I'll be Back

Now with our idea we looked into terminator which has the burning playground scene which had an influence on our final outcome so i wanted to look into it now. Now the scene shows all the children but since we were only doing 2 characters we just used the the symbolism of the playground and used the fire like this scene did to show that bad things have happened to the area. While the fire is more wide spread in this we like the idea of less is more and just put it on apparatus in the playground that shows a more sinister design rather than just random flames dotted around the level. We decided instead of changing the textures on the objects we would use the darkness of the level to trick the viewer.

In the end this one scene had a major influence on how the final layout appeared.

Cut scene or Cinema

Now with our piece being more cinema I decided to look more into more movie like cutscenes rather than conventional cutscenes such one is the one below for mass effect 3 and while it does have some good cinematic shots. It has a very monster movie like feel to it  and what i count as a cinematic cutscene is a cutscene were you can put the controller down and just enjoy it which i think this is.

Now while alot of games are going for cinematic cutscenes some just don't get me putting my controller down, but one does and that is Halo 4 with it's sci fi movie style shots and atmosphere which while not the genre we are doing i want to have that effect on people watching our cinematic. I think that with how eerie we made it we have pulled that off well but there are a few here i think we should of implemented if it was longer than a minute but since it wasn't i think what we choose was right.


 

Now the halo one below is not a main story cutscene so i don't spoil it for people but this is a stronger applicant to my point that i made especially since it uses a lot more shots that would work for our scene.            
The Human intereaction is the style that we will want except not with looks or actions but other factors such as music and the atmosphere around us which is alot more like mass effect.


Altogether my main point is that there are alot of movie cutscenes around but if played well like these are it can cause more immersion for the player which is an angle i hope we can replicate.

Finished Turntable

Here is the finished body in a turntable in unity i must the turntable is a new process which i enjoyed learning since it gives the character a professional feel. The use of light lets me see the character in the way i envisioned him even if still in the T pose due to being able to set up the mood which i think i did a good job with.

The Bottom two are animated and i have done screenshots in poses that i like. I think besides the sketchy animation this turned out really well and i would happily show my work off to people which includes people who aren't friends and biased.

Time to move it BOY!!

Now the bit i hated for my own ignorance the animating. The animating i admit it isn't to bad but were my ignorance lies is with the graph editor and my lack of skill with it and how to make it walk normally which annoys me since i did biology a level and physical education in GCSEs. Rant over i found what really screwed up the animation is the bands around the legs which caused the faces to collide during movement which made the legs move erratically which was as i said earlier was the problem which i couldn't rectify. Besides all that trouble i was quite happy with my jittery character but i would go back and change the animated walking speed to be a little slower.

It's Alive

Now rigging i had no problem with when designing the rig thanks to matt's vid but it did lead to an awkward part later that by the time i noticed the leg was to far forward in idle mode it was too late to correct so i had to go back to a earlier save before binding. and correct it. Also the controls were no problem since i found that part easy. but on to skinning i just mentioned i had abit of trouble but i corrected it quite easy due to the early stage of the problem. The skinning became a little differcult due to the bands around his legs due to how many faces were present and how much space between them which caused the movement to be jumpy so next time i'm getting rid of them or making them flat.

Birth of the Thug

Now on to the modelling i had abit of trouble with this since i had to design it 4 times since the first file was corrupt, the second file had a problem with the design as did the third, and the 4th is the one you see above. Even though i had created the half of the model when i mirrored the geometry it still had problems i realised too late that it was one extra face that caused the problems.

Happily i had no problems with uv mapping it and texturing it since i did the mask and the baseball bat separately to the main geometry which made it alot easier that trying to do it all at the same time. I did have a bit of trouble when it came to the bands around the legs from mirroring as well as texturing.
When i finished it thought he was very blocky it really suited the comparison to the kid. Next time i do this guy i am not doing the leg bands or will instead just make it a colour on the leg instead.

To be the thug or not the thug

Now this is the character sheet for thug/the skull which at the moment has only influenced the design of the character not much else. i know this will influence the animations when i get round to it but due to all i'm doing is modelling it is a bit unneeded. i would of like to put more into this but due to the small amount of time you see him for it was hard to decide on a personality so i think to improve on this i will need to in the future design of characters make a story past and before the project so i can create immersive characters.

Turnaround bright eyes

So this was the turnaround which was used for the modelling image plane which had more of the style that the character was going to look like. The character looks quite blocky in this pic but as i was drawing the character turnaround i noticed that the scale of the head makes the head the same size as the shoulders which by measurements is just the right scale. The reason i only gave the character one arm in the T pose is due to me only modelling the one side and then mirror the geometry across which formed the overall character plus even as a T pose the character is showing attitude.

Evaluation: I had a bit of trouble thanks to this drawing due to him being at a bit of a slant which caused the lining up in maya, to be more awkward than it needed to be especially when scaling the two sides so the character could be created oh well need to use a grid next time or a ruler.

Final Concept

So here is the man that would storm though our scene, the design of this man took reference from two movies i had watched recently which were The Warriors which is a gang based theme from the 80's and aDeath Wish 3. Death Wish 3 has a gang ruling a neighbourhood and a lone detective comes to help the citizens against them. The use of colour here is a very natural shade which works well with the trees giving him a very nature oriented appearance so in the village/forest he looks like he fits the location. the style is a bit more normal like you would expect someone to walk down the street looking like this minus the mask of course which gives him a more captivating appearance when he is linked to the style of the kid that tom is creating.

Evaluation: This is definitely the style i want for the character and when it comes to modelling it doesn't have as harder design compared the others. Unlike the picture above the original had a more human scale and the baseball bat had a normal design but due to the style of the kid and to keep the style of the universe in general i increased the size of the bat, his head and his feet which made it so they could stand in the same place and not feel so weird in the long run.

So with this decision my next job should be the start of the modelling so lets get to it.

Concept 3

Okay now these were my first ideas for the character back when he was going to be less human but that evolved into instead of inhuman faces to the use of masks, as i drew some ideas i came up with the bottom pic right side pic which was the mexican skull mask. The mexi mask worked well because instead of hiding his face completely or showing it the design gives you the basic shape of his face and looks but with the ability to not show emotion. Masks have been used due to has a inhuman quality such as how roman cavalry used the emperor's face as masks since it gives a human look but shows no fear no emotion and no remorse which suits what this character would do in the cinematic.

Evaluation: now the mask concept really helped build up to what the character would look in the end but that isn't all. The hooded figure at the top right really helped since the use of more common clothes helped create the character as we wanted since a hoodie has it's own connotations that we could use effectively to make this character more menacing to the child and viewer.   

Concept 2

The idea of this guy came from a combination of mass effect styled clothes and mr fries (DC Mr Freeze) and while i like the style of long jacket i think the colours are to vibrant when looking back at it and the style of the colours seem to unnatural when comparing to the environment. the bottom right is a style that i like for this character design since it feels more mafia and yakuza, but that is the problem it looks too fantasy organised crime while the design for the character we wanted was more street gangs or small criminal group. We also wanted a hood but the hood look didn't work for this guy so that was another strike against him in the long run but i did take some influence for when i designed the final concept.

Evaluation: Nope.....due to the style it didn't work for us even if he was easier to model than the last one so this boy will only stay a concept.

Concept 1

I am going to write a section on each of my concept designs and give the pros & cons of them.

So what do i think on this big lad the design i love and the contrast of the skin to the clothes is really present. I like this one due to the use of the orange and black contrast much like the koenigsegg sports car had which gave it a really good aesthetic feel as well as a gritty feel.
Now while i got influence for this from arkham city as well as final fantasy this idea was one i really liked but what knocked this guy down was the muscular arms which caused you to pay attention to them first, and the difficulty for the modelling would be high for just starting with the rigging and such.
On the right there are some variations of masks that i could possibly use on this person, looking into the style of the environment it doesn't have enough contrast to the fire used and due to the darkness of the level it would be to similar to the character.

Evaluation though it is a good design it is a no go unfortunately maybe another time.

Initial idea development

While we were looking into an initial idea i came up with one and so did tom now since he designed one he can tell you about his and i will talk about mine. Above are the character sheets for my alien characters but the setting for the scene is a bar in a more shady area and it goes along the line of a downtrodden musician and a helpful barman. The story progressed that while the musician is drinking the barman comes over to give him a letter with a venue on it and the musician leaves while thankful to the barman.

We ended up getting the class to decide between our two ideas and the one that was chosen was tom's idea so we went with that idea but as a personal project i will one day do my design on my own. As we were looking at the two designs we did moodboards for multiple aspects of the design ranging from hoods to surveillance and they are all in the hand in folder.

Final alien

Once i  Binded the skin i went to weight painting which is weird to say the least it was interesting but took a long time to do and i needed to do it about 5 times just to get the movements right but still ended a little weird with the movements.

But as you can see from the bottom picture the rig turned out well and after smoothing i think the alien looks brilliant but not to sure about the movements when animating it for the turntable.

I will definitely use this rig to practise my animation in the future since it works quite well except the left hand moving weirdly when the right arm moves.

Alien Control

Like i mentioned earlier these are my screenshots of controls for my rig this was another calm and enjoyable bit for me due to the simplicity of designing the shapes and parenting to make the controls work.

Now unlike the other posts this is a really short post due to the actually process length to do the controls and how easy it was due to matt's video about it online.

After doing a few modifications all i needed to do was skin the rig which i will talk about in the next post.

Alien has a skeleton

This is the textured model that has smooth preview Which i think looks really good. With that done it is time to enter new territory which is rigging, controls and skinning. I really enjoyed learning the new parts of maya which is handy because i needed to know them for the character we needed to design later.

 These next two pictures show the Rig in all it's glory, now this was interesting for multiple reasons  one being that is something new and as a gamer it is fascinating since this is what game companies do which makes me feel like i am working towards that goal in the future. After that though it got a bit annoying since my right knee was were it was supposed to be so i had to redo the knee which took extra time and patience.
I wish i could of tried this with my original geometry but maybe in the future i will come back to my original geometry and try and fix it to be able to be used for rigging.

Alien Exercise UV Mapping

Like i mentioned in the last part my geometry went wrong when it came to this part. While we tried to work out what went wrong it came to a point so i don't terribly fall behind Matt gave me his basic geometry so don't be surprised that from now on the character looks different.

Failed one

As you can see this is the failed one above and below is the one i worked with.

Now i have taken each section of the geometry apart for UV mapping and i have to admit this is the part i don't mind since it is quite relaxing if you know the geometry, i had to look over it a few times since it wasn't mine so it took awhile to familiarise myself with it.

The Bottom picture shows my Geometry mapped out for texturing, with my texture i tried going for a martian manhunter (DC) influence which sort of worked i will show the picture in the next post.

Because my geometry screwed up i was a bit annoyed at this point so the calm part of uv mapping, texturing and matt's help really helped me from going crazy over the week we were doing this other wise i think i would of snapped.

Alien exercise

I decided instead of putting my ideas for our own creative section of this brief first i will put the exercise we did with matt to learn the techniques down first so here we go.

So the first part is modelling the alien and the design we used was drawn by Matt so we all had a similar design. After importing the image planes in we got to work, i started modelling from the head down on this model and tried to keep with the image planes design. Doing this reminds me of the modelling of last year so it was fun to get back into it at first but after awhile you always have that face that won't go the way you want it too.

I extruded from the base of the head to make the neck and the rest of the body. I had a hard time with the knees and the arms due to making it easier for the rig later. When i finally got it finished i had a little trouble mirroring the geometry due to a few UVs but when it was done i liked how it looked.

Now unfortunately this was all a hollow victory when i got to the UV mapping but i will tell you about that next time.

So where am i going?

Well what do i intend to do besides just going to Bradford Animation Festival, well here we go lets get started. I will be going to thought bubble since i went last year now though this isn't so much moving media and is books/comics the reason i am going is because those form of media is brilliant at story telling since it needs to be able to tell story with just a few pictures on a page. Now thought bubble is a good way to network with other story writers be that either professional or non mainstream. Here is who i want to meet

 I love ElephantMen for it's well done story and it's beautiful visuals that i always instantly knew when i see it.

     Another one i am looking into is the International film festival since it shows a range of films that will help me in my game studies by seeing how to use cinematography well for my projects since they both tell stories being either cutscenes or in game points of interest.

Here is the link for anyone who is interested
http://www.leedsfilm.com/programmes/

My chosen cutscene

When we were asked to chose a cutscene to look into i had abit of a hard time since there were quite a few that caught my eye that i wanted to show, so instead of just showing my chosen one i thought i might show the runner ups for my choice and then go into explaining my 1st choice.

1. HALO WARS



Now the reason i chose halo wars and i particular chose this scene is due to the range of camera shots and how much action is in the scene. The cutscene was pre rendered and doesn't have the in game models due to the game being an real time strategy that doesn't allow the camera to zoom in close enough to view the characters guess thats what you get from an xbox 360 RTS. I love the use of the camera around the fight between the three spartans and the elites but even with the camera shots it is how clean and well done the characters animation are.

2. The Witcher 2

 

Though someone else used this cutscene when we showed our chosen cutscene but since i own the game i have a soft spot for this cutscene. Though CD Projekt Red is well known for there realistic visual and even though this is a pre rendered it does exactly what a opening cinematic should do.
The opening is my favourite when looking at the other scenes i choose but the reason i didn't use it is due to it being a pre rendered scene.

3. Lara Croft Tomb Raider Anniversary



Now while this doesn't show it this is called a quicktime event/cutscene which is an interactive cutscene. This game is a remake of the original tomb raider which as a person who played the original i found this scene well done since the layout of the cutscene is set the same as the original. i would recommend people to play the game just to see the cutscenes.

My Top Chosen Cutscene
SHOGUN 2



Now this is my chosen one to present and also a personal favourite of mine. With the intro until 50 seconds in it is the same but after 50 seconds it make the opening unique to which of the 8 clans you are. The voice used changes with each clan which gives the clan a unique feel rather than you feeling that they are all the same. With the combination of in game models with the maps and pictures it gives the feeling of history as well as you being apart of the history.  This is my favourite and since it is on computer only what you see in the opening is what you get for visuals.

Our Briefing, The Cutscenes And Machinima

          So we started our new project to create our own cutscene in groups of three the end outcome should be a a up to 1 minute long cinematic using all the components which the group creates ranging from sound props background and the characters themselves. since we don't have a genre limit this leaves a lot for us to decide on oh joy.

With that the research begins fortunately annabeth gave us a few cutscenes that got me ready to start this course the three she chose were:

Mists Of Pandaria



Now I'm not a massive MMORPG fan but the cinematic is beautifully done even though it is a pre rendered sequence so though it is an opening it doesn't use the in game models. the models animation and the camera angles are amazing and the art style of the cutscene is well done and aesthetically pleasing.

Red Vs Blue



I have watched red vs blue original series and the red vs blue is a machinima that started during halo 2. The thing that i find good about machinima is that they are made by a group of gamers rather than a team of animators. machinima was originally shunned by game companies due to them using copyright on the developers but after a while it became a new form of advertisement that lead to the machinima becoming as popular as the games itself.

Wolfenstein



This is the type of cutscene i like were you walk into the area that the boss or key moment is and then it instantly starts to run the animation that uses in game models which then enter combat and normal gameplay afterwards. the dark tones of the game really suit with not having a really long cutscene since you want to get back into the combat.

What went on this summer?

       So what did i do after having a year of a study and having the summer to practise my new study, unfortunately not as much I would of liked in the way of practising maya and unity. I have spent alot of time doing concept art which lead to my realisation i need to work on human proportions since i am better at humanoid and non humanoid with irregular proportions.

      During the holiday i bought a few old games from PS2 since i wanted to look into stories for games the list of games i played are:
PS2/1
Prince of Persia sands of time, warrior within, the two thrones
Sly Cooper 2 band of Racoonus
Spyro the Dragon

XBOX 360
Gears of War 3
Mass Effect series
Halo Wars
Halo Reach
Halo 3
Dead Rising 2
Lara Croft Tomb Raider anniversary
Dynasty Warriors 6
Sonic the Hedgehog
Dead Island
Red Dead Redemption
Afro Samurai
Saints Row series
Just Cause 2
F.E.A.R
Lost Planet 2
Portal 2
Metro 2033

Computer
Team Fortress 2
Portal
Shogun 2, Fall of the Samurai
DC Universe Online
Age of mythology
Sims 3, Medieval.

        Now that list is finished i should mention that i have gotten a new Gaming computer Which has been able to run all my games at the highest quality which has allowed me to enjoy the models of the characters and areas in game, much faster gameplay :D.

      Altogether i have been looking into stories and writing my own and designing and drawing the characters for them with practising modelling of some of the characters.

PPP evaluation

Well i was first and as always if your first you set the standard and i think i didn't set it high enough but my colleagues all like the piece which makes it a lot easier for me to do the presentation to the audience. when showing the piece off i found that it should of been a larger area for movement and so it was not so cluttered. The textures could have been improved but i think my message came across clearly to the audience if i could do it again i would make an avatar that stands in the area while you move around.
I look forward to next year and seeing what i can do.

Copyright laws

This is everywhere and it is really important to us as creatives since it is our lively hood and our creation that is being plagiarised our tutor's and our briefs repeatedly talk about it. It recently happened to my friend who had work stolen and used as a final piece and it ended up in court, lesson is if you can't create something on your own then don't enter the career in my opinion.

Sectors and services

When i re looked over this i remembered how this was quite a complex lecture about the three sector of industry Primary, Secondary and Tertiary. I believe that the creative industry aka us is in the tertiary sector which is a least funded sector which is a little disheartened. This will be a situation i will do more research on in the future since it will impact me in the future since it is my field.

Writing an evaluation

I can tell you that i wasn't in for this lecture so i can only say how i don't like evaluation since i haven't had to do an evaluation since i was in school. This is something i need to do more research and practise so i can create more complex evaluation as well as them being longer. this is important for industry since it shows that you and see what needs improvement and won't cause the company to lose money. It also increases your chances of getting hired.

Social media and communication

This was an interesting lecture since it was talking about facebook and the communication age which can be found all around us. The power of the internet is testament to this especial with youtube since alot of people that have done something unique or surprising can be helped by millions on the web, such as the man with a golden voice who had a radio voice and got a job thanks to the internet.

With new communication the general public are more involved and emotionally connected which make it alot more powerful than word of mouth. now i don't use online communication as much as i used too due to how most information is rubbish and useless. i have started to have a more business section on other sites than facebook.

Skim Reading

Skim reading is a skill that i never was really good at but i can read quickly so unlike most who can't skim read at least i could go over the piece of text quickly i missed the event but from what i have seen with the other blogs they did an task that helped skim reading. This is a skill i need to improve over the next couple of year or i might have a hard time with the writing tasks.

Lecture Making Connections

We had a lecture that spoke about how everyday life connections such as facebook. It was interesting to find which sites are used and how people keep connected. I have used skype for many years for keeping in contact with family and friends but i saw their point of that it can be used to talk to contacts in a large conference call.
Here is the examples she gave:
Twitter
Digg
Red Bubble
Flikr
Linked In
SlideShade
Myspace
Skype

The tips that were given are
be generous, be kind, respond to comments, share links, credit sources and many more

This was a very generic post which had good information but it seemed like they just did it because they had to.

Fallen kingdom

Minecraft is a game that has created a large following with 100's of people online creating videos about it online and this is a project by such a group have a look.



I love this music video and i do mean the whole thing, the animation is impressive the remake of the song was spot on and the story really hit the viewer. The group of CaptainSparklez and friends did an amazing job especially since they didn't meet up and it was all digital communication during the process.



As you saw on the second vid there was quite a bit rigging which allowed all the emotions that the character had and i was so jealous of their skills which is why i will experimenting with maya to try and improve my skills during the holiday. This is definitely and inspiration since it isn't made by professionals it is made by people like me which is why i want to be as good as they are.

Tupac Hologram

I have been looking forward to doing this post since it gets me really excited with the possibilities but anyway have a look at the vid.



Now when this happened everyone was going crazy but as usual it only becomes popular when someone or something mainstream is added, I really like tupac and it is impressive how much like him the hologram looks which i think is the most impressive thing. This technology has been around for a while and i find it interesting how the effect is down which is explained below.



The only reason i used this vid was because it was the only one that shows how it is done but beside from that finding out it is a 2d projection is shocking but i think this is a perceptive thing and what our brain sees but like i said they weren't the first to do it.



We have gorillaz performing above and hatsune miku again below now both of these groups or performances use the 3d/2d projection technology and by doing this create a unique feel to the gig. The more time passes i think that this technique will increase in a multitude of ways.



My hope is that in the future amusement parks will get there hands on this and can create a guide that moves across the screen with you on the ride or instead of maps that you get given you could have a projection appear and give you direction when you push one of multiple buttons in front of it. I would be quite happy if we could get a rancor (star wars), troll (LOTR) or and ent to show up as a huge projection in front of you for live action events such as MCM expo. the possibilities as usual falls on your own imagination.

Avengers

the most popular film recently in cinemas at the moment is Avengers (assemble in uk) i have put the trailer underneath here.



I held my judgement on this film when the trailer was released since normally films like these do well when they come out but people get disappointed which was the case with quite a few of the origin movies, the movie in my opinion as a comic fan and will always put my hand up to say i am a hulk and thor fan so seeing them together was a fans dream. The actual sequence of events in the movie at certain sections got a bit tedious but the action scenes made up for quite a few of these. The actors used for the movie were really well chosen and it is hard to see anyone else playing the part. The post and pre production was definitely hollywood blockbuster standard there were only a few moment were it was hard to pick things out in the shadows but when that happened it seemed on purpose.

They have hinted at another film which i will be looking forward to especially if it is as action packed, comedy filled and as full of adrenaline filled as this one but as usual it is going to be hard to create a sequel that is better than the first film so that is a challenge i am looking forward to seeing them solve

Mass Effect 3

One of the biggest video game series, a giant on the consoles and this is going to be a review of the third in the series watch the trailer below.



Now i don't really want to use this term but the game is epic except for all the trouble of the ending that everyone speaks about BUT this post is about the game not the story as much. now as for the gameplay compared to the first and second the one change that stands out most is the change in the cover/shooting system and how they add a multiplayer in the game. The multiplayer is shown below.



The multiplayer was a surprise but the game itself ranging from the campaign to multiplayer is beautiful and really well designed. As i played the game i felt that it was really good build up if you look at how the conflicts got bigger and while i am a bioware fan i think they did a good job with most of this game.
When the game was released there was a major uproar about the ending and as a fan and even as a fan of games in general they could of put more effort into it but as i said before it isn't about the ending.
All in all it is a game and series i would recommend to anyone and give all the games a 9 if not 10 out of 10 since they are what games should be like rather than making two games the exact same.

chess love story

I don't know how i found this gem but i try to find the people who did it and could not find a better video quality or the group who did it but i really love this animation. The narrative is a very sweet story and has all the scenes and conflicts you would expect in a movie. The modelling for the background and the characters is beautiful since you can tell all characters had alot of attention put into there modelling. I would like to try my own version of this since it is quite and inspiring animation and seems fun to do.

beyond black mesa

The basic story is following Adrian Shephard and a group of freedom fighters trying to get a message out about the incoming invasion.

these are the group who created this stats on their filming
 Independent short film - 2 years in the making - Endless hours of post
- 1 Canon HV20
- 7 Friends
- $1,200 budget for the full short film.
Directed by Brian Curtin
Producer: Matt Hall, Mat Powell
Actors/Grips: Joy Gravel, Walt Thomas, Andrew Gothard
Special Tracks: Nate Quarterman
Narrator: Taylor Robinson
Audio Mastering: Eric Chapman

I really like this narrative which is based in the video game half life universe which has quite a small cast and large amount of editing which i really liked. The lighting for this piece was moody and suits the actual game enviroment. what makes this so impressive is how much special effects in pre and post production are done such as the zombie make up and the costumes for the combine armed soldiers. I would like to try something like this but the factor that shocked me was the budget and the 2 years in the making but all in all this was a good find.

Warren Elis

this is a post about when i went to see a video biography of Warren Ellis called Captured Ghosts and this is a inspired post about how ideas can come from other fields. Warren Ellis created the comic book Red which later got used as a plot and basis for a movie which got quite good feedback and response from fans. The same idea is used with video game design such as dante's inferno which is based of a poem and book that shows as long as you have a good story or basis it can allow you to create a good outcome.

Cinematic game or Interactive movie

Recently a lot of games use quick time events in the games which annoy a lot of people since they appear at weird times but quite a few games have learnt how to make them an actual game such as the ones below.

 

Jurrasic Park the game came out 2011 and was a bit underrated due to what other games were released at the same time and a lot of people don't like the game due to it being more like an interactive movie and it not being action packed enough. Visually jurassic park is beautiful and it is really good design it is just gameplay that everyone didn't like and the story was a little too slow paced for most.



Farenheit was the predecessor of heavy rain and it used quick time as a major gameplay component. Farenheit is a game i loved it had a good story, a balanced gameplay style and is a overall pleasant game to play. The whole point of this post is talking about do you need to make a cinematic game or can you make it a movie where you can decide what happens during the story. i think this is a difficult thing to decide on since it takes away the concept of a game but it is still in debate even now so i expect more games like this in the future.

Hydrophobia

Now i recently got Hydrophobia for quite cheap and i completed, now a lot of people had bad opinions of this and it got a few bad reviews but i think most people forgot that this was an xbox live arcade game so it was never going to be A list. Many people found that the water physics were over hyped but when i played it i found that if there was a glass window on the other side and you were going to get attacked you just shot the window and the water rushed them off their feet, since it is only a xbox arcade game i think that is really well done. I agree with a lot of people that say it wasn't as good as it should be but as i pointed out above it wasn't going to happen, the feedback from all the reviews help Dark Energy Digital since they have potential with this. Water based games are popular due to it being a challenge and i wouldn't mind trying to create my own game with physics like this game. The game is really moody and it does well making the game dark and moody but still allow you to see were you are as you move around, the gameplay was a bit lacking and the story could of been improved but like i said the game had potential. The game used a fps format rather than sticking to puzzle platformer which i think suits it better.
Personally i would recommend this game but a lot of people wouldn't  which is fair enough since we all have an opinion

Somebody that I used to know

This is the music video for Gotye song 'Somebody That I Used To Know' that had a little Controversy over the meaning of the narrative in the music video. What i really like about this video is that they do a really good job with the colours and how all it really is is two people singing in front of the camera it is a very nice piece and goes well with the song. I really like how it isn't a complex video with a lot of moving shots it is basically a tripod at a certain height just recording which you can see with the speeded up sections. i really like how simple this video is and how it can be shown to anyone and the narrative is brought across.

Tangled

I recently watched Tangled and it was the first time i saw it and while watching it felt very old disney rather than how disney have done most of their most recent movies, I feel that the movie brings a nice touch to an old story under here i have the official trailer.



Now the movie itself is a nice family movie and this trailer gave a different feeling than the actual movie itself and i would of liked if some of these scenes that are not in the movie were used. The movie itself was good but the thing that really impressed me was the animation of the hair since it flows very realistically in certain scenes of the movie and that is what interested out of the whole movie sadly. The story and sound design were good but i felt it didn't have as much of an impact since i was doing the animation module at the time so that was the bit that got my attention rather than the other aspects of the movie.

As i have said i enjoy the movie as a whole but the animation that was done that made me make a post about it.

This is a video showing how it didn't all go to plan.

Kinect applications

now kinect is the most recent advances on xbox 360 and it has gained a lot of popularity for the fun you can have as a group, personally i think kinect is for more child related audiences such as family but also a large group of teens or adults since it is just a innocent form of enjoyment.

As a piece of technology the kinect has a range of possiblities such as below:



 The way they showed using the camera to generate a puppet that moves with your hand and makes sounds with your movement, the puppet is really impressive but i want to see what else you can create using this type of projection and modelling for example a full body model and projection of a bird or a creature that can be projected on a wall.



This is more my thing i love the idea of creating a weird creature and motion capturing him without using the multiple cameras or renting out a large space to do the filming i would like to look more into the technology of this and also the program they use since it seems an easy to use program.



It's amazing when you look at the difference between the raw data and the animation model it's hard to believe he can get such great facial captures from such rough raw data. The ability to capture faces using the camera makes the amount that it will cost to do it decrease so more games or animations could have better facial acting which is an exciting as a designer.

The abilities of the camera are really a lot more than what they originally designed it for i think but the only ones who know that are microsoft so i am not sure. This one piece of tech as made it possible to do a lot more as designers and i look forward to see what someone does with it in the coming year.

Tesla Coils

This is a weird post since it isn't about the thing itself but what it suggests for media and concept for media.
 

Now Arc attack aren't the first group to use tesla coils to create music but the are the most well known and it is a very impressive sight and can lead to a lot of interesting concepts in the future. Now below is a scene from Sorcerer's Apprentice which uses the tesla coils in the story.



Now the reason i brought this up is because it shows a narrative in a story can be directly affected by technological advances which thankfully for script writers it means they can advance their story teller, Writing stories for me is more imagination based but as this style of inspiration arrives it means i can change ideas and make them better or completely revamp an idea.

Music In Our Games

Video games have always used music due to the immersion it can create for the player ranging from calm music during the town or city scenes and fast paced music for fights or battles one such series that created iconic music that is memorable to all who have played them is the final fantasy series. Nobuo Uematsu is the video game composer for the final fantasy series and created all the pieces which allowed the composer to go the direction he wanted.

Some games use already worldwide and famous music but use them set places such as Saint's Row the third which uses 3 songs in certain parts of the game to give the feeling of power or desperation to the player. One such song was Bonnie Tyler holding out for a hero which is played in a car chase at the end of the game while you try to save your friend, the song empowers the player and makes the player hold down the accelerator a little longer than normally, also must be said i love that section and song.


(this was the only video i could find that shows the saints row use of sound if you want to see the part go 1:00 in)

Some of my favourite music is just because of the position of the music such as the use of just a simply cue to enter a character or an event on screen or more commonly known on the ost as a characters theme which is normally only played at a certain part. one of my favourite examples of this is gears of war 3 when if you fufill a certain condition it plays the ashes to ashes trailer music which for fans is a really nice thing.

I really like when companies give extra effort when designing music for games be that either fitting for the scenes or if they create an easter egg for the customers of the company.

Hatsune miku

Now the japanese have always come up with interesting ideas and technology and this one is about hatsune miku here is a video of her below



Now as the video shows she isn't real but that is not the point i am raising today what i want to talk about is the software called Vocaloid and this is the description from http://www.vocaloid.com/en/about/
"Vocaloid is a technology for singing voice synthesis developed by Yamaha, and the name of this software application. The software allows users to input melody and lyrics in order to synthesize singing. In other words, with this technology, singing can be produced without a singer.
Singing voice synthesis is produced by using fragments of voices recorded from actual singers, called the Singer Library. By changing this Singer Library, various voices such as Miku Hatsune and Gakupoid are able to be created. There are countless musical pieces that have been uploaded to Nico Video and Youtube that use these products."

So the reason i decided to talk about Vocaloid is because i find it interesting and i believe it won't just be a passing fad so to speak. A few people use the vocaloid as backing singers so thankfully it won't be just for lead singers since they would be to similar in my opinion. The thing that amazed me was how you wouldn't have to worry about them being sick or losing their voice since it is all computer generated. I would love to get the program just so i could play around with it and create new voices to use in video games and animations.

Blur studios

the first piece i realised that i had seen of theirs was the gentlemen's duel.



i enjoyed the piece a lot since it brought a interesting twist with the steam punk machines to a quite old mundane thing which is the gentlemen's duel. The art direction of the piece is amazing and the use of light in the piece really gives the feel of a duel. After this piece i looked into Blur studios which is the animation reel below.



I really didn't know they did all these until i looked on their site and it really surprised me that a company i just heard of was apart in all these games. On this video's youtube page i saw a comment from someone saying "So their job is to make S*** games look better than they actually are, this i find unfair I think you have to take it the same way you takeTV adverts it won't be like the advert since the things are supposed to get major hype so you are interested so when you get the game you can make a judgement when you buy it. Ignoring the negativity the company are really good at there job and this shows with their portfolio and how much people talk about the games at least 10 of the games they have worked on i own and all the other ones i have seen parts of. Definitely a job i wouldn't mind putting my name to in the future.

Sound Test

I used a lot of sound effects on my project so being taught about pitch, range, 2d sound, 3d sound and Doppler effect really helped give the effect of the battle around you and i was able to set the area of battle around you by using cubes to attach the sound and move it around to the desired position. one thing i didn't get taught was if i could give a slight delay to the start of a sound file but i managed by using soundtrack pro to get the sounds to last longer. I should of put background music in but face it because of the alarm as a 2d sound and is everywhere you wouldn't hear it.

Terrain tool

With my piece i didn't use this but it was very helpful to learn especially since i have future ideas that will need an easy to make environment, the tool was mainly used during my test shipyard since it was more used for the background rather than the actual playable area. I will use this tool more in the future but at the moment in my space level i didn't use this at all.

Particles

One part i really enjoyed experimenting with was particles since you can do so much with particles, ranging from fire, smoke, rain, dust, waterfall and many more which if you add scripting i think the amount of stuff you can do increases quite a lot such as your character walks on a trigger and steam bursts out of the floor. In my environment i used fire and smoke but i also changed smoke to make steam that flows along the floor giving an eerie effect as the player moves through the level.

Intern Crit/ play test

 These were the feed back i received and the main point at the time was texturing, lighting and the ability of not being able to fully explore the level so i took all the comments into consideration and edited the piece accordingly.

UV mapping & Texturing

UV mapping & texturing was difficult for me since i had a hard time getting used to it, i got the mapping and texturing in the end but was and still am really tentative when using it. One thing i didn't do was bump mapping since i found it difficult to get to appear how i wanted them to. I know that white is top and black is at the bottom on the bump map but i felt that i should try this more during my own time when i have a long period of not doing work to get better at it.

Unity

When we started unity it seemed a bit confusing but i found when we got into it i enjoyed it, the layout seemed easier after the first lesson since the first lesson we learn' about colliders and mesh renders which leads to creating invisible walls and also triggers for sounds and scripted events. After the renders we looked into lighting and how it was similar to maya in the way of how it is controlled and how it appears.

I look forward to learning more.

Moral Combat

We watched a documentary which was talking about ratings and also just because you can design a completely violent game should you. My thoughts is that violence in video games isn't bad if it is used tastefully such as hitman series since some of the violence is bad since the objective is to kill your target but it is done more tastefully than say manhunt which is an appalling game.
 
   Violence has been used to make you hate a character since the dawn of story telling so i don't see why a new form of media gets so much trouble for it when you have horror movies that should just be called gore movies.

  One point that they brought up that i agree with is that if a person plays a game and says it encourages them to kill i think there is a psychological problem with that person even if he didn't play games i mean hell do you see someone on TV go i want to wrap people in a ball like Katamari when asked why he murdered people no he just wants something to blame so it doesn't lay on his conscience.

Recently kids have become immune to violence and they blame designers but like one of the people said it's not the developers that are wrong it is the parents that allow them to play it which needs to stop blaming someone else and look more into how they raised their kids

This topic i think will keep going just because we are a new media in the industry so it is a bit of pick on the new guy so we will keep getting this abuse till we all agree on something that is beneficial to all.

Current Trends and Approaches in Games Industry

With research the book suggests looking into similar games and playing them to get a feel of what worked and look into reviews to find what the general population likes about a game and what each person interaction is in the project and when they start work in the project. I enjoy looking at this book since it has a lot of good information to give and also shows how to lay out your idea in a proper format.

Idea and Concept Development

In the computer game design course text book we were mean't to read sections of the book to gain a better understanding of the industry. The first section read was about inspirations to design and how you can design a game in the most unlikely way such as Pokemon which is glorified childhood bug hunting. The use of sketchbooks is highly suggested since it is a collection of possible inspiration for a later project including pictures, ideas and drawings. As For creating a new game it brings up the point of status quo and how instead of health packs in call of duty they made your screen red and blurry which caused your aim to be off until it regenerates. One section talked about how to gather materials and ideas and one of the key points was the internet which i have to agree causes a lot of different inspiration and help find research materials.The point it suggests is use mood boards and keeping references in one place which is something i have always done.

Carlton Reeve: Play with Learning

Carlton Reeve talked to us about how you can learn using games such as the ones you get on children sites but i personally think most of them are dull especially if there is only one correct answer since that limits the amount that as a designer you can do but also feel like it will bore the kids.

Not all learning games are for kids though since you have ones like flight simulators and bike simulators which are for learning but a different type of learning and a different age range.

Adrian Hon, Six to Start: New Stories for New Platform

Adrian Hon had quite a different presentation compared to the others since unlike when the ones i have posted spoke they spoke about technology in their own games but i liked this guy since he spoke about how stories can still be pleasant in new platforms such as Android phones and iPhones and when you look at angry birds what he says make some sense. The one that he used as an example which i liked was a zombie one which was used as a motivator for jogging and the further you went the more in game money you got for the game, now jogging you don't expect to have a story behind it but he showed how times are changing and we can no longer limit our creativity to just consoles.

I am not sure about a narrative in simple games that you play when waiting for a train or sitting at a cafe having a coffee but just like the zombie game you just have to find an angle you can work on.

Brendan McNamara, Team Bondi: Bringing Humanity to Games

L.A Noire One of the biggest games of the year and the main part that got people's attention was the amazing motion capturing for facial recognition which as Brendan mentioned was a program they had to make so they were able to capture changes in facial expression.

This amazes me i really look forward to watch them trying to push the boundaries with this tech. I would love to explain what technology they use but to be honest i would not be able to explain this like the video can.

Eurocom: Motion Capture in Goldeneye 007 Reloaded

Goldeneye was a game that was originally on N64 but with the remake of the original movies with a new james bond they decided to remake the game with the new james bond being face captured which gives a better feel to the overall gameplay since you feel like you are being talked to by a real person which increases the immersion even if you don't realise it.



The motion capture they did was a lot of face and movement capturing such as being shot and falling which i think as a gamer looks nicer but also feels like they put the effort in for the fans. The actual levels in the games are all remakes of the first game which though it means there isn't as much creativity as there is if you are making something from scratch but still has as much work.

Nick Adams, Blitz Games: Designing for a Radical Control Method

Blitz Games showed more Puss in Boots that uses kinect that unlike the first one had more action tagged on the game rather than puzzle or family oriented but the person raised a point that i'm glad they thought about and that is when i swing a sword the angle or height or speed will change depending on the person which i think is the problem with this style of game controls, the same impacts Wii Play and kinect since unlike a handheld controller it isn't a button push instead it is movement.

I think this shows the movement thing quite well when you look at the cat but though this shows a different point than what i was making. how Blitz games said they got around it trying to follow your arms they make it respond to the first bit of movement so when you finish coming though with the slash the game finishes with you which was really well done since it feels like you have done it and not that it is partially scripted to do it at a certain arm position.

Cat & Mouse: Animating the animal kingdom and the Magic Kingdom

On the first day we had members of Frontier Developments to talk about creating a game that was mainly kinect based, the two games they spoke of was Kinectimals & Disneyland Adventures which thought they are both are child friendly games they are impressive to see when you look at all the intereaction that is present to the person who is playing the game.

Kinectimals was a game that was released when the kinect came out and it bought a new way of playing games to the xbox and it's fans with a fully interactive puzzle game with cats and bears as your avatar.
The feeling this way of playing gives you i think is pleasant but not for someone like me who is a serious gamer but as we advance in technology the closer it feels that we are getting to a way of immersing yourself in a rpg.

Disney Adventures though it is childish it has shown that this can be used for more than games since it is in scale to the actual park. The way they created could be used to rebuild the Colosseum or the Titanic so people who might not be able to see it with their imagination can witness it as it might of been. which would be good in museums, on site or even at home. Now i don't know about you but i would love to walk across the deck of the titanic using the kinect or even go to stone henge and see it in away that makes you believe you can touch it.

The actual games don't interest me overall but it is what the games suggest and show which really got my attention with the presentation, I look forward to seeing what more can be done with the tech over the next couple of years.

Bradford Animation Festival

The class all went on a trip to Bradford Animation Festival for two days while the event lasted for a week. I wanted to go see an event that was done by Ray Harryhausen but due to me not doing my research i couldn't go to see it. I didn't stay for any of the mixing events due to trying to get home but i would of gone if i was able to.

social media & communication

the use of internet and phones was the main point of my media which is incorporated into our course by vimeo, youtube and tumblr by allowing us to post films, animations and messages to people all around the world. The main version that every sees are virals which are everywhere.


Diagram in presentation
this affects all media especially in this day and age

Visual Communication

I did not take notes due to the speed the lecturer speaks and the lack of words in the presentation but the basic thought around the piece is that everything that is put in an image is there for a reason such as the picture she showed of obama with the flag badge and the congress building behind him all were put in the picture to have an effect on the audience consciously or subconsciously. one quote i did write down was "These signifiers will be called connotators and the set of connotators a rhetoric, rhetoric thus appearing as the signifying aspect of ideology".

 The badge was a signifier which was then called a connotator and if you add the congress building it becomes rhetoric which signifies the ideology of the president.

Communication

the three points that i got from this mainly was the semiotics

Semantics is what a sign stands for

Syntactics is the relationship among signs

Pragmatics Is the practical use and effects of signs

Fashion as Photography

now as the name of the lecture implies it doesn't have a major connection to us but that is wrong since the lecture shows the advancement of film for camera which is one of the mediums we use in a lot of work even if it is just doing a wreckey, but the main point was how they used people and how they were shown  and how they push the boundaries which applies to all media since if i want to make a likeable character i won't go for an evil look i would make then stylish. the later photograph shows how to bring the surroundings into a form such as unfortunately the war picture but they are done in a way that has an effect on the audience.

Contextual practice exercise

Each of these videos show something different to the audience even if only a small change is shown it still impacts the audience differently. The first video adds movie fight scenes which if you never watch the movie or know of the character might not know this is an action movie since the original is calm and gothic. With the added action scenes it shows to the audience, first the character which is just a symbol as a person and second shows that this is a crime fighter especially if combined with the gothic opening that gives the appearance of buildings as you swoop past.

The second Video though could of been better down shows the use of colour changes the feel from gothic and moody tones to more of a industrial city feel and a secret hint into one of the key moment in the film which is joker using his joker gas that is green like the beginning of the video.

The Last video shows a sped up version of the opening and different music, this in itself gives a more fast paced action feel due to the style of the song as well as how fast you move over the opening. The music feels like a heartbeat when you listen to the beat which gives the feeling of fear that is usually described with batman.

The type was another aspect that could of been changed if it wasn't intricate to the video but due to it's size and colour i could not edit it out but as you can see on all of then a serif font is used which is gothic but if a sans- serif font was used it would have a more modern business feel to it rather than the gothic appearance.

History of Advertisment

Though this lecture did not mean much to me  during the lecture when you contextualise it it shows a connection to what i do since it is evolves during it's progression and also starts up international advertisement which has in the past used a lot of animation such as Cheetos and the old monster munch adverts. The main thing i took however was more though into connotations and art direction since it is really important when designing a piece for advertisement and the world wide market. One piece i like was strategy, art, copy which gives the same feeling as when designing a good character that will be enjoyed.

Media Specificity

I didn't write any notes for this one due to the large amount of information that would need to be written for me to make any sense of it so instead i went back and looked at the lecture powerpoint and read though that. From what i could gather from the lecture it seems to make the point that media specificity is  the term for the limits in your work being the process for the materials itself such as if i wanted to create a massive spaceship in maya modelling and put it into unity the gameplay would suffer due to the limitations of the machine being able to render it all. Though this term seems bad it also helps us grow and create new media such as cars improving and tapes to cd s.

Type lecture

I originally was in a graphic design course so we were explained the importance of type so i only took a few notes but basically type have all there own form and this form can deliver a feeling just like an illustration can have its own connotations surrounding it. Since i took two years doing working with type i didn't decide to put the notes up but instead wrote about what i had learn't before and during the lecture.

Avant Garde

This term is used for categorising challenging innovated and inspired ideas. This term is used in all media ranging from film and advertisement to architecture. since this is so broad anything is possible to the designer.

Italian Vernacular Cinema

These films were called Giallo meaning yellow because of the books it is based on. the movies test taste, style and expression. most of the people from these movies are set in a jet set life with parties and drinks all around and use english travellers and i person mixed up in it all.

French New Wave Cinema

This type of cinema was breaking away from the set ways of the american cinema, The way of the French New Wave cinema was to reinvent the film from the ground up which in the end made the people respond well to movie.

Auteur

Auteur is a person more usually called film maker most of the time a director who manipulates the film. The Director is often well known and celebrated  the Auteur has their own language when it comes to film and their own style that they follow like artists they will make, set and break the rules.

Graffiti & street art

Apart of culture and art itself graffiti/street art was recorded first being done in the caves of Lascaux and has also been found in ancient Rome Pompeii which shows that i can be used to deliver a message and can be shown as a symbol to rally behind. For films and games graffiti can be used as a story or can be a subtle undertone to connect to over connotations such as hardships, war and famine. The look of graffiti is always unique even if the artist does it a hundred times and shows a form of the little man's voice.

Post Modernism

Post Modernism was a response to modernism and the horror of world war I And unlike modernism post modernism involves innovation and originality. Post modern was associated with the idea of global village and globalisation of cultures and races. As a film format it lead to a more artistic form in movies which still has an effect today.

Modernism

Modernity is the term used for industrialism and Urbanism but it also was how the artists saw the city around them.Another movement called surrealism is linked to modernism such as Hitchcock who uses Dali as inspiration for set design. the modern movement became a lot of consumer based items which instead of being unique they became generic and easily replicated, the movement itself was very much an audience piece rather than designed for a single person. Modernism itself created new technologies which led to us having the technology of film, the main idea it gave was the idea of form to function.

Advent Children

Square Enix's famous animation called final fantasy VII Advent Children amazed people when it first came out. keeping in mind it is japanese which normally don't do normal body ratio's they got the body looking very realistic for the ratio which made it easier to get reference to movement and weight as the characters move which ranged from walking to fighting and jumping. Due to the budget they could hire very skilled animators for the project which proves large budget more time and skill behind a piece.