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!

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.

SO FLUFFY!

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:

• 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

 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!

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

Happy kiwis playing on swings etc

New Zealand before inhabited by us

This was my research of flightless birds who are alive or extinct

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!

Innovation - Dan Berry

This lecture by graphic novels tutor Dan Berry focused on the innovation of smart phones and Ipads but also the amount of personal information they obtain from us without our knowledge. The things we use almost everyday of our lives - Facebook, Amazon, Kindle and smart phones - take huge amounts of our personal information and keep the data indefinitely. This information varies from our location to our spending habits and if written out would fill over eight-hundred pages. These products and sites and undeniably life changing but are they too intrusive?

The answer is also undeniable - yes. Internet pages and technological devices take far too much personal information and we seem to hand it over without batting an eyelid, but in today's world you need to give this information away to have any sort of presence on the Internet - for example setting up a Facebook or twitter account to advertise your company, get the latest news or even just catch up with friends asks for several personal questions varying from age to your telephone number.  Although these sites state in their terms and conditions that they will never sell your information or, nor will they ever use it without your permission, Internet hacker groups, such as Anonymous, who are infamous for hacking the PlayStation Network, celebrity twitter pages and other large sites have proven that this information is easy to access and can be stolen very easily.

Although this lecture was not particularly useful to my subject and had no real purpose other than to scare us about the amount of information we give away willing and offered no solution to this problem, it was a very interesting lecture. Very few people stop and read terms and conditions when applying for online sites such as Facebook and Tumblr because we assume our personal information is safe. It's a good job these terms and conditions don't state they can own your soul or take all your possessions because thousands of people - including myself - would probably not notice and click accept!

Walking with Meaning - Walk Cycle

In this assignment we were asked to design a character and animate a simple walk cycle. I decided to use the same character I was designing for the 3D animation as this might help me further down the line when I'm actually animating in Maya. The way the character walked had to have meaning behind it - for example if they walked with a limp there would have to be a reason why. My character is a young female socialite and so she wears a long dress, walks with her head held high and has a swing in her hips.

 Here is the finished animation!

I am pretty happy with how this turned out (besides the crazy eyes, ever-growing hair and a neck that thickens at will). I think the leg and dress movements are quite accurate and the arms swing naturally, i also think you can tell this character is quite confident from her posture - even if you can't really see the swinging hips from this angle.

Design Thinking - Marisse Mari

This lecture was given by one of my actual tutors and focused on design, design thinking, 'T shaped designers', the job of a designer and the ethics of design - basically a whole lot of design. She started off by asking us the question 'what is design?', which she then answered with a quote from Victor Papanek - 'We are all designers. All that we do, almost all of the time is design, for design is basic to all human activity’.

We were also introduced to the concept of 'T Shaped Designers' - which is a designer with two key skills, they have a speciality subject and are knowledgeable about another similar discipline. They have two strings to their bow. This is a concept that Marisse seemed very interested in however i fail to see the usefulness of being a 'T shaped designer'. I see the logic behind it - twice the amount of skills, twice the likelihood of finding a job, but i don't see how that is a good thing. Take me for example- i love drawing characters and creating stories for them so i would be well suited as a character designer, however i am also being forced by the university to study animation. Therefore when i leave university i will be a 'T shaped designer' as games art will be my speciality and animation will be my secondary skill. The only problem is i do not wish to be an animator, so having it as my knowledgeable second subject is useless. Obviously this will not be the same for everyone, but at this point in the course i do not wish to be a 'T shaped designer'.

I liked a few of the quotes from this lecture but after a while they just seemed to spew out and didn't relate to anything after a while, the word design seemed to crop up every five seconds and at the end it wasn't a word to me anymore, it was just a sound. And also, even though Victor Papanek makes some good points, how on earth can you take a man referred to as a 'design guru' when his own book, 'Design for the Real World' (1971) is so poorly designed?!

Even in the 70s this must have been awful

Victor Papanek also believed in something he calls: 'The Function Complex', which generally makes the designer think about his design to see if it will be good enough. This 'Function Complex' has six stages that are listed below:

Method
The 'honest' use of materials - the utilisation of the materials must be such that the best solution is achieved.
If you don't need to add another material, then don't include it.

Use

A design has to work - it has to fulfil its purpose, for example, an advert should persuade, a book should be understood by those it is aimed at.
There is no use in adding features that aren't needed.

Need
The needs of the people should not be neglected by the designer. "Much recent design has only satisfied evanescent wants and desires, whilst the genuine needs of man have often been neglected by the designer" Papenek.
Is your design even needed?

Telesis

"The deliberate , purposeful utilisation of the process of nature and society to obtain particular goals"

The design must reflect the society that has created the need for it, and also fit into the economic society.

Association
Our Psychological conditioning, often going back to early childhood, predisposes us to or against certain values.
Does the design meet the expectations of modern society?

Aesthetics

The attraction of the design.

Does it look attractive enough for people to be interested in it?

Even if the cover of this book is incredibly outdated and especially hideous, Victor Papanek seems to know what he is talking about and delivers some interesting quotes and good points, i especially like his 'Function Complex' and have used a few of his steps when designing characters (obviously only using a few of these stages as not all fit with character design). However, i think Marisse may have used the word design a few too many times and i think by the end of her presentation she had lost most of her audience which is a shame as she is clearly so passionate about design.