The Hero's Opening Scene

Before I begin, let me give a quick update on events in my personal life, as it relates to how things have developed with my Suikoden fan animation, which can be viewed here:

At the beginning of July, I moved house with my family down to Hampshire. The countryside is a drastic change from the city locale, and its a lot harder to find work out here (not that I was having that much luck in London) but the natural scenery has provided me with some inspiration, which I have applied to my most recent animated project.

From an early stage in creating my fan fiction, I decided how I wanted to introduce the hero (from the video game Suikoden IV) in his first scene.
When you play Suikoden IV's "sister game" Suikoden Tactics, you find that the hero has taken up residence on the Deserted Island, which is the central most island in the archepelago of Suikoden IV.

Check my rendition of the map below:

Map of the Island Nations, which is the setting of Suikoden IV and a big chunk of Suikoden Tactics.

And so, I decided that the Deserted Island would make the best place to kick off my story. In the opening scene, we would have the hero practicing with his swords on the shores of the Deserted Island. As I progressed with this idea, it became more clear on what sort of iconic imagery would help enhance the scene and ground us more into the heroe's world - images such as waves crashing into the shore, while the hero poses with his trademark weapons, the duel swords. His red head band blowing in the breeze. Seagulls flying overhead. And of course, the Rune of Punishment emblazoned on the hero's left hand. Usually, the hero wears gloves to conseal his rune, as people in the Suikoden world tend to panic if they notice an unusual rune on your hand, and rightly so, considering the Rune of Punishment's reputation of devouring the the life force of its barer and every human in sight.

But since our hero is isolated and all alone out here, he takes to the shore with his bare hands, untroubled by thoughts of any unwelcome passers by.

However, whilst the youth is calmly practising with his swords, the rune of his left hand begins to glow ominously, and it causes him enough disturbance that he doubles over, dropping his swords, to try regaining control of the rune. As the red glow dies down, he looks up to see another light before him - a pale blue vision which reveals the cloaked form of a familiar figure - the sorceress, Lady Leknaat.

Leknaat the Sorceress

Leknaat the Sorceress, as she appears in the video game Suikoden IV.

 Leknaat is a recurring character in the Suikoden universe. She is kind of like the fairy godmother to each of the main heroes who appears in each Suikoden game. Her story is that she was born into a clan of magicians called the Clan of the Gate. Both Leknaat and her sister Windy possessed runes with the power to connect different worlds, but Leknaat's sister, in a typical fit of rage inspired by sibling rivalry, sought to take Leknaat's rune from her so she could become more powerful. Lenaat repelled Windy's attack, but she was blinded during their struggle. However, she did develop tremendous powers of prophecy, and she became  an almost divine figure, watching over the powers of the true runes and ensuring that none of them became too powerful and end up leading to global catastrophy.

Leknaat's role in Suikoden IV was to make sure the hero used his power wisely throughout his exploits in the Island Nations. Depending on certain decisions that you make as the player, Leknaat appears towards the end of the game to help restore the balance of the Rune of Punishment, so that it no longer drains the life of its barer.

Of course, with my fanfiction, I don't want it to end there. Now she appears to the hero to tell him that the dark properties of the Rune of Punishment have been lying dormant, and are now resurfacing to wreak havock on the hero's world. And so, he must once again embark on a mission to restore the balance to his cursed power.

Animated Oceans

When it came to animating the scenes of the hero and Leknaat on the beach, I was faced with a dilema - how do I animate the sea? I've seen oceans in animated movies and shows before, and some of them look fantastic, and some fo them... not so good. Initially, I tried using photographs which I had taken from previous trips to the coast and cutting and pasting and editing them using flash and photoshop, but I was never really able to achieve a natural effect.

Barton on Sea, Hampshire - my local inspiration.

Fortunately, now that I live but 30 minutes away from the sea in my new contryside home, I have been able to film live footage of the ocean using my digital camera. It was this footage that I would edit using various programs to create an animated background, which would work quite effortlesslty for my animated scenes in Flash.

Of course, it wasn't THAT simple, as the footage I took on my camera tended to be very jerky. I'm not a professional cameraman and I don't have access to professional camera equipment. Fortunately, the web is full of valuable sources, many of them free, and I soon found that the virtual dub program, along with it's deshaker filter plugin, was exaclty what I needed to achieve my "natural" ocean scenery.