THE CABBAGE FAIRY

This video game is an adaptation of the 1896 film, "La Fee aux Choux" directed by Alice Guy Blache.It is a 59 second long fim about a cabbage fairy taking babies out of large Cabbages. The movie itself is very simple, but I fell in love with it for it's simplicity. I was particularly fascinated by the movements of the fairy which very clearly come from ballet poses. The woman in the short film fascinates me because she performs in a very exaggerated manner. As she pulls babies from the cabbage patch she moves her arms up and down and awround to gesture her next move and she maintains a large, delightful smile. One funny part of the movie is that the babies do not appear to be real babies but rather little babydolls that they animated in the film to imitate a squirming child. I wanted to turn this film in particular into a game because it is one of the first fiction films made which is very interesting, and it is perfect for a game because it involves one repetitive act of picking up babies.

In this game the character will move the cabbage fairy across the screen with the goal of picking up babies and placing them on the ground. I would like to use the arrow keys and the spacebar for all of the moevements (side to side and up and down to navigate and space bar to place down the babies). The game will be only in black and white to pay tribute to the quality of the film, and I will design the environment and the sprites keeping in mind the grain structure of the orginal film. Piskel is perfect for this because it uses little squares to draw, and this is incredibly similar to the grain structure of film.I want to maintain the simplicity of the film, and therefor the game will not be very goal-oriented other than to pick up the babies. I don't want it to be particularly challenging. The gestures of the fairy in the film are so fantastic that I will animate the avatar to mimic her movements.