Clencence
What is Clencence?
Clencence is a cinematographic project that uses Minecraft and a plethera of mods,
most relevantly the Pixelmon Reforged one, to deliver a narrative about a guy named Cu getting
stranded in a Pokémon-based land.
Project overview
This series was conceived during the development of Magus Relics: the Majimono,
and ran parallel to its development. After defining its core, we underwent a research phase to look for mods that would enable
certain types of moments, of which the Replay Mod was especially relevant. Once we figured out the overall space of possibilities
we were working with, we defined the overall structure of the narrative, from start to finish. Then, we jumped on an iterative
process of making the episode's storyboard, preparing the environment to hold each scene, recording them, adapting the narrative
beat to any unsuspected technical limitation, then editing the result, correcting any part that doesn't fit with the flow of the
episode (which usually meant re-recording some scenes), adding a layer of audio, and finally, creating all the content necessary
for publication (mainly the Spanish and Catalan subtitled versions, the character icons, and the video thumbnail).
As a creator, it was a very interesting project due to the duality of freedom that the game provided: on one hand, Minecraft
is not an application prepared to be used as a recording set, and even with the Replay Mod, there were many limitations, and the
things we could do were usually rather clumsy and time-consuming. Another huge problem was the compatibility between mods and version,
from content that was locked beyond Forge, to mods that couldn't communicate with others, an especially painful case being the Morph
Mod, that would have allowed the ability to have full autonomy of a pixelmon's movement by transforming into them, even gaining access
to their animations. However, the mod creator explained in his Discord how Pixelmon had a very out-of-the-normal way of retrieving entity
information that wasn't compatible with how Minecraft usually handles it, so there was that.
Then on the other hand, the absurd quantity of mods available, even when limited to the 1.16.5 version, allowed us to add content
we wouldn't have expected to be available, and even find roundabout ways of achieving what the technical limitations prevented us from,
something that was supported by the natural freedom and flexibility of the game itself. For example, if we can't become the pixelmon,
we can throw an invisible potion to ourselves and use the riding mechanic to take control of their position and rotation as if it was the mon itself
moving, but with the camera only recording the mon. This, of course, has many limitations: we can't have a scene with Cu and a controlled moving mon at the same time; pixelmon that are not fully evolved can't
usually be ridden; and the camera is not always in the best angle when mounting a mon, so first person perspective would not be a kind of shot available when riding certain entities; additionally, when the Replay Mod's camera is
too close to a mon, it shows its name tag and the trainer it belongs to, even if the "name display" option is disabled, which would break the inmersion, and makes it again, not a possibility. At the end
of the day, however, it still means we have access to controlled mon movement, and it is adapting to those secondary limitations that
makes the enacting of a scene into reality that much more fun.
It is partially as a consequence of this game of trial and error that the story's overall structure was planned from the beginning,
yet the specifics of its content were deliberately left in the air. After all, making up potentially dozens of scenes, the viability
of which was not known, or even trying to test the limits of what could be done without the actual experience with the tools at work,
seemed counterproductive. Since the nature of the story we wanted to tell, one that didn't focus so much on the plot as it did on the journey, was also aligned with the possibility of adding new content
as the development went on, the project went on with this controlled uncertainty, and in a way, a hunger to see how far we could push
Minecraft into fitting our cinematographic vision.
Project cancellation
Unfortunately, due to economic limitations, and the pressure to finish the long development of Magus Relics: the Majimono, this project was cancelled after months of work. By the time of cancellation, the documentation was in the following state:Playlist list
To watch Clencence, click here.