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Jersey Jack Pinball 2 - Dutch Pinball Open Expo 2024 - Pinball News

Pinball News (Dutch Pinball Open Expo 2024)·video·48m 38s·analyzed·Nov 5, 2024
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.038

TL;DR

JP DeWin details JJP animation pipeline, team collaboration, and licensor approval processes for Elton John and Avatar.

Summary

Jean-Paul DeWin, lead animator at Jersey Jack Pinball, discusses his 10-game journey creating animations and art direction for JJP titles including Elton John and Avatar. He details his transition from solo attic work to leading a distributed team, explains the collaborative creative process with licensors (Elton John, Disney/Lightstorm), and showcases the technical and artistic evolution of UI design, playfield art, and 3D asset creation across multiple projects.

Key Claims

  • JP DeWin has created animations for 10 Jersey Jack Pinball games total

    high confidence · Speaker states 'I've created 10 games for Joyce and Jack. So it's quite a milestone.'

  • Avatar was Mark Seiden's first game as a designer after transitioning from homebrew design

    high confidence · Speaker shows whitewood and states 'His first design, he was a homebrew designer, just Jack Hyden, and his first game was Avatar.'

  • Lia Paskey is the first female artist to work on a JJP game in 30 years

    high confidence · Speaker explicitly states 'Lia Paskey, first female artist in 30 years in Pinball' and notes she is art director for Hearthstone at Blizzard.

  • JJP now targets two games per year production schedule

    high confidence · Speaker states 'Back then we had like three, two years, one year. and now we are trying to make two games a year.'

  • Avatar features 22 different modes with unique pre-mode animations

    high confidence · Speaker explicitly states 'There's 22 modes in this game, so there's 22 of these different animations.'

  • The Na'vi left-hand combo mechanic in Avatar is thematically justified because Na'vi are depicted as left-handed

    high confidence · Speaker explains 'The reason why we have this left-hand combo, because apparently the Na'vi are all left-handed instead of all, maybe, like humans mostly are right-handed.'

  • Olaf was the lead animator for Elton John after initially being asked to recommend another animator

    high confidence · Speaker states 'I was looking for someone to do it and I thought Olaf was taking up too much with his own project...I said, well, I'm actually interested in doing that.'

  • Disney/Lightstorm required approval on specific details like bioluminescence dot placement on Avatar artwork

    high confidence · Speaker states 'Lightstorm was really precise in all the details, like the bioluminescence dots on their faces had to be exact...someone there checking all the dots. That's a job.'

Notable Quotes

  • “I started by myself...working and trying to figure out how to send my animations to America. And it worked because there you see Jack. He received my animation. So that's how it worked back then.”

    Jean-Paul DeWin@ 0:48 — Establishes DeWin's origin story at JJP, beginning as a remote solo animator sending work across the Atlantic

  • “All that stuff is just too much work with the time frame we work in now. Back then we had like three, two years, one year. and now we are trying to make two games a year. So I need help.”

    Jean-Paul DeWin@ 2:52 — Reveals JJP's accelerated production schedule (2 games/year) and resulting need for expanded team

  • “So there's so much detail that we can put into the game...that's what I love to do as well. You know, all those jokes and the small details and things, because people are having them at home. You play them a lot and you see each and every time you see different detail.”

    Jean-Paul DeWin@ 18:24 — Articulates JJP's design philosophy of rewarding repeated play with hidden details and Easter eggs

  • “Elton John wasn't particularly my favorite theme to work on. I never had anything with Elton John. So I was like, well, why don't I find another animator and I can focus on Avatar.”

    Jean-Paul DeWin@ 11:39 — Indicates personal thematic preference and delegation strategy to manage workload across multiple concurrent projects

  • “Lia Paskey, first female artist in 30 years in Pinball. Mark Seiden himself found her online, approached her, and she is an artist for Blizzard. She's the art director there.”

    Jean-Paul DeWin@ 29:24 — Highlights Avatar's hiring of a high-profile AAA game artist and marks significant diversity milestone in pinball artwork

Entities

Jean-Paul DeWinpersonJersey Jack PinballcompanyMark SeidenpersonOlafpersonLia PaskeypersonJasperpersonJohnny Uigoperson

Signals

  • ?

    community_signal: Mark Seiden's transition from homebrew designer to lead designer on flagship Avatar title represents acceptance of homebrew talent into mainstream JJP production

    high · DeWin identifies Seiden as 'a homebrew designer' whose first game was Avatar, indicating JJP's willingness to recruit from community

  • ?

    design_philosophy: JJP art team collaborates with external specialists (modelers, 3D artists, background painters) on per-project basis rather than maintaining large internal department

    high · DeWin identifies specialists brought in for specific tasks: Johnny Uigo for modeling, Jasper for hand-drawn UI, Rick Hude for 3D, Richard Benning for backgrounds, contrasting with Stern's large in-house teams

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Avatar game design incorporates thematic constraints from licensor: Na'vi left-hand dominance, no use of numbers in UI (replaced with symbols), limited pinball element integration to maintain immersion

    high · DeWin explains left-hand combo mechanic justified by 'Na'vi are all left-handed' and notes licensor hesitancy: 'they don't like to use numbers in Pandora because they don't know numbers' and 'hesitant to add pinball elements into the Pandora world'

  • ?

    design_philosophy: JJP emphasizes hidden detail, Easter eggs, and micro-animations rewarding repeated play over time

    high · DeWin explains 'all those jokes and the small details and things, because people are having them at home. You play them a lot and you see each and every time you see different detail. and we are allowed to do that, so that's really, really nice.'

  • ?

Transcript

youtube_groq_whisper · $0.146

0:01
This is a Pinball News production. Welcome. I'll do this in English because we have some international guests.
0:17
We have Jack. And, yeah, enjoy it. Thanks for coming. So it's going to be about Jersey Jack art from the Nellons. I picked that title because I want to explain that I started by myself. And Greg, when he worked for Jersey Jack, he got me into Jersey Jack people. So I started from my house on the attic working and trying to figure out how to send my animations to America. And it worked because there you see Jack. He received my animation. So that's how it worked back then. In the meantime, I've created 10 games for Joyce and Jack. So it's quite a milestone. It's quite a milestone.
1:21
So I worked on all the games. Elton John was... So this is Olaf. Sorry, I forgot to introduce Olaf. He's the lead animator on Elton John. But eventually I also worked on that title. more on that later. So I started with mostly LCD animations, that's how I got into Jersey Jack Pinball. But soon, in the second game, I got to be also licensed of contact for getting approvals, sending in animations, getting approvals, being the first person is easier because you don't have to go to another person who has to submit your work feedback through that person back. Then I started creating printed art for Hobbit, prepare art for printing on other games where artists worked on. I also did marketing flyers, banners, flow charts for almost every game, social media website assets, video assets for release trailers and artist direction in the end. So I operated through this office in Miami. This is where I work now. And there you see Greg is still peeking over my shoulder.

  • “This is like creating something new...I explained, well, this could be toys that they maybe carved and maybe they made for their kids to play with. And so Lightstorm said, well, we did something for that, not in the movie, but for their, like, an attraction or their goal.”

    Jean-Paul DeWin@ 40:20 — Demonstrates collaborative creative process where original game concepts receive retroactive approval and validation from licensors

  • “If you mix it too much, it can go... You can start to see different styles.”

    Olaf@ 42:36 — Articulates importance of maintaining visual cohesion when multiple artists contribute to same project

  • “They don't like to use numbers in Pandora because they don't know numbers. But then how do you display scores? It can be a bit tricky.”

    Jean-Paul DeWin@ 43:31 — Illustrates tight licensor constraints that require creative problem-solving to maintain thematic immersion

    • Avatar
    game
    Elton Johngame
    Keith Johnsonperson
    Lightstorm Entertainmentcompany
    Disneycompany
    Gregperson
    Rick Hudeperson
    Richard Benningperson
    Jerome DeWinperson
    Nova DeWinperson
    Larsperson
    Olaf's UI teamorganization
    Christopher Franchiperson
    John Yauciperson
    Olaf & Lars collaborationorganization
    Elton John (licensor)person
    Stern Pinballcompany

    licensing_signal: Avatar licensor (Lightstorm/Disney) maintains strict approval authority over artwork details and thematic elements, including color schemes and bioluminescence accuracy

    high · Speaker details approval process for armor colors (rejecting orange), bioluminescence dots, Na'vi school symbols, and multiple iterative revisions requiring licensor sign-off

  • ?

    community_signal: Jean-Paul DeWin maintains hands-on art direction role despite accelerated production timeline, serving as lead on multiple concurrent projects while delegating component work

    high · DeWin describes shifting between 75% responsibility on Elton John and Dune while Olaf handled 25%, then reversing roles on Avatar, maintaining visual continuity through direct oversight

  • ?

    personnel_signal: Jean-Paul DeWin evolved from solo remote animator to lead of distributed creative team at Jersey Jack Pinball over 10-game career arc

    high · Speaker details progression from 'started by myself...in the attic' to now managing team including Olaf, Johnny Uigo, Rick Hude, Jerome, Nova, and others across multiple locations

  • ?

    product_strategy: Avatar features UV artwork with tiered complexity: LE with 3 UV layers vs CE with 1 UV layer, indicating intentional premium differentiation

    high · DeWin states 'the LE has one UV layer, and the CE has three UV layers, three different colors' for inner art blades

  • ?

    product_strategy: Jersey Jack Pinball has accelerated production schedule from 1-3 years per game to targeting 2 games per year

    high · DeWin states 'Back then we had like three, two years, one year. and now we are trying to make two games a year. So I need help.'

  • ?

    personnel_signal: Jersey Jack Pinball recruited Lia Paskey, art director for Blizzard's Hearthstone, as first female artist on JJP title in 30 years for Avatar project

    high · Mark Seiden directly approached Paskey online; DeWin confirms 'Lia Paskey, first female artist in 30 years in Pinball' and notes her Blizzard credentials

  • ?

    technology_signal: JJP leverages original film assets from Disney/Lightstorm for Avatar, requiring significant re-texturing and model conversion to make animatable in pinball game engine

    high · DeWin notes 'they provided us models...you really need to take a look at and change a lot to make them animatable again' due to differing file formats and workflows

    • 2:50
    I cannot do that all by myself. All that stuff is just too much work with the time frame we work in now. Back then we had like three, two years, one year. and now we are trying to make two games a year. So I need help. And I got help from Johnny Uigo.
    3:10
    I know him from the broadcasting company I work for, SBSS. He helped me on Wizard of Oz, creating the model for this hourglass, for instance. But he also helped on the intro title of The Hobbit, Pinball Machine.
    3:31
    And so he was, so just saying that I didn't do everything by myself, but I think it's safe to say that I did 75% of all animations in the beginning six steps. He helped modeling buildings for Dao Din. This is a sketch from John Yau, see what you got. And I was like, I cannot do that all by myself. I need a modeler. So Johnny was able to help and I compiled the city. I textured it and eventually created the city for this game. And Johnny also helped on Toy Story 4. We got Pixar stills, and we needed those models to actually rotate, and they didn't provide the actual models for this, so Johnny helped modeling this. Then another artist, he lives now in Eindhoven, so it's not so far. Jasper is here.
    4:43
    So I got in contact with Jasper for, while I was working with pirates, I needed, I was looking for an artist to do this hand-drawn field for the UI. And I found him online. And apparently he lived very close. And apparently he applied for an internship earlier, But I didn't have any space for that. So funny enough, later on, and so after that project, I said to him, yes, if you ever look for an internship, let me know. So he got, while I was working on Guns N' Roses, he got in as an intern. And he worked a year with me. And so he did the concept animation, the previces. Then, while we were working on that, or I think it was pretty early on, he told me, yeah, I have this poster I drew, and I won this art contest, and it was a worldwide art contest. So this is what he created, and it's now used on DVDs, right, for Blu-rays worldwide. So I was like, so what do you think? Do you want to maybe try to do a back glass, a backlash for Guns N' Roses. So he started, he ended up doing the CE backlash. So here you see some of his first markups with the images we got from the official assets and then he started drawing. I rendered the 3D model so he could draw over it. He did the inner art plates as well with nice details of the coma area where the crowd has the face mask. Funny enough, This was just before COVID.
    6:37
    And actually, during the internship, COVID started, and we didn't travel that much anymore. And actually, this game, I didn't go to Chicago at all, so this game is fully developed from,
    6:58
    at least, I didn't see it before it was finished in person. Then we also took Dane's artwork and made it more painterly style. This is the end wizard mode. This is conceptualized. And actually, Jasper rigged those for animation and I animated those for the final wizard mode. So then we knew what he could do and he ended up doing the playfield art for Godfather. So here you see the stages of how that goes.
    7:37
    And so here's a template which I create for him so he knows where the inserts go and where the holes are in the game. And it's a collaborative project because I made the inserts. He had a, he's more of a, you're more of an artist, like page restyle and inserts are more graphic style. So we combined our projects until we got the end result of what we have here. Then we got to Olaf. Olaf I also know from my work in television. And so for Wonka, I needed 3D animated characters. And so I asked Olaf and he, and yeah, you did all these Wonka of the Oompa Loompas. So that's where his pinball career started.
    8:46
    Multiple, sorry, XFL animation. And here are some tests of face rigging, so you can record your face and then see it. So it's funny that the technology nowadays is that you can do this pretty much by yourself. And not 10, 20 years ago, it was impossible. So I always had a lot of fun with some clumsy oompa loompas as well. And he would send me these animations on Friday, like heaven. Pure time. So, and then there is more people which I want to bring up. So Richard Benning, he did the background painting for Dal Din City. I also wasn't able to do that by myself. So you've got to find the right people to combine it together. Then Rick Hude is a great 3D artist, also known from my television work. He worked at SBS as well. So he worked on 3D models for Pirates and some first passes for the multiple. I'm actually showing a lot of making of, not the final stuff you can see in the games itself. So I just like to show them making ops and rejected stuff. Then my brother, Jerome, he did a lot of pre-editing work in The Hobbit. He took out all the characters in Pirates of the Caribbean. So we now only see islands and no characters in the game. He did a great job on editing and voice, lip-syncing Axel to the studio recordings. and on Elton John he edited the Topper concert footage, which we were not able to lip-sync, because Elton John didn't want his early studio recordings lip-synced to this old character, Elton John. Then Nova, my daughter, my oldest daughter, also got into editing, and she did a free editing for Godfather in Avatar. And she made an appearance in Dial In. So John Yaucy drew that logo. I wanted to animate it, recorded her eye, and she's in the end. So now we have just Jack Pindle and the panelists. What do you think, Jack?
    11:32
    All right, so now we're to Elton John. We're going to talk about Elton John and Avatar. Elton John wasn't particularly my favorite theme to work on. I never had anything with Elton John. So I was like, well, why don't I find another animator and I can focus on Avatar. Maybe sit back a bit, help Polar and relax. Because it a lot of working on all projects You constant you have to be creative and as you can see it a lot of work
    12:18
    But the games are also getting closer and closer together, so you cannot do it all. So you've got to find people who can pick up this project. And Olaf did a great job.
    12:27
    Yeah, and my background was also freelancing for a long time. and I did a lot of work for Disney and on Disney Channel you see a lot of bright colors you know, nice fresh color combinations and it turned out that it worked really well with Elton John so I felt already good with the theme, you know, so the type that the person he is with all the clothing and all the shoes and glasses and I've seen a lot of shoes and glasses and outfits we will see later on. It really suits me. So, yeah, it was nice and really great that he called me and that we started. Yeah, actually, I called Olaf. So I was looking for someone to do it and I thought Olaf was taking up too much with his own project. He always booked as well. So I was like, well, do you know someone who can do what I do? And I said, well, I'm actually interested in doing that. So that was great to hear, because I think that was a better find than someone you don't know. So yeah, that ended up really well. And actually, we didn't animate this. This is what I wanted to tell about this, that like the Cums and Roses logo, we weren't able to create our own Elton logo. So we did a pinball style of that E, which is this modern Elton logo he uses. And on the tour, he created that E in several different styles, so we were allowed to create our pinball style logo for this. So Olaf had to create his first UI.
    14:22
    Yeah, it's a really rough sketch, but the first is that there are some rules already being made by the developers based on a wide route, so it's very rough at that stage, and they start playing it and think about what kind of rules could be applied to this theme. And then it turns out, well, let's do something with the crocodile, and maybe we can do something with Rocketman, maybe it's a Rocketman multiball. So yeah, Then it starts very rough in the first approach, the first sketches, and that evolves into a more defined design. So, yeah, here it's a little bit more like, hey, you know, we need more text here, more things to show.
    15:09
    These are typical sketches, I think, in Illustrator. and then you were so he also had to you know figure out how it all you know how he starts so I set up like maybe it's this shape we have this star the star is what Elton and we have all these inserts star is the shape he wanted to you know it's his brand basically part of his brand not that you can lie to the star but yeah so we ended up having this star shaped UI.
    15:47
    Yeah, maybe the next picture. Now it's getting more into the UI. We know. It looks familiar. So one thing is the score. That's an important thing. So how does that look? What kind of feel does that have? So I thought, you know, it needs to be a lot of glitter in there. that's moving, it's an animated glitter. We can apply that on the letters and even apply gradient on top of that.
    16:19
    And then it also needs to be moving up and down. So yeah, there's a lot happening, but I think that makes it interesting. And while designing this, I thought, hey, maybe if you have a high score, then it turns into gold. So that was one thing I started with. And then I said, well, Olaf, don't go too far. Don't go too far. I need to talk to the programmer. It's possible. Now, we had a weekly call. It's really nice to have such a legend in the business of UI to talk to. Because all the pitfalls, you know them. And it was a great talk. And pushing things a little bit pushed back. But it was a lot of freedom. You gave me a lot of freedom to develop things and try them. So you bring a lot of new ideas, which is also refreshing for me. Yeah.
    17:21
    And at the top you see the piano. That is also an important thing in the game. And yeah, what we do then is we focus on one rule. so that's purely the top part and I started to create all the elements so first it's nice to have this piano turns into a stage then all the multiple locks and then when you have this multiple you go into a multiple intro of that year and you know this is the signature stage and now is the multiple running and then Elton is there behind his piano and if that is done Then I'm going to make it for multiple stages. So it's, you know, that's what I did. And I made multiple, multiple stages. So that is so great in working for Jersey Jackets. There's so much detail that we can put into the game. And, you know, that's what I love to do as well. You know, all those jokes and the small details and things, because people are having them at home. You play them a lot and you see each and every time you see different detail. and we are allowed to do that, so that's really, really nice. And it's also fulfilling to work on these things. So I had a lot of fun creating that. And this is just one element, and there are more corners to fill, so it was a lot of work to do. Another thing is creating assets, 3D assets.
    18:58
    Here are some glasses, shoes, and a rocket. those were the first things to create. There was also an early stage, like, hey, maybe we can always use some glasses, we can always use some shoes, those iconic shoes, that hat, iconic hat, we can use that in the game. And later on it turned out to be a rule, and that's maybe nice. So it was useful to research everything. So for each song in the game, there are other things you can collect.
    19:33
    So in this case, for Levon, you have this leather jacket with the leather shoes and these funky glasses. So I researched all things, and it was also in collaboration with JP, because sometimes he found something online or in the... Yeah, you reach out to the distance, and you look for specific items that are also known for those songs. Now the feedback we got back from the licensor, from Elton himself or his husband, they wanted to also... So we mostly looked for... because the songs are mostly his old hits, his old wardrobe, but they wanted to get the modern wardrobe in as well. well so that was sort of our research yeah was sort of we have to change it a bit of rounds and they wanted yeah some some shoes in other place not that anyone in the end sees that or cares but we care because you had a call every two weeks right with them and then you know I prepared for we prepared together stuff that we can present and then it's just a talk and you get feedback and feeling if we're heading towards the right direction and take it from there so yeah so in our course so here you see all the first batch of shoes and maybe we can go through because it's nice yeah that's the thing if we just cut this out and you place it in Photoshop, we can show it as a picture, but it's much nicer if it can be rotated and can be nicely there on the UI. So those things, if you collect them, then there are flying elements on top of the UI and you see how much detail that there is into such things. You see the light and we could go all the way with it. Anyway, I thought maybe it's nice to put it here so you have more time to see it, because I think in the game it's four seconds and then it's gone. So once you've collected an item, it keeps coming flying at you. And if you collect the two items, it alternates and then on the third item they all fly through the screen. It's pretty cool. The better you play, the more your screen gets built in. Sure. It's a continuous loop. It's coming towards you. So this is how you collect an item. This was your previous... Correct. Just a previous of how it could work with a couple of shoes. And then we changed that. It's more into turning to gold and other kinds of backgrounds. So yeah. Yes.
    22:45
    So then I was guiding Olaf with the whole animation process. And I wasn't really, so Steve was working with John Yauci and Lucrezia Fafranci on the artwork. But at one time, Jack called me and asked, hey, can you help out with the art direction? Because can you take a look? And so I ended up being art director on this game. Anyway, so I witnessed the game I wanted to pass on. got to be my ArtDirect project. So here again, it's a template for Franchi, because he did the playfield art to work on, with all the plastics in place so he can start working. So this is his . This is in progress, so you can see some elements that have changed if you know the game good enough. And so I also take, so here you see a picture of the whitewood I took. And then I Photoshop all the art that comes in. I Photoshop it on that whitewood. So besides that there another image of the completed game It the Photoshopped version So we can present it to the license But it also helps the artist to see if certain elements are covered by or obstructed by plastics, like this target bank here. Do you want to put important art on the back of it or not? So this helps visualize that certain loop shots behind the piano, you don't see the art at all. So why focus too much? So then Yossi.
    25:00
    So I helped Yossi with the cabinet art. I took a good look at the style guide. So Frenchy did this thing on the cabinet, and it's a great Frenchy cabinet. I helped out with Yowsey on the CE, which ended up being the CE package. And this is one of the first layouts I created. So John had already created that image of Elton, and I came up with the idea, what if we have these rays shooting out of the, sorry, I saw that purple and the gold. I wanted to combine that.
    25:43
    So I started using all those 3D renders on the cabinet. So that also came together. Like the gameplay on the screen, you see that on the cabinet as well. So I wanted to create Elton on flying in his own universe. And then you can see I first had him this way, and it ended up the other way. Because it's kind of weird that someone is behind the machine and he is flying like that.
    26:15
    So it ended up being this way, which I'm actually pretty proud of. I really like how the burst, I'm not sure if I've seen that in Bimble art before, that there is like this burst coming from the flipper button and really gives this power. So this is one of the first mock-ups for the back glass. And we used the Steve was very, Steve came up with this logo with the bulbs, which we see on the play field. But I didn't think it worked on the back glass. So we changed that to something else. And then here's another version looking for armor colors. And here's you see why we went for the gold and not the purple. So we also helped, and Olaf also helped, with the color guiding of the sculpts. So we get the sculpts, and then we rendered those in the colors we think we would paint it. And then the painter in Chicago got those models to the office. And then it's sent to the production. And then you get it back like we wanted. So that's the Elton part. And this, sorry, I thought about something I maybe wanted to talk about, but Avatar. Avatar, so here's the first White Woods by Mark Seiden. His first design, he was a homebrew designer, just Jack Hyden, and his first game was Avatar. So you see some stages. And what I thought was really cool when I first shot this white wood was the underwater scenes. The lower level play feels because it really fits with the water theme. And it's something different. It's a different layout. And it's a great license. It's absolutely a license I love much more. so you can really get into that more. Although I must say, once you get into the Alton world, you also start to understand it. And what you saw, you end up being the artist for the collector's edition. So you just want to do your best. So for this project, no Dutch artist. This is Lia Paskey, first female artist in 30 years in Pinball. Mark Seiden himself found her online, approached her, and she is an artist for Blizzard. She's an artist for Hearthstone, if anyone knows that game. She's the art director there and she accepted our project and started sketching. And these are the sketches we sent, you know, you sent in the first pass to Lightstorm and Disney and you get your approvals or not, or changes and you don't want to go too far because if you get rejections you've got to start over again. So there's a rejected side piece we haven't, you know, that didn't end up in the game. We didn't end up with these three characters in the center. But here is a piece that ended up being the CE. We removed the logo from the cabinet. And so the second pass is a color pass, where you get first approval. Is this the direction? Are these colors good? Can we move forward with this? And then you say yes. And then you can finalize your art piece. And she has her great style, something totally different than what we see on other games nowadays. So we're very happy with this package. Here you see another three steps to final. And the light storm was really precise in all the details, like the bioluminescence dots on their faces had to be exact. So we had calls with them, and it was asked, did you check if all the dots were correct? There's someone there checking all the dots.
    31:26
    That's a job. So here's another color rough. She did the inner art blades, which are the same on both games. But the LE has one UV layer, and the CE has three UV layers, three different colors. Here's the rough on the play field. And she did really well on this. I didn't really have it. So the play field is the toughest part to create art-wise. You have to work around inserts, and she did this over, I can't remember that I briefed her on this. I think Mark briefed the play field before I got involved in this, so really, really good job on this.
    32:18
    So here you see how we brief this, So this is a preview of the V-Inks, all the separate layer. And yeah, we got a lot of reference footage because it had to be like the movie itself. So they had many assets of plants in reference, but also a reference of the animal. And this, I wrote this at Expo. I forgot about that story. this, the Turok, and this is the big beast Jack writes at the end of the first movie in the movies he wasn't seen in the dark but we had to apply the UV patterns on it so they had to look up somewhere and we have a rendering of it but it wasn't used in the movies so there again it had to match, but then you also see We cannot do these gradients in UV, like the tips of the wings. So we have to choose, okay, this is going to be just blue or red. And then I think, you know, this is the CE panel because we also have wings.
    33:26
    Here again, a photo of the prototype. And a photoshopped version of the prototype to present. You can see in the... For the licensor I would like to type in like this is a prototype sculpt, it's not painted yet so there you can see, okay, this is not finished prototype ramp. But, you know, along the way you keep adding stuff and updating stuff until it looks like the final, does it sound better? Yeah, sounds pretty good. So here is a different renders of different armor colors which you could pick. It's kind of obvious that the blue and the green don't work. And we had, we also, Mark Seiden, the designer, wanted an orange because he thought it matched the big banshee. But the lights they didn't want any orange armor, because maybe also they thought it looked too much like the Avatar, the cartoon animated version. They have an orange logo, so it had to be two blue cabinet armor. So I think I was the one that came up with, hey, why don't we do the skin pattern on the CE armor and do something else and do something special.
    35:04
    And then the idea got really fast rejected, like, no, that's too expensive. But then during a call, it was brought up, hey, can you show maybe the skin? And then Lightstorm loved it, so they, now we ended up with it. I'm not sure that Jack is happy with that. I think it looks great. So here again, first iterations for, first sketches for the UI. I tried something completely different, very organic, because it's an organic, you know, the movie Pandora is an organic world, no straight lines, and so you try to do something different.
    35:54
    No, no, what is it, symmetrical UI score offset to the side, like we did on Dialed In, and so you start, you know, putting in the rules. There's this, and then you do some, so these are the color palettes they give you of the movies. And you try to apply that to the titles you use on the screen so it matches with the movie And don use any colors that don fit So the songboard is a major story. It's used in the second Avatar movie and Keith Johnson, the programmer, he had this idea of these songboards as your modes. So that's why we created and started putting that in the UI. Each beat on the song board, each sort of a... What a beat is a... A memory? A natural jewel. Oh yeah, it's their experience in life. So each time something major happens or important happens, I should say, like the birth of a child, they attach this new beat to their songboard, so the longer your life, the longer your songboard, et cetera, et cetera. So those experiences are the modes and the scenes you play in the game. So this is how we, so I started using like full screen video clips. This is the first like sort of set up to show the lights on in this way what you are planning to do and then they say, no, I don't want that, like that, their bonding thing in the UI. That's something we don't want that, take that out so you don't use that anymore and you have to come up with other ideas and then trying to find so in that upper corner you have the multiple one progress and here is your multiple two progress, movie one, movie two. And trying to integrate the pinballs into that, they allow us to do that because they're also hesitant to add pinball elements into the Pandora world or the Avatar world. so it all has to be yeah they don't want to easily accept anything that we come up with so these are the backgrounds, before you play mode I picked an interesting shot from that movie scene that I 3D, Parallax animated as sort of as a prelude so you know which mode you are going to play when you start a mode.
    39:14
    There's 22 modes in this game, so there's 22 of these different animations. Qualifying a mode is by shooting different shots in the game. Each shot has its own name.
    39:38
    So we came up with this idea to create these tokens, wooden tokens. So a certain set of tokens will qualify for a certain mode. So each time you make shots, you will qualify different modes. And so we came up with this, like, tokens to do, and we presented these to Lightstorm. And Olaf made this render with a lead, like a metal toy. And I said, well, maybe it should be wood. So we presented this. And then I was so happy to hear that Lightstorm accepted it. Because this is like creating something new. And I explained, well, this could be toys that they maybe carved and maybe they made for their kids to play with. And so Lightstorm said, well, we did something for that, not in the movie, but for their, like, an attraction or their goal. So they gave us, like, new assets where they actually created what we were looking for, what we thought out ourselves. And so some we could recreate and some we came up with ourselves. So Olof made all these and they look really nice of course. So happy to have you on board Olof. Yeah, yeah. And I work from Amsterdam in a studio and I'm working there together also with another person. His name is Lars and it's also good to name him because he's also working on those models. And so it's also their collaborative project. And yeah, it was very nice to work on.
    41:31
    Yeah, at that time you asked me to help out with more of the UI part. So the upper left and the lower right corners.
    41:42
    All the wooden tokens. and the beats to bring that a little bit further. Because at that point you were also working on the cabinet art, helping that.
    41:55
    There's a lot of things to sort out. We're looking for footage and making all the full screen. Absolutely. We just have less time to create, so we just need more people on it. I know Stern has a big team of people creating all the stuff for their games. Yeah, so when I was finished with done with Elton, I started helping you out. It was basically the process. Yeah, so now it's like you do 75% and I 25% and then the other way around in the other projects. It also keeps the style the same. If you mix it too much, it can go... You can start to see different styles. Another idea was to... There's no real language or written script in the movies, but we did find
    42:52
    Disney extended the movie, or we found it actually online. Apparently, in one of the shots there is this sort of an old school, Navi school, where they try to learn Navi. And they came up with, I found these symbols. And we were allowed to use those in the game, in the inserts. And they just light up with the UV light. So it's sort of like comparable to Monster Bash where you shoot a shot three times and it starts a shot mode. So when you make your first shot, you also see them on screen. So it sort of is a counter because they don't like to use numbers in Pandora because they don't know numbers. But then how do you display scores? It can be a bit tricky. Another interesting thing is this left-hand combo thing. So when you start this, you can only make, all the shots you make with your left hand will add to the combo. Once you use the right flipper, you end your combo and it will, you know, you will collect the amount of your jackpot that you build up. The reason why we have this left-hand combo, because apparently the Na'vi are all left-handed instead of all, maybe, like humans mostly are right-handed and now we have this left-handed combo. That's what the reason why. Maybe we should have put the plunger on the left hand as well. So we got a lot of assets from LightStorm, original assets from the movies, which was great to work with, although they were pretty large in file size and all that, so you reduced that to... Yeah, they were working with their own programs and they had their own workflow, but they They provided us models and those are models you really need to take a look at and change a lot to make them animatable again and look as nice as in the movies. You need to do the texturing and all the things over. But it's a great starting point. There's a lot of detail. There's a lot of... in the provided textures there's a lot of, yeah, you know, it looks fantastic. So it's amazing starting point to work from. Yeah, and then I worked on this multiple, the Crab Suit Battle.
    45:35
    Yeah, we also made a bunch of arrows. Yeah. So, yeah, so Olaf would model these random leaves for me. So I could use them in any way further in the game for the multipliers.
    45:53
    And then he also animated this wood sprite, which we then render in different movement and angles. So if you mix it up and use it as a particle system, they all look different. And also if you do a time offset, then it will look pretty natural. So we ended up, like here you see them being used as a particle system. And this is the one that Olaf created. Yeah. And I think you actually used AI to create the environment, right? Yeah, true. Yeah. So, yeah, you know, you need to be also precise on how much time you spent on the thing. If you can use AI to create already the background, the far background.
    46:45
    And it turned out really nice. And then you add the parallax and the light effects. This was another example we made. But it was ejected. So the reason this was rejected, Yes, they don't have these wooden boards in their world. Navi didn't create these things. And they don't have the numbers. So that was a reason to come up with a different match. So it doesn't match with your end number of the score. But the sprite will pick the player that gets a free game. like in the game or like in the movie does Bryce go to Jake and surround him as a selection it's also funny when seeing it back after a while you totally understand why they rejected it if I look at it now it's more of a funny thing it is also brief sure maybe it's also to do with I just came from Elton and you're still in that Yeah.
    47:59
    That theme also needs to grow on you more and more. It's always figuring out with each license what you can do with the license, what a licensor allows you to do with it. So, yeah, sometimes you just look for the boundaries and you've got to accept that something is... Oh, that's it. Okay. So, that's it.
    48:26
    Thank you.