New Persona 5 Game Trailer Draws On Graphic Novel Design
Persona 5 is an up-and-coming RPG from Japanese studio Atlus that's based upon a super team of high schoolers able to channel powerful monsters called "personas". The seemingly innocent team explores dungeons and pulls off heists all while waging war against their arch enemies, the Shadow. Atlus recently release a trailer for Persona 5 that provides hints of the game's characters, cinematics, and GUI.
However, the real hero here for Atlus may be the game's trailer, which is filled with a very bold color scheme and some slick motion graphics. These graphic elements are combined with a retro theme created from a "scratched" film look and musical score straight out of 70's exploitation films. At times, it hard to tell which graphic elements exist within the game and which were create just for the trailer. This is probably the hallmark of a good trailer that successfully mixes both seamlessly.
The game's graphic user interface is featured several times and reveals a graphic novel style. At moments, the foreground image is "opened" up to reveal a background layer, as in the example below. These are comic book-inspired elements, which suggest the game may be trying to combine both styles within its look and gameplay.
This is an interesting approach since the trailer's dominant red and black color scheme also resembles another comic book/video game hybrid, SXPD from last year. These colors are also integrated into a cut-and-paste, multi-font for lettering as in the image below. The slanted camera angle juxtaposed with the film scratches that seem to "rain" down at a similar angle, really give the image an intense feeling of movement an energy. The trailer's composition is also dominated by strong lines that help emphasize depth and perspective.
Visually, the trailer is quite stunning, aggressively bombarding the viewer with bold images. You don't really watch it or meet its visual style half way, rather it comes running at you at full speed...with a funky beat.
This is an interesting approach since the trailer's dominant red and black color scheme also resembles another comic book/video game hybrid, SXPD from last year. These colors are also integrated into a cut-and-paste, multi-font for lettering as in the image below. The slanted camera angle juxtaposed with the film scratches that seem to "rain" down at a similar angle, really give the image an intense feeling of movement an energy. The trailer's composition is also dominated by strong lines that help emphasize depth and perspective.
Visually, the trailer is quite stunning, aggressively bombarding the viewer with bold images. You don't really watch it or meet its visual style half way, rather it comes running at you at full speed...with a funky beat.
