is a screenshot from the forthcoming game The Witness designed by Jonathan Blow.  The game is a first-person "exploration-puzzle game" set on an island -- which sounds a bit like a modern version of Myst to me (and I'm not the only one to think that).

The image below was taken from a development blog by one of the game's sound designers.

A vinyl record turntable in a forest?  Woah there!  An example of nostalgia applied within video game design?

Very nice visually, but why a record player?  Why not a CD player or an MP3 player or, well, a laptop with big speakers?  Why not a gramophone player with big horn?

First, let's look at the target audience for the game.  This kind of game is normally aimed at older players, and often a predominantly female market.  So the record player makes sense as a reference, and triggers both a nostalgic affect and a "quirky" feel fitting with the aesthetic mood.

But ... we'd normally associate this kind of audience with iPads or laptops.  So why is this releasing first on the PS4?  Jonathan Blow seems to be taking advantage of the publicity of being a launch game for a new console, and also of having something a little different to the typical AAA games which accompany such.

But surely the primary target audience for the PS4 is going to be spotty teenage boys C1C2DE males aged 18-40?  (Indeed, I spotted the forest image this while researching PS4 & Xbox 8* technology.)  Where does that fit in?

Jonathan Blow says that everything in the game "is there for a reason".  I suspect that the decision to use a turntable is more down to his age (42 years old) and a personal fondness for the old technology, rather than specifically as a visual nostalgia trigger.  However, it's nice to see in a prominent game!
__________
* (no, against all popular opinion I simply refuse to believe they'll call it the Xbox 720)

Model: Ray Gun

I came across a friction-spark space pilot ray gun when touring the Land of Lost Content in Shropshire.  It immediately produced the affect in me that my project is all about, so I knew straight away that I had to include it in my game.

It also represents an older generation of toys -- something which is important, because the whole nostalgia thing is extremely subjective.  I need a wide range of 'hits' to ensure that the player is likely to see at least some items which trigger an emotional reaction.

Friction motor toys were very popular in the 1960s & 1970s.  They contained a flywheel driven by gears, which would usually do one of two jobs:

• Maintaining inertia -- this was the most common type, which would involve pushing the car a short distance, firmly, a few times to 'pump up' the flywheel.  Then, when you let go, the car would keep moving for a considerable distance until the energy in the flywheel was drained.
• Creating sparks -- the flywheel would be an abrasive wheel which would rub against flint to create small sparks.  In the ray gun, the sparks would appear inside the semi-transparent red chamber.  You can see a video of one in action here (for some reason it won't embed properly, hence the link).

3D Model

The model was more awkward than it first appears.  The initial problem was how much detail to put into the low-poly mesh.  Every ring around the barrel increases the poly count substantially, so I took the option to recreate the ribbing on the main red plastic bit as a normal map.  The outer rings, however, had to have a clear displacement.

Most of the models so far have been built by eye but in this case I decided to use an image plane template to line everything up.

Next step was a high-poly version that I could bake to create the normal map.

Finally, I created a quick colour map and applied the normal map to create a basic model.

However, at this stage I started to have problems with the colour map, which included transparency information for the barrel.  A quick test export revealed that both Maya & Unity had a problem with the transparency information, turning the rest of the model transparent too.

I ended up separating the barrel from the rest of the model and applying a separate material to it, which solved the problem.

You can see that this model lacks a fair bit of detail, but this can be added for the final production version.

I had considered building the sparking into the model as an animation, but Unity has a built-in sparking system so I thought that would look better.  I'll give that a try when I implement the model.

Model: Big Trak

Big Trak is a battery-powered, programmable tank toy released by Milton Bradley toys in the early 1980s.  Using the keypad on top, the vehicle can be fed a sequence of commands to make it move or flash its 'laser' light weapon.

The American version had grey plastic instead of white.  A trailer accessory was also available, which could tip up on command.

Long after the company stopped selling the toy, it maintained a fanatical following: you can find websites all over the Internet with instructions on modifying hardware to create custom versions of the vehicle.

In 2010, the nostalgic value of the toy was realised when Zeon Tech released a modern version (with retro styling), with camera and rocket launcher accessories, plus an iPhone controller app.  A smaller variant, Bigtrak Jr., is also available.

3D Model

This was one of the first models I made for this project, and was a key part of Phase 1 testing.

The basic model has a high poly count at around 1700 triangles, but in early stages I'd wanted something which would be fairly detailed.

With the Big Trak still on sale, I'd wanted to avoid any trademark issues so I've renamed it 'Space Truk' and will make further cosmetic changes before releasing the game.  As a bit of a typography enthusiast I pride myself on knowing most common commercial typefaces but it took me a while to identify Serpentine (designed by Dick Jensen); like Crillee, it was very popular during the 1980s but it seems to be back in fashion again because I've seen it on a few posters recently.

After UV-mapping the object I produced a colour map and normal map to add major surface details.  (This turned into a bit of a rushed job in the final stages so you'll notice some sloppy changes in the angle of decals across seams.)

The final model isn't too bad.  I animated the wheels before exporting, and it certainly works well in the game prototype.  I shall have to re-visit it at some point in the future, and consider adding the tip-up trailer as an add-on.

Model: Fisher-Price record player

The Fisher-Price Music Box Record Player is a plastic toy first produced in 1971.  Powered by wind-up clockwork, it mimics the operation of vinyl record players using special plastic discs.

The toy was finally discontinued in the early 1990s. 

Essentially a music box, the interchangeable discs have small notches which trigger one of a number of small 'needles' in the playing arm.  Each disc plays a different nursery rhyme or popular song, such as Humpty Dumpy, Twinkle Twinkle Little Star or Camptown Races.

If this sounds familiar it's because I posted last month about a man who had developed his own system for 3D printing plastic discs for the player.

3D model: disc

This was one of the models produced for Phase 2 of my game project, so my plan was to create a basic model which looked enough like the real thing to trigger memories, but I wasn't too bothered with accuracy or detail, or optimising the model.

I intended the plastic disc to work in a standalone capacity (i.e. loose obstacles on the floor) so I started with this.

After creating a low-poly mesh as my main model, I subdivided and extruded faces to create a high-poly version of the disc with raised rings; after adding small notches I baked this (within Maya) to the low-poly model to create a basic normal map for the disc.

This turned out badly, so I ended up colouring the raised edges and creating a manual normal map by fiddling with embossing and colour channels on Photoshop.  This didn't quite emphasise the rings enough, so I added a subtle diffuse map to add detail when combined with the normal map.

 With a bit of simple lighting, the final disc looks fair enough.

3D Model: record player

The main part of the record player was fairly straightforward.  The yellow plastic playing arm and knobs were added as separate components so they can be manipulated by the game engine to simulate the actions of the toy.

The disc was then added, plus a diffuse map texture to make it look a little more like the real deal.

Finally, a very simple normal map (again, created manually on Photoshop) to add ridges to the inside rear section.

Not bad for 600 triangles.  I could probably bring this down with a bit of extra work but it's OK for a basic model for Phase 2 of my project.  I may re-visit it in more detail at some point in the future.

Model: pocket fan

Hand-held fans are powered by battery and designed to slip into a pocket.

Model

I decided to create a very plain pocket fan -- as opposed to the curved version above -- just to get it into the Phase 2 prototype game level as quickly as possible.  The model below should have taken only a few minutes to create, but I was held up triangulating the blades to ensure that they looked right.

Final stage was to UV map the surface and create a matching colour map for the model.

Nothing special but it does the job.  The blades & rotor head are a separate object so they can be rotated by the game engine.  Rather than exporting a manually-animated model I'm going to control the rotor animation from within the engine, to allow the speed to vary.

For such a simple shape it's a relatively high poly count (around 300 triangles) but I was more interested in getting it made quickly than keeping the count low.

Project Update

Blimey -- it's been a long time since I managed to post something on this blog.

March was full of illness (including the dreaded norovirus), Ofsted inspections (did very well, just in case you're wondering), and paid work thwarting progress on my MA work.

I'd also got myself in a twist creating detailed blog entries that got bigger-and-bigger, and never got posted because they weren't quite finished.  So I've decided to junk those and cannibalise them to create new, small posts based around:

• MA project -- design & constructions notes from the 'Eggles' game I've been working on.  (I really need to find a better title than 'Eggles'.)
• Models -- info on the models I've been creating for the 'Eggles' game.
• Miscellaneous -- anything which takes my fancy, so long as it's related to Games Design or nostalgia.