Geek Woman interviews the creator of Alex, a character in a PG rated motion picture and video franchise by Luminetik Animation Studio. Alex and Ruby are two characters that are much like actresses who have had a print modeling career prior to being new superhero’s and role models in their own game/movie. This is not the only way that game developer Akiko Ashley who is a Partner and Executive Producer at Luminetik Animation Studios, is breaking new ground and bursting stereo types. She also wrote the story for the upcoming computer animated franchise known as Dis_Konnected. She is the executive producer/creator/writer of Luminetik’s Animation Studio’s new short film called “Kuriocity”. “Kuriocity” is an introduction to the story of the future motion picture and video game franchise. Dis_Konnected will be a motion picture, and video game combination project. Akiko is a programer, an artist and a designer. Geek Woman has the rare opportunity to speak to her for WG.Geek Woman : What is your position at Luminetik Animation Studio?

I am the Co-CEO and Executive Producer. I wrote and created our film franchise “Dis_Konnected”.

Geek Woman : Is the short film called “Kuriocity” an introduction to the motion picture and video game franchise, which is called Dis_Konnected?

Yes, the short “Kuriocity” is an introduction to the characters and the motion picture and video game franchise. We wanted to slowly introduce the elements as this is one of the first teen CG films and targets a very different audience then the PIXAR, Dreamworks, and Blue Sky Films.

Geek Woman : Is there a website specifically for the Dis_Konnected project?

At this moment, we have a web site in production that will show up on the web once the short is done. We wanted to have the short finished so the fans would be able to understand a bit about the film from viewing the short and to be a little familiar with Alex and her story before the site was up. Currently, Alex is building friends on My Space and doing very well. www.myspace.com/alexthesuperhero. I want the storyline to be a very high priority in the development of this film and game so the audience knows what is going on and can relate to the characters.

Geek Woman : Have you worked on other games or movies?

Yes, and many are covered by NDA but I can tell you I worked on some games for Nintendo in Kyoto Japan when I was much younger and have worked in the film industry as a VFX producer on movies like “Two Weeks Notce” and commercials for Arm and Hammer.

Geek Woman : How difficult has it been to break into such a male dominated industry?

I would say Japan is much worse then the states as women are not seen for their technology skills. This may have changed in recent years but was very difficult in the 80′s.

On a different note, I have been doing high level math in my head for years and understood physics since I was a child so I had a very good mind for coding software. When I was young though I had to hide what I could do or risk being beat up for being nerdy. I have been beat up a few times for being a girl nerd.

Geek Woman : This is I am sure a terrible memory for you. It is an experience that we both share. I can not help but ask if it was the girls or the boys who were so intimidated that they had such a violent reaction?

At first the reaction was both girls and boys who actually picked physical fights with me. My mom was unhappy about this as she is traditional Japanese and did not like her little girl fighitng like a boy. As time went by girls punished me harder for it. I found this strange because no matter what happened I thought we shared a certain sisterhood being girls.They just could not relate to me breaking traditional roles. I was not allowed to hang out with popular girls who shunned me. I spent many a days alone and learned to be comfortable with this. The boys weren’t much easier but sadly they began to accept who I was and stopped alienating me. I found myself with more male friends then girlfriends. I vowed when I got older to rectify this situation and keep an open mind when it came to supporting ideas by women especially when it has risk invovled and is outside the normal paradigm.

I think that the doors are opening for women now and that they should defintely consider a career in film or games as technology is making it easier and easier.

In fact, when AMD first came out with the Opteron, I made the decision to go with AMD before many of my male counterparts in the industry. I helped create and design our first pipeline and if you ask any of the men I work with, they are big fans of my choice. AMD is one of the partners that enabled me to do what I am doing.

Geek Woman : What educational background do you have? Are there any suggestions to geeky girls that you would have for those who would like to have a career like yours?

I spent 4 years in college with a degree in “Clinical Psychology” that did not help me much for jobs, so I went back to school to decide what I wanted…I did two years in medical school, one year in law school and a year in a fine arts school in Paris. I also found a creative writing to be a good place to expand my writing skills and took a creative writing class every year in college and highschool.

Geek Woman : In the trailer that I saw, I was most impressed with Alex doing some sword play. To me it looked like it had to have been created with motion capture from a living human. How was that sequence created?

Yes, this is motion capture. We were very picky about motion capture systems giving a natural character look to the walk for Alex as we wanted her to have a signature motion. Motion Analysis delivered this in her walk and sword animations. It is very fluid looking. I really like what Motion Analysis does and this made me a fan of it.

Geek Woman : Will you be doing mostly one kind of animation or a combination of technologies?

We plan to use mostly keyframe animation as this can give us a kind of freedom to stylize the animation a bit…we won’t be using the pose to pose style of animation as this does not blend with motion capture very well so we had to find something that flowed with the motion capture and would blend without looking out of place, and we call this technique “fluid motion animation”. We do plan to use motion capture as some of the action pieces would benefit from this workflow as the physics for this are tough on keyframing the motion and could actually take longer.

Geek Woman : I enjoy that the 40 year old female character Ruby looks slim and healthy. What prompted you to design not just one heroine but several female characters, young and middle aged, for your game?

I wanted there to be a range of female characters in the film and game. There is still a female villian yet to be introduced who may bring to mind characters like Darth Vader….We have yet to introduce her yet as she is something we want the fans to find out about in the film. She is designed to make a statement. When you see her, you will either love or hate her or both.

I felt that there aren’t enough women in games and just having one girl as the superhero was not enough. I felt that in real life women have different roles in the world and wanted to illustrate the relationships between Ruby and Alex and the relationships they have with the villian. Oddly enough each girl will think very differently and this is illustrated in the script.

Ruby and Alex are slim because very much like their male counterparts, you would need a certain physique to be a superhero and would be burning more calories then real people do. It makes perfect sense when you consider the amount of action they are involved in…On a humorous note: Have you ever seen many characters eat in a game beside Pacman? LOL. I am kidding of course.

Geek Woman : Are you concerned that having female lead characters will effect sales to men?

I think it really depends. I believe there are a lot of men who have played Lara Croft and had no problem. I wanted to take this to a new level and show men that women have certain strengths that are pretty cool and make it part of the game play to give men a chance to feel this and say whoa this is pretty awesome. Women do have some cool secrets they don’t always reveal.

We also wanted Alex to be a girl that guys would love to date as well as admire. We felt that a lot of female superheroes do not feel like women, they look like women but act more like men and are missing the nuances that make them women. Some female characters are so unrelateable it is hard to warm up to them.

Note: I do not use the word superheroine as I feel this word discriminates and does not make it clear that this is a female superhero. As male and women doctors share titles like teacher, professor, doctor and lawyer, why shouldn’t they share the title superhero. On a marketing stance, superheroine just doesn’t pop like the word superhero.

Geek Woman : How are you going to distribute this film? Will it be produced by Hollywood or is it going to be an independent project?

We are right now in production of a short film called “Kuriocity” that will introduce the “Dis_Konnected” world so we can introduce the film, video game, and character elements. We will follow this with a website and forum for people to talk about the film and help give us feedback and what they feel about the storyline, characters and look. We have had an amazing amount of feedback from a My Space page for Alex and have had an amazing response to the stills from the short. We get the sense people are just as excited as we are.

Once we launch the short and it has independent distibution via mobile devices and internet, we will follow with a motion picture and video game which will take a couple of years to produce. We are holding off on any distribution deals for the film and game until the short is complete.

Good news…we plan to make the short episodic so we can keep doing small films to keep the storyline going while the motion picture and game are in production.

I had the toughest time when I was developing this story about Alex to convince Hollywood and the gaming industry that women were really playing games and that they actually needed games that related to them. And of course it was interpreted as women like only girlie or sissy games. I defintely had a lot of work ahead of me to convince them otherwise. I created Alex because I was disappointed with the way men wrote female superheroes and the way men created the women in games. It is the story that makes her very different then her counterparts. What is at the surface conceals a much different type of character. I also wanted to create a girl that kicks butt but kept her vulnerability and feminine qualities. It is the type of movie and game that both boys and girls can play and guys won’t feel that it is too feminine and may help him understand a little about how a woman thinks as this would be rewarded in this game. Only way for a man to know what it is like to be a woman is to put him in her spot. (How many times have we played male characters, I want to give men a female character they don’t mind being and help bring them closer to the women in their lives.)

My next task is merging film and game into one solid storyline so that the film and game are seamless so you do not feel like you are taken out of that world. Intergration of the storyline to make it a full experience.

Geek Woman : What game characters influenced you to design Alex?

I would say I was more influenced by Disney and comic books. You may see a merging of these ideas in her look. She has some traditional key character features that follow common design rules, Disney uses these rules in their characters.. My favorite comic book influences were “Shi” by Bill Tucci, “Spiderman” and “X-Men” from Stan Lee…”Batman”, “Superman” and so many others.

Geek Woman : Are you playing any games currently?

I am limited in my time to play games but have been checking out World of Warcraft, Final Fantasy’s new game and have played Halo a lot.

Geek Woman : Which movies have influenced you the most?

I have to say I am a big fan of Sam Raimi and love what he did with the “Spiderman” franchise. I also loved the X-men franchise. My favorite girl lead is “Underworld” and think Kate Beckingsale was so perfect as the character. I love how James Cameron writes women. He is one of the exceptions I find for men who can write women. There are people who did not understand his brilliance of how he wrote Jack and Rose in Titanic but every teenage girl understood completely. I am also a big fan of the show “Smallville”.

I love all kinds of film and also watch classic Hitchcock, Selznick, and Kurosawa films. I use a lot of traditional film techniques for our cameras. I love old films as they illustrate these techniques clearly. I love what David Fincher does with a camera.

I watch independent film because it helps me to take risks in storytelling that big studio sometimes cannot identify with.

I own almost every animated film on DVD from Disney Classics, PIXAR films, Dreamworks films and Japanese anime and manga.

Geek Woman : I understand that you perform music as well, will any of your music be in this project?

I was a music industry executive and worked with many bands. I am always looking for music on the cutting edge and sometimes I can be a year or so ahead of the industry. Some teenagers find it funny that I find bands before they do. We agree on songs and bands and what is is coming. It is so much fun to hang out with teenagers, they really do take risks most of us don’t.

Geek Woman : Would you be disappointed that when I saw Alex at first glance, I thought she was Lara Croft?

I do not mind at all. When we first designed Alex, there was a huge difference between the characters. When you work with CG characters there is going to be some resemblence. Do you ever notice how a lot of anime girl characters all look very similar due to the style of anime?

Geek Woman : Yes I have. When I saw the head-shot of Alex her features did resemble Lara at first. I wondered if it was because she is CG. But as I looked again, I noticed the subtleties, her jaw-line is shorter and her eyebrows are more arched and feminine. Yes, she does look much younger than Lara.

I think that a lot of CG girls look a like for the same reason. There is a much newer design version of Alex that takes a step into making her more unique. We want to distinguish her in her own right.

Storywise, Alex is a teenager and much younger and softer then Lara and has a certain vulnerbiltiy that comes through in the storyline. Alex also has a much different body build and in other photos looks entirely different. As she evolves and you see her in the film, you realize she is her own person.

Geek Woman : In your Myspace the characters each have their own profile and they seem to interact with each other. This is a new method of delivering the story, how is that working?

I think it works well. I put Alex on the web about 5 months ago and she has been talking to everyone and learning a lot from everyone that graces her with their friendship. Storytelling can be very difficult in a vaccuum and unlike other filmmakers I wanted to make the storytelling process interactive so the audience feels like they are part of it. I am hoping to make the entire process like this within reason.

Geek Woman : Where do you see the future of gaming going?

I think that the future of gaming and entertainment are merging. You are starting to see some of this on the game console as they are now both game player and DVD player. As this expands and resolution gets better, I think film and video game storylines are going to be shaing assets interactively as this union grows. The future of film and gaming I believe will be merging more closely. I created “Dis_Konnected” seeing this future unfolding. The storyline is weaved between the film and game and vice versa. One of the images I will send you with this article illustrates this. You will see Ruby in a shield which is a common video game element. The way the world is built and the journey of the character reminds you of destinations in games to get to a certain level. All of this blended into a single pipeline as our target for gaming is the next generation platform.

Geek Woman : Do you think that targeting a demographic of young people that have grown up downloading music and videos for free, as well as pirating games is going to be difficult to market to?

I don’t think pirating hurts the industry as much as it hurts the channels of distribution. I know that many kids and people who pirate content have a tendency to buy it as well. It gives them a sense of having a filter to detect bad movies, games and music. I think that piracy is bad when you create content that can’t sell itself. You really have to give them a reason to own it. I think that there is enough of Alex and “Dis_Konnected” to make you want to buy and collect it and have something that is original. I notice that sales statistics are still showing growth and the teen market place has been estimated to be a 170 billion dollar spending market so we aren’t looking to corner the market but just get a small piece. Apple seems to be doing very well with the iPod and MTV keeps expanding their cable channels so I think the growth in this market is going to continue.

Geek Woman : When will this be released?

The short “Kuriocity” will be out this winter to introduce the world of Alex and stay tuned for news at www.Luminetik.com or at Alex’s My Space page at www.myspace.com/alexthesuperhero.
We will make announcements about the film and games here. Our estimated production cycle for film and game is about 2 years. The good news is the short will be out and we plan to make it episodic to keep the story alive.