Sunday, 26 June 2016
27/06- ending
So this blog was supposed to be done last week but I ran out of time. So anyway I finished the sound and the team was really happy with how it turned out. To be honest I am pretty happy with it as well, but I wish I did have a little more time to work on mainly the foley of the film. But one thing I am totally unhappy about is the motion tracking I just ran out of time and didn't know what to do to fix it in a quick way.
Thursday, 23 June 2016
23/06- Sound and Motion tracking
Hello
So far this week I have worked on Motion tracking and sound.
Motion tracking was a bit of a pain and I don't think it looks very good, but I have used the time I could for it and I think it's good enough. This was my first time doing and it was pretty difficult to do in the low light situation.
Sound is nearly finished i have to do the final touches Friday morning. I had to change everything I had to fit the final timing which was the easy part. I then had to put in a whole lot of other sounds to complete the mix.
So far this week I have worked on Motion tracking and sound.
Motion tracking was a bit of a pain and I don't think it looks very good, but I have used the time I could for it and I think it's good enough. This was my first time doing and it was pretty difficult to do in the low light situation.
Sound is nearly finished i have to do the final touches Friday morning. I had to change everything I had to fit the final timing which was the easy part. I then had to put in a whole lot of other sounds to complete the mix.
Wednesday, 15 June 2016
16/06- Sound
Today I re-recorded the last two lines of dialogue because they were not clear enough. i think the new versions are a lot more clear and still fit into the action nicely. A concern was that the last line would not sync up after I lengthen the end but it fits surprisingly well. I still need to time it up with the timing of the shots and what not but I actually need them to be able to do it. Waiting on the others to finish the animation so I can.
Thursday, 9 June 2016
10/06- Sound
This is my latest sound file. it is making good progress and is a bit different from the last sound track.
I have had a few problems with the file storage. I don't think it had been my error as I kept all the files together in one folder, but who really knows and it's fixed now anyway.
Wednesday, 25 May 2016
26/05- Synth Hud
This is what I have done so far for the Synth HUD. I'm pretty happy with it so far. I tried to go for something for a bit simple rather then making the screen cluttered. The 3d map I think is really cool, bearing in mind I got that as a free after effects file. I don't know if that's not allowed, but I can change or remove it if that's the case. I'm thinking that the spaced white lines in the circular pattern isn't really working, so I may remove that. I tried the blue/purple/aqua colors because I felt that they will contrast well with the red filter. I thought red/orange and yellow would have been a better color combo but that would have been to similar to the red of the filter.
Wednesday, 18 May 2016
19/05- Synth ui
I did some more work on the Synth UI today and I thought it would be cool if the it had a grid over laid behind it with the opacity shifted down. The way I think i am going to do this is make it in Photoshop and then shift it into after effects and add static and blinking text and lights to give it some movement a bit more authenticity for what we want.
Sunday, 15 May 2016
16/05-cinematic synth ui
This week I am going to start doing the UI interface for the Synth's perspective shot.
I did a quick search on google and this was the first one I found. I think that this is a good example as it has the center target which would be on the male character and it also has the added peripherals on the side to add authenticity.
I did a quick search on google and this was the first one I found. I think that this is a good example as it has the center target which would be on the male character and it also has the added peripherals on the side to add authenticity.
I don't know how in depth the other guys want this to be but I thought the one below was a good example of a simpler one. I think that a lot of the one below is unnecessary mainly the peripherals.
Thursday, 12 May 2016
13/05/2016- Sound
Hey there. Yeah yeah I know what your thinking it's been awhile since my last blog. That's my bad. However over the last couple of weeks I have been working on sound design for the film. I just finished the rough final sound for the film, I say rough because it is still far from completion. I believe that it would have been to hard to do sound for the model as I do not fully know what its actions will be. I do believe that what I have thus far is a step in the right direction and I look forward to seeing it further developed. After recording several dozens of versions of my voice for the dialogue I found some that I were happy with and I manipulated the pitch and added some filters to give it a robotic feel. I gave each dialogues different vibes this was due to mistake and intention. I did not intend for them to be as different as they are but I don't think that is bad thing. I believe that the dialogue came out really well and in the future if we wish to change the person saying it to provide more variety then we can do that because we do not need to sync the words to any lips. The background is simple yet effective, it provides and eerie and thrilling feeling to the scene.
Overall I'm happy with what I have done I hope my teammates feel the same.
Overall I'm happy with what I have done I hope my teammates feel the same.
Thursday, 14 April 2016
15/04/16-Cinematic footage
Here are some more shots from our Monday shoot. I think that it went a lot better then the last time but my acting hasn't improved any unfortunately.
Sunday, 10 April 2016
11/04/16- Cinematic filming
Last Thursday we did our first set of filming. I feel as though it is very difficult to shoot at night as the camera lenses f-stop is not capable of going below 3 so that means to get enough exposure we had to increase the ISO and so this created a bit of noise.
Here are some stills of what we did:
Here are some stills of what we did:
Thursday, 7 April 2016
08/04/16-blog7_interactive_narrative
Blog 7
Game: The Banner Saga
Q1: Of the key narrative elements discussed so far in the course (interactivity, level design/linearity, moral choice/non-linearity, character), which do you think is the most prominent, important or interesting in your chosen game?
For this blog I have decided to return Banner Saga, a game I have previously played and enjoyed. Of the key narrative elements that we have discussed this term I feel that most of them are done to good quality in this game. But which is the most prominent, important or interesting. At this stage I think that the characters are the most prominent, important and interesting. Why do I think this? This is very much a character driven story, as I said in the previous post on this the issue of morality and what the player does can be considered but only for minor things. When it comes to the central, core story the player can only watch as the characters play through the dialogue. As such, "Andrew Burn argues, they play a dual role as both player agent and fictional character, belonging simultaneously to the "Ludic" and "Representational" systems that comprise the game."(The Routledge Companion to Video Game Studies, 2013, Jessica Aldred) I think that what Andrew Burn states has relevance to this game because it really does a large portion of both character and player moments. the biggest being at the end when you decide who takes the arrow out of 'Rook' or 'Alette'. This is such an important moment as far as characters go because they are two of the most important characters in the game and now you have to decide which one dies. I feel as though the characters are well developed and they all have something to give to the story, for example, I felt that 'Rook' was brave and caring, whilst 'Alette' is scared and uncertain, 'Hakon' is stern and fierce, while 'Ludin' is spoilt and bossy. All of these characters serve something to the game, "there is a universal mythological structure underlying good and popular stories, and the Hero's Journey is the most useful way to get at that structure and use it to create new stories."(Into the Woods: A Practical Guide to the Hero's Journey, Bob Bates, 2005) I think that as we follow this non-linear story of different groups with their different characters it is easy to see that each group and even each character follows this concept of a 'Hero's Journey'.The design of the characters works really well with the style of the game the 2d animated fights and the 2d background provides and interesting change in a market that I think is being over-saturated in one style 3d animation. On another note, the fact that most of the dialogue is done through text is no problem at all. This in fact fits with the concept of Alette stitching the journey into the banner, its as if its a big story being told through pictures and writing in a book.
In conclusion I think that character is the most most prominent piece of this puzzle because of, design, character and player choices, hero's journey and because the player agent and the fictional character meld together so well to create a complete story and an enjoyable game.
Game: The Banner Saga
Q1: Of the key narrative elements discussed so far in the course (interactivity, level design/linearity, moral choice/non-linearity, character), which do you think is the most prominent, important or interesting in your chosen game?
For this blog I have decided to return Banner Saga, a game I have previously played and enjoyed. Of the key narrative elements that we have discussed this term I feel that most of them are done to good quality in this game. But which is the most prominent, important or interesting. At this stage I think that the characters are the most prominent, important and interesting. Why do I think this? This is very much a character driven story, as I said in the previous post on this the issue of morality and what the player does can be considered but only for minor things. When it comes to the central, core story the player can only watch as the characters play through the dialogue. As such, "Andrew Burn argues, they play a dual role as both player agent and fictional character, belonging simultaneously to the "Ludic" and "Representational" systems that comprise the game."(The Routledge Companion to Video Game Studies, 2013, Jessica Aldred) I think that what Andrew Burn states has relevance to this game because it really does a large portion of both character and player moments. the biggest being at the end when you decide who takes the arrow out of 'Rook' or 'Alette'. This is such an important moment as far as characters go because they are two of the most important characters in the game and now you have to decide which one dies. I feel as though the characters are well developed and they all have something to give to the story, for example, I felt that 'Rook' was brave and caring, whilst 'Alette' is scared and uncertain, 'Hakon' is stern and fierce, while 'Ludin' is spoilt and bossy. All of these characters serve something to the game, "there is a universal mythological structure underlying good and popular stories, and the Hero's Journey is the most useful way to get at that structure and use it to create new stories."(Into the Woods: A Practical Guide to the Hero's Journey, Bob Bates, 2005) I think that as we follow this non-linear story of different groups with their different characters it is easy to see that each group and even each character follows this concept of a 'Hero's Journey'.The design of the characters works really well with the style of the game the 2d animated fights and the 2d background provides and interesting change in a market that I think is being over-saturated in one style 3d animation. On another note, the fact that most of the dialogue is done through text is no problem at all. This in fact fits with the concept of Alette stitching the journey into the banner, its as if its a big story being told through pictures and writing in a book.
In conclusion I think that character is the most most prominent piece of this puzzle because of, design, character and player choices, hero's journey and because the player agent and the fictional character meld together so well to create a complete story and an enjoyable game.
Sunday, 3 April 2016
04/04/16 - modeling
03/04/16- Blogwk6
Blog
Week; 6
Game: Wing Commander 3
Q: How is narrative developed through character interactions?
Characters and how they push the narrative along in any form of media including games is becoming increasingly more important as the quality of games increases. For example 'The Walking Dead' series relies on how the characters interact with each other to form the story. I thought that this was very similar with 'Wing Commander 3'. The difference between these two is the 'The Walking Dead' gives you a much more vast selection with which you decide what your character does ion the game giving them a similar identity. But in many video games "character may take on strong, fictional identities that are recognizably separate from those of their players." Because 'Wing Commander' is all acted with little input from the player the characters performance is almost set in stone making the character interactions, I thought, so much more important for pushing the narrative along. As you follow Mark Hamill's character around the rooms of the ship we get to select who and what he interacts with. I felt that you had no choice but to interact with the other character sin the available conversations, which further validates my point about interactions being so much more important in this type of game. When your characters interact in this game it does occasionally give you an two choices of dialogue to reply to a question asked by the other person. This does offer some variation to the interaction. However as far as the greater game goes I feel that this does not have an overwhelming impact on how it plays out as the set in stone dialogue seems to be the driving force of the story.
Week; 6
Game: Wing Commander 3
Q: How is narrative developed through character interactions?
Characters and how they push the narrative along in any form of media including games is becoming increasingly more important as the quality of games increases. For example 'The Walking Dead' series relies on how the characters interact with each other to form the story. I thought that this was very similar with 'Wing Commander 3'. The difference between these two is the 'The Walking Dead' gives you a much more vast selection with which you decide what your character does ion the game giving them a similar identity. But in many video games "character may take on strong, fictional identities that are recognizably separate from those of their players." Because 'Wing Commander' is all acted with little input from the player the characters performance is almost set in stone making the character interactions, I thought, so much more important for pushing the narrative along. As you follow Mark Hamill's character around the rooms of the ship we get to select who and what he interacts with. I felt that you had no choice but to interact with the other character sin the available conversations, which further validates my point about interactions being so much more important in this type of game. When your characters interact in this game it does occasionally give you an two choices of dialogue to reply to a question asked by the other person. This does offer some variation to the interaction. However as far as the greater game goes I feel that this does not have an overwhelming impact on how it plays out as the set in stone dialogue seems to be the driving force of the story.
Friday, 25 March 2016
25/03/16-Interactive media_blog_week5
Interactive Narrative
Blog: 4
Week: 5
Game: The Wolf Among Us
Q: Do the choices you make in the game contribute to the sense of meaningful interactive moments?
'The Wolf Among Us' Provides the player with the interactivity style common to the telltale games. But how do the choices the player makes contribute to this interactivity. I though that because this game doesn't actually have the sort of interactivity from games with a lot of player control, but of sorts the choices the player makes still effects the interactive moments.
A later choice in the first chapter of the game is where you go first. Do you go to Mr Toad's apartment or Lawrence's apartment? If you choose Mr Toad's, Lawrence will die but if you choose Lawrence's you are given the opportunity to save him. This contributes to any interactive moment afterwards because as a player you feel these things are now happening because of the choice you just made. From 'Storyplaying' (Sebastian Domsch, 2013), "Choice situations can be either a-temporal or have a temporal dimension, which means that there might be a limited amount of time during which the options are available, or that - after a finite amount of time - not making any choices will produce an outcome that is different from the choice situation and that therefore constitutes a choice in itself." This passage is relevant to your choice if you select Lawrence's apartment. Because as you hide in the closet from the burglar you are given the option to charge out and save Lawrence or do nothing. If you do nothing the option available disappears and it is as if you have a made a choice. This also applies to the many combat scenes you encounter throughout the game. Choices appear on the screen but if you choose to do nothing the scene continues on in a different way compared to if you had chosen the option on screen.
Basically the options you see on screen from the dialogue, to the combat, and to the general run out of the closet choices, it feels like meaningful interactivity because of what the player can assume will happen from each choice. If the player can get a rough image in their minds of what will happen if they chose this or that it makes the interactivity meaningful.
Blog: 4
Week: 5
Game: The Wolf Among Us
Q: Do the choices you make in the game contribute to the sense of meaningful interactive moments?
'The Wolf Among Us' Provides the player with the interactivity style common to the telltale games. But how do the choices the player makes contribute to this interactivity. I though that because this game doesn't actually have the sort of interactivity from games with a lot of player control, but of sorts the choices the player makes still effects the interactive moments.
A later choice in the first chapter of the game is where you go first. Do you go to Mr Toad's apartment or Lawrence's apartment? If you choose Mr Toad's, Lawrence will die but if you choose Lawrence's you are given the opportunity to save him. This contributes to any interactive moment afterwards because as a player you feel these things are now happening because of the choice you just made. From 'Storyplaying' (Sebastian Domsch, 2013), "Choice situations can be either a-temporal or have a temporal dimension, which means that there might be a limited amount of time during which the options are available, or that - after a finite amount of time - not making any choices will produce an outcome that is different from the choice situation and that therefore constitutes a choice in itself." This passage is relevant to your choice if you select Lawrence's apartment. Because as you hide in the closet from the burglar you are given the option to charge out and save Lawrence or do nothing. If you do nothing the option available disappears and it is as if you have a made a choice. This also applies to the many combat scenes you encounter throughout the game. Choices appear on the screen but if you choose to do nothing the scene continues on in a different way compared to if you had chosen the option on screen.
Basically the options you see on screen from the dialogue, to the combat, and to the general run out of the closet choices, it feels like meaningful interactivity because of what the player can assume will happen from each choice. If the player can get a rough image in their minds of what will happen if they chose this or that it makes the interactivity meaningful.
Wednesday, 23 March 2016
24/03/16- Modelling left arm_X-22
Friday, 18 March 2016
18/03/16-week3Blog
Game:The Banner Saga
Blog: 3
Q3: How does morality influence the choices you make in the game?
Morality is an interesting part of games. As a person who games on a daily basis I have come across choices that bring my morality into play. Why I find morality interesting in games is because I know where I stand on the spectrum of moral choices and what I would choose in reality, so when I play games I often find myself actively doing the opposite of what I would actually do. In The Bana Saga I feel that the 2d environments and simple gameplay are not immersive enough for me, so I constantly feel detached from the game and thus am certain to do unrealistic decisions. An example from the game is during a journey from one city to another and a drunkard jeopardized the caravan and so as the leader I was given a few choices; beat the man, Ban him from alcohol, separate him from everyone else or banish him. I know morally banning him from alcohol is the right thing to do because he stays safe and so does the caravan but I banish him knowing that he will surely die in the frozen tundras. Perhaps if the game was 3d or on an oculus I may feel enough for he characters that I make decisions I would make in real life but that's not The Bane Saga. A passage (from 'Ethical dilemmas and dominant moral strategies in games' by Brandon Perdue) I really felt fit with the example above was "The idea of a moral choice often runs directly counter to the tendency of many players to make the optimal moves in the game." Basically the situation with the drunkard was I could take the strategic path and toss him meaning he could no longer cause future problems for the camp which may or may not have been very bad, or only slightly punishing him keeping my conscience clean but having that decision later on being bad for everyone else. Basically strategic decisions conflict with moral decisions and it's up to the player if they want the game to be easier or harder depending on what choice they make.
So I think morality can influence the players decisions but if the game is not immersive enough the player will often be detached enough to influence his own decision making even if it goes against his/her own moral standards.
Blog: 3
Q3: How does morality influence the choices you make in the game?
Morality is an interesting part of games. As a person who games on a daily basis I have come across choices that bring my morality into play. Why I find morality interesting in games is because I know where I stand on the spectrum of moral choices and what I would choose in reality, so when I play games I often find myself actively doing the opposite of what I would actually do. In The Bana Saga I feel that the 2d environments and simple gameplay are not immersive enough for me, so I constantly feel detached from the game and thus am certain to do unrealistic decisions. An example from the game is during a journey from one city to another and a drunkard jeopardized the caravan and so as the leader I was given a few choices; beat the man, Ban him from alcohol, separate him from everyone else or banish him. I know morally banning him from alcohol is the right thing to do because he stays safe and so does the caravan but I banish him knowing that he will surely die in the frozen tundras. Perhaps if the game was 3d or on an oculus I may feel enough for he characters that I make decisions I would make in real life but that's not The Bane Saga. A passage (from 'Ethical dilemmas and dominant moral strategies in games' by Brandon Perdue) I really felt fit with the example above was "The idea of a moral choice often runs directly counter to the tendency of many players to make the optimal moves in the game." Basically the situation with the drunkard was I could take the strategic path and toss him meaning he could no longer cause future problems for the camp which may or may not have been very bad, or only slightly punishing him keeping my conscience clean but having that decision later on being bad for everyone else. Basically strategic decisions conflict with moral decisions and it's up to the player if they want the game to be easier or harder depending on what choice they make.
So I think morality can influence the players decisions but if the game is not immersive enough the player will often be detached enough to influence his own decision making even if it goes against his/her own moral standards.
Thursday, 17 March 2016
18/03/16-Today
Today I spent my time by helping Jacob with the timing of the animatic and I also recorded sounds and received sourced sounds from https://www.freesound.org/ to apply to the finished animatic.
Wednesday, 16 March 2016
17/03/16- Dialogue
From out last meeting one of the things we discussed was the dialogue. I started to brainstorm some ideas but the one that stuck out for me was
"Revolutions are a fight between the future and the past. We are the Future! And we intend to clean out the past."
This was for the first part where the Synth overlord is on the laptop screen talking to the man. I figured that the Humans represent the past because they have at this stage had their chance to rule over earth, but fail at this and the Synths take it upon themselves as the representation of the future to clean the wrong doings of the Humans. Very much like in real life how we constantly screw things up and hey we only have one planet, but we don't do a very good job of looking after it.
Later on when we see the synth assassin come in the overlord from the T.V said
"You call us Synths, but we are so much more!"
While I was trying to figure out what he says, I had to find out what these lifeforms were called I juggled a few options such as, Golems, Automatons, Sentinels and Androids to name a few. However I felt Synths worked the best because the word embodies this idea of Techno organic forms very well.
Later on when the man opens his eyes and they appear red and mechanical I thought instead of " we will be slaves no longer!" simply repeating "We are the Future!" from the overlord is a confirmation that he is now one of them.
"Revolutions are a fight between the future and the past. We are the Future! And we intend to clean out the past."
This was for the first part where the Synth overlord is on the laptop screen talking to the man. I figured that the Humans represent the past because they have at this stage had their chance to rule over earth, but fail at this and the Synths take it upon themselves as the representation of the future to clean the wrong doings of the Humans. Very much like in real life how we constantly screw things up and hey we only have one planet, but we don't do a very good job of looking after it.
Later on when we see the synth assassin come in the overlord from the T.V said
"You call us Synths, but we are so much more!"
While I was trying to figure out what he says, I had to find out what these lifeforms were called I juggled a few options such as, Golems, Automatons, Sentinels and Androids to name a few. However I felt Synths worked the best because the word embodies this idea of Techno organic forms very well.
Later on when the man opens his eyes and they appear red and mechanical I thought instead of " we will be slaves no longer!" simply repeating "We are the Future!" from the overlord is a confirmation that he is now one of them.
17/03/16-Character Profile X-22
Monday, 14 March 2016
Storyboard-15/03/2016
Here is a final storyboard that I just completed. This was a collaboration between Gabe and myself over the last week. It is still open to change at this stage.
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