@Phil - Pinball concepts and inspiration
Since the OGR I've been trying to conceptualise the cardiac cycle in the style of a Pinball machine. It's been quite a task since I've been trying to apply Pinball machine physics to the how the heart works, after a struggle with getting it on paper I managed to create some messy concepts (1&2). I am producing a map of the pinball machine before I go any further with concepts and story boarding as i want to get a full understanding of what this world will look like. So far i've gotten onto adding colour to the map (3).
In 3 the Flappers act as the heart beating or rather the Nodes in the heart and how they contract and relax. When the ball (Bloodcell) is "pumped" into this system the aim of the game is to get the highest score by making the blood get to all of the organs and limbs that need blood. From this point the machine has a twist in terms of how blood cells lose oxygen, this will supply a "Time limit" to the game, so the more oxygen the bloods cells lose, the more carbon dioxide is formed and the lights of the system begin to dim. (except for the central lung system) So, the Blood cell has to get to the lungs in order to "recharge" (re-oxygenise) -- I plan to have a morphing animation at these stages showing the process of de-oxygenated blood cells and oxygenated bloodcells.
What is very mind boggling for me is how I can communicate the oxygenated stage without physically changing the state of the pinball scene - this could be solved by how the lights change to make it more pressuring and alarming?
A couple of suggestions - food for thought:
- Flappers are the pacemaker
- Pinball goes into a hole and 'something' happens to it - something we can't see, possibly the de-oxygenation
- basee of the pinball system has a illustrated design - like all pinball machines do, I could follow the tron one and some other stylised retro design, but I have to keep it simple
- So the orange tube is the left side (oxygenated blood system) and green is right side (Deoxygented blood system). Entrance to the lungs are closed in the orange state but once the ball enters the Right side tube it's a rush to the lungs.
- Once in the De-oxygenated state bumpers that are the 'organs' are non usable.
Hi Meg - looks like you're doing some great number crunching here in terms of getting the logic sorted - just a hint though - I don't think you need to achieve everything inside the pinball machine itself - what I mean is you could have 'break-out' sections - so when the ball hits a particular aspect - you could have some neon-y text-based sequences which express what's going on in terms of the science - for a sense of what I mean, take a look at this - at the bits where the characters are introduced:
ReplyDeletehttps://vimeo.com/31337415
So - you can do exactly as you're planning - mapping the cardiac system onto the pinball machine - but where the science gets more complex (or more abstract) you could sort of freeze the action - punch the ball out into a break-out sequence with exciting use of pinball inspired typography - explain what's going on - and then re-start the action and off we go again, following the ball again.