Yet another backlog

Sigh.

I really need to get into the habit of writing smaller posts more frequently.
This is going to be a long one.

First thing's first - Kernel

As semi-self appointed animation director, my job is to give Kernel it's animation style and direction. After consulting with Olly, the real director, we came upon the possibility of an almost stop-motion feel for the animation, especially after this first animated shot. With the amazing work that everyone has put into modeling, texturing, rigging and lighting, it certainly would be an interesting way to go.

_Impressed?

The discussion also reminded me of how the Prawns were animated in District 9, with very little use of 'tweening' and lots of subtle keyframes. This apparently gives them a more organic look. See for yourself.

He also suggested films such as the Backwater Gospel:

_{How many times is this going to feature on my blog?}

And Little Tombstone:

LITTLE TOMBSTONE - ESMA 2011 from Little Tombstone on Vimeo.

To use as inspiration.

I'll be compiling a little information package with this information and more for the future animators on this project in order to keep a consistent look throughout the film. I finally feel useful.

Now, H0le:

I haven't been working on H0le as much as I should be.
I have, however, finished the rough animation for that climbing shot:

This was my first real attempt at ToonBoom, and I feel that this slowed me right down. I've decided to do the rough animation in Flash. I am much more familiar with Flash and this rough animation can be exported as an image sequence that can then be imported into ToonBoom for the cleanup artists.

Now onto some personal business...

One of the regular podcasts that I listen to is Red Bar Radio. The host called out for fans to design a logo for a joke drink 'Mike's Ice Cold Diarrhea', which was to be put on t-shirts and other items. The 'brief' was simply to resemble old root beer labels.

Here's my attempt. Sadly I submitted the design a day too late and was not chosen, although I was given positive feedback by others of the Red Bar Radio community.
This is the first time I've ever worked on anything for t-shirts, and I had to learn a few things, such as having to use the half-tone dot effect for shadows. It was a fun experiment, even if I didn't get picked.

I've also been playing Zelda recently, and I noticed some cool effects.
The first from Skyward Sword is this cool diamond-shiny effect.

So I tried to emulate this effect thanks to ol' Leonard, here. It seemed to be simply the matter of plugging a rotated checker-board pattern into the eccentricity of the shader and boom!

_{Old Man Ghirahim.}

In another attempt to copy something Zelda-y, I wanted to have a quick go at this effect in Twilight Princess:

here, the darkest areas and shadows are transparent, leaving only illuminated areas visible. This gives a lovely ghost effect, reminding me of the technique used for projecting ghosts on theater stages, known as "Pepper's Ghost".

_{The technique}

_{The effect}

So I had a little play around with Maya's nodes and did some connecting on the faithful Platehead model:

This one used the sampler.Info.node>Camera facing ratio (used to make simple rim lights)and connected it to the transparency.

Here I plugged Surface Luminance (duh) into transparency, which has a much better effect and is more physically resembling of the Pepper's ghost technique.

Some tweaking and different angles.

What I like about copying techniques used in Zelda games is that they're cheap. The Wii is a runt in terms of processing power, and so Nintendo can't afford to use fancy shaders for everything and have to find the effect another way.
I feel that it is always best to find the most economical solution, and being able to optimise your work can only be a good thing. Perhaps that's why I have so much love and respect for low poly games. It could just be nostalgia, but there seems to be a certain consciousness and deliberateness in the models. Every extra poly is expensive, and trying to keep to these limits turns it into a much more creative process. The same can be said for any other artistic medium.
Challenge fuels creativity, and without it, we'd still be a bunch of sponges and worms drifting in an ocean.

Finally, here's some drawings that I done do did:

Free Sword

Fi, from Skyward Sword talks a whole unskippable lot. She lives in your sword. That is the joke. Hilarious.

Breaching Octopus

This is from a dream I had a while ago. I was filming the giant swimming octopus in the background, when a pod of smaller octopus began swimming alongside my speedboat like dolphins.

Marker Madness

It's been a while since I've used my markers. It feels nice to shade stuff sometimes.

Now prepare for a WHOLE mess'a drawings!
In the next post. This one is already too long. Plus the drawings need cleaning up.

Be ready!

New year

As usual, when I go home I have no computer, so I got no work done over the holidays.
The work I did do, however, was dissertation-related.

My topic is something like "-Clever title-:How Video Games Are The Optimum Media For Horror".
I've been looking into topics like Agency (the feeling of possession of an action)

Also, in my scare spare time, I have been working on a secret project.
All I can divulge is the tentative title, Machina, and this colour/style test.

This spinning diamond is an example of the sort of colour scheme and shine effects that I want in the project. I may even have spinning diamonds, too.
The project itself is still very early in development, so I'll need to do a bit more work on the story/characters before divulging much more, although I have been playing about with the Unity Engine - if that's any kind of hint.

Games Corner

AMY

It's just...awful.

Some major complaints for me were:

Poor framerate (even when NOTHING is happening). ¹

Floaty camera controls .

Frustrating combat. ²

Loose movement controls (The 'forward' action on the thumbstick is misaligned, so you end up walking in circles).

Awful framerate (when ANYTHING happens).

Tooth shine. ³

Bad writing and voice acting. ⁴

The above remove any/all immersion and as such, the game is not scary in the slightest. ⁵

Poor framerate (even when NOTHING is happening). ¹

1. This makes no sense to me. My hypothesis is that the game is poorly optimised. I noticed full reflections in the protagonist's eyes, something which not only makes her look weird, but doesn't even need to be there. We never see her eyes close-up except for the rare few cut-scenes, so it doesn't add any emotional value or ease of empathy.

Floaty camera controls .

2. I understand that this is supposed to be a survival horror game, and that an awkwardness and unfamiliarity in the character's fighting style add to the tension and feeling of vulnerability, however, combat in AMY doesn't add to any sort of tension. On occasion, the camera flips around and shows the impact from a different angle, which would seem to add to some sort of cool effect, but the cutaway is so short that it is just jarring and disorienting.

3.

_{Also note the super-shiny eyes.}

4. Horror films and games in the past have always been a little underbudget (indeed, low budgets are what made the cult horror films such as The Thing and Alien the successes that they were) and in most horror movies (and games),the acting or writing often suffer.

_{Something Resident Evil 4 happily continued}

Video games generally suffer from poor writing and voice acting as it is, so it should have came to no surprise that AMY's is doubly poor.

5. This is something that I am addressing in my dissertation. Horror games (as the name suggests) should include elements of horror. This doesn't mean just putting in zombies and calling it a day. Call of Duty: Black ops has zombies in it, and that's the most power-fantasy non-horror game you can get. Even The Legend of Zelda:Skyward Sword has zombies in it. Horror requires a lot more than just a rotting antagonist. It requires atmosphere and empathy - something AMY's flickery frame rate and awful character performance removes entirely.

Now, perhaps AMY gets better later on in the game, but I honestly couldn't even get past the first chapter. I even had Olly come over and try it, too. He managed to get a little further than I.
The worst part of the whole problem is the disappointment. I was looking forward to this game, and how could I not when AMY was marketed as "Ico, but with zombies". I was also hoping for another good horror game to add to my analysis for my dissertation. It certainly made the cut, but only as an example of how NOT to make a horror game.

_{Amnesia, on the other hand...}

The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword

I am a massive Zelda nerd. Like an allergy, it only sufaces and consumes my life with when a new Zelda game comes out.

_{Thanks DeviantArt}

So I was pretty excited for Skyward Sword.
I have a lot to say about it and a lot to analyse, so I'll probably leave it for a separate blog post or something, but I wanted to talk about it a little bit.

_{Go run and get it.}

The wiggly Wii controls take a little getting used to, such as aligning the Wii remote in order to get the slice-y directions right. Another problem I had is that the pointer (used for navigating the menus and aiming weapons) doesn't use the actual Wii I.R. pointer.
Instead they use the Wii Motion Plus to guess where you're pointing. It's fairly accurate, but the cursor moves very slowly across the screen, and often it becomes misaligned which requires the player to re-align the pointer.
The game looks surprisingly nice, despite some ugly close-up textures put through the painterly filter.
I feel like Zelda games haven't advanced beyond those on the GBA, with a very small library of static looping animations and text boxes. Also, some voice acting wouldn't go astray. The worry is that giving Link a voice would ruin the experience of the games. I don't think we're asking for Link to have a voice, but for everyone else to speak. It makes them feel like actual people, and it's hard to empathise for an inexpressive looping animation and a text box.
Look what it did for the Metroid Prime series, with 1 and 2 relying solely on text boxes and the occasional vocal sound from one of the few NPC's. Metroid Prime 3: Corruption, however, has full voice acting for all of the NPC's - an enormous departure from the rest of the series. but it worked. Samus remained her silent, stoic self, but the world around her felt alive.

_{Then Nintendo took it too far...}

I'll save the rest for another post, which will also have some art, I'm sure. I do have lots of nice things to say about it, but it's easier to get the bad things out first.

Bye bye.