I found a good thickness i liked and drew the central picture with it, i think this will be the same line thickness i will use to outline my cut out body parts for my upcoming animation.
Thursday, 8 December 2011
Flash Workshop Lesson Three
Today we learnt about line thickness and how this changes the more you put pressure on the drawing tablet pen. We were allowed to go a bit wild and just draw whatever we wanted for a few minutes to try and find a thickness we liked, below are my quick doodles in flash.
I found a good thickness i liked and drew the central picture with it, i think this will be the same line thickness i will use to outline my cut out body parts for my upcoming animation.
I found a good thickness i liked and drew the central picture with it, i think this will be the same line thickness i will use to outline my cut out body parts for my upcoming animation.
Tuesday, 6 December 2011
Flash Workshop Lesson Two
In the second Flash lesson i was taught how to add textures into Flash which can give animations a more hand drawn or unique look. My tutor quickly demonstrated by using this texture which was drawn in photoshop in a few seconds.
She then quickly drew a character and showed me how the texture would look and the sort of result you can expect to get if you use this style. Ignoring her picture and just focusing on the effect, i quite like this style. I think i might use this but instead of making a texture in photoshop, i could use colouring pencils. I'll test this and post what it looks like later on.
For the rest of the lesson we were taught a little more about gradient and went over manipulating objects again just in case people had forgotten. Although I'm not a big software or animation fan, this programme is much more friendly and accessible than Maya, even if it is a bit more childish looking. Here is the ball i had to animate bouncing in slow motion so you can see each stage.
 |
| Red Rubbish |
 |
| Groovy Jumpers |
Thursday, 1 December 2011
Flash Workshop Lesson One
So our Maya tutorials are over! Yay! Now we are having Flash tutorials instead which in my opinion are much more fun and easier to understand. Even though we were only learning the basics i learnt some stuff i didn't know before about the gradient tool, line effects and colour. We were asked to draw a flower, colour it, and then have a play around with line effects and gradient. I liked the look of the stippled line, even if it does look like a five year old did it in MS Paint.
Next we were taught about simple shading techniques and how to join lines up that didn't quite meet, as simple as this sounds it was very useful as in the past I've just deleted an odd line instead of fixing it. Again we messed around with the gradient tool (even though you can't really see it in the picture) and easily shaded our second flower. I'm looking forward to the next Flash lesson where we will actually be animating an object.
 |
| A Stippled Flower |
Next we were taught about simple shading techniques and how to join lines up that didn't quite meet, as simple as this sounds it was very useful as in the past I've just deleted an odd line instead of fixing it. Again we messed around with the gradient tool (even though you can't really see it in the picture) and easily shaded our second flower. I'm looking forward to the next Flash lesson where we will actually be animating an object.
 |
| A Poorly Shaded Flower |
Visual Music - Yvonne Eckersley
In this lecture we were taught about how music can be linked with sight in the form of colour and movement. This is something we have already been taught because we have Yvonne as one of our tutors so none of this is particularly new, however I'll review it anyway.
Yvonne taught us that many scientists and musicians have attempted to link these two senses as far back as 1669 when an argument was put forward for the spectrum of white light to include a 'musical division'. Since then there have been several inventions specifically made to experiment with colour and music. For example, 1730 saw Castel introduce his 'Ocular Harpsichord', which was a harpsichord with several strips of coloured paper linked to certain notes that when pressed, would be visible. This was a very similar design to Rimington's 'Colour Organ' which worked in the same way.
In 1919, Thomas Wilfred came up with the idea that light should be considered as an art form called 'Lumia' and should remain as a silent art form - sounds riveting. Luckily he changed his mind however and revealed to the world his Clavilux, a complex instrument that allowed the player to create colourful patterns appear on a screen while music played. It was described as being beautiful but the design was incredibly complex and hard to reproduce, apparently Thomas Wilfred was a great artist but not a very good mechanic.
More recently, Norman McLaren has experimented with music and colour- painting straight onto bits of film because he couldn't afford any other materials. His work usually consists of coloured shapes moving around to music and he rarely uses and characters or story. After being shown a few bits of his work i can easily say i am not a fan, they get very boring, very quickly, but it is clear he spent a lot of time on them. Here is some of his work:
Even though I'm not a big fan of the examples of visual music Yvonne showed us, i do think there is a connection between sight and music, especially when it comes to colour, for example very few people would hear a very deep loud noise and then in their head imagine the colour yellow or pink would they? Most people associate noise with black or navy and graceful music with light colours.
It is a shame that Yvonne didn't mention 'Waltzing Waters', a very interesting and pretty display of water fountains carefully timed to music with lights flashing through the water. I've seen it for myself and it seems much more interesting than the colour organ etc. and gives better evidence that colour and music are linked. Sadly i seemed to be one of very few people who found this lecture useful, although there was barely any relevance to my course it was interesting but it didn't seem to interest many others.
Yvonne taught us that many scientists and musicians have attempted to link these two senses as far back as 1669 when an argument was put forward for the spectrum of white light to include a 'musical division'. Since then there have been several inventions specifically made to experiment with colour and music. For example, 1730 saw Castel introduce his 'Ocular Harpsichord', which was a harpsichord with several strips of coloured paper linked to certain notes that when pressed, would be visible. This was a very similar design to Rimington's 'Colour Organ' which worked in the same way.
 |
| Rimington and his 'Colour Organ' |
 |
| This does actually look pretty cool |
Even though I'm not a big fan of the examples of visual music Yvonne showed us, i do think there is a connection between sight and music, especially when it comes to colour, for example very few people would hear a very deep loud noise and then in their head imagine the colour yellow or pink would they? Most people associate noise with black or navy and graceful music with light colours.
It is a shame that Yvonne didn't mention 'Waltzing Waters', a very interesting and pretty display of water fountains carefully timed to music with lights flashing through the water. I've seen it for myself and it seems much more interesting than the colour organ etc. and gives better evidence that colour and music are linked. Sadly i seemed to be one of very few people who found this lecture useful, although there was barely any relevance to my course it was interesting but it didn't seem to interest many others.
 |
| Maybe this would have been more interesting: Waltzing Waters |
The Sustainable Lie
Unfortunately this lecture was a part two to a previous lecture i missed due to the BAF trip. From what I understood his previous lecture focused on the pollution of the world by gas emissions and waste packaging etc. This lecture however was about greenwashing, which is when companies spend more money on advertising how much they help the environment rather than directly helping the environment. For example an advert for energy saving light bulb is being broadcast on millions of television screens and wasting vast amounts of energy that will never be saved by switching to a different light bulb.
Apparently at the moment 20% of the planet's population are using 80% of the planet's resources and if 100% of the planet lived like the West does, the planet would be unable to sustain itself. It would be an ecological disaster as there wouldn't be enough crops to feed everyone or enough fuel to get things from one country to another. But we will surely reach a social disaster if things continue the way they are with only 20% of the planet living in luxury. However, as far as the possibility to sustain ourselves in concerned, we won't know until we try. One hundred years ago sociologists were warning us that the population couldn't withstand six billion people eating a basic amount of food let alone a percentage living in luxury and we have managed quite well so far. Fuel on the other hand may be a problem to sustain, with all energy saving fuels seemingly requiring a vast amount of fuel to produce.
Next we were given some statistics:
Lastly were told about how helpful recycling really is and it was quite eye opening. Although we all think that we are being helpful by putting out our recycling every week, a lot of fuel is wasted on actually recycling these items, usually outweighing the amount of energy that is being saved. Paper for example requires a costly bleaching process and only 50% of this new paper is deemed suitable enough to reuse resulting in 50% of all the UK's waste being paper. 50% of all our plastic sent for recycling is sold to China for £50 per tonne (Strangely everything seems to be 50) and is shipped over there, using up a lot of valuable fuel.
Our lecturer's statistics seemed very one sided and included no positive statistics at all. I hope this was just a shock tactic because if there really are such few positive results from recycling then what is the point? I'm guessing he was just using shock tactics as a few of his points seemed very weak and desperate such as glass and metal recycling wasting petrol to take it to the recycling centres - this was the only negative point for these two materials. I'm going to keep on recycling and hopefully that will have some small impact on the world, and if not, at least i tried.
Next we were given some statistics:
- There is a new product launched every three minutes which is usually over packaged and produces lots of waste
- $400 billion spent on advertising luxury products we don't actually need which use up fuel to produce them and lead to a lot of waste and over consumption, this ranges from pop tarts to DVD players
- Cement for new buildings creates 5% of all global carbon dioxide emissions but is very rarely pinpointed for this whereas airports are even though plane travel only creates 2%
- The technology we use everyday like Ipads and computers create massive amounts of waste, for example a laptop produces four thousand times its own wait in waste
- BP, an oil and gas company has received a lot of criticism and media attention largely due to oil spills but this company is actually twice as efficient when compared to rival company ExxonMobil who produce 146 million tonnes of CO2 per year - this is more than an average country!
Lastly were told about how helpful recycling really is and it was quite eye opening. Although we all think that we are being helpful by putting out our recycling every week, a lot of fuel is wasted on actually recycling these items, usually outweighing the amount of energy that is being saved. Paper for example requires a costly bleaching process and only 50% of this new paper is deemed suitable enough to reuse resulting in 50% of all the UK's waste being paper. 50% of all our plastic sent for recycling is sold to China for £50 per tonne (Strangely everything seems to be 50) and is shipped over there, using up a lot of valuable fuel.
Our lecturer's statistics seemed very one sided and included no positive statistics at all. I hope this was just a shock tactic because if there really are such few positive results from recycling then what is the point? I'm guessing he was just using shock tactics as a few of his points seemed very weak and desperate such as glass and metal recycling wasting petrol to take it to the recycling centres - this was the only negative point for these two materials. I'm going to keep on recycling and hopefully that will have some small impact on the world, and if not, at least i tried.
Wednesday, 30 November 2011
BAF 2011 - Day Two
Puss in Boots: Kinect - Blitz Games - Nick Adams
This presentation was given by Blitz Games' Nick Adams who talked to us about how to make a successful kinect game for children as his company had recently made 'Puss in Boots: Kinect'. He said that it all started with the player, kinect is all about the player and so they wanted to deliver a great experience for the player, Dreamworks, who requested the game, described the game vision as being a movie experience but in a game.
Blitz Games apparently came up with many ideas for the game that they thought would be fun and interesting for kids, but when they tested it on them, the kids got confused and frustrated and so a lot of ideas got binned. He stressed the importance of simplicity in games and that if a player doesn't understand or like something, it might have to be removed, even if it is an idea you really liked. This was some good advice for me because i know it is hard to be told your idea might not be appropriate for a certain assignment and it is hard to let go of it.
Nick also talked about how important it was for the game to deliver a hero experience where the player feels cool playing the character. To do this, the game utilises the Kinect's interactiveness and let the player control Puss' sword. However, a kid trying to use a pretend sword doesn't look very good in the game, with the sword going in multiple directions and looking very sloppy. So Blitz Games made it so that the sword would go into one of several animations depending on the direction the kids flung their arms in. This gave them the feeling that they were doing extravagant sword swishes when in reality they looked like a drunken pirate.
They also found out through testing that children didn't understand or think of a lot of the actions to do certain things (that sentence sounds like a mess i know) e.g. to shimmy across a ledge you needed to move your arms in a certain direction, whereas the children chose to do it another way which didn't work in the game. They overcame this by making the action requirements much more vague so the player could do whatever movement they wanted to overcome any obstacle.
The Getaway (PS2) - Team Bondai
Next up was Team Bondai who made the PS2 game 'The Getaway', which used real life actors to create realistic moving game character animations using magnetic motion capture. Magnetic motion capture at the time could have up to five actors on the screen at one time who would stand between two big magnets. However, this type of technology was limited and the PS2 couldn't handle much more than this game was already providing and so mouth performances were unavailable.
Enter L.A. Noire, a crime and detective game that was praised for its facial animations and voice acting. L.A. Noire used 3D camera scans and because of this were able to deliver very natural performances. They used sixteen pairs of cameras, so thirty-two in total to capture these very detailed facial expressions and faces, each character apparently needed 428 in game heads to give of believable mouth performances and idle animations. Here is an example of how detailed the facial expressions were:
Lots of famous celebrities make cameos in this game including Greg Grunberg, Vincent Kartheiser, Elizabeth Moss and Jon Cryer. However, even with these famous celebrities acting, the game had a problem, the same problem as a lot of other video game NPC characters, when you speak to characters they are full of life, but as soon as you stop, they become dead and lifeless and do repetitive idle animations (looking at you Bethesda). L.A. Noire conquered this problem with using lots of different idle animations similar to ones that humans would make such as biting lips, scratching noses etc. These animations are all included in the 428 heads I mentioned earlier.
3D Scanning - Ten24
Ten24 were the company behind the pretty amazing Dead Island trailer and the in game character models. They spoke to us about the different types of scanners they used to create realistic looking characters where every part of the body looked well finished. Even noses and fingernails look realistic whereas other companies don't bother with detailing those areas.
3D scanning helps to get this realistic look as it will scan the face and body in 3D so most of the work is done for the sculptors already. The only downside is that it takes a very long time to scan something and the target has to stay very still for long lengths of time. Here are some pictures of 3D scanning.
Laser scanning is a quicker process that will quickly scan one face of a target and produce a fairly detailed, but usually unfinished look. This is more work for sculptors but is still a very useful way of scanning. The target has to stand very still for this type of scanning but only for about thirty seconds or so.
There is also a 4D scanner that scans everything from every angle, however this takes a very large amount of cameras and is incredibly expensive to do. This method of scanning (although called 4D) scans everything in 3D, and i mean everything, it even scans into the nostrils and ears to produce a very detailed final image that needs very little tweaking by sculptors.
Ten24 then showed us some character models of Dead Island and then finished with the trailer they made. It was all very impressive and pretty cool seeing a game you already own in construction and recognising faces and characters.
Overall, my favourite presentations were both of the kinect for Xbox 360 ones: Puss in Boots and the Disney game, bit of a coincidence but they were both very interesting and informative and gave good advice. Although a lot of the presentations were about the same thing- face recognition software and 3D scanning BAF is still well worth a visit and i will probably be attending next year.
One more thing! As a little extra, here are some of the pictures me and Stuart did on the way home with our left hand - it was a very boring trip home and we needed something to entertain ourselves... Enjoy!
This presentation was given by Blitz Games' Nick Adams who talked to us about how to make a successful kinect game for children as his company had recently made 'Puss in Boots: Kinect'. He said that it all started with the player, kinect is all about the player and so they wanted to deliver a great experience for the player, Dreamworks, who requested the game, described the game vision as being a movie experience but in a game.
Blitz Games apparently came up with many ideas for the game that they thought would be fun and interesting for kids, but when they tested it on them, the kids got confused and frustrated and so a lot of ideas got binned. He stressed the importance of simplicity in games and that if a player doesn't understand or like something, it might have to be removed, even if it is an idea you really liked. This was some good advice for me because i know it is hard to be told your idea might not be appropriate for a certain assignment and it is hard to let go of it.
Nick also talked about how important it was for the game to deliver a hero experience where the player feels cool playing the character. To do this, the game utilises the Kinect's interactiveness and let the player control Puss' sword. However, a kid trying to use a pretend sword doesn't look very good in the game, with the sword going in multiple directions and looking very sloppy. So Blitz Games made it so that the sword would go into one of several animations depending on the direction the kids flung their arms in. This gave them the feeling that they were doing extravagant sword swishes when in reality they looked like a drunken pirate.
The Getaway (PS2) - Team Bondai
Next up was Team Bondai who made the PS2 game 'The Getaway', which used real life actors to create realistic moving game character animations using magnetic motion capture. Magnetic motion capture at the time could have up to five actors on the screen at one time who would stand between two big magnets. However, this type of technology was limited and the PS2 couldn't handle much more than this game was already providing and so mouth performances were unavailable.
Lots of famous celebrities make cameos in this game including Greg Grunberg, Vincent Kartheiser, Elizabeth Moss and Jon Cryer. However, even with these famous celebrities acting, the game had a problem, the same problem as a lot of other video game NPC characters, when you speak to characters they are full of life, but as soon as you stop, they become dead and lifeless and do repetitive idle animations (looking at you Bethesda). L.A. Noire conquered this problem with using lots of different idle animations similar to ones that humans would make such as biting lips, scratching noses etc. These animations are all included in the 428 heads I mentioned earlier.
3D Scanning - Ten24
Ten24 were the company behind the pretty amazing Dead Island trailer and the in game character models. They spoke to us about the different types of scanners they used to create realistic looking characters where every part of the body looked well finished. Even noses and fingernails look realistic whereas other companies don't bother with detailing those areas.
3D scanning helps to get this realistic look as it will scan the face and body in 3D so most of the work is done for the sculptors already. The only downside is that it takes a very long time to scan something and the target has to stay very still for long lengths of time. Here are some pictures of 3D scanning.
Overall, my favourite presentations were both of the kinect for Xbox 360 ones: Puss in Boots and the Disney game, bit of a coincidence but they were both very interesting and informative and gave good advice. Although a lot of the presentations were about the same thing- face recognition software and 3D scanning BAF is still well worth a visit and i will probably be attending next year.
One more thing! As a little extra, here are some of the pictures me and Stuart did on the way home with our left hand - it was a very boring trip home and we needed something to entertain ourselves... Enjoy!
 |
| The States of America game and some left handed drawings |
 |
| Who's that Pokémon? |
BAF 2011 - Day One
After BAF was so awesome last year i was pretty excited to be going again this year. Even though this year's line up was rather vague and sounded uninteresting we knew it would still be good. We weren't mistaken, here are some of the highlights of day one.
New Stories for New Platforms - Six to Start - Adrian Hon
One of the first talks was given by Adrian Hon from Six to Start, a company that focuses on story in games rather than just saying 'MOAR GRAPHICS!'. His talk was gripping from the start and grabbed my attention immediately, mainly because i loved how much this guy swore. The first line of his talk was something like 'Why are stories in games so shit? I mean seriously, they suck!' This was refreshing as it showed he wasn't just another corporate monkey trying to crank poorly made games out and was actually interested in talking to us and getting decent stories across.
He explained that big title games such as Resident Evil, Call of Duty and Grand Theft Auto will always sell well, even without a good story (although i disagree about Resident Evil, awesome story). He also talked about the well known problems with games based on films and books that are ordered by massive corporations and usually turn out to be terrible because no care has been taken with the game's story as it is just rushed through.
His solution was similar to what is recently happening with the Indie Game Sector. There is now less need for a publisher who will very rarely distribute high risk games - high risk meaning anything that isn't a shooter and may not sell well. If they aren't needed anymore, loads more games with great stories will find its way onto our shelves. Funding was previously a major problem - if you can't find someone willing to fund you you can kiss your game goodbye. However, nowadays there are websites such as Indiegogo that let lots of people donate funds to you based solely on your idea. Minecraft is a great example of this. If normal everyday gamers can start making their own games with donated funds and no distributors saying what they can and can't do then games with great stories should be just around the corner.
Kinect Games - Frontier - Matt Stevenson & Nick Rogers
Frontier are a company that have recently specialised in games for Xbox Kinect. Although the Kinect hasn't reached the same popularity as the Nintendo Wii, it has attracted a lot of customers and has sent Xbox in a completely different direction. They were at BAF to talk about their previous release: Kinectimals and their upcoming release Disneyland Adventures.
Kinectimals
Kinectimals was one of the Kinect's launch games and was released in the winter season of 2010 and it received very positive reviews even if it was a very basic idea. The aim of the game is to raise and take care of a group of cats and bears who are all cute as hell and who all live on a deserted island. With their help you uncover the island's wonders and beauty- so it's pretty much a watered down Lost for kids with fluffy animals instead of people. We saw the stages of creation including their original animation research where they had filmed cats. However, Cats are pretty boring animals and don't really do a lot so instead they used dogs and adapted the dog movements to cat animations. As the talk went on we were astounded at the amount of work that went into this seemingly simple game. One of the most interesting statistics was that there were over 3,000 full length animations, each having to have a separate transition animation that all had to be executed perfectly.
Disneyland Adventures
Although this game looks TERRIBLE to me, a twenty year old, i can see how much children would love this game, mindless hours cuddling an interacting with furry cats and i respect how much work Frontier put into this game, i just hope i don't ever have to work on a game with such little storyline and no real character depth. The guys explained the basic layout of the game - you play as a kid exploring Disneyland and interacting with the famous characters at the park and some of the more popular rides. This game is to bring all the fun of Disneyland to the comfort of your own home which is a good idea, especially in the current economic situation, it costs less money to buy a game than go to Disneyland. Apparently this game has over forty five levels and an impressive one hundred and eighty characters - each individually rigged and fully animated equalling a total of forty hours of animation and another one hundred and two hours of speech. Amazing.
I may not be the biggest fan of the Kinect or either of these games but Frontier is clearly a very impressive company whose projects just keep getting bigger and better. I wouldn't be surprised to see a lot more of their games appearing on the Kinect in the next couple of years!
Playing With Learning - Carlton Reeve
A bit of a controversial talk was next up as Carlton Reeve made the rather damning statement that nothing educational has ever been learnt from a game. He spoke about how much kids hate learning games and everyone agreed because if you have ever played one, you will know how abysmal they are. He blamed the educational system on not realising the potential of educational games and not taking gaming seriously enough.
He believes that educational games are an untapped mass of potential for the following reasons:
I don't think he made himself particularly clear with his opening statement and i imagine he said it to grab our attention. I think he meant that although you may learn a few things from games, these things are so insignificant in the real world that it isn't worth the effort and you could spend the time you were playing the game more efficiently learning from a book or the Internet.
With day one over, it was time to head home, get some sleep and start fresh again the next day!
New Stories for New Platforms - Six to Start - Adrian Hon
One of the first talks was given by Adrian Hon from Six to Start, a company that focuses on story in games rather than just saying 'MOAR GRAPHICS!'. His talk was gripping from the start and grabbed my attention immediately, mainly because i loved how much this guy swore. The first line of his talk was something like 'Why are stories in games so shit? I mean seriously, they suck!' This was refreshing as it showed he wasn't just another corporate monkey trying to crank poorly made games out and was actually interested in talking to us and getting decent stories across.
He explained that big title games such as Resident Evil, Call of Duty and Grand Theft Auto will always sell well, even without a good story (although i disagree about Resident Evil, awesome story). He also talked about the well known problems with games based on films and books that are ordered by massive corporations and usually turn out to be terrible because no care has been taken with the game's story as it is just rushed through.
His solution was similar to what is recently happening with the Indie Game Sector. There is now less need for a publisher who will very rarely distribute high risk games - high risk meaning anything that isn't a shooter and may not sell well. If they aren't needed anymore, loads more games with great stories will find its way onto our shelves. Funding was previously a major problem - if you can't find someone willing to fund you you can kiss your game goodbye. However, nowadays there are websites such as Indiegogo that let lots of people donate funds to you based solely on your idea. Minecraft is a great example of this. If normal everyday gamers can start making their own games with donated funds and no distributors saying what they can and can't do then games with great stories should be just around the corner.
Kinect Games - Frontier - Matt Stevenson & Nick Rogers
Frontier are a company that have recently specialised in games for Xbox Kinect. Although the Kinect hasn't reached the same popularity as the Nintendo Wii, it has attracted a lot of customers and has sent Xbox in a completely different direction. They were at BAF to talk about their previous release: Kinectimals and their upcoming release Disneyland Adventures.
Kinectimals
Kinectimals was one of the Kinect's launch games and was released in the winter season of 2010 and it received very positive reviews even if it was a very basic idea. The aim of the game is to raise and take care of a group of cats and bears who are all cute as hell and who all live on a deserted island. With their help you uncover the island's wonders and beauty- so it's pretty much a watered down Lost for kids with fluffy animals instead of people. We saw the stages of creation including their original animation research where they had filmed cats. However, Cats are pretty boring animals and don't really do a lot so instead they used dogs and adapted the dog movements to cat animations. As the talk went on we were astounded at the amount of work that went into this seemingly simple game. One of the most interesting statistics was that there were over 3,000 full length animations, each having to have a separate transition animation that all had to be executed perfectly.
 |
| SO FLUFFY! |
Although this game looks TERRIBLE to me, a twenty year old, i can see how much children would love this game, mindless hours cuddling an interacting with furry cats and i respect how much work Frontier put into this game, i just hope i don't ever have to work on a game with such little storyline and no real character depth. The guys explained the basic layout of the game - you play as a kid exploring Disneyland and interacting with the famous characters at the park and some of the more popular rides. This game is to bring all the fun of Disneyland to the comfort of your own home which is a good idea, especially in the current economic situation, it costs less money to buy a game than go to Disneyland. Apparently this game has over forty five levels and an impressive one hundred and eighty characters - each individually rigged and fully animated equalling a total of forty hours of animation and another one hundred and two hours of speech. Amazing.
I may not be the biggest fan of the Kinect or either of these games but Frontier is clearly a very impressive company whose projects just keep getting bigger and better. I wouldn't be surprised to see a lot more of their games appearing on the Kinect in the next couple of years!
Playing With Learning - Carlton Reeve
A bit of a controversial talk was next up as Carlton Reeve made the rather damning statement that nothing educational has ever been learnt from a game. He spoke about how much kids hate learning games and everyone agreed because if you have ever played one, you will know how abysmal they are. He blamed the educational system on not realising the potential of educational games and not taking gaming seriously enough.
He believes that educational games are an untapped mass of potential for the following reasons:
- 77% of the UK population have played a game in the last six months
- The average twenty one year old gamer has spent twenty one thousand hour on games
- Games are played for three billion hours a week by the population of the world
- Games make millions of dollars everyday - Black Ops has made over a billion dollars in the first year of release!
 |
| Sorry Bitesize, but your games were pretty rubbish |
With day one over, it was time to head home, get some sleep and start fresh again the next day!
Thursday, 3 November 2011
Second Date
After altering my ideas for a couple of weeks my Message storyline was finished- Instead of just being stood up and picking herself back up again she would feel pretty hopeless but after ordering the bill the waiter would leave her a nice note and his number. This is a happier ending which i like as the first could have ended on a low note if not executed properly. The message now is that every cloud has a silver lining - which means that every bad thing that happens can have positive outcomes. Here is a page of sketching i did to decide on the character's hairstyle (even though i ended up sticking with the same one) and a few sketches of the waiter character i have introduced.
I have also decided against 3D as i don't think I'd be able to finish in time seeing as I'm hopeless with the software. Instead I'll be using cut-out animation. I haven't done cut out animation for a few months now so let's hope i haven't forgotten too much... Here are some more sketches along with the waiter character that has now been introduced.
 |
| Hair Styles for female character |
I have also decided against 3D as i don't think I'd be able to finish in time seeing as I'm hopeless with the software. Instead I'll be using cut-out animation. I haven't done cut out animation for a few months now so let's hope i haven't forgotten too much... Here are some more sketches along with the waiter character that has now been introduced.
Give Me More of Your Organs!
Just a quick update to show you how my Design For Society work is coming along. After re-doing my organ donation storyboard there were certain frames that i scrapped and some that i thought were very strong that i will keep in the final animatic. I might tweak a few things about these frames, for example i want to use simple colours instead of black and white and the style needs to be changed slightly - either cartoon like or semi- cartoon like. Here are the strong frames and a basic outline of what will happen in my campaign. Enjoy!!
 |
| This shows how many people can benefit from your organs |
 |
| These people in black are organ donors, they will be simple colours |
 |
| This man's heart is failing and he needs a new one |
 |
| Basic Outline of advert |
Halloween Pumpkins!... Kinda...
So... I hope you managed to buy a pumpkin before October 31st because, well, we didn't. Even after rushing to several supermarkets in the early evening we were too late to grab ourselves a couple of pumpkins to carve. To cut a long story short because we couldn't find any pumpkins we decided to carve watermelons instead! Pumpkins, watermelons - same thing right? RIGHT! They actually turned out pretty awesome and were much spookier than any pumpkin I've ever carved! (which would be zero).
Happy Halloweeeeeennnnn! Mwahahahahahahaha!
Happy Halloweeeeeennnnn! Mwahahahahahahaha!
 |
| A watermelon by day... |
 |
| ...a spooky pumpkin by night |
John Again... *sigh*
After drawing the same guy for a year in our life drawing classes who we'll call John, i had hoped that we would get to draw someone else in year two. Sadly, this was not the case. It isn't that John isn't a good life model, i'm sure his very limited collection of poses could possibly prove to be useful somewhere down the line. If i ever need to draw someone throwing a javelin or someone with their hand on their hips showing as much expression as a lemon then i'm sorted. However, it would be nice to have a little more variety as otherwise i'm going to be drawing middle aged average looking men for the rest of my life. Hopefully we'll get a diferent life model in the near future but for now he's all we've got. Here are some sketches of John in all his glory...
 |
| Subway sandwich grease :/ |
Give Me Your Organs!
My second idea for Design for Society is organ donation. This is a subject I'm quite passionate about, I'm not really sure why but there's some moral issues you just instantly support and that's what it's like for me with organ donation. Although i wasn't an organ donor when i originally came up with this second idea, i later heavily researched organ donation and signed myself up. Practice what you preach and all that!
We recently watched a series of adverts and social awareness campaigns that were broadcast over the 1950s- 1970s. It was strange seeing such different methods of presenting ideas to the public. They were all comical or politely informative, such a nice change from the adverts of today that seem to all rely on sympathy to get something from the viewers.
This made me think about my organ donation campaign and i made the decision not to rely on sympathy and instead follow in the footsteps of these old adverts and use simple cartoons with an informative voice over to persuade the viewer to become an organ donor.
This is my first draft of the organ donor advert.
We recently watched a series of adverts and social awareness campaigns that were broadcast over the 1950s- 1970s. It was strange seeing such different methods of presenting ideas to the public. They were all comical or politely informative, such a nice change from the adverts of today that seem to all rely on sympathy to get something from the viewers.
This is my first draft of the organ donor advert.
 |
| Information about organ donation with a rough voice over |
 |
| A very grim looking sketch of an original idea |
 |
| Possible characters from different races that could be helped |
 |
| Main character becoming an organ donor |
First Date
The Message assignment - where we have to do a 3D or digital animation with a message that has to last 20 - 30 seconds. I was struggling with this assignment and couldn't really think of anything to do so i did what i normally do when I'm stuck and listened to music whilst drawing. Here are a few sketches i made:
I eventually came up with the idea of someone young and enthusiastic going on a blind date.I realised early on i wanted the message to be something nice or empowering and so after the character has been stood up she would walk away with her head held high.
Here are some storyboard sketches:
Now i have to come up with an ending and strengthen the message of taking things on the chin and getting on with life.
I eventually came up with the idea of someone young and enthusiastic going on a blind date.I realised early on i wanted the message to be something nice or empowering and so after the character has been stood up she would walk away with her head held high.
Here are some storyboard sketches:
Save the Kiwi!
My first idea for Design For Society was a social awareness campaign for children explaining that the kiwi, a native bird of New Zealand, was endangered and was close to becoming extinct. Kiwis are pretty cute flightless birds that have lived in New Zealand for thousands of years and because they had no natural predators up until New Zealand was inhabited, were pretty stupid when it came to preserving their lives - often walking up to dogs or cats expecting them to be friendly creatures. It would be sad if New Zealand were to lose these birds as they have become part of the country's heritage and the people that inhabit it are often referred to as kiwis because of the bird. Here are some rough storyboard ideas i came up with.
Sadly, i didn't choose to use this idea as i felt that 1) it would be another endangered species advert on TV that no-one listens to, 2) there wasn't much to say about them, and 3) I don't think anybody would really care that much. So the idea was scrapped. Sorry Kiwis, take care now!
 |
| Happy kiwis playing on swings etc |
 |
| New Zealand before inhabited by us |
 |
| This was my research of flightless birds who are alive or extinct |
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)