Aperture Eye Films: 2012

Took me some time, but here it is, Pokemon Tower Defense saga episode 4. Try to say that 4 times fast.

Joey vs Team Rocket.

(Spoilers below)

Update:Behind the Scenes videos.

I thought of this after posting Episode 4, what if I post some "Behind the Scene" videos that show part of the process of making the episode, what if I post one each week while the next episode is being made. Is this a good idea or what?

Placing the background trees is the hardest thing in the entire process.

Well, it always takes me more time to make than anticipated, but I put some love into this one, with a new intro screen grabs. My wife keeps wanting me to do the "previously on..." thing, but to me each episode is so short, that if you want to know what happened previously, you can just watch the last one. No offense.

I wanted to show what the outcome of Joey vs Team Rocket would be. In the game, you see this play out really fast with Team Rocket kidnapping Joey and hypnotizing him and his Pidgey. That's the first time you meet Joey and his poke-singing antics. In episode 3 I wanted to show Joey before those events, to show what he was up to in that area (route 1). He was a simple trainer in my mind, doing what trainers do best, trapping the user in an all out battle confrontation. [This is all my speculation, not canon at all ;)] Then I had the problem of Derek not having any Pokemon to fight with. I had to resolve that to keep moving forward. Route 1 became a 3-part arch because of this, much longer than I anticipated as well. So I came up with the loop hole that if you don't have a Pokemon to battle, you can skip any trainer that challenges you along the way. That's my logic in episode 3.

Now in order to show what happens to Joey I had to break free from Emma and Derek and concentrate on Joey for episode 4, and give you an epic fight and explore the attacks of these two very distinct Pokemon. On one side you have Pidgey, a common Pokemon that with a bit of a short temper and funny quirks can be very compelling. Add to this, his gust attack, and he can be quite impressive on the battlefield. I wanted to highlight the "gust" attack, because in the game it is quite effective.

On the other hand you got Drowzee and Hypno, psychic Pokemon are very challenging to interpret, luckily for me Sam had made it pretty clear in the game what to make the hypnosis look like, I just polished it and gave it a meditative sound to make the viewer immerse in it like they're being hypnotized too.

Keeping Team Rocket a threat was my goal from the start, I have yet to see this in the anime, and I've never agreed with it. It's for kids, but what age, 5? I made them feel like they were super human monsters that could beam themselves behind you for a sneak attack, hopefully it translated. I know they're not really that, but to a little boy (Joey), anyone with a costume, might posses that power.

Now that these events are setup, we can enter the final act of the route 1 arch, introducing the Pokemon army that will try to steal the rare candy and it's up to Derek and Emma to defend that candy. But that's all I'll say for now. Until next episode.

As always let me know what you thought of episode 4 in the comments below and like us on Facebook. Also share this saga with friends that might enjoy Pokemon tower defense saga as well. Thanks!