Game Production & Visual Design Developments

In Game Production this year I’ve been introduced to 3DS Max and however that it may have started out a bit slow for me I’ve really gotten use to it and produced a lot of good work I would say, though it seems no however good you think your work is there’s always someone to criticize it, but it’s a harsh reality.

My work has been a bit sloppy and messy throughout so I have had to come back and address things, at first I thought I’d just produce everything in 3D however I could get it done but after a while you realise that there’s no hiding from having to unwrap assets instead of mapping everything and that the mesh flow must be good and clean that that everything must be named and have the correct sizes! I thought it’s overcomplicating it at first but to be professional you must take the time to do it and not be lazy! I avoided the 3D work as much as I could at first because I thought it was hard to get use to and I’m sure we’ve all been stressed with it at some point but like I say you can’t hide and I have bothered to get myself into gear and do it.

I’ve now tackled my fear of understanding how to unwrap assets and model them efficiently, I have found myself asking for help quite a few times along the way though. Next year I’m not going to ask as much for help unless I really need it, University is about self teaching yourself so I need to do a lot of that, no one else can help, like we’ve been told countless times, this is not school or college and at first I treated it like college, but I’m a slow learner so over time I do eventually understand things! So I’m going to do that especially after basically being told by one of the third years to shut up and just do it, because critique is overrated and makes no difference according to him, being a third year I definitely believe him.

In visual design well what can I say? I’ve gone from doing pencil sketching to now being more confident in drawing much more complicated objects such as cars etc that a year ago I’d have never been able to do! Now I’m drawing all kinds of stuff and why is because perspective and going back to basics of drawing has really helped me a lot! I have a better understanding of colour theory and have become much better as a painter, I mean I can’t just always produce pencil sketches my entire life.

In life drawing I’ve gained a better understanding of the human figure and different forms of it, though I do need to practise it more, I can’t believe however how simple it was just to not look at the page your drawing on and just let your hand follow your eyes, my drawing of the figure have turned out a lot better this way though sometimes it doesn’t seem to work because of rushing things, I need time to plan my drawings and work out that everything is in proportion before I render so I mostly just thumbnail sketch everything because it’s easier and everything looks a lot more accurate! When we only get 20 minutes to produce a rendered sketch just isn’t long enough and I end up going wrong because of the rush, though I think this is something I need to address, GETTING FASTER! I’ve spent so much time doing one drawing after another on Photoshop and I spend way too long on the images I produce, drawing a banana took me 6 hours to do and it still doesn’t look right!

I’m not sure where things are going to go in the next year but I know that over summer I’m going to practise my skills and techniques in 2D and 3D so that I don’t forget nothing and be fully prepared as from now on it gets harder. I understand depth, composition, colour theory, perspective a lot more this year and I would say I’m well on my way to becoming a Game Artist pretty soon, my only worry is my grades but only time will tell.

I guess over the summer I will have to keep practising my skills in 2D and 3D and probably in the meantime it will be good try and download UDK because as I seem to have mastered the basics in 3DS Max we’ve all got to go back and learn the basics of a new program this October! Best get a head start huh?

Year 2 & 3 Presentations

I liked watching the year 2 and 3 presentations. First off the year 2 presentations, straight away they all made an immediate impact on what is expected of us on the 2^nd year of the course. The quality of the 3D work produced was amazing; at the moment I’m not as good as what the 2^nd years produced but not far behind! So far I’ve built up a good library of the basic skills, but if I am to become better I need to work more and they showed how much you need to work in order to become better. It was the sight of actually seeing these fully playable levels right in front of me first hand which made it more exciting to watch. They all explained about how they went about coming up with the ideas for the Queens building project. They went around taking photographs first which is self explanatory why but I liked how they used these images to create some concept work of how the final thing may look and each part of the level will look like. Actually being there and seeing this done first hand was very interesting, I’ve seen videos of old games that I like and how they went about creating the concept work and making variations of what scenes may look like in day and night etc and how what levels may look like once they finished, but never have I once seen it being produced and sitting around the labs, you can sometimes catch a glimpse of it but to see it actually work was awesome!

I know that working as a team isn’t easy; it may think it looks easy but trying to keep everyone happy in which no one is doing all the work sure isn’t, I’ve even seen arguments around the labs because of occurring problems. Thing is, I think it’s a lot more like designing a game; you don’t just have one designers but a few or LOTS! You’ll find it better to pool together all your ideas and then form that pick out what you all like and will work and what you don’t like and may not work, it’s like deciding on what people think maybe a risk and what they think may not be because it’ll come good, or at least is should come good...

Communication is key, obviously, staying in contact, knowing who is doing what and when it must be done by and just generally keeping it all in order managing your time you have. If one thing isn’t done it can and will throw the whole thing out of place and require you to re-do the whole time planning process which should be done at the start so it’s kind of having a step back to the beginning before you can continue again.

The year 3 presentation we’re even better than what we saw in the year 2 presentations, the thing is just because you’re in year 3 doesn’t make you better than anyone in year 2, even first years have gotten comments from third years on how good their work is, but to me in Art there’s really no right or wrong answer, you’ve got to be creative and just create things how you see them and then create the image in your mind of how you see your concept working out? I think the biggest impact of seeing the year 3 work was the fact that they was making work that I'd consider better than the year 2 work but there is only one person doing the job.

There work was stunning, everything right to the last detail, but the thing was that everyone wasn’t going for same style, in year 3 it looks as if you get to chose what you want to go for, meaning you don’t have to create something realistic just something you would really like to do. You can set your own triangle limit which makes it interesting to model things as well as texturing them I don’t know what my final project in the last year would be, but I know that I’ve got a lot on my plate now before I can start thinking about that.

Finally we talked about how adding things into your levels makes it more rewarding for the player, like adding photo's of your friends faces. Here's a video of how Crash Bandicoot 3 was made, in here they talk about that exact same thing for example when a player dies the animation of the character dying in all kinds of different ways really "softens the blow" as they put it to make losing a life a little more fun. They talk also about how the Art within the game can be changed etc to gain an outcome of how what it may look like when the final thing is finished. They sort of say what target audience they are going for and how really try to engage their audience by taking what they like and challenging them with it.

4 Lions

4 Lions is very interesting film to me for a few reasons. One would be that it’s set in Sheffield England which is near to where I come from; two is that the characters are all Muslims that become suicide bombers and finally... everything I said.  It just seems like a funny concept when you put it that way. It’s completely hilarious along the way. They all eventually turn out to get materials which allow them to make explosives. They then try to decide on what to use these explosives for.

There’s one scene where the explosives are in bags and they are trying not to drop the bags and bring them safely home without getting caught. In which one guy who is friends with of the Muslims throws one of the bags left behind and it’s either catch it or be killed, and it’s things like that which get in the ways and make the film funny.  It actually ends up with them attacking the London Marathon with them dressing up as existing characters such as a mutant turtle and the honey monster, thing is they have the bombs strapped around them all. Earlier in the film they are shown trying not to get caught in which they eat their SIM cards out of their phones simply because they are electronic and can be tracked. Later on the during the marathon however they get themselves into all kinds of trouble, I can’t help but think that the film was inspired all the crap you see on TV where foreigners are threatening to bomb places etc, which is wrong but it sort of based on that but it shows how we mostly stereo type these people in exact similar ways and they aren’t all like this.

The ending however was quite surprising, I thought it would of ended in the way of getting what they actually want but I didn’t quite understand that they wanted to become suicide bombers? It actually all ends up with them all dying, but the way they all die is made funny and it’s okay to laugh at all of them because it obviously not real. One guy eats the other guys SIM card and then when he starts t choke on it someone attempts to help him bring it back up but when he grabs hold of him and squeezes, it sets the bomb off and all you see is this mutant ninja turtle head come falling down. One of them and to quote the words says: “he fell over a sheep and exploded”, it’s just so funny all the way through and has that great British comedic sense of humour about it which I like. I felt kind of unfair that they all died in the end, two of them are brothers and one of them dies while in a restaurant but the thing is because the other brother has had his SIM card eaten he can’t contact the other brother, and so it ends with the older brother jumping into a local boots store and exploding to death, again even for the final death and ending to show it still managed to be funny.

It’s a good comedy but it sort of shows you the kind of things these people go through I thought besides all the comedy, I was well done and I would put it near the top of best films I’ve seen, I think one of the biggest things in this is that you become connected to the characters in which I’ve previously talked about before, talking about how you become connected to the personalities of the characters and the things they get up to and even the environments they are in, such as a certain scene were they in Pakistan hiding from helicopters hovering above and firing rocket launchers into the middle of nowhere , having no knowledge of how to properly use the equipment, causing disasters and getting themselves into more bother. Just brilliant!

Dark City

Dark City, well I think we all know what I’m going to say about this one... It’s another dark and gloomy science fiction, so basically I might as well just say “read what I thought about Blade Runner”.

But it wasn’t so bad; it’s about a guy who has this group called ‘the strangers’ after him. Murdoch (main character) has some sort of power that allows him to do stuff like make doors appear to that of what the strangers have. Basically he’s being chased over several murders that he didn’t commit. Basically what happens is that Murdoch finds out that he’s form a place called Shell Beach and wants to get there in hope of finding answers etc but he can’t because no one knows how to get there even though it appears on a map of the city. I think this is due to the strangers scrambling everything when they keep stopping time etc, the thing is Murdoch isn’t affected by this because he has the same powers as the strangers but it becomes increasingly frustrating.

He wants to get back to his wife etc but he then finds out that the city is surrounded by nothing but space. The strangers use his own memories of which he doesn’t have suffering from amnesia, but using them to track him down. Murdoch eventually takes on the strangers takes on the strangers and uses his powers to bring him back to Shell Beach and meet his wife.

Yes it is a very strange and weird film, but that’s what makes it unique. From what I’ve heard the setting for the film was inspired by the work of Edward Hopper. It does capture that feel of America I thought and turns it into a whole believable world or city in this case. It’s like as if Edward Hopper has already done the concept Art for the setting of this movie and all they needed to do was plan it out where everything is going to be how it’s going to and also what they are going to have for each scene. It’s quite clever; we’re always talking about nicking ideas of what other people have done and making them into our own thing and what better example of it. Personally I always try to stay away from these miserable looking films and games that are dark and what not but I didn’t think it was bad; it had a good story to it and they managed to create this whole believable world which I liked.

I talked before about how were not ever really rewarded watching a film but this comes a long and the entire movie is pitch black throughout it until the very end we get to see this beautiful beach setting, it’s as if all the way through you want Murdoch to reach Shell Beach, the place he grew up in but you don’t get it, so the story sort of sets itself up on him gaining the power to bring down the strangers and getting what he once had back, it’s quite simple and effective whereas most films over complicate stuff with mind games etc trying to make you think more. The names of the strange too such as Mr. Hand and Mr. Book, that’s pretty simple and effective to, wouldn’t you say?

The Others

‘The Others’ is set in Britain which is always nice to see. It’s about a woman and her kids living in an old house with history about it. The daughter starts to see a small boy around the house and the mother is convinced that it’s not true. However the woman (Grace) hears strange things going on like the piano being used when there’s no one visible she can see. She thinks it’s something unholy and needs the house to be blessed in order to get rid of it. The daughter however starts to scare her brother with this unknown small boy called victor. The three servants that enter the house at the start of movie, to me seemed suspicious. We find out that both children cannot be exposed to light, only weak light such as candles thus they must live in complete darkness for the rest of their lives. However the old woman (one of the three servants) says to grace that if you don’t expose them to it ever, then you’ll never know it’s cured or not. I couldn’t help but think this was used in a way of purposely putting the children in more danger. The kid’s sort of question Grace’s beliefs at the start of the movie, Grace doesn’t believe that ghosts exist etc and she doesn’t like the fact that her kids think they could exist. Grace then starts to think ghosts could be around and tries to find the graves of people that previously lived in the house, but the servants cover the graves up. That scene however is done in the way of they are purposely doing or that it was a mistake.

The servants become more and more suspicious all the way through. The curtains in covering all the windows in the house however are one day removed but the thing is the old woman servant says that, that is what might happen proving to Grace they can’t be trusted and thus kicking them out of the house. There is a part of the film where Grace finds a photo of people who previously lived in the house but died, the three people appearing on it are the three servants. At which point you think okay they are ghosts then, but if they are how can Grace and the two children see them? The children however run away at one point to find their father who at one point was with them when Grace found him in the middle of the woods trying to get the house blessed by the priest. The father however seems dead from the start, he doesn’t hardly or even say anything at all as far as I recall which I was weary of at first. Whilst in the woods the kids are confronted by the servants at which ultimately proves there’s something wrong with them. The start chasing the children back to house, what I found hilarious about all this is that Grace every time throughout the movie is constantly using a shot gun as protection, but that is only because she doesn’t believe that they are ghosts and that only find out right at the end that they are ghosts themselves as the children discover there’s a group of people in the house acting as mediums to get answers from the ghosts inside the house which is Grace and the two children.

In the end everything is just to find out that they killed themselves and the purpose of the servants is to tell them this and realise they are the ghosts. It’s kind of weird however; I’m a believer in ghosts myself and feel like what it would be to be a ghost. They’ve put in a perspective of humans and ghosts cannot see each other and basically both are scared of one another. It’s quite cleaver I think and it ends by the daughter standing by the window watching the family that is there move out and being exposed to the light which isn’t effecting the children at all. It’s odd when in the past I’ve seen these types of creepy things happen on TV etc like séances and it puts in into a way of how one may think it’s being conducted as the children whisper into their ears telling those reasons why they are here and answering questions...  I’d never try a séance however...

Scott Pilgrim vs. The World

Being so hooked up on video games my whole life, this was like the ultimate film for me. It starts out from the beginning introducing existing games such as Zelda etc. The opening to the film where usually you see the universal logo  was done in old bit text, form that moment I think pretty much all of us where going to enjoy this. Though my doubts about video game inspired films are always there because we’ve seen it so many times where they screw it up. Basically it’s about  Scott and he has this new girlfriend who he really doesn’t want to be his girlfriend, he starts to take more interest in this other girl who keeps appearing in his dreams eventually meeting her in real, the thing is to date her he must first defeat all her ‘evil exes’, 7 of them to be exact. This leads to them appearing just about anywhere and everywhere out of the blue and Scott must beat each one in a combat battle, but the way it is simulated is exact to that of a video game style of play, how could it not be anymore cool and awesome?

When Scott beats one of these ’evil exes’ they explode and thousands to millions of coins scatter everywhere indicating a sort of arcade style of winning, something that similarly reminds me of winning on a slot machine and it paying out like crazy, makes sense though! There was all these little things in there they had taken from gaming, like when Scott goes to the bathroom and the ‘pee bar’ appears and it decreases as he ‘uses the bathroom’. There’s one scene where Scott gains an extra life as it were, from that moment it stuck in my mind because I thought “Scott is going to get killed later on and his 1up will bring him back” and it did! I just knew it, when you’ve been play games as long as I have it’s so obvious that’s why they give him it. The battle of the bands thing during the film was kind of a cliché, we’ve seen it so many times in the movies etc and the main characters always seem to win, but one thing I liked about he name of the band was that it was inspired by a Mario character or enemy, the band name: ‘Sex Bo-omb’ I noticed the ‘-omb’ part and knew that’s where it was taken from straight away, quite clever if I say so.

The scenes and graphics used in the film was spot on, I think they really captured the atmosphere of gaming with all the bright colours and what not, that’s what gaming in the old days was all about they took the feeling of that retro style and put it in there, which to me is the core of gaming, it’s the start and beginning of where it all started, and I just love the old classics more than anything. That’s all gone now, it’s all about trying to be as realistic as possible with a billion different colours to use which I don’t see ever happening, it brings you back to the roots of gaming through film format... really? We needed a film to that?  Too many people forget about the old ones, it’s all about Call of Duty and Halo etc and to be honest I’m fed up with hearing it, I complain too much, maybe I should actually play it and see what it’s all about.

The one scene I remember the most was were Scott is using the bathroom however and the music is a remix version of a song from the Legend of Zelda, it actually sounds better than the original and as soon as it came on I clicked what it was from, they mentioned Zelda quite a few times in the film. I think it sort of portrays what it may have been like being a teenager (or a young person in Scott’s case)in the 1980’s where video games were at their peak, because to me it shows that in scenes like the battle of the bands etc.

It don’t think it’s the best film I’ve seen, but it’s definitely one I’d watch over again and again because it’s quite odd to see how a film director making a video game style movie actually got it right, or at least for me they got it right.

Sky Blue

What can you say...? I really didn’t like this, it’s an anime so it has its limitations but to be honest, but I’m not going to be fair on this at all, it was awful. Some anime is okay and the Japanese sometimes do good films but this just wasn’t up there at all. It’s apparently about some guy who works for a company but they get rid of him after he hacks into their databases without permission to do so or something and then 10 years later he comes back and also gets back into a love triangle with some girl and another guy apparently...

I didn’t even get what was going on half the time, I understood that the company which is called ‘Ecoban’ is the cause of the clouds blocking out the clear sky. ‘Ecoban’ would make sense since they are polluting the world and not being eco friendly so it’s ‘Ecoban’ would be logical? Anyway it’s set in the year 2142, which I think is a bit of a cliche just because it’s asking us all the question of how many times we’ve seen some anime set in the future with robots and flying transport etc, it’s annoying and I just don’t care because it’s all the same. When I realised it was a Japanese anime, I was praying to god that it was going to be good, some parts of it were okay and funny, but most times there was just so many pointless scenes like there’s one with a small boy and girl and they are looking up at the sky and smiling as if amazed by it, I mean the story is about this company and the world being dark and gloomy all the time but it was a bit exaggerated. The title of this film in Korea is called: ‘Wonderful Days’ what’s that all about? Really?! They sure don’t seem like wonderful days to me.

In the end there’s this one memorable scene that everyone pretty much remembers. All three from this so called love triangle are in the company and all floating around with no gravity, it’s very strange but the biggest laugh of this is one of the characters just float up and you don’t see him, but then he floats back down behind one of the characters standing in the fore ground, but he’s upside down! He’s like done some sort of flip in the air then comes down in the style of Spider Man not only that but it’s like a scene out of Spider Man the way it was shot.

Not much else to say really, I guess all these Japanese anime films and shows always try to be emotional about everything which is okay but they do it a little too often. It’s set in the future, but the thing about films set in the future to me is that once that time comes the film becomes a present day film and once that year passes it becomes a film of the past so it has the ability to change over time, but I think everyone will pretty much forgotten about this by the time 2142 comes.