Of Bots and Bananas Final

Of Bots and Bananas Final




Ok this is my final version of my Robot Animation. On the whole I am really happy with it, all things considered this is the first piece of animation I've ever attempted and everything moves well and looks natural. The main problem though is my choice of background, I had a black horizon but I don't think this works at all because it means that you can't see a lot of the robots. I'll hopefully change this at some point in the future.


The biggest problems with it come from my over ambition really, I tried a lot of different camera angles and pans thinking that this would link in with my flying robot however it doesn't really work. Another part is when the robot actually trips, I wanted a really epic slow motion scene where the robot helper only just escapes however something doesn't quite work and the camera angle restricts what you can see a lot, so by trying something new it actually misses out some of the best bits of animation.


However I am really proud of how it looks and is modelled really well, its a miracle that I managed to get the rig to work because it was that complicated and the fact that I've got anything even half functional is amazing. So yeah I'm very happy with it, if I get time I might go back and iron out a few of the mistakes but on the whole it's a good effort and I'm proud of it.

Roller Coaster Ready to Render

Roller Coaster Ready to Render

Finally got my Rollercoaster ready to render, I'm pretty happy with it I've gone for a basic idea basing my idea around a childs mobile with everything hanging down from the sky. What this allows me to do is have very basic but effective textures so rendering isn't as bad as I thought it would be so I've got enough time to render out a few different shots and get the finished piece looking good.

Card Designs Updated

Card Designs Updated

Ok I've now gone back and updated my card designs, I really wasn't happy with the block colours of the last ones so I've changed that. I've kept the first one exactly the same and I like how its a different colour because this is going to be my magic card designs, so its good to seperate the two different types. I've also split mages and warrior cards into two different colours to make it easier for the player.

Final 'Of Bot's and Bananas' - Part 1

Final 'Of Bot's and Bananas' - Part 1


Just finished rendering the first part of my robot animation, this is where the robot helper first discovers the banana and then goes running off to find the main robot, it's more of a prequel of whats to come than anything else but I'm happy with it just going to plow on with this rendering now and get it all done.

Scanline or Mental Ray?

Scanline or Mental Ray?
I'm at a very annoying point with my rollercoaster, I'm just starting to put it all together and add the final few textures but I really don't know which renderer to use, they both have major flaws for this project. Scanline renders really quickly and does everything that I want it to but doesn't have the same amount of textures as Mental Ray. However Mental Ray, takes forever to render and doesn't pick up all the finer details that I have on my rollercoaster, for example it's missing parts of the string, while Scanline does this perfectly.

It's a tough choice, I think that I'll have to stick with Scanline at the moment and see how I get on with texturing, I can also use the rendering effects in Scanline. It's just annoying though.

A Working Planet

A Working Planet

This is again another render for another piece of the background for my Rollercoaster, again I like the way that it pivots making it look as though it is hanging on a piece of string. I also added some rotation to the rings around it and added an asteroid that follows a path constaint around the planet. Trying to follow the theme of something that has been made I also added a line around the planet to make it appear as though it has been joined together from two different parts.

The only problem I am having at the moment is texturing, I'm close to finishing this project at the minuite but textures seem to kill my laptop and slow down rendering time in a big way so I need to try and find a way around this without jeprodising how it looks, this is Visualisation after all.

Stars

Stars

This whole idea mainly came from the artwork from The Cure's Greatest Hits, I love how the stars hang down from the ceiling and thought that the idea would work really well with my rollercoaster. But yeah I'm really happy with how it looks and moves around quite naturally.

I've finally managed to get the lens effects to work on 3D S Max so without any further adue here is just one of the stars that I'm going to stick around my rollercoaster. The reason for this is that instead of just sticking on a background picture of stars I would create a simple one myself in 3D S Max that suits my theme much more so I'm hoping that this is the final missing link that my rollercoaster needs. I'll now start putting all of this together and keep posting up when something major gets added.

Ready to Animate

Ready to Animate

Ok it has taken forever but I am finally ready to get animating everything is rigged up and ready to go at last. Which I will do tommorow and the get rendering.

I'm going to use very basic textures so that I can actually render it in less then a year. The only thing that I'm not completely happy with is that my main robot doesn't move as smoothly as I'd hoped, I can get around this with some clever camera work but this does mean that I won't get every shot that I'd hoped for. So what I'm going to do IF I have time is do another one over the weekend using the robot I built in Andy's seminars to show how I wanted it to look, if it doesn't turn out well.

Robot Model Finished

Robot Model Finished

Finally! I have finished my robot and I am so proud of how it looks, it has taken forever but now that it's done I can just sit back and enjoy my hard work.

I've gone for a very Transformers/Gundam look and I deffinately think that it looks badass which is what I set out to create.

I'm really happy with the layered look that I've given it, I might have to change some parts though so that

the different pieces don't colide.

I also textured it however this takes forever to render, this one image took 3 minuites, so as much as I'd like to have an epic animation with beautiful textures and everything.

However in the interests of logic and time I'll apply a basic texture instead which should keep the rendering time down to a minimal. So I'll finish rigging the hands tommorow and then get cracking with this animation.

Robot Head

Robot Head

The head for my robot is now finished, I'm happy with it I might make a few minor changes if I get time but I'm a lot more interested in getting this finished at the moment but it looks good.

I'll attach this to the rest of my robot and quickly rig it up and I'm done and ready to go. Should have the finished render of my robot up by the end of the day.

Robot Chest

Robot Chest

I've now finished the chest and back of my robot and just thought that I'd post it up so anyone that wants to can have a look. I am very happy with how this is turning out so far, I set out to create a bad ass robot and that's what I'm doing. The only thing I'm slightly not happy with is that I had to move a few of the pieces so that they wouldn't colide during animation, however that now means that you can see some of the joints. It's not really a problem, but if I've got time I'd like to fix it somehow.

I've also rigged up the frame underneath and it's all working fine now, so all that's left is the arms and head, which should be a pretty quick job and I'll post the results up once it's done.

Roller Coaster Modelled

Roller Coaster Modelled

I've now pretty much finished my model for my rollercoaster and I'm very happy with it. I've tried to get it to look like a mining cart track, so really rough and ready but it works. I've not added any textures yet because I want 3D s Max to work right for the moment while I add all of the planets, stars, moons and asteroids that I modelled earlier but I'll keep posting up as I'm going. The only problem I'm having is getting my things to stay on the track when I use a path constraint, but I might use this to my advantage and have my cart look as though it's bouncing around almost falling off the track.

Movement test

Movement test

Just thought that I'd stick this on aswell before I start modelling the rest of it properly, I've had a bit of a play with the follow path thing used with splines. It looks pretty good so far I need to think of a way of making sure the rollercoaster stays on the track without going through it or floating on top of it. But it works on the whole and that's the main thing. I also tried using the curve editor to slow it down in splace it works to some extent but I'll properly perfect it for my final piece.

Roller Coaster Spline

Roller Coaster Spline

Well I've finall finished the splne of my roller coaster and thought I'd post it up. I know that I should have done this weeks ago but I have been working on my rollercoaster but I've been doing the other pieces that are going to go around it. Basically I don't really like working with splines unless it's on a flat plane they are very hard to get right but it's done now.

I'm going to be working on it all night so I'll post the results up once it's done.

Robot Legs

Robot Legs

Here's a quick render of my robot so far so you can hopefully get the just of how it's going to look. I'm very happy with how it's turned out so far and I'll very hopefully get the rest of it finished by the end of the day and have it posted up. I'll then rig it tonight ready to have a bit of a play with the animation for tommorow.

That's the plan anyway.

Card Designs

Card Designs

Ok here's my designs for my cards. I've got three types, magic, mages and warriors and I thought it better to divide them into colours to make everything a lot simpler for the player. I'm really happy with them actually 'all' I have to do now is add images and types up each card, and then print them off, cut them out and I'm done. Yeah it's going to be a long weekend, but I really want to get the presentation right on this and make everything look good.

Robot Helper Finshed

Robot Helper Finshed

Ok I've now finshed my Helper Robot and I'm very happy with how it looks, just how I planned anyway. It's all rigged and ready to go once I finish my main robot. I should have my main robot finshed and rigged by the end of tommorow with any luck and then it's just a case of animating and rendering for the deadline but I know exactly what I'm going to do so it's all gravy.

Anyway here's a short clip of my robot in action.

Robot - Armour Plating

Robot - Armour Plating

Ok here's my mission for today, I'm going to completely cover my robot frame in plates so that it looks totally amazing and everything, I'll hopefully have it finished by the end of the day and ill post up the results.

Playing with Cameras

Playing with Cameras

Today I've had a go at rendering the practice robot and putting the animating together in a more organised dramatic way. Anyway one thing I've found is that I am a very harsh cutter and I shoot from shot to shot too quickly, but this is why we practice, so I won't do it when it counts. However I did come up with this shot that I am quite proud of, I like the way the camera moves and the manhole cover slowly comes into shot letting the audience in on the joke while the robot thinks he's safe.

Robot Final Frame

Robot Final - Frame

This is the Frame for my final Robot for the animation project, I'll rig this as soon as I get a chance and I'll then be in a position to do my final animation. But to make my robot look all fancy and everything I'll attach a load of plates and wires to this frame and group them to the right pieces.

So basically if this works I'll have a robot that is build from a lot of different pieces and looks really cool but works in exactly the same way as the robot we built in the seminars and will be very easy to rig. Hopefully it'll all work.

A Robots Assistant

A Robots Assistant

I've decided that I want a really small and simple robot that will accompany my main robot during the animation.

How I'm hoping that this works is that my main big robot is the brawn while this little guy that flys around is the brains, and my entire animation is going to be about how these two interact. And I think that it will work well to show how these will react when a foreign object (the banana) appears.

I'm hoping for something simple anyway a very basic flying spherical object such as Guilty Spark from Halo, or this scout droid from Star Wars. I'll have a couple of animation constraints in there for a few moving parts and an eye constraint but nothing nearly as complicated as my main robot.

What I'm hoping to do with my animation is have it so that together my two robots are pretty unstoppable however they are completely stumped by this strange object and then ultimately destroyed.

Robot

Robot

Just thought I'd post this up, this is the robot that I modelled originally for the animation project however eventually I decided that I wanted to do something different.

However this is the key part I don't dislike it and I am very happy with it so I'm going to rig it and use it as the passenger in my Rollercoaster animation. The reason behind this is that I don't want an empty cart just flying through space and I find robots like this easy to get a lot of funny expressive animation out of, which I hope will help with my Visualisation project.

I might, hopefully, if I have time do a banana trip animation with this guy aswell but I really want to focus on my main projects and get them done. And on that note I should hopefully have atleast the frame of my final robot posted on here by the end of tommorow and maybe his little helper robot aswell who knows.

Banana Slip Practice

Banana Slip Practice
Here's a short video I made in my seminar today of the robot slipping and falling over epically on a banana skin. I'm pretty happy with it, and there we're suprisingly few hic-ups. The only thing wrong with it is that I linked the banana skin to the wrong thing so instead of landing on his face it floated around a bit, so I decided to have it land behind him nice and simply.
I know I keep promising this but I should have some of my own stuff building towards the final piece very, very soon.

Gantt Chart

Gantt Chart

Here is my Gantt Chart planning all the work that I've got to do over the next few weeks. I'm glad I spotted how much work I have to do now, atleast I've got time to do something about it, I've been keeping up to date with everything lately anyway but it's good to see how everythings progressing.

Card Game

Card Game
Ok it's taken a while but I've finally got a pretty good idea for my card game. I've just noticed anyway that I've not posted anything up on my blog about it so I just thought I'd let the world know how it's going.
So I've got to design my own card game with a maximum of 60 cards, it has to be totally unique but at the same time not overly complicated. To be honest I've had a lot of trouble with this project, it's not that I've not wanted to get on with it but it's hard to come up with a totally new idea. My first thoughts was to have like a medieval battle game, players could arange cards in different formations and move them about, but after a while I realised that the only way to do this would be with a board or a grid and we're not allowed, also it'd be too hard to make the game without it being too over complicated.
So I decided against that idea, I might keep it in mind though for next term and the board game. I then came up with the idea of a Final Fantasy style battle system and I've gone with that idea and I really think that it works.

Whats unique about my game though is the way in which players play, each card has a value, stronger cards are worth 3, 4 or even 5 while weaker cards are worth less. The cards chosen by the player must add up to a value of 20. So depending on the player and how they want to play you will always be playing against a different style of play, the two extreme examples are one player chooses 20 weak cards with a value of 1 each while another chooses only a few extremely powerful cards but sacrifices a lot in terms of numbers. It's a very interesting system and I'm very happy with it. I've gone through two prototypes already and I'm pretty sure that the game works now, at the moment I'm going through the stages of balancing the cards out not making any too powerful or weak and so on. I want to get to the stage where there is a way to beat any hand, in other words there is no perfect way to play. I'll explain a lot more about my game later I just don't want to explain everything in text it's kind of hard to understand, I'll get some images up too hopefully and stick my rules up soon.

Playing with Lighting

Playing with Lighting

Today in our visualisation seminar I had a go at lighting a room, here are two of the set ups thats I liked, the first is a simple daylight system with the light shining in through the window, the second had no exterior lighting however i added lights to the lighting on the ceiling which work really well.

A Bit More Movement

A Bit More Movement

Just a final thought on my still walk before I leave it forever, there was a banana on the scene so I thought I'd stick on a bit of old school animation like scooby doo. Moving the banana on its own and nothing else to give the illusion that the robot is moving.

Robot Animation Test

Robot Animation Test

Today in our seminar I made a short piece of animation and here it is a avery simple walk, it's best watched on repeat anyway, but it works and I'm pretty happy with it. Next I'm going to do a silly walk, I've actually built a robot of my own that I've decided not to use for my final piece so I'll use it as a tester instead, once it's all rigged and everything, should be done soon though. I'll explain why I decided not to use it once it's up.

Rollercoaster - The Moon

Rollercoaster - The Moon

This is the early stages of my modelling for the moon which will be a part of my rollercoaster. I'll add a few more quick renders as I go along but I'm happy with it for the minuite and I'll add a few more details later on just to make it slightly more interesting.

Space the Final Frontier...

Space the Final Frontier...

I've been flicking through my online journal recently and I noticed that I've not really explained much about my plans for the rollercoaster design. So here I go, I've chosen space as my starting point, this is because I like the freedom that this allows, basically I really want to test out modelling a lot of different enviroments and this would be more easily achieved using space as a starting point than underwater.

However although space is infinate apparently, in my designs it doesn't have to be so I'm going to model an orrery that is upside down, basically all the planets are going to be hung in the air and the rollercoaster will interloop between this. Also every planet will have a very different look to it, this will allow me to model a variety of different enviroments for example, the planet closest to the sun will be almost like a desert and the one furthest away will be ice.

As for how I want it to look, I'm going for a very cartoon, very blocky approach to designing it, the problem with sci-fi for me is that everything looks too sleak and shiny. So I think it'd be a different approach to have something that looks very poorly constructed, maybe even made of scrap metal.

I've been playing a lot of Banjo-Kazooie Nut's and Bolt lately and I really like how some of the vehicles look, they're not sleak or well built but they work. I'm going to go for something very similar for my rollercoaster, it's going to look rough and poorly built (in it's appearance, my modelling will be top notch, hopefully) but it works, however it wouldn't pass a safety inspection. To get this across in my animation I'll have a lot of jumps and tight twists with the cart often quite close to falling of the tracks.

The Problem with Robots and How to Use this to My Advantage

The Problem with Robots and How to Use this to My Advantage

Ok I've been designing my robot and it's going quite well, I've pretty much got the basics of what I'm looking for sketched out but I've hit a bit of a brick wall.

What I've found while designing my robot and doing a bit of research is a problem with how mine looks. With all the cool looking robots anyway you can always see parts of the insides

giving you a glimpse of how they work, and it looks awesome. I want to get this into my designs somehow.

The main reason for this is that character design is a real interest of mine and this is the closest I'm going to get to doing it this term, so I want to design the biggest baddest looking robot I possible can. So what I've decided to do it model parts of the insides aswell as the main panels on the outside. This sounds like creating a lot more work than needs to be done, however I can use this to my advantage to make the whole animation process a lot easier and simpler, and I'll also get a much cooler looking robot out of it that not only fits the brief but that I can be proud of.

So what I'm going to do it model it from the inside out starting with a simple frame not 2 different to the simple robot I made in the seminars but with a different shape. I can then rig this quite easily and that's the hard part done. From there I can build around the fram that I've created adding panels and maybe some fancy stuff to make it look cool. So anyway my designs are progressing quite nicely, but I'm now going to continue with this in mind and hopefully finish soon so I can get on with modelling it.

Robot Animation Test

Robot Animation Test
Here is a short clip of a robot I built in Seminars to test out modelling, it's a bit shorter than I intended but it took so long to render that I'm not going to bother adding anything to it. This is just a trial to show how all the controls work. I now need to apply the same principles and animation mechanics to my own designs. Anyway enjoy.

Modelling - Splines

Modelling - Splines

Today we had a go at moelling using Splines, I think there a very useful little tool to use and will make the whole Rollercoaster a lot easier to model.

First we made a room. which was really simple to get the basics done and then add things later. It brought back memorys of trying to do this last year for my narratives project but doing it a really long way. That's what I've found so far this year everything I thought that I knew about studio max is rubbish and there's always a much shorter easier way to do everything. Which is good but annoying at the same time.

I also made a simple chair, this was really easy to achieve again

using

the spline tool to get the metal base and then adding a few shapes on top just to make ti look nice. I think that using splines could be the way forward for working to get a quick and simple effect that I can add stuff to.

Roller Coaster Design

Roller Coaster Design
I think that it's time I started thinking about designing a weird and wonderful rollercoaster, the trouble is all I can think about is this...

All I can say is that cadburys make good adverts and that this reminds me of when my mum used to make me watch coronation street, bad times. It's a cool advert though and I like the look of it a lot. I think that I want to mix things up a bit though with this project, I seem to be going for a very serious look with my Robot project so I think I'm going to go for a more cartoon looking idea with this. And give it a very interesting style, so influences....Banjo-Kazooie has always has a really cool look I think and with Nuts and Bolts on Xbox 360 they've used the next gen graphics amazingly, while everyone else seems to be trying to get everything to look as realistic as possible Rare seem happy doing what they're doing. What I love about the look of this is how everythings stitched or stuck together, it's hard to explain but it makes everything look a lot more detailed than just flat surfaces.


Futurama's a pretty good place to start aswell, I think I'm going to go with space as the theme for my rollercoaster because of the things that I can do with it, a vast expanse that I can stick anything into. Got so much work to do....

Animation Research

Animation Research
Like an idiot I managed to go to a lecture that didn't exist today, but it's ok I spent my time in the library instead and found some really useful books that I think will definately come in handy with this animation project.

First I found a book called 'Computer Animation' that was written by a number of different authors and editted by John Halas it's good but focused mainly on how 3D software works and wasn't that useful. I also found 'Animation Design' which was a compilation of lots of different artist work.

The best books I found though were 'Timing for Animation' written by Harold Whitaker & John Halas, but also featured a foreward by John Lasseter. It's a very specific book that looks at how the timing for animation works and how to do it right. The best book by far though was 'The Animation Survival Kit' by Richard Williams, this is a really good book focused mainly on 2D work but the ideas will still work for 3D. I've borrowed it out anyway, what I like most about it though is that it looks at how to give life to your characters, using subtle techniques to bring them to life, really really good. I'm glad I got up this morning.

Why Can't I Render!

Why Can't I Render!

It's annoying when you do some work but you can never actually show it, Anyway I've finished my Orrery but for some reason I can't render it as a movie. I don't know I'll work it out later hopefully so heres a few picks just to show that I actually did it.

I bet this comes back to haunt me around deadline time.

Robot Moodboard

Robot Moodboard

A quick moodboard for my robot, not the greatest piece of work I've ever done but it's good to get an idea of what I'm looking for with the design of my robot. I've focused more on characters that inspire fear than classic robots, so I've got big bad characters like Sauron and Darth Vader.

I'm going to look at how the directors identify these as the bad guys straight away within minuites of seeing them. I've also thought about armour as an interesting way of approacing designing a robot. I think that the gundam series does this best basing their designs on samurai armour. I think this is a good way to approach designing a robot instead of only looking at robots. So I'm going to do some designs and get this project done because I've got a lot of work to do this term.

Work and Organisation

Work and Organisation
Well now that I've had all of my work for my seminars for this year shown to me I know that I'm going to have to work hard, very hard to stay on top. On the plus side though I'm very happy with all the work thats been set, it looks fun and interesting. My tutor for games design work on diddy kong racing though how cool is that the first game I ever had, but yeah lot of work to do should be cool though.

One thing I can do though to make things much easier for everyone is keep my blog organised, its all well and good posting stuff up all the time but not so good if nobody can find it. So to sort this out I'm going to tag every post I do. Also I'll use some colour coding my usual blue for Andy's animation work, green for Simon Wallet's presentation work and yellow for Brad Warrens games design seminars. Oh I'll also do Jool's Successful Principles and Practices lectures in red.

Train - 3D Studio Max Modelling

Train - 3D Studio Max Modelling

Just finished a small bit of modelling in my seminar of a toy train. It's pretty cool and good practice, I've also had a bit of a play with the lighting trying to make it look moody and atmospheric, I think I'm going to have to keep trying with the lighting systems because there is so many of them. So heres the model I made below, the first image is without lighting the second is with.

I also animated it moving but for some reason it won't render properly so I'll stick this up if I get chance. So yeah I'll hopefully post up some more random modelling projects soon, and I'll hopefully have some robot designs to post up aswell.

Of Bots and Bananas

Of Bots and Bananas
New brief, 'Design, build and animate a model of a complex Bipedal Robot that can walk slip trip and fall.' I think it's pretty cool and I can hopefully use this task to build up my modelling and animation skills. The only problem is making it funny!

For me the slipping on a banana routine is probably overdone and represents an old type of comedy, so the problem remains how to make this funny? The idea that I have at the minute is to build up an aura around a character, almost like the first scenes of Star Wars.

From the first scene Darth Vader appears in you know automatically that he is important and a bad ass. What I would like to do is create a character or a robot in this case and make him look cool and scary maybe even using music to add to the aura. As we know though 'pride comes before a fall' and I think it would be more comic to build up a character before knocking them down to earth. It's just an idea anyway but I quite like it and I think its a more interesting way to use the tired old banana gag. It would be interesting to see how the animation of this works mainly having a very serious tone then imediately switching to a very silly and stupid. Anyway I've got 10 pages of designs to get on with so we'll see how it goes.

Greatest Animation I've Seen

Greatest Animation I've Seen
Ok This is hard because I'm a huge fan of Pixar and everything they've ever done however the best piece of animation I have ever seen has to be the epic Final Fantasy 7: Advent Children, the movie sequel to the best selling playstation game.

This is for two reasons; 1. I am a huge Final Fantasy fan and even though FF8 is my favourite I've always had a special place in my heart for FF7, basically this film is purely for the fans satisfaction it answers none of the questions you may have with the story from the game, its a standalone story that to be honest is very heavy going and hard to understand.
So what makes this so great?

The animation is superb, from the second you see it your literally blown away, no 3D animation I have ever seen looks so realistic, pixar may be the kings of 3D animation but they always use a very cartoon like style that is great for their target audience, however Square Enix use realistic looking characters. The same amount of care has been put into this game as Square Enix put into any of their games, it looks superb and sounds great, the music in particular is epic in everyway. But what makes this film truly great is the way they use animation, because the characters look so realistic it is possible to wonder why not just make a live action film? It's in the fight scenes that the reasons behind the animation truly shows.

Everything is so over the top characters jump miles (literally) into the air swinging huge weapons with all the grace of a ballet dancer. It's hard to explain but take for instance 'Flying Tiger Hidden Dragon', although a great film you always notice the fact that the charcters are on wires, however Advent Children through the use of animation makes you believe that the charcters are capable of such gravity defying acts.

What makes this film a great piece of animation is not only that it has amazingly detailed characters and enviroments but also that it uses this animation to do things that wouldn't be possible in any live action film. Anyway I can talk forever about Final Fantasy so I think It'd just be better to watch a clip.

Character Design - Greatest Heroes

Character Design - Greatest Heroes
As I said in a post earlier I've been looking a lot at character design lately and been designing my own, I've got about 4 done at the minuite I just need some a scanner and a bit of time on photoshop and I'll post them up here.

However I stumbled upon this the other day and thought it was quite relevant, http://uk.gamespot.com/greatest-video-game-hero/standings/index.html. This is a vote online that is currently going on the website www.gamespot.com , I found it quite interesting to see how all the gaming heroes compare in the eyes of the public. Anyway check it out one thing I would say though is that the list tends to be comprised very much of nintendo characters that are very franchisable (mario, yoshi, etc). Amazing characters none the less but they don't really have the depth of character that some of the others have that haven't done that well on the list. Don't get me wrong pac-man was an amazing game for its time but can anybody really say that he has the same amount of depth in character as Cloud (Final Fantasy VII) or Master Chief (Halo). But it's still a good list.

Like I said I'll have some cool pics up here soon, hopefully before term starts and then I'll try and work on turning them 3D over the year but I want to focus a lot more on my work this year.

Very Cool Video

Very Cool Video
Check this out, I just clicked onto youtube today and checked out this amazing video on the featured videos section. This is awesome, sometimes you just have to take your hat off and say wow, I can't even begin to think how much work went into this. Amazing....

Character Design - Mirror Opposites

Character Design - Mirror Opposites

Ok I've been thinking about the kind of characters that I want to create and model over the summer and I've decided upon the classic hero and villain. So what makes a hero? and what makes a villain? Well since I'm only designing a the look of the characters I can't really rely on having an epic back story to tell their stories so I have to do this through how they look, and make these two characters look different.

What I can think of is my vast knowledge of final fantasy. When designing their characters they often use mirror opposites on their main characters often the main antagonist and protagonist. For instance on the left is an image of the promotional artwork for the Final Fantasy 7 film 'Advent Children'. The character 'Cloud' (left) is meant to directly contrast the character Sephiroth (right), his blonde spiky hair the exact opposite to Sephiroths long silver hair. What is interesting is that the conventional use of colour to define good and evil isn't used here, typically the good guy will be dressed in bright vibrant colours while the bad guy will wear dark moody colours, here more subtle methods are used to determine good and evil.

Again this presents a problem as I am only designing my characters not telling their story while in final fantasy the characters develop into their roles of good and bad, Sephiroth for instance started out a great hero and only turned bad after he found out he was created from some alien but that is another very long and confusing story for another time.

A better example of mirrored characters comes from Final Fantasy 8. The characters are exact opposites and rivals in everything, this is shown best in their character design. Squall (right) the main character has brown hair and a short jacket while his rival Seifer (left) has blonde hair and a long jacket. This use of mirror opposites is best shown in the scars they have on their faces. Given to each other in the epic opening movie http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q09quI356sQ (watch it is awesome) they both go across their forehead and down under their eye in opposite directions.

This is more of the idea I want to use two characters that are opposites in most ways, and it is easy to see that they contast each other in some way. It's going to be quite hard but fun at the same time and something that I really want to look into. If nothing else it will be good practice for my third year when I have to actually do this for a project.

Another Perfect World?

Another Perfect World?

Wow! I've just watched a programme on the TV channel More 4 called 'Another Perfect World?' basically it is about online gaming, and I really wish that it came out a few months ago when I was studying this kind of thing. But I'm posting now out of genuine amazement in the program and seeing just how deep, confusing and big these 'worlds' that are created online are.

I think its right to use to word 'world' when talking about MMOs, people actually live in these places spending more time there than in the real world, they have their own currencies and economy's, one in particular 'EVE Online' has its own countries. There's even a hypothetical Decleration of Rights for Avatars which can be found at; http://www.raphkoster.com/gaming/playerrights.shtml. I'm amazed and quite embarassed when I was looking at all of this stuff I commented on the graphics and how big the games where (this can all be found on my blog... if your interested) but I totally missed all of these aspects of the games, I realise now that these aern't games that you play they're worlds that you live in. I still think that the whole idea of living in an online world is flawed but its an interesting phonomenon non the less, having played a few of the games mentioned in the program I understand what they are talking about.

It's hard to explain but the power especially in MMOs is with the stronger players, just because they are the biggest or the strongest it doesn't make them the best people to lead a country, you wouldn't make Ricky Hatton prime minister (even though he's an absolute legend) just because he can throw a hard punch. So what you end up with is nothing more than a tribal society where the strongest man is king. But what a found most amazing is how the program showed a revolt on a game called 'Lineage' where all of the weaker players revolted together against the bigger players who ruled the world. This just shows however that these aern't games they're places where people live out lives different to their own, maybe it's possible to create a society online that is perfect and we can all live in it like the Matrix. Who knows personally I can't think of anything worse but it could happen, I enjoy gaming and like the idea of MMOs creating a character that represents me and roaming around with a cool sword doing quests, things that I can't do in the real world but not totally living in the world.

For me its a game not a world but things are very different for other people, but if thats what they want to do. Very interesting and brilliant show though.

Update - Past Project and Future Plans

Update - Past Project and Future Plans

Ok its been quite a while since I posted anything on here, This is mainly because I put so much effort into finishing my final project that I didn't even want to see a computer again! the mear sight of photoshop or flash makes me cringe. But ahh well worse things have happened, I got my project in on time (just).

I've got mixed feelings about it really it got to the point that there shouldn't have been enough hours to get it done, but I managed to finish it however the quality wasn't as I'd planned it to be. I found a few mistakes with the coding, simple stuff really but I didn't have the time to check it through, but at the same time I'm happy I got it in on time. I'm hoping that it does alright (atleast passes) and then I can look forward to the next year after I've had a wicked summer. And next year I'm going to get my project management skills sorted, it's always been my problem and stopped me working to my best so it's time to change. Anyway I'll post my final piece up soonish, after I've made a few changes.

So onwards and upwards but what I am most disappointed with is my 3D work on my Identities project. This is the area that I want to go into next year and my Avatar wasn't what I intended. I spent too long learning the program and then ran out of time at the end, so I didn't have time to texture it properly and ended up with very basic colours and no shirt!

So I want to solve this and do some 3D work of my own, the reasons for this are simple... I spent a lot of time learning 3D studio max so the skills are there but they don't show in my final project, also I want to develop my skills further so I get much better and finally I'm really interested in part of the character designing project that will be in the 3rd year (I think). This sounds wicked I've always been interested in character design and this would be my ideal career (if i'm very very lucky).

So over the summer I'm going to design and atleast start 3D modelling a couple of cool characters. I want a real final fantasy style look to these characters because they are probably some of the characters in any form of media that mean the most to me, probably because the games and so long and deep that you feel like you've actually gone on a journey with them. I probably won't be able to achieve this but I want to design a cool couple of characters and see how it turns out.

Anyway I'll post up some rough sketches soon, till then....

English Rose - Finished

English Rose - Finished

Ok while I was modelling my Avatar today I got a chance to add sound to one of my flash animations. Anyway here it is basically the idea behind it is the same as with my logo, in that it looks at the idea of the places you've been and lived directly influencing who you are. I also used this as an opportunity to adress one of my own personal issues, I'm from Huddersfield in West Yorkshire and I've lived there all my life and for some reason I'm quite proud of that but now that I've moved away I feel slightly more distant from the place I grew up.

Basically I used the song 'English Rose' by the Jam (no copyright infringement intended only used out of a huge amount of respect) and put it into a different context. What I'm trying to say with this animation is that although I've left it's still my home because of the people I know there and the experiences I had there have directly influenced who I am.

Anyway I hope you like it I know my description of the video is incredibly corny and I apologise sincerly, however although I'm from Huddersfield however it doesn't mean I'll ever say its a particulary brilliant place and I've made fun of it slightly in the video in a subtle way, but it's an important place to me so I felt that it was only right to get this into my Identities package.

Avatar Update

Avatar Update

Ok I've now pretty much finished the body of my avatar and the head is almost finished so its all coming together nicely now. On the left is a picture of how it looks with the smooth modifier on and I'm pretty happy with it. One thing I've noticed after putting these screen shots up is that the legs look tiny compared to the body, basically it looks like Jonny Bravo. But thats pretty simple to fix I reckon.

But yeah I'm really happy with it so far. What I have noticed with other peoples avatars is to make the jeans they've added a picture over the UV unwrap thing, it looks wicked and I'm going to use this method but what I've also done is model some of the major parts of the jeans, like the pockets and the boxer shorts over the top. So should hopefully have this finished completely very soon.

Update & Final Element - English Rose

Update & Final Element

Well it's been few weeks since I've posted anything worth while up on here. Well I'm sorry I have been working very very hard these past few weeks trying to get this whole project done and it's coming along quite nicely. So I should be posting them up very soon, my avatar will be hopefully done by the end of tomorrow, that is unless anything goes majorly wrong but I will post up something about it because it's actually come a long way since my last post.

But the reason I wanted to stick a post up is because I have totally changed what I'm doing for my final element, I was going to try experimenting with film and layering I think I put a post up about it somewhere. But anyway I was struggling majorly with this in that I couldn't find any way to make it about me, or at least say something about who I am without it seeming corny, one idea I had was layering a load of words over the top of film that described me (I know terrible). Anyway I was looking finishing my logo off that is meant to represent 'my journey' and I realised how important where I grew up was in making me, me.

So anyway I wanted to do a bit of a tribute to that. Basically my idea is based around the song 'English Rose' by the Jam, 'No matter where I roam I will return to my English Rose'. I do want to explore and see as much as I can in my life and I see University as being the first step. However what I wanted to show here was that I guess Huddersfield in West Yorkshire will always be my home and the most important place in my life because the experiences I had there made me who I am (God that sounds corny). So basically it starts with a short of Earth then that zooms in, then Europe, then England, then Yorkshire and so on.

I've also gone to town on the images for this creating them all my self, I'm actually very happy with them basic but quite cool I like to think. But yeah I think that it's going quite well really, it's pretty on the brief as well because it explores an aspect of my personality and who I am. It does work so well with the music as well a beautiful nostalgic song and the symbol for Yorkshire is a rose so result. It's almost finished I've just got to fine tune the last few images and stick them onto my animation and I'm done but it's looking pretty good so hopefully I'll have it finished for tomorrow, but I've got an essay to be writing as well so who know but yeah I'll post up them video very soon....