EDIT:

Though the original tournament ended up not happening, I did hold a separate tournament at the Willis Library of UNT for "International Gaming Day." I wasn't able to get any tournament footage, but maybe you'll enjoy the video of the prize unveiling. :)



So, I worked really hard on the Persona 4 Arena Scrub Tournament. Plans for the Persona 4 tournament started waaaay back when P4A was first announced. I was very excited to do it, and couldn't wait for P4A to release just so I could host the tournament.

Actual work on the tournament didn't start until last month. I started wracking my brain for what could be a possible prize for the tournament. I searched eBay and other stores online for official Persona merchandise, but most of it was super expensive, and didn't really seem all that special anyway, since the idea behind the scrub tournament prize was supposed to be something silly, that only had to be tangentially related to the game it was inspired by.

I hadn't settled on a prize initially, so I designed the trophy first. Most of my craft materials were back in Denton, so I didn't have access to them. There couldn't be a cool little wooden pedestal for the trophy like with the Catherine one. So, I only had access to a few things here in Paris. I had a stack of bristol board originally used to print out bootleg Cards Against Humanity cards and an inkjet printer. I started looking into papercraft to mold a trophy. I couldn't really find any Person-related papercraft templates, so I decided on something easy: a television. A television is just a rectangular box, really easy to make out of paper. I could just print the design on the bristol board, cut it out, then assemble it. I could do the same for the trophy base.

Here was the template for the trophy and base:


A plain yellow box was a little boring, so I decided to have the "Persona 4 Arena" logo pop out of the screen. A neat, little 3D effect. Here was the final product:


Following the completion of the trophy (or during its construction, I don't recall exactly), I decided on an appropriate "mystery prize" for the tournament: tarot cards. The Persona games heavily feature thematic elements of tarot. I'm not exactly an expert on tarot, but it's clear that the Major Arcana play a major role in Persona 3 and 4.

I started off with the official Persona 3/4 arcana designs. Using my Fool Arcana card from my P4 cosplay as a basis, I printed out miniature versions of the Persona Major Arcana and then cut out individual cards:

After a few days, I decided that these miniature tarot cards weren't enough. They didn't actually serve a functional purpose, as they were just designs. The alcohol trivia book and first aid kit for the previous tournaments were items you could actually use. I decided to order an actual tarot deck off eBay. It was pretty cheap, and the designs on the cards were pretty cool. It even came with instructions on how to do readings with the cards, so it was an actual, functional deck.


So, the prizes were finalized, for the most part, but the work didn't stop there. I worked pretty hard on the production of Catherine Scrub Tournament videos, but I wanted to go all out on this Persona one. I also wanted to get a head start. All the video production for the Catherine tournament videos was done after the footage was actually recorded. I have to go back to school soon, so I really wouldn't have the time to put the Persona videos together from scratch. I decided to do all the video graphics ahead of time so I could just cut and edit the tournament footage and drop them into the completed video package. This was probably the most arduous task of the whole thing, and I don't even have any recorded matches yet (if ever).

First, I'll present the "finished" product, then break down what it took to make it:


Everything in that video I made from scratch, with the exception of the Space Jam remix and the photograph of the broken TV. All the video effects were painstakingly created by me.

The first thing in that video is the calendar scene. That was actually last part of the video I worked on, but I'll start talking about that anyway.

In Persona 4, the calendar and weather play a major role. The entirety of Persona 4 takes place over a year, and between each day, a particular calendar transition scene plays. I attempted to recreate this effect for the video. As you can see from the video, I had a specific date in mind, the 17th of August, a Friday. It was originally going to be on the 10th, but some key people couldn't make it that day, and I had to postpone the tournament to the following week. With that in mind, 8/17 was the day.

I recreated the scene transition. I tried my best to match the fonts from the game, as well as the animation. The fading images and scrolling text are straight from the game, and I'd say it's a pretty accurate rendition.


The second part of the video was the title graphic. While I did not take the photograph of the broken TV (despite having a recently-broken TV), I did add the text to the photo. This was actually the first thing I did for the tournament. It was initially created to be the picture for the Facebook event page. Again, the text was created in the style of the Persona 4 game, in this case, Persona 4 Arena specifically. The "tv static" effect was added for the video. It took me a while to get the timing on the image roll just right. It's almost in sync with the music, right when the vocals kick in, the rolling stops.

The third part of the video was probably the most time-consuming. I visualized a dramatic sweeping camera to introduce a rotating trophy, but doing such a scene with the camera equipment I proved difficult. Here's my initial test at filming a rotating trophy through stop motion. It looks terrible.


I pictured something better than that, and I though the best way to get what I wanted was to render a virtual scene with a digital polygonal model of the physical trophy I had made. The problem was, I haven't used a 3D modeling program since I was like 14. I downloaded Google Sketchup, because a friend had showed it to me years ago as a means of creating primitive 3D shapes. Of course, when I loaded it up, I had no idea what I was doing. I messed around a bit, trying to create a cube and adding a custom texture, and this was the result:


Looks just as crappy as the stop motion thing, huh? And then I had to figure out how to animate it. I did some extensive Googling, trying out various tutorials, trying to figure out how to do exactly what I wanted. I needed to know how to arrange primitive 3D objects, how to apply custom textures, how to create a reflection, and how to animate the camera, and how to export the animation to a movie file for video editing.

It took me two days of tutorials and experimentation to just learn those simple things, but I eventually got something decent-looking.


Once I created the scene, I added in the animated overlayed text in Final Cut Express. With my experience in the program, it took significantly less time for something simple like that.

Using that knowledge, I was able to create a rotating 3D Persona card. I initially used a 2D image and some rotation effects in Final Cut Express to create the rotating card, but it ended up looking like crap, so I recreated the card in Google Sketchup. It was a lot less work than recreating the trophy, but I still put a couple of hours into it. The rotating card went through many different iterations.


The bracket is the final part of the video, but I believe it was the second part of that I worked on. For the Catherine tournament videos, I was particularly proud with how I presented the bracket. It emulated the style of Vincent climbing the tower in the game. I wanted to do something similar with the Persona bracket.

The Person bracket had two versions. Originally, it was meant to look like the Social Link screen in the game. Considering all I really had to work with was a low-resolution screenshot from the game, I had to recreate the screen from scratch, which included tracing over the card graphics and such to get them looking sharper. I unfortunately no longer have the Photoshop file of the original version of the bracket, but here is an image I created as a test:


After mulling over this for a few days, I decided I was dissatisfied with this bracket presentation. It looked too plain. I decided to start over and do something else. This time, using the TV motif, I created the bracket as seen in the above video. Again, since the tournament was a specific day, I also decided to add this little day indicator in the upper right, again based on visual elements from Persona 4.

This bracket presentation was a little complex. I wanted a some animated TV fuzz to be present behind the bracket information. This required me to work in various layers. Here's a picture of the overlayed bracket information and a static image for the background. I would later go into Final Cut Express and add the TV static effect to the background, resulting in the final product.

That's all I have to say about the video for now. This part of the project easily has taken up the most time. It's the result of weeks of work, and it's still not even done. If I ever get actual tournament footage, I would then add them to the video, as well as overlay player names on top of the video footage. I had recently been working on how to add that to the gameplay without interfering with the in-game interface. That would've ended up looking something like this:

Okay, I'm done explaining the video part, but I'm still not done with the tournament project as a whole. If you noticed, every day I was posting a new quote on the Facebook event page. I created a calendar in which I would post an arcana quote a day, counting down to the final day of the tournament. These arcana quotes came from the final boss of Persona 3, and I thought they were pretty cool. There were 13 arcana quotes in all, the final one being that of Death. I think I started posting the quotes on the 4th, because 13 days (and quotes) later would result on the 17th. So yeah, the date of the tournament became kind of important.

Here's the little calendar of quotes I created:

Fool, Magician, Priestess, Empress, Emperor, Hierophant, Lovers, Chariot, Justice, Hermit, Fortune, Strength, Hanged Man and Death.

August 4th

0 "The moment man devoured the fruit of knowledge, he sealed his fate. Entrusting his future to the cards, man clings to a dim hope. Yes, the Arcana is the means by which all is revealed."

August 5th

1 "Attaining one's dream requires a stern will and unfailing determination."

August 6th

2 "The silent voice within one's heart whispers the most profound wisdom."

August 7th

3 "Celebrate life's grandeur... it's brilliance... it's magnificence..."

August 8th

4 "Only courage in the face of doubt can lead one to the answer..."

August 9th

5 "It is indeed a precious gift to understand the forces that guide oneself."

August 10th

6 "There is both joy and wonder in coming to understand another..."

August 11th

7 "One of life's greatest blessings is the freedom to pursue one's goals."

August 12th

8 "To find the one true path, one must seek guidance amidst uncertainty..."

August 13th

9 "It requires great courage to look at oneself honestly, and forge one's own path..."

August 14th

10 "Alongside time exists fate, the bearer of cruelty."

August 15th

11 "Only with strength can one endure suffering and torment."

August 16th

12 "In the face of disaster lies opportunity for renewal."

August 17th

13 "The moment man devoured the fruit of knowledge, he sealed his fate. Entrusting his future to the cards, man clings to a dim hope. Yet, the Arcana is the means by which all is revealed. Beyond the beaten path lies the absolute end. It matters not who you are... Death awaits you."

This wasn't really a major thing, but I thought it was kind of cool. It was a way of reminding people that the tournament was coming up. I had trouble with a few days. I think I accidentally posted two of them on one day, but I figured a way around that.

Considering the state of tournament, whether it'll happen or not, I probably won't keep posting these, but we'll see...

And finally (maybe), last night, I had a sudden last-minute idea for a secondary prize for the tournament. Considering how nerdy and "anime" the Persona games are, I figured, a body pillow featuring of the characters would be perfect! Of course, a body pillow of Chie or Rise would make too much sense. I decided on another character. I spent two hours earlier today tracing over some official low-resolution art of this character, so I could have a higher-resolution image to apply to a pillow case. Then I went to Walmart to buy the pillowcase. This was the result: