Sushi bar research

Having already looked further into Japan and Japanese culture, I have grown an interest in sushi bars, and think that it would make an interesting subject matter for my game.

As research I made a moodboard of different layouts of sushi bars as well as sushi in general, which you can find on this link to my pinterest http://pinterest.com/sachaframpton/game-module-sushi-bar-inspiration/ (I have also taken a screen shot of a section of the board below)

I also have taken reference to Pixar's Monsters Inc, where Mike and Sully first meet Boo in the Japanese restaurant. Although it isn't a typical sushi bar with the moving belt, it holds strong reference to Japanese culture and the style and layout you would expect from an oriental restaurant.

  

I couldn't find any English film clips of the Sushi bar scene, but managed to find a Spanish version!? However language doesn't matter, as I was focusing on the visual style of the restaurant, and how the characters reacted in their environment.

These three images, I feel show the decor of the Japanese restaurant well, and the calm and oriental atmosphere of the environment is enhanced by the use of lighting

I also found this slightly strange short animation on Vimeo created in a stop motion style, of a Japanese tappanyaki restaurant. Although the animation is a little jaulty and off in places, I love the simple and bright environment created, and the cute needle-felted characters.

Teppanyaki Dynamite by TADA's Revolution from TADA's Revolution on Vimeo.

Looking into Sushi more, I have found some examples of sushi toys, which I can use as a reference to style, as often they are purposely created to be overly cute, or kawaii in Japanese, adding small faces to them for extra appeal. Beneath is a moodboard I created showing some of the toys which I feel have the best style.

I was also going to look further into how sushi and sushi bars have already been used in games, but there are simply too many to even mention. This topic is a surprisingly popular theme in online and moblie games, where often the players job is to serve sushi to waiting customers or prepare sushi to a recipe whilst being timed. This however is not how I intend my gameplay to be, and I am just wanting the sushi bar to be one area the player simply visits on their travels and can choose to stay and eat or simply walk by. This taken into account, I have chosen not to look into any games of a similar topic as I am more concerned with the style and feel of the game in this given moment.