The Journal of Jamie

Specular and AI

2011-04-19T07:09:00.005+01:00

Windows

2011-02-03T07:05:00.004Z

Ive done quite a few windows recently, there shown with a normal skybox behind them but once I make a real space skybox itll look how its ment to, the problem with windows on a spaceship is trying to figure out what part of the ship your going to see if you put the window there, some are placed the because you cant see the rest of the ship, so its a nice cheap effect. In other areas I've has to do lots of mini outside environments to show the exterior of the ship. I did consider doing this with a 3D skybox but so far the way im doing it now doesnt present any problems

A solid week

2011-02-03T06:53:00.003Z

As much as i love level design one solid weak has made me pretty tired of it for now. But what a week, managed to get pretty much all the basic layout of the level done plus a few test ideas for cover, defence e.t.c The next step is some windows and then I have something substantial to show my client. I have also been toying with some ideas about how and where the attacking team spawns which i might integrate in in a few days. Current concerns are over the size of the level, I'm worried the Ive been to liberal with the amount of room you get but things like this can be countered with lots of scenery to cramp in in a bit but theres always the problem of snipers shooting half way across the map through a straight corridor or something

Further Development Images

2011-02-03T06:50:00.001Z

Portal Flow

2011-02-03T06:38:00.006Z

One of the biggest issues with maps like these is memory usage. It can be easily wasted on something unnecessary or even invisible to the player. Optimization is something that is important to keep on top of as you go along. This means things like making sure objects that the player won’t see aren’t rendered and any objects that aren’t part of the vital layout of the level are turned into entities. As shown in the image below when a solid becomes an entity the game engine does not calculate the environment around the object and so save much space and much time rendering the level especially if it’s a particularly complicated object like a sphere.

Development images

2011-02-03T06:24:00.005Z

Here are some early layouts for the level, this is the basic shape of the level and allows me to gauge the size of the environment and get a feel for the level. The part is also important because it make a simple "solid" shape for the computer to use as a reference for the playable world in the environment. Any leaks or holes into the void outside need to be sealed in order for the game engine to calculate lighting e.t.c.

Client Designs

2011-02-03T05:43:00.003Z

I've been working on the basic layout of the ship and after a lot of trial and era came up with some like these. I needed to consider all of the characters that you can play in team fortress so actually coming up with a useful shape proved very difficult. I had to be careful not to allow one type of character to gain a huge advantage or even make it too hard for a team to win overall. I considered the other features of the level such as appearance i would leave later and focus on the level design and flow of the level, after all no matter how good a map looks it can still be rubbish to play.

Further Development Images

2010-02-09T11:02:00.005Z

Rendered images of dm_extraction

2010-01-18T21:36:00.005Z

These are a few screenshots of my level built and running on steam, however so I diddnt have to wait all this time for a proper build VIs hasnt been enabled which means its direct lighting only as well as a few other problems, also I havent dont any lighting properly yet so its just the occasional basic light source.

As you can see there are a lot of small things that need fixing as well as general decoration and optimisation, the images speak for themselfs, the only thing to post next for now is maybe an image of a above view graph to better describe how the map was designed.

Work for the Steam Servers

2010-01-18T20:17:00.005Z

Designing the Map

Well although its taken me longer than I had thought to get this far and I split tea on my keyboard so now x,c and v all stick, my Christmas project is nearly finished. This project was to get a foot in on the Steam servers by creating a really good Half Life 2:Deathmatch server map which should attract a lot off attention hopefully to my map designs. This will be aided by programming the server to offer a invitation to every player who plays the map to join my steam community group or add me as a friend. The group which I haven't thought too much into yet will be somewhat about good level design, team work and beta testing but mainly telling the players about current map/s or up and coming ones, but the main benefit of this is that anyone who is a member of a group can receive event notices for scheduled times, this I can use to tell all members that a new map needs testing or an event to get a large number of players playing at once.

The map I have designed is cunning in nature I hope and I will be explaining more about is as I finish off the map. So far I need just a few more days to complete it to the point I can test it out on a server. The basic shape of the map is an S shape, each side of this team deathmatch map has a base building with the main way the fight each other being a wide S shaped outdoor arena. But each side has the option of going around a different route which is full of tighter and smaller arenas to eventually come in from behind the enemy via either underground sewer pipes or a broken down wall. Also their is a bridge that can be reconstructed with planks that grants that person and others a quick way to the enemy until it is destroyed again. Here are some design images I took recently of my work so far, everything is pretty much laid out and textures need now applying in places and objects created as well as roughing up wall edges and such.

This is a kitchen area on the combine side, I could have gotten shot of this game rendered ingame but unfortunately I didn't have enough time to build the level as it takes hours at the moment because the file hasn't been optimised to gamepley yet which consists of identifying objects and surfaces the don't need to be rendered or needs to be told to not react to lighting or exist as a solid. These things save on memory and file size as well as cuts down on the time it takes to build.

Here we have the basic layout for the main entrance to the combine building, the players are given a good chance to defend here but also attackers have a chance to run for cover.

One of the things I realised while playing Deathmatch was that whoever had the better weapon ruled over everyone else unless they where more experienced or just lucky. So it was important not to place weapons in the wrong place for the sake of team balance, to answer this problem I came up with the technique of making weapons hard to acquire but ammo placed in some of the areas where that type of weapon might be desirable. For instance the combine have a guard tower which would be perfect for a rocket launcher, but since that would just mean everyone would stay there and get kills I will put a small amount of respawing ammo of different types of weapons and make the corresponding weapon harder to acquire without too much running around.

Something I had to learn for the first time in Hammer was terrain, I had to keep the number of pixels down for the sake of memory because the map itself is rather big at this point, this is the first area as the rebels leave the underground sewer leading from the back entrance of their base and it is another point of possible standoff/defence of the area this is a middle ground easily dominated by either side so whoever gets it is rewarded with the rocket launcher.

This map is based on a dream I had not long ago, I wont go into the details but it had all my friends in it and we where against each other on a map like this on, I remembered the images I had from the dream and realised how great the map actually could be. The design is suppost to be a military base, the rebels side a barracks and reception/office/medical building leading to an underground lab you don't see, the combine area is suppost to be the old building next to the barrack which was used as a storage docks, officers rooms and a room which is a big bathrom for the soldiers. These two areas are separated but an S shaped middleground full of debris from the wrecked building and previous attacks, this map is suppost to capture a moment when the combine have attacked and securely taken half of a rebel base in an old building and after a short siege are trying to finish them off.

Week 3

2009-11-06T11:43:00.004Z

Presentation Pics

2009-11-06T11:41:00.009Z

These pics are here for temporary presentation use.

And finally the calamity

2009-05-29T22:01:00.003+01:00

Well I have done what needs to be done on the unreal level, it took ages. But despite all this effort I can't place GUNS! I have tried everything under the sun to fix it and apparently I'm not the only one who cant do it either, plus I've heard a lot of people's stories of glitches and invisible walls. This is very annoying because I need to game test it soon and its going to be hard with no weapons or items, I can place player starts however. But anyway this left my with no choice but to use what I had I took a few people around my level and i watched dhow they moved around and explored or got lost, it was all very helpful in making last minute alteration, in fact one of the main game testers Terrance Nabbs wrote four sides about the level on all of our opinions about it and what needed to be changed. (Click to enlarge)

This helped make some last changed despite the opinions based against it not having weapons, me Jack Boyles, Tez, Richard Norman, Ollie, Graham and Ashley Nabbs all tried to imagine how things would play out in certain situation, the discussion where pretty in deep sometimes, all in all I'm happy with it but I'm not finished with it by far if i had the time i would make it bigger, maybe less compact but that would alter the feel of the level. The textures are my number one hate, defiantly going to do differently next time.

Using time like a one night stand

2009-05-29T21:51:00.001+01:00

Now there isn't much time left so I have been doing all the things to finish my level off, the floor and ceiling have been given there final touches and the tedious texturing of stairs is over. also I have now placed a few large crate to jump around on in the decks, also I have placed a lighting scheme, one serious problem though is how horrible Unreal ed really is, I have been wasting hours of my time fixing glitches in the game and when i finally do other appear, in fact I seem to be making it worse sometime and if i want something big like a pillar or a support I cant because it causes problem with then level, you can see through walls and everything sometimes, other time i wont be allowed in certain areas of the level like an invisible wall is blocking my way.

I did the texture for the crates in flash, I gave each part a different layer then put that in Photoshop and gave it shadows, this gave off a nice Team fortress 2 like "3dness" to it despite its bold red colour.

Cant get enough

2009-05-29T21:37:00.005+01:00

I cant get enough of just putting random things into this level, but I'm afraid I will run out of time so now I have been doing textures mostly, I created this wires texture from a photo that I am going to use to show a bit of power flow through the ship to hopefully make it more believable. Also i am going to make a view into outside space.

The level is really starting to take shape by this point, my aim is to make each area of the ship differently themed so there is a distinction between all areas of the game so its harder to get lost I have found that leaving engineering can be hard but that's if you forget where the exit is.

By this point i have decided to scrap the whole space station idea as i feel i should concentrate all my efforts into making them ship really good because it works well as a 8-10 player game with enough areas for weapons to go.

To help with my texturing dilemma I used the classical yellow and black caution strips this helped me frame a lot of the levels features which somehow gave them a very interesting look. in this environment.

A while in the works

2009-05-29T21:30:00.004+01:00

This is after a few weeks of design, I have taken the opportunity to add lots of little things t0o frame the rooms and i have a lighting scheme in mind, I already placed a great one in engineering, a really great red light that travels far. I'm not even finished modelling but already I can squeeze in so many paths to different rooms. The level does look a little blocky at this point and it had low ceilings and I still don't really know what my texture and colour theme will be.

getting textures to work has been annoying but it has been solved recently thanks to getting Adobe Cs4 and a few patches for Unreal, hopefully now textures should work without problem, and I can believe it took me this long to finally get it, that you have to put mylevel in the package name. So a problem pretty much solved there

A test run

2009-05-29T21:24:00.006+01:00

i just thought I should pop in here a quick video i did early one in my visualisation project, here i am just rotating the camera around the high res blossom to see how it looks from all angles because it will be seen from every angle as it is used over and over again in the scene. This proved useful and made me notice the indentations in the petal and that it needed smoothing.

Design in

2009-05-29T21:24:00.003+01:00

My unreal level is taking shape nicely I have been focousing on the bridge and building down from their, i dont evenneed to try very hard to give this level more feel than its Timesplitters version, so as I am going along them level is just taking form. One thing I have noticed is that I need to keep reminding myself that this is unreal so try to avoid those long narrow corridors.

A new way?

2009-05-29T21:12:00.003+01:00

So i had a hard time actually piecing together my level in design until i remembered what i used to do. i used the level editor from Timesplitters, this is because it is the only level editor that has an easy drag and drop software, this mean I can make a very-very basic layout of corridors and rooms, once I'm happy i can build from that.

Now this might seem a little bizarre but it really did work, I could make mistakes change corridors and try out so many ideas at once that would take me weeks on another piece of software. Through this I could really picture what i wanted and keeping in mind I'm designing a PC game and I can change anything I see here. On the top picture I got to try all different kinds of lighting scheme in a few mins, that one i went for multi colour instead of red, it didn't work very well.

The two pictures above are the two main maps the top one is the space station and the bottom one is the spaceship. how they link together will have to be designed on elsewhere because there isn't enough memory on a PS2 memory card to fit them both on one map. Shame

I settled with these two main ideas and took them away from the PS2 after hours of tweaking. To transfer them to PC I simply placed my T.V next to my screen and copied them by eye, making sure it scaled correctly to the game.

Unreal Unreal

2009-05-29T20:48:00.003+01:00

So when I heard that we where going to be doing unreal as a project I immediatly started trying to remember my faveourite maps fromFPS over the time the one I settled on the most was this one above, the map for Bunker in Goldeneye, a great map for such a basic shooter. I used it a lot for my inspireation and looking over these maps I began to shape my own idea, I wanted it to be out in space on a mysterious alien ship, on of those where you dont know what anything does, I also wanted it to include a small space station next to it a low gravity so you can jump to it. The design below show my two supporting and main ideas for the project, the docking area on the engineering deck of the ship.

Despite it being inside a spaceship i wanted player to have a lot of alternative routes and lots of highground and escape routes but keeping it to a reasonable level. i had a picture in my head of the level and a few designs but I needed so basis to get my level going and get a solid idea down.

Animation 2.9

2009-05-29T20:33:00.002+01:00

The animation process is looking slow at this point, i am happy that everything looks like it is working now, after I spoke to Andy I found out that i scaled my bones down which apparently can cause that problem so I just did it again differently. But like i said its slow so I guess i need to persist.

The scene itself is looking good, I learnt a new technique for this project which is the use different channels for different materials so that you can give certain ones glow effects and such without effecting the whole scene. So I did this to give the background and the lasers a neon glow effect, well with the lasers I had to hide them until needed. And without a doubt this also makes my scene look much more Tron like so continues the inspiration. In the animation though I have come to use blue and red more, the virus that they have to deploy is red just like them and everything else that is carrying power is blue, at the end it will be shut down or changed colour thanks to them.

In the picture above I did thelast bit first as I was not ready to use them both together yet, here he is about to quite literally punch in the code to take over the area.

Using Adobe Premier Pro I edited the footage so it would look better cut and I could cover my animation from different angles at once then cut them in.

The Models

2009-05-29T20:27:00.003+01:00

These are the models i was talking about, these where dug up from an old Han tomb recently last year and they show us what certain buildings looked like, I considered this a goldmine but at the same time not a great amount of detail can be made out nor any colour but nevertheless its a great start and gives me a good shape to start with finally

Bones

2009-05-29T19:56:00.003+01:00

So now i have reached the stage of modeling the other character and putting bones in both of them, I have also started on designing the environment that i will be using to capture their movements in.

I am quite happy with how she looks, i made a few changes to her also like raised shoulder pads to give her a stronger shoulder line but vertically so its less masculine. i have also textured her fully with a very shiny grey metal for the really tough looking areas and appropriate colours every where else, also she has glowing red body parts to make her look more powered up, however she does lack the spikes up her back and is instead left with three stumps.

Rigging up the bodies was relatively simple, using IKlimb solver helped a lot but I couldn't achieve some movements that I wanted to, the real snag which up to this point I cant solve is why the legs change shape when I move them around, so for example if I was to make him put his leg up it would squish the lower leg and the knee would become oval, soon i will meet Andy in a surgical to see if he has any help.

These are a few shots of the environment so far, it has two main scene areas and places for expansion, I want the scene to begin at this point above where they will drop in, I seem to have made the scenes very tron inspired with long stretches of path and places for lights.

The 3Dmax work

2009-05-29T19:27:00.009+01:00

At the same time that I designed the larger bulkier version of this character I also put the brother into 3D max, no bones have been placed yet but the chance to make him into 3D has made me make a few modifications even further, for instance I put in a backbone the is tilted back at the top, it is like a tube and runs from the shoulders and down to the pelvis, this makes him look like he is being held up almost, which incidentally makes him look more robotic.

In the picture above I am cloning the leg and arm so that the body is more symmetrical.

The antennas on his head and spikes on his back are going to react to emotion, this will help give him more of a voice because of the lack of facial features, this will usually happen when he is surprised or alarmed, the antenna would flatten down when he is sneaking or sad.

Here I am attempting to texture some parts of it, one this I am defiantly going to use is this red wires texture, it was one i made for my unreal level project, it is really just a picture of my wardrobe screens gone through Photoshop. There is a blue, red and colourless versions of it, i am going to use it to signify who is the enemy and who is ally. The two main characters will have the red wires on their body, and will be show flowing throughout them, where as most of the environment will be the blue colour.

This is the rendered version of the male character without textures which looks better at this point. What you cant see here is a double set of metal plates to protect his back, all the parts on his body will be linked back to the limbs so they will follow them as the move.

So its been a while

2009-05-29T18:57:00.006+01:00

So its been a while since the last design of the smaller character and after lots of thought the other to accompany him is a bigger version of hi,self equipped with armour and heavy weapons, and also female. She is designed with all the original ideas in mind. I tried to make her look like she was based on the same model or design as her brother but modified or constructed as a different model, all hopefully told to the viewer without narrative and just through there appearance together.

Notice how she differs but some of it has just been modified, like the feet claws pointing forward instead of two at the front and one at the back, she would look almost the same if it wasn't for the metal plates covering her legs and shoulders, this added with the different pelvis (that has less moving parts and so looks less officiant) makes her look slower but stronger. She also has a double laser weapon and a more effeminate colour scheme.

First Model

2009-05-29T18:41:00.006+01:00

After a while I came up with this model of one of the characters, at this point I don't know what exactly I am going to do with it but this is what I had pictured in my head for the smaller one, even if it winds up only being slightly smaller. My idea has changed again based on this drawing and I think it is more likely to be completed this year compared to the last idea. This is the design I did in my sketch book:
As a lot of characters that sit at the centre of a franchise there is some kind of twist between them, like one is grown up and the other young or they are linked like brothers or father and son, for this i wanted to twist on an expected result, this is that this character being the stealthy, small weapons character it is also the male of the pair. The other to counter that will be female.

Animation 2

2009-05-29T18:17:00.006+01:00

So when i was given my brief I had many ideas almost immediately, I went through a lot of phases of thought until I started to modify on an idea I had already. This was a game I did a few designs for, it was a FPS game which needed 2 people to work together to fight other enemies, but it was most based around the multiplayer game where partners fought other partners. The reason it was co-op was because one player controlled a large bulky tree climbing organism with heavy weapons whilst the other controlled a very small robot which ad to stay near the larger one for safety, it had precision weapons and cold infiltrate because of its small size.

So from this I changed it to another extreme based on size that was more fitting for the brief, it involved one player controlling a huge robot which slowly moved but could launch hellstorms of explosives and attack buildings and everyone else one the team was deployed from it as a spawning base as small soldiers with assault weapons, the robot and other machinery would rely on them to take down things that threaten them and the soldier would rely on the machines for cover and heavy fire.

These ideas are a lot I know but I have come to start these projects off with big ideas because its always easier to scale down which I expect I will be doing a lot of with this.

Development

2009-05-28T16:30:00.007+01:00

This post will show my progression through this project using screenshots from beginning to end.

The backdrop house in progress.

First placement of blossom trees after importing the model.

Positioning the dummy trees som i know where the proper one will be.

Creating the grass.

An overview of the enviroment in its early stages.

The first screenshot, this started off with just 1 giant cube.

It should be noted that the high resoulution flower that I created for this tree diddnt work out, in fact the blossom above which has a much lower polygon count was also still too high, so to solve this problem I met Andy Love in a surgical and told him about my problem, he suggested to me to create a tree that imply wrapped a texture around a sphere using opacity, where you make a version of the texture in black and white which defines which parts allow light through it. This proved to be the most useful solution even though I suffered some grahical slowdown it wasnt as bad. Personally I felt it would have been nice to use the tree I intended, it would have looked really good.

One of the never used blossom textures.

The high res blossom before smoothing.

The shape I used to base my blossom on.

The default blossom texture made in Photoshop.

The dummy tree, first used to model the better trees.

The high res blossom from above, notice how it gets yellower in the middle just like some existing breeds of blossom.

Modeling the tree.

Attempt

2009-05-28T16:17:00.004+01:00

I attempted to create a peach blossom, the result after using images and such as a referance was this.

The branches for this tree typically go straight up from the main branches, I read on the internet about how to create a tree using the Parray in 3D Max so this is the kind of branch I planned on using at this point though I am worried that even this branch alsone is too demanding and high in polygons so it might have to be changed, but that can be donte later. Also in the background you can see the tree model I want to use, i made it from a cube and extruded it, which is something new I've learnt.

Three Kingdoms Art

2009-05-28T15:54:00.004+01:00

The Peach Gardens (Oath of Liu Bei (Yuan-te,) Guan Yu, Zhang Fei,) is a very important part of Chinese history it had extremely big effects in history and still effects us now, one of the most amazing things related to that is that the Triads in China base their idea of brotherhood on this oath, they even worship Guan Yu who was later called the God of War by the Chinese. Looking at the image above it tells us that other form of media are interested int his story, there are games you can buy like Romance of the Three Kingdoms or even Dynasty Warriors, the story have even been translated into children's storeys, cartoons, T.V series. In fact if you watch T.V lately you will see the trailer for battle of the Red Cliffs which is the battle of Chi Bi the most of the most epic battles in the book.

These painting show us another side/perception of the same story, but the traditional Chinese art may not necessarily be the most honest like most classical paintings. These painting would represent the whole event rather than a snippet of time captured in frame. But I'm not saying that their is nothing to gain from these pieces of art, it brings me even closer to creating some kind of environment, in the one above they have used the orchard as a backdrop where as others have the subjects stood actually in the middle of it, admittedly when i read the book i also pictured it like this.

This one is slightly more honest in appearance and has them stood with the orchard as the backdrop. This also appeals very strongly with what we consider them to look like today.

Reserch into The Garden

2009-05-28T15:28:00.005+01:00

I didn't know this until now but apart from all the other stuff that this story inspired it also inspired many artists, a lot of them are simply inspired by the event where as some where inspired by the appearance of a peach garden which can be pretty beautiful. I personally think that especially during sunrise or sunset the pink and greens would complement a nice orange sky just like Eve Larson did in his piece Peach Orchard in Bloom. (evelarson.com)Funny that this was pretty much what I had in my head when I found it. The sunrise (or set i think its rise) has given the blossom a nice crisp orange glow, then this against the green foreground and the glarey and duller background really draws your eyes to the centre. This photo below by David Kocherhans which goes by the same name (David Kocherhans) has been helpful in gaining a good idea of exactly what those trees look like, this is very important because in order for it to look like blossom it needs to have the same typical branch formation (so how big it is, the length of the trunk, exposed roots typically, how high the branches start and their angle/shape (check here) over height up the trunk) and typical foliage so you think that it is a blossom tree even if its not life-like.
Three kingdoms art follows in the next post.

Reserch into Han

2009-05-28T15:05:00.005+01:00

It was very very hard to find information i want from that era, I'm worried i may be trying to be too specific. In other words everywhere I look there are rich supplies of information like http://www.chinaculture.org/gb/en_artqa/2003-09/24/content_38809.htm which is a rich resource of info on what i want but i cant find the number one thing i am after and that is what a typical late Han dynasty house or estate looks like, because the peach gardens take place behind Zhang Fei's "estate" as it is worded in the book so it is going to be a crucial part of the scene.

I cant shun every web page and book though, i did learn lots of general things like the progress of the Chinese' history of architecture and how it developed. The picture above is an old house built on the Han style, it was named old Han house on the net but i cant find any proof that it has been around since 200 AD. It simply could have been what i presumed and its Han style. Nevertheless it does give more of an idea to me about what i can be expecting it to look like.

Vis 2.1

2009-05-28T14:56:00.005+01:00

So for my project it is going to involve some Chinese architecture, Han dynasty to be more specific. so for this i have been researching into both subjects 1. Han dynasty architecture 2. Thoroughly looking at the section from the three kingdoms story and translating that into an environment. The following posts will show what i did.

Idea Developmet

2009-05-22T00:27:00.003+01:00

So for my Visualisation project i chose to do the legendary scene from my favourite book Romance of the Three Kingdoms. It is the part where Guan Yu, Zhang Fei and Liu Bei make an oath of brotherhood in the peach gardens behind Zhang Fei's estate, this scene is briefly described in the book as:

"The man said, "My surname is Guan, my given name is Yu, my style name was Shouchang, but then I changed it to Yunchang. I am from Xieliang in the Hedong Commandery. Because there was a man from a wealthy family who was acting like a big shot and bullying everybody, I ended up killing him. I had to become a fugitive, and have been living the life of an itinerant mercenary for the past five or six years. When I heard that this area was recruiting soldiers to go smash bandit rebels, I came especially to join up." When Xuande told the man of his plans, Yunchang was overjoyed. They all went to Zhang Fei's estate to discuss these important matters.Fei said, "There is a peach garden in the rear of my estate, and the flowers are now in full bloom; tomorrow, we should conduct a sacrificial ceremony to heaven and earth. We three should become brothers, joining forces with a common purpose, and later we will be able to accomplish great deeds." Xuande and Yunchang both responded in unison, "An excellent idea!" The following day, they prepared sacrificial offerings such as a black bull and a white horse. The three of them all burned incense, and performed double obeisance. They all took an oath, saying, "When saying the names Liu Bei, Guan Yu and Zhang Fei, although the surnames are different, yet we have come together as brothers. From this day forward, we shall join forces for a common purpose, and come to each other's aid in times of crisis. We shall avenge the nation from above, and pacify the citizenry from below. We seek not to be born on the same day, in the same month and in the same year. We merely hope to die on the same day, in the same month and in the same year. May the gods of heaven and earth attest to what is in our hearts. If we should ever do anything to betray our friendship, may the gods in heaven strike us dead." Having completed the oath, Xuande was declared to be eldest brother, followed by Guan Yu, with Zhang Fei as the most junior brother. They made thorough offerings to heaven and earth, and then butchered the bull. They also brought out some wine, and gathered together all of the brave men of the county. They recruited more than three hundred men, so they proceeded to get thoroughly drunk in the peach garden. The day after, they gathered their weapons, but became frustrated that they had no horses to ride."

This oath brought together the three key people in the Three Kingdoms story and effects the whole history of china, it has also inspired a lot from art to secret societies such as the triads. I often imagined what it would look like myself and there are many representations of it some of old Chinese art of the event and some of what it likely would have looked like as described in the book, which is what I am aiming for also. As a virtual environment it ca be used as an environment for any kind of media that would want a virtual backdrop as the story is still popular today. For example a movie has very recently been realised based on the battle of Chi-Bi called Battle of the Red Cliffs, it is China's big current movie realise, and so follow ups are going to be made if it proves successful and as well as that there are many, many depictions of the story ranging from T.V series, cartoon series and computer games which cold all use an environment for such an important part in one of China's most famous historical stories.

New Light

2009-04-17T12:57:00.002+01:00

When I was sorting out my old stuff from my mums house I found out the old comics that I had, unfortunatly she threw out my older ones when I was little which made me pretty upset but I had issues from the later years of Sonic the Comic, and reading them gave me that little memory back of why I started to draw in the first place so that has helped my previous dilema about not doing art as much recently.

Despite these being the later copies it still had some back issues in it from previous strips. These where the good one which had the artisic quality that I liked, the comic I scanned in is the last issue I ever bought because it was right at the moment where they changed Sonic for whati though was the worst.

Designs on Steam

2009-04-17T12:25:00.007+01:00

So recently I have found out that on Half Life 2: Deathmatch there aren't that many good custom maps going around so I decided to make a multiplayer map to hopefully get around some players to get some feed back. But the news gets better, I wanted to use the same map but modified slightly for 1 or 2 single player modes for me and my friends because we where always saying what we would do in a zombie situation, so this map is based on where we live. So those maps will all be good for uni too, but it gets even better because I have found out that they haven released a Left for Dead developer kit yet which means when I use the same map for the L4D game I will hopefully get it out in time to be one of the first so I can get a large amount of downloads and feedback... hopefully.

My plans for this map is to make a multiplayer version, a survivor mission, a single player mission and a Left for Dead version I've already got a line of people ready to try it, all I need now is some friends over steam to send it to and to put it on a server when finished.

Exploring Multiplayer games

2009-04-17T12:15:00.004+01:00

So I have been exploring more multiplayer games over this term, I'm not a huge multiplayer person over the net but I have had a deal of experience, I began playing halo at the beginning of this year and in contrast to that started playing Half Life 2: deathamatch and Unreal Tournament 2 online.

There are some key differences to PC and platform games, for start PC online first persons are a lot more aggressive and the use of the mouse makes everyone very accurate. Where as on the console you get movement over aim. This last half term was my first real bout on online multiplayers and with my cousen Jason in Japan at the moment I can play with him. From this I have learnt a lot in realation to level design and how to make adjustments to appeal to PC games compared to anything else.

Recent Work 2

2009-04-17T11:58:00.004+01:00

So over the past few week as well as continuing with the projects I have on at the moment I have been trying to learn more and more design skills as well as trying to find a good way to get some feedback from people on my maps. So because I am doing the Unreal project at the moment I have been learning how to use Source SDK also, because this will help me learn more about mapping and understand a good level design.

So after getting to grips with the main tools and features I made a test map to try out all I had learned and later on to see how many enemies my new computer could handle.

I learnt a lot from just this second go on it, and it made me realise where I could take this. But not forgeting just how much a slower compter might handle this I thought of a great level to create on this.

Additional Learning

2009-01-15T05:31:00.004Z

Future plans and Recent Development

Through this project i have done in my spare time i have learnt a lot and expect to learn much more, to improve the quality of the work i am producing for this RPG project and for other benefits i went to life drawing classes, and did studies into the images and location i want to imitate, whilst trying to create this game design i have been researching into games of the genre and game structures in general, I started off with Final Fantasy 7 and then start to branch out to playing Runescape also which teaches me a lot about the maths of leveling up (as well as playing it for another personal research project,) as well as researching many others. More recently I have read Robert B. Musburger's "An Introduction to Writing for Electronic Media" (Scriptwriting Essentials Across the Genres) Focal Press, 2007, Elsevier Inc. I have been reading parts of this book especially the games chapter, it nicely covers the industry's significance and history, although I could question some of its game references. The last part of the chapter covers the process and requirements for producing a game step by step and how to properly prepare you game for others to Analise either outside in or inside the work group as well as how to deal with common problems and prevent mistakes. One thing in particular that stood out for me when reading through this chapter was that it mentioned making a "base line" for my game, something I apparently should have made near the beginning of the production process. So after a few sessions of work we finally made one we think fits into the criteria, "A fantasy-horror set in the near future on a small island off the coast of England, about a war veteran re-living the murders he committed through illusions in his mind." despite the fact that we think it works I'm worried that it spoils some of the biggest and most important plot twists in the game, I'm not sure if they are suppost to do that.

For the future I have made arrangements with Oli Bartman who does photography at the uni and is Jack Boyle's cinemaphograher (another student at uni,) I arranged with him a few trips over the next year up until the end of summer to visit places in the UK that looks like the places in trying to imitate and are visually inspiring or can teach me about landscapes, whilst there we will be taking pictures and i will be doing some sketches, as well as all this we will both benefit from imporoving our skills, expecially about outdoor enviroments. Also my plans for this project for the future are to develop the long overdue character profiles and other further detail, and most importantly to get as much out of this as possible, even if I dont produce it fully (which I don't think I will, well not right now.)

Storyline Development

2009-01-15T05:03:00.006Z

This next post shows evidence of us grouping together and developing the ideas we has for the storyline further and with more detail, what was made apparent first are the difficulties of writing for a game is very different from writing for a film. It was time consuming enough trying to make each piece fit, after creating a solid beginning and direction of the storyline i went about writing a back story to be referenced throughout the game, this also gives everything else a cushion to fall back on to explain many things and help it all add up.

Further Development

2009-01-15T04:48:00.006Z

During development of the game i went through several stages of design both for the island and for the story line and detail, the next images will show how we have been working our ideas.

Spare Time Project

2009-01-15T04:27:00.010Z

Over the last term and Christmas I have been working on an RPG game that is based on things that i would like to see in an RPG, it is inspired by all kinds of fanstasy roleplaying and online RPGs. I based the story on what the inspiration I found from playing final fantasy 7 and studying other games of that kind like Runescape. Throughout all this time I, along with a number of people who also want to help make it have designed the island where its based, the starting storyline and other certain parts in detail. the rest of the story is drafted also. On top of this I'm currently working on detailed character profiles, their development and interaction, some of the first things I did was draw images I had in my head to help get the ball rolling for further ideas. The following pictures are what I first drafted to people.

This next part is an example of a few first ideas for the opening and a recent draft of the first part of the game where the player learns how to play parts of the game in due process.

First draft for RPG

Opening Video- Part 1

The opening video fades from black and shows a large mildly Victorian age styled room with an easel centred in the middle facing the wall there is a thick closed book on it, also there is soothing saxophone music playing in the background that fades in also (but it is distorted as it fades in and takes a few seconds to recover.) As the shot pans left it shows all kinds of paintings and ornaments, but there are no windows other than a row of port holes with big bolts holding them shut which are lined along one wall, 5 spaced out, its pitch black outside. As it progresses it shows another wall coming up the left and out of the shot, there is a small rectangle space into the wall with a candle on each side, and in this space is a man who is chained to the wall with cuffs on his wrists and ankles which are holding his legs and arms spread, suspended up the wall away from the floor, he is unconscious and wearing dirty grey torn clothes with big blood stains all over them (most prudently over his chest,) and a grey hood that darkens out his face and blood stained bandages which cover his mouth and neck (those being the only things seen from the hood). The shot stops here and a big black dirty boot steps into shot from the right and walks to the man, he is wearing a standard full English army camouflage uniform for a private, and he has a round black cap with a flat base and a thick dark blonde moustache. He walks up to the man looks him square in his slouched head, chin resting against his right shoulder. The shot changes at this point to both their heads filling the screen from the side so it seems as though the private is looking into the grey hood. (But the unknown man’s face is never seen from the hood other than perhaps the parts covered in bandages.)

Private: You don’t get angry do you? (pause) You just CALCULATE! (As he shouts “calculate” spit flies from his mouth at the man.)

The man begins to slowly lift his head and open his eyes to look him square in the face.

Man: (Calmly) I am anger, you should be afraid.

Private: (Chuckles) Ha! (Looks closely into his face and snarls) That’d be like fearing a caged animal, wouldn’t it.

The private stands up straight and makes a sharp 180 degree turn, half way through this the shot changes to facing the wall with the man behind him as he finishes his turn and he begins to march off the shot to the right. But just as he is nearly out of the shot he stops with his face in clear view, he does this because at this moment in the background he hears (and can be seen in shot) the chains loosen and fall off the wall and his body, the man falls to his knees and stands up carefully but fairly quickly, examining his wrists in a calm but surprised manor. All this time the private is showing a gradually daunting look on his face and finishes by closing his eyes and looking down.

Private: (Whispers) No.

The shot changes to show one of the cuffs and chain on the floor close up, his knee falls down to the right and his dirty scratched hand comes from the top of the shot and picks it up. Now we see it from behind him from where he once hung as he walks away sharply towards the private who doesn’t move (still faced away from him, hands holding each other behind his back.) The man grabs both ends of the chain and cuff and immediately puts it over the private’s head and pulls it tight around his neck. The shot changes to a very low angle along the floor; there is a sound of the snap of his neck and a loud angry grunt from the unknown man, the private’s body falls to the floor faced away (head, neck and shoulders fills the view,) the chain falls after, dropped on his head and neck carelessly. He walks along the room in the background towards the easel.

The shot now changes to behind the easel at eye level, he is already in the shot, he walks further in and turns to face the book which is resting centred and closed on the easel.

Man: (Starts to take angry deep breaths) Its time I set things right, its time I took things into my own hands.

He raises his left arm above his head and a thick curved dagger materialises in his hand, his fingers slowly wrap around it, the blade is emitting a green glow which becomes the main source of light, still his face is never seen past the bandaged area. The shot cuts to facing the book, it’s dusty and brown with a simple faded brass border pattern. He drives the dagger into the book and slices a hole down it and pulls the blade out again. There is a pause before the lighting in the room begins to change, a blood red light starts to shine through the port holes behind him and light the room with direct beams of light, the various candles in the room change colour to red also, and a number of still and moving shots cover all this. The room begins to shake furiously, the man leans forward and holds onto the easel to stay up, a bright white light shines out of the slice in the book and consumes him. As the camera moves away from him the light gets brighter until all that there is left is whiteness. It fades from the whiteness to reveal the shot is looking at him from behind through one of the port holes from outside, as the white light goes away into the hole it reveals him burning with black flames in places and he collapses, slumping to the side onto the floor, and as the camera moves away ghost like spirits and arms begin to claw out of the hole in the book. The shot continues to come away from the port hole and turn about 60 degrees left whilst continuing to move backwards, all this time the 5 port holes are in shot getting further and further away, the shot shows the room is embedded halfway down a giant rock face in a tight valley, almost like a huge crack in the earth, its night time and eventually the bottom is seen which is filled with rough sea water and in the distance is the horizon and the ocean (seen through the end of the valley.) As the shot stops the room explodes outwards into the valley and debris falls slowly down to the sea, immediately in the blown out room can be seen monsters climbing out onto the rock face and dark spirits flying away some flying past the camera to be seen clearly. Music fades in (unknown at this point) and at a certain beat or note the scene cuts quickly to black.

Opening Video- Part 2

The sun is shining brightly down onto some gardens behind a row of 5 old brick houses separated from each other by narrow pathways; each garden has a lush green hedge bordering it except from the back end of the each garden which has a low white picket fence so to show the ocean. These gardens are on a cliff edge and 30 ft below that are small grassy hills that are suffering from erosion, the waves of sea water can be heard crashing up against these from a distance. The shot begins from the black screen where the previous scene left off; it fades to white and then fades away to show the bright 12 o’clock sun in the blue sky and various small clouds, the camera rotates diagonally right and down to gradually show the garden and stops on a young lad aged 18 lounged on a garden chair and looking into his laptop which is on his legs, he is wearing dark green combats and a thick blue belt with a white zigzag line going all the way around it and a silver buckle holding it together. His t-shirt is black and there is a 5 inch thick silver stripe going around the breast of the shirt, he is also wearing big combat boots and has a short military haircut. The camera is angled low and almost from behind him. The garden is filled with various objects of leisure like footballs, a goal post, a hose pipe left leaking water into the grass, a swing ball post and bats left on the ground, a broken basketball hoop, a spade and half planted shrubbery, also there is a small white table next to the chair on the left the lad is using to keep a cold drink, a magazine and some sun glasses on. The young lad looks up to the sun and casually shields his eyes from the light with his right hand and puts a thin pair of sunglasses over his eyes with his left. He puts both his hands back down to his laptop and continues look up, he takes a deep breath. The wind blows gently and makes the grass rustle.
Lad: I can’t just do this every day... (Long Pause, looks around, notes the waves and wind)... maybe I should join the army.

There is another long pause and eventually the wind stops blowing and the sound of the crashing waves begins to get louder. He takes his laptop and holds it away from him as he gets up and places it on his seat, he takes a quick mouthful of his drink and starts to walk towards the end of the garden. The angle changes to looking at him from the cliff edge of the garden as he walks towards the fence slowly, looking at the sky. From here we can clearly see the 3 floor house he lives in. As he reaches the fence and stops moving thunder can be heard beginning to rumble and the sun starts to fade and turn red. Now we see the sky from over his left shoulder as he looks up to the sun. Further down the sky closer to the horizon there is a giant thick cloud illuminated red from the sunlight, a bright white light tears through the centre and the entire cloud spirals around it for a second and stops. The massive beam almost seems to be directed towards him.

Lad: What the fu...?

Just as this is said a long spear like object comes rocketing towards him from the bright hole in the cloud at a phenomenal speed, the camera angle changes to a side view of his upper body and his speech is cut short by the speeding object driving its way through his right shoulder and sending him flying backwards as blood quickly squirts from the wound, the entire object makes it through his body and the shot changes to an extreme close-up of the blade stabbing into the ground out of sight and forcing up a lump of grass, the rest of the object relaxes to the ground as some kind of strip of material which is attached to the unknown blade like a long ribbon. As this happens you can see in the background just out of focus the lad collapse to the ground, hard. There can be seen smoke rising from his wound. The camera starts to move away from focusing on the blade in the ground and begins to move backwards and higher up keeping both it and the lad in the shot, the picture blurs out of focus to white again, all that is left is the continuing sound of the waves out at sea.

The whiteness begins to fade and we see his closed right eye which is mostly filling the shot as he lay unconscious on the ground, the camera is turned so it seems as though he is upright and he is leaning against a wall of grass, all seems well the waves of the sea can be heard and the sun is making everything about the image look healthy. His eye opens quickly, the pupil adjusts itself, he blinks and at that instant everything goes back to how it was when he was struck down, everything about him is tinted red from the bloody sun and sky. The camera begins to zoom out of his eye to slowly show his whole face, there is no sound of waves just a gentle breeze; almost as if the sea stopped, it was a sound he wasn’t used to, silence, living on a small island the only constant sound was the waves of the sea. He sits up with immediate alarm, we see this from his right his whole body is in shot and the garden hedge is in the background. The sky can be seen in this shot, the clouds have all disappeared, the sky itself is like a sunset that has lit everything alight with a blood red colour and the horizon is a yellow almost like the placenta separating from it.

He quickly checks his wound where he finds nothing but a hole in his shirt, he takes a quick look around from left to right and loudly lets out a panicked and confused breath of fear, then looks over his shoulder and feels for the other side, the angle of the camera also changes to looking at him from where the unknown blade is stuck in the ground as he notices it. The lad crawls across to look at it but before he does his attention is drawn to the right of it, a thick leather bound book lay there with a simple square border made of very well maintained silver and a silver clad buckle keeping it closed, it looks like it was just made, fresh from the hands of a skilled craftsman. We see it from over his left shoulder as he goes to pick it up from the ground; his hand reaches for the buckle of the book. Now we see it from waist height, looking up at him reaching to unlock the book. The buckle is loosened, the camera switches to looking square at the hedge to his left, something pushes against it, and the view switches back. He opens the front cover, entrapped into the mission of discovering its contents; the first page is simply titled “The Way”. He turns for the second page after a long look at the title, again the camera looks away to his right this time and we see a harder shove from the other side of the hedge. The camera looks back and we see as he settles the page turned against the other side of the book, a look of confusion develops on his face as he scans the two new pages. Suddenly a flash of white light escapes the pages and consumes his upper body but then disappears within seconds; he is left looking wide eyed at the book, his pupils large and white themselves.

The look on his face begins to weaken and he starts to feel ill, the book turns to black ash in his hands, his eyes examine it with a weary look, he starts to foam at the mouth and falls to his knees in front of our view of him. Then we look at the hedge to his left which is struck from the other side again, this time a top portion of it is pushed in a clump into the garden and something starts to claw its way over, grunts can now be heard, we look at his right side now and the same thing happens to the other hedge. The lad himself is too preoccupied with tending to his sick and weakened state as we see from his right side with the clambering things in the background, he slowly looks to the left at what is going on, we can start to hear his heartbeat over all the audio, he sees the pushed over hedge, then turns his head to the right still hunched over, everything starts to slow down and his heartbeat get faster and louder, the expression on his face drops from a look of pain to a look of panic as he spots in clear view one of those things which had made it over to his garden. We see it panning from the bottom upwards slowly still his heart racing as the main audio, its humanoid or at least it used to be, the skin has become bruised over 100% of the body, all of the flesh is covered in yellow and black swellings, the clothes it is wearing are like rags, faded of almost all colour and torn to the point they are not practical anymore, this one in particular has lost its whole bottom lip, by the looks of the skin left it was just torn off the face. But the teeth are all pointed and from the expression alone he could tell it is hostile. He snaps out of it and we see him from the location of the blade which is in the ground, he dives for it and grabs it by the ribbon attached to it and pulls it from the soil. He gets up and stands ready to fight with the blade in one hand and the ribbon bundled in the other, we see him from between two of these bruised enemies, there are 4 surrounding him from all corners, one lunges at him and without a second thought he immediately attacks, the heartbeat sound stops and the camera starts to rotate slowly around the attack group, he shifts all his weight and rotates his whole body 360 degrees twice and on the second turn he is low to the ground and the blade extended with the reach of some of the length of ribbon, the sharp blade slices all four enemies in the circle formation around the belly area as it swings around him. They all fall back and blood mixed with all kinds of infection and puss leaks from their bodies and runs down them until they fall to the ground one by one, it seems they had nearly no blood pressure for any serious bloodshed.

Storyline, first draft

After the opening sequence our main character is left in the long back garden against the cliffs, if the player takes time to explore through one of the holes created by the monsters he would find an item on the floor which should be some kind of basic recovery. The first objective is to enter the house through the back door and look for his mother inside, every time he enters a room a sound should play of him calling out for her. The player may take the time here to examine things in the house which give clues as to the background of the place and other clues made sense later. Once a note is found that tells him that she is at the local shop the player must leave the house through the front door, when he opens it more of the strange badly infected are outside and force their way in, this introduces the player to the first battle in a constrained area (corridor, and rest of house if player chooses). After this battle the player is left free to explore the village but the only trigger point is at the shop and the player is not allowed to leave the village somehow, all this time there are more of those Puss-heads wandering around some even killing NPC’s. Once you reach the shop a frightened cashier from behind the counter tells you she was on her way back when this happened, also it is obvious that someone has robbed the place of certain supplies.

Mc: (Wide eyed and panicked) She must have taken the back way! (He gets up to leave right away)

Cashier: Wait! Something... (Calmly) something crashed right through that way and blocked it off, take the back way out of here and you should be fine.

Mc: Thanks mate. (Runs off immediately)

The cashier is left looking slightly lost and appears like he could have done with his help, he goes about hiding himself even more when a background scream is heard. The next part presents the first puzzle for the player, this is simply for the player to find the back door and then figure out a way to get out of the loading area by going over the wall and into the back way home. This is done by finding objects lying around then pushing and pulling them so they stack in order to make steps over the wall, there could even be many ways to solve this puzzle other than the obvious one. Once in the back ally the player is introduced to the spawning feature this game includes. As he is running down the back ally Puss-heads are making their way over the walls, crashing through windows and so forth, these become fightable enemies once properly spawned. This leaves further choice whether to fight for a while of keep moving, the game would of course at this point restrict the amount of random fighting you can initiate in because of current level and available health resources.

Test Run

2008-12-18T09:28:00.004Z

I managed to take advantage of a spare half an hour the other day, so I used the time to render a quick preview of the enviroment, plus Id like to see how the enviroment reacts when the camera is moving around, expecially the Luxor Pyrimid.

3Ds max Screenshots

2008-12-18T07:27:00.005Z

Ive finally managed to get together my screenshots from 3d max, I wont show them all here but I will try to show my design process.

One design problem I had lately was with the pyramid in the middle of the board, despite the fact that I had made a good texture to give it the reflective glass look but I couldn't seem to get the effect to look right. So to solve the problem I made a clone of the pyramid and made it slightly bigger around the smaller one, I gave that one translucency properties and a dull grey colour, then I gave the inner pyramid the texture and the reflective properties, this effect filtered through the slightly larger pyramid gave it the effect I was looking for.

Further Life Drawing

2008-12-18T07:10:00.004Z

Here are the other pieces i did from observation, while this is for my own benefit as a practitioner this did help me understand objects and surfaces more and so could be counted towards study for Exploring Multimedia. Here are a few examples of what Ive been doing since the beginning of summer.

Life Drawing

2008-12-18T07:03:00.004Z

During this term I have been developing my skills as an artist, my ambition is to become a better designer both for environments and characters. Since I got burgled and lost my laptop and 360 Ive been feeling disheartened and found it hard to draw. After talking to Danny Kay and spending some time tyring to think of how to get the ball rolling again I decided to attend life drawing classes, which worked and I have learnt many things from doing it which I can reflect in my personal studies.

Las Vegas Boardgame 4

2008-12-18T06:01:00.005Z

Once I had fully constructed the ideas I had for the game I went on to make some test designs on Google Sketchup. This way I could get a good idea o how my model will look in 3D before starting on my main design. Making them told me a lot of things about how they are going to look as well as gaining a good 3 dimensional idea of the space that will be taken up.

Las Vegas Boardgame 3

2008-12-18T05:43:00.002Z

Now I have established various designs and made my choice on what I want to include on my boardgame it is now time to think of the specifics, I have made a board using Flash to correspond with how I want my board to be constructed. This way I can build around it an keep true to mydesign intentions.

I have also made several more textures using flash such as the smooth black reflective glass of the Luxor Hotel Pyrimid, which was made using faded white lines against a dark grey backround which when put in 3Ds max looks like a large wall of glass with square window rims. I chose flash for some of the texture making because you can make simple and bold images which aheave an effect I want to utilise in Autodesk 3Ds Max.

Las Vegas Boardgame, Further Design and Reserch 2

2008-12-18T05:37:00.003Z

Las Vegas Boardgame, Further Design and Reserch 1

2008-12-18T05:32:00.005Z

Las Vegas Boardgame 2

2008-12-17T06:47:00.005Z

It became instantly apparent that I can't exactly rip out the whole of Las Vegas and put it on the board because thats just going to be too hard and not really a creative piece of work because I am simply copying some existing designs. So the next loical step I though was to somehow mix the glamour and style of Las Vegas and mix it into a game enviroment.

So like a lot of things in the gambling community I went for a themed approach, by mixing existing well know landmarks that reprisent the Las Vegas strip with the games that are played there so to stick with the theme. My ideas is to take certain landmarks like the excalibur hotel and take there acrcutectural design and make it into a game of set piece, these will also intergrate into the board itself. Also Ihave chosen to use the same board for both the visualisation brief and the animation brief, I belive I can cover both because the board I plan to make in 3Ds Max will have all the ambitious detail for the Visualistaion brief and also there are going to be many moving parts on the board like the Exclibur Roulette Wheel.

Milk Candy Farm

2008-12-17T04:09:00.003Z

Milk Candy Farm is an idea that me, Jack Boyles and Richard Norman came up with, basically its the name of a web site we want to make from which we will make all kinds of media like animations, films, documentaries, games, really anything we make in our spare time. We are pulling in all the people we know who we feel can contribute, we've been talking to students that cover graphic design, web design, students who want to write scripts for us, and media students who want to help with all things like filming and editing. Jack want to contribute his directing skills and has lots of ideas for sketches and short films, Richard also has lots of ideas and plans to make use of the website and he also wants to practice his skills with a camera and show off his smooth hand held work.

Personally I can contribute a lot because I know how to use flash very well and I can easily make web based animations, I am also currently learning script so I can make games but at the moment I'm looking for a programmer to help and even give me a learning boost. I can also contribute artistically by doing storyboards and the endless list of design ideas for games and other media I produce all the time. On top of this the three of us live together and are constantly collaborating ideas, this would also make it easier to run a website as at least three of us are around to keep it organised.

Despite all this there is one other key factor that is attracting all this attention and that is that I'm and receiving £800 from the government and its not the kind of money I want to spend to myself so I am putting it all into this idea to Milk Candy Farm a budget. This will give us the chance to put money into some of our efforts and explore some new ways of producing media.

I think that this will be a very productive way of spending our spare time, we can only benefit from doing this and it help us by beginning a network, even if it is among friends it will build from there.

Las Vegas Boardgame 1

2008-12-08T21:17:00.009Z

I started this project by thinking of a few ideas from scratch, after a while of considering a few ideas I remembered a boardgame I made for fun when I was little after watching the gambling episode of the Simpsons, from that idea I had a talk with Andy in a Seminar with him and he helped me realise how it could work as a virtual boardgame. From this I started to make some initial sketches from images I researched on the Internet, I wanted to look at the distinct visual style of the gambling industry, the countless efforts to attract people's attention, the amazing monuments constructed and the astonishing amount of money that flows in and out (but mostly in) of the companies that own it all.

After looking at casinos from all over the world I kept being drawn to just Las Vegas because out of any place in the world it holds the more of what I want visually in one place, also it seems better to make a boardgame about a single place and making one about Las Vegas seems an even better idea. Some of the things I noticed when sketching ideas and looking at Las Vegas was that themes and difference are important, there isn't one big casino that is the same as another. These variations apply to almost anything, from the shape of the building or structure to the use of lighting to even the design of the slot machines themselves. Personally I appreciated all these efforts, maybe not making casinos without windows so customers cant tell the time of day, but the effort to draw in a crowd of gamblers and tourists with bright lights and fantastic shows that try and better their rival companies. This endless and ever expensive competition has spawned some of the most famous locations and visual styles in the world. It is important to try to reflect this in my own work, an environment with a fast pulse that visually represents Las Vegas if it was a boardgame like how Monopoly would represent London if they included more models on the gameboard surface like I plan to.

Looking Around

2008-10-29T13:50:00.008Z

As part of my assignment to observe objects characteristics I took a picture of the metal bench in the forest, I chose this because I walk past these things every day and every day my mind wanders and I thin about the things that have happened in this same space. What interested me about this bench is it represents those thoughts, this bench has been used by thousands of people and probably will be used by more.

The object itself interests me because it has character which tells us of its history and place. Firstly it is covered in black paint and it gives it a cold metal look because the light bouncing off it is very dull, there are countless mark and signs of ware which only aid the character of this bench, if you look even closer there are things like chewing gum and other unknown things stuck to it in various places. This object does not move, does not make a sound and it is firmly stuck into the ground, the frame work and shape let the viewer know this.

Creative Oppertunity

2008-10-29T12:45:00.007Z

In my life I've never really had any contacts outside of college or school that have provided me with a creative opportunity. Except for maybe one, when I was living in Seven Hills while I was at college in Newark-on-Trent, whilst there I used to visit my friend Marshall and I got to know the family and I used to occasionally keep his little brother company and get lifts into town sometimes. When Christmas came His mother Barbra got me a copy of Flash MX 2007 as a present, which I was really happy to get. When I got it installed on a computer I used to practice on it all the time for a good year and a half, teaching myself how to use it. When my FMP (Final Major Project) came around at the end of the college media course it was up to me to do my own project so I made a 5 min flash animation and film called Tall Hat Man, it was a featurette movie pretending to be about a made up game that will be coming out soon, showing a demo and interviews with staff.

If it wasn't for being given the opportunity to play around with flash I wouldn't have been able to do the project for my FMP and I wouldn't have gotten the 3 Distinctions I was awarded for it, therefore I wouldn't have gotten the points to get into uni. I feel that this was an important opportunity for me and without it things might not have been the same and I certainly wouldn't have the skills I have on Flash today.

Art

2008-06-02T02:36:00.004+01:00

I dont often produce a piece of art, but I am happy with this, its not properly finished but it feels finished to me. This is Zhang Liao a warrior on the side of Wei in the Three Kingdoms era of China in 200BC, his is a character in the book who is both a great warrior and follows the way of honour. It is all drawn in pencil, ranging different softness.

2008-06-02T02:32:00.006+01:00

I saw in an XBOX 360 magazine that there was this softwere called the XNA editor. Apparently with this you can easily make games for the PC or XBOX 360. I have dowloaded all the components and I am looking into it now.

2008-06-02T02:19:00.004+01:00

I have owned Civilization for a few years but only recently got into altering the game. Here I am trying two ideas, the first I have tried to give the player the choice of trying out playing as different civilizations that start on very different conditions, for example one place you start on is full of tropical islands and you make a living through the sea and battle pirates and such, and another in a mass of hills, mountains and forest with meat and furs as resources. It was a test of variation. Civilisation is a game where you play an in-depth reality that can either be made up or reflect a real scenario, you raise your own civilisation and control grown, development, people, war and government, amongst much more. On my second mod I have started a scenario that imitates the famous three kingdoms period in China. You can choose from Wei, Wu, Shu, Ma Teng, Yuan Shao, The Nanman, Liu Piao and many other small factions. This leaves the resolution of the battle to the player.

2008-06-02T02:04:00.003+01:00

Here I was inspired by the James Bond movie For Your Eyes only. When I watched the final scene where they infiltrate a monastery, have the final fight, retrieve the stolen device and rescue the girl, I thought how it could be turned into a playable level because of the sequence of tasks and steady story advancement it had as the story resolves. I thought of the alternative ways to do the level and the choice to stealth it or not and the consequence of the decision. Here I have started design on the main structure and trying to exact the features and scale from looking at scenes and screenshots of the movie.

2008-06-02T02:02:00.002+01:00

Here I am practicing using Google Sketchup. I created a tree stump to be used in a virtual environment; there is both a high quality version and a low quality version which takes up less memory. The reason there are two different kinds is because of certain restrictions virtual environments have. For example a busy environment with a lot of objects would require a low quality version because of the likelihood of memory problems. I created this through starting off with a cylinder base and wavy base, then connect the two to each other, and then applied my own curves e.t.c.

Tall Hat Man Rises Again

2008-04-10T13:49:00.013+01:00

I have started to practice on actionscript and I have made my little character take his first steps. It’s not much but it’s something and helps me advance in actionscript. There are a few things wrong with it and it needs a lot of work, its certainty not user friendly. However I did do another program after that, this is a different setup where you press buttons to make Tall Hat Move do his different moves, again not a true user friendly game in any sense, but it is useful for displaying what it would look like in the game and give me a different angle to check my work and improve on any design problems.

Barton Fink

I watched Barton Fink the other day for the first time, it was part of this Coen Brothers Collection DVDs I bought after reading about it in Empire Magazine. I loved how the film kept the viewer interested throughout the slow pace of the first big chink of the film. John Goodman does an exellent job as Charlie, whos is by far my faveourite character in this film. Particularly I enjoyed the awesome scene with Charlie running down the corridor firing shells at two detectives in a blaze of flame, I like to call it the Shotgun Shit-storm. He is one of those actors who acts with their face in remarkable ways, being able to communicate a complicated mix of emotions through such small effort. It seems as though the movie upto this point is several ingrediants which finally become something as the film slowly comes to its conclusions.

Second Life

2008-03-01T12:34:00.010Z

11th February Monday

Nothing much happened today except from a castle that I accidentally stumbled across. Below it can be see that a lot of effort went into the making of this place, there is a smart use of high detail textures throughout the building, although there seemed to be no point to it the place was very big and good to look at.

13th February Wednesday

Today I decided to set out and give myself some aims to do on SL. Today I aimed to find a person I could talk to about there like on SL. After being teleported back to my original starting island for trespassing I met a crowd of people talking to each other, I asked the group what they do for fun on Second Life and they suggested typing words in the search bar for things to do. Later on I was using the IM service to talk to one of the girls who was part of the crowd. She told me that she was married with two children. When I asked her what she does for fun on SL she told me that she worked, went shopping and went clubbing. She said she was addicted to SL and like many others on there didn’t think of it as a game. Her and other people seemed to look at SL as some kind of place to socialise and have fun but not a game. Personally I think I could argue this as being a game.

15th February Friday

Ok so today I aim to make use of the search bar rather than wondering around all day. I needed to type in something I felt like looking at. So I chose to see how good SL is and typed in Safari. I chose the most popular pace. First I started by riding the small red train which took me around the park and through most of the locations at a low speed. The place was almost empty like a lot a places I has been to so I was the driver, it all looked like someone had paid close attention to the park when making it but the animals themselves looked stiff and lifeless. When the train took me through a tunnel the other 2 carriages suddenly shot off the track, one up and one down, and the front part of the train where I was sat sopped moving. I took a good 10mins for things to settle down and SL let my character get up and out of the train. When I decided to look around on my feet I found that every exhibit came with an information stand and links. This place would suit a child much more for it is the only age any of the safari might be suited for.

18th February Monday

Its been 3 days since I’ve been on SL for more than 5 minuets on my look on it has changed slightly. I feel compelled to change my characters appearance because I think it would be a lot more fun than controlling an imitation of me. So I decided to turn my avatar into a very short, very ugly, fat, pointy eared, green skinned monster of some kind. I felt better because I controlled something of my own creation and something that made me laugh and he got a lot of attention. He was compared to Shrek, Goblins, Ogres and Orcs by many people Orcs. What was interesting was that many people who commented on my appearance were confused why I would purposely make myself ugly or didn’t understand why it was funny.

I stumbled upon an interesting place, it was a medevil fighting ground. This place has interested me the most so far perhaps because this is more my thing to do on a game. After watching a jousting match I wandered the graveyards with a cup of coffee which may have been benefiting me somehow, I’m not sure. Whist there I was approached by a bald man in robes, he can up in front of me and began by saying “Hello there green one” which suggested that he was in character and Role Playing. I replied respectively and told him about why I was on SL and after a short conversation about who I was and why I was here he very quickly broke character. He never told me his real name and I never asked, but he said he was a Psychologist living in Edinborough and he claimed to even know a tutor at my uni but wasn’t sure which uni he went to. We talked for a while and he suggested a few things to try, we also talked about why people enjoy this game and why people do and appear as they do. He said personally he comes here to relax and is a regular at the place we were in. He also suggested that people might come on here for escapism, exploring there personality and to be creative.

From this encounter I learned that SL can be fun and does have benefits, as a matter of a fact I myself have used SL to be creative by changing my appearance so there may be a place for me here yet.

19th February Tuesday

I have decided to enlist the help of my cousin Jason, in real life we get along very well and we always manage to have a laugh and lots of fun no matter where we go. So I told him to install SL on his PC a meet me there. I waited for him on a bridge over some water in a forest, I noticed when I met him that he also decided to make his avatar look hideously in-human. From there we did some small activities that were to do in the region we were in from playing the piano to drinking a cup of coffee underwater (I don’t even like coffee.)

21st February Thursday

We met up again and we decided to type in the search bar Australia and see what was there. There were cars to drive and landmarks to see but noting great.

23rd February Saturday

I have been exploring some of the wild and forested areas today, it was disappointing because everything as usual was aimed at making money rather than fun so there so called “wildernesses” were full of rental homes on resorts. Which made me ask “Why would someone want to rent a room?” I have yet to find an answer to that question.

24th February Sunday

Today I have been on my own, I have changed my character to a small goblin like creature (again of my own creation) and equipped him with a bow and sword, I hope to find a place where I can use this new avatar I have made and engage in some battles or role playing and see if that’s any fun. I have spent today’s session looking for that place.

2008-02-11T21:46:00.000Z

Self Identity

During my research on self-identity one thing that stands out above all is that it is argued that self-identity is not a concept or self-image or self-esteem, rather what a being knows about itself. But self identity is defiantly close to self-image, it is known however that self-identity is influenced by other sources so can it be questioned that do any have self-identities true to ourselves or can self-identity exist without influence from another source or from oneself. In regards to this in today’s media and in the past altering or influencing a persons self-identity has been an essential part of selling to the consumer. For example modern pop-rock music conveys a heavy message of identity, wearing certain clothes and listening to certain music is a perfect way to control a large group of consumers and to make the purchase the produce companies want them to buy.

When these concepts are reflected in something like Second Life a whole new door is opened in a persons self-identity. A person can now choose what to look like, how to talk, what to own where to go in this new person that they control online. Despite this door-way for consumers to pretend like there lives mean something in an online game, this has opened a window for the stereo-types and current identities from the real world, which are still reflected in this online game. Despite this being called second life it is a business non the less, it doesn’t really offer a second life because this world reflects back too heavily on the real world. The concept of a new identity through second life however is still strong. How a person might behave in real life, such as buying a big house or the latest dress is all to show off and feel bigger and superior to the next person. The same is reflected in the online games, a person is willing to sit for days on end just to be the best at something which in the end means nothing. If a person had an identity which suffered sociably in real life then where better place than to hide yourself online.

Self identity means to me what a new pair of trousers mean to me, the only real time I consciously consider my own self-identity is when I do such things as buy clothes from a shop. This is because when I buy clothes I first consider if this reflect me as a person, going off the typical ideal of what a piece of clothing make a person look like to another random person. I always decorate my life with thing the reflect who I am, my personality and my interests. I could dress up in clothes that are more acceptable to my peers, or even purposely not acceptable. But at the end of the day I go for things that mean something to me as a person. Although it could be argued that my choice in decoration to reflect myself would appeal to what is sociably acceptable or what society identifies a piece of clothing or a poster too in my personality .

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-concept
[2] http://secondlife.com/
[3] http://www.testcolor.com/languagecolor.html
[4] http://www.bath.ac.uk/management/research/pdf/2003-17.pdf

2008-02-11T20:58:00.000Z

Clerks 2

I watched Clerks 2 for the third time yesterday, its not like me to watch a movie repeatedly for fear of it loosing its edge. But in this case I can't help it, the problem is that I have fallen in love with the message that this movie gives out, its all in the climax of the movie and the ending sequence, what it tells us is that who could want a better life than what they have? Who could ask for more than working in your own shop and hanging out with your best friend for the rest of your life? And I think they are completely right about this, what I mean is that a person could take up his/her whole life in the pursuit of success and happiness when (as in the case of Clerks) what more could you ask for that the Quick Stop.

What I like about what they have done is that they have purposely made this movie very different from the first, the first was an hilarious situation comedy where they lead there lives rather than the second in which this so called "harmony" is broken. I am sure if anyone asked themselves if they had an opportunity to buy a shop with there best friend and embrace the kind mishaps that happen in daily life, who would turn it down? Simple living, you could do whatever you wanted (whilst maintaining the shop of course) and hang out with your best mate and who knows who else.

The movie achieves this message by very easily implanting story imbalances and situations (Quick Stop burns down, has feeling for another woman, hates new job, will be moving to Florida from everything he knows.) leading to the characters self realisation that he has the opportunity to have a perfect life with a rich and beautiful woman, where he wouldn’t have to worry about problems ever again. But he would be far happier with his best friend, a woman who loves him and the Quick Stop. (Which is essentially even better).

When I ask myself the same questions about what I would rather be doing with my life, well there is a much bigger force keeping me here at university, not because its expected of me, not because I think I have to got to university, not because my qualifications allow me here, not even because I have an interest in media, in fact I hate about 80% of the media and would gladly take it down if I had the power. My own personal reasons are more instinctive.

2008-02-11T20:54:00.000Z

First Half Week

3rd February Sunday

This is my second day on second life, I have spent the whole session today looking around Avatar Island (the place I chose to start on,) among the things I found there were a dance floor and objects such as cars and boats to ride on. These things all seem very fun but it makes me think that I should first turn myself into a hardcore city person first, a person who has never actually been in a boat or wandered through a forest, rather sat in an office 9-5 or hanging out at a skate park all day trying to impress the girls with my low hanging trousers, but this is slightly off topic. The point I was trying to make is that despite all these amazing features nothing seems to appeal to me personally to make use of my time on here. I shall aim next time to look for further things to do and find out how to teleport to another place in second life and look at some more of the things this game has to offer.

5th February Tuesday

Ok now I have figured out one way of teleporting to another place, I used to in-game search engine, found a place, then moved there. I searched for the word ‘money’ because I figured that in order to really get the ball rolling on this game I should earn some money. I arrived at a place called Money Island, which was the first place that came up on my search. At the moment I have had a brief look around this place. I found these ATM machines that offer you free money, I looked at one and it took me to a web page. On this page it offered free money for participation in a survey of the browser’s choice. This turned out to be a gimmick like most things on this game because in order to get this money you had to give away personal details to leading companies like Apple, but in exchange for this information you get your money and are entered into a free prize draw for a product like a Mini or an iMac. So in the end this is internet advertising dressed up.

This kind of attempt at marketing didn’t settle well with me and I am still awaiting to find something useful on here, at the moment I have just left my character dancing in the main Money Island building because that gets you L$ on this game, but in order to do this I have to suffer a barrage of advertisement massages from the building, which is annoying.

6th February Wednesday

After Money Island I wandered elsewhere to a place I saw on an advertisement in Second Life that was about leather clothing. The billboard took me straight there, the first thing I did was pick up some free snowballs that could be thrown around in allowed places. The shop there was empty and wanted money for clothing. Eventually I saw a dragon on a cliff edge near it and then there was this message about a security HUD and all of a sudden I got very confused and switched off for the day, all the time in my head trying to figure out what that meant.

7th February Thursday

I still wasn’t sure what the HUD message was about but I’m pretty sure it was and advertisement for land owners and there security or something like that. Fortunately though this place was attached to what seemed to be some kind of main-land. I have spent the last 45 minuets flying around the place looking at the places I came across. Still though it all seems quite aimless, I have yet to see some kind of motivation for me to participate in some kind of task in this game. All I see is endless empty buildings, the odd person and many opportunities to spend money. It’s a shame that I have yet to experience what everyone else seems to like about Second Life but what I wonder at the moment is: “Is this just like any other game online? Is it simply another way to show off to your friends by having more achievements than them?”

My aim for tomorrows session is to interact with some people on Second Life and find some things to do there.

Second Life

2008-02-10T21:01:00.000Z

First Thoughts

I have recently tried my first go on second life. I spent at least an hour working on the appearance of my character, I was aiming to make him look just like me, everything went well in that respect but there were 2 problems I encountered and just decided to ignore them later, the first was the lack of customary hair, it had many options but little to no variation, I am fairly sure that there are places to get more appearances though. The second problem was the minimal use of textures, there seemed to be no place which i could play about with them any further than just simply placing them on the object and altering its colour, there should be more options like one to repeat the texture more than once.

The game itself is overwhelming at first, with so many options and the general indirection at the start of the game. I have simply so far just had a look around the islands I started off on, from this i was disappointed at the slow graphical movement (Which preferably cant be avoided at the moment,) also the music that was played was awful, there should be no music at all (except in a players own space) other than ambience because if the player really wants to listen to music they will surely have there own to use, and lastly there is nothing to get the ball rolling here, you make your profile and then left to your own devices. This I feel would deter many gamers at first. There should have been a beginners board with suggestions of things to get started on.

All in all the first impressions were moderate at best. It seems this would appeal more to a person who likes to escape from life more.

Ineractive Narrative

2008-01-10T12:16:00.000Z

Now that I have figured out how to embed flash content here is my Interactive Narrative. Fans of Roger Dean rejoice.

Things I have been Getting up to.

2008-01-10T10:55:00.000Z

Ok here are some of the things I have been getting up to over the is past term, sadly I havent been doing much with the projects at hand but there are some other things that I have been doing. For instance:

I have sort of lost my heart to draw lately for some reason. But nevertheless I still manged to produce this from penil. I had to darken it down after i scanned it of course. This image is a homage to one of my faveourite artists H.R.Giger. Although he did lots more than just Alien I still felt compelled to draw this, or at least that was in my head at the time.

Next I had a little fun with Google Sketch up, I thought it would be a good idea to practice my 3D design skills and learn how to use a new programme. I have to say that Sketch up is pretty good for design purposes but I was just playing with all the tools and made a few things which I put on Google Earth in and around my home town. My first attempt was to make a 5 storey dome like structure and submerge it in the ponds near my old village, thus creating something only an Evil Villan from James Bond would even care about. Then I had a go at some kind of evil sinister castle of some sort.

Lastly I took it closer to where im living at the moment and turned my flats (The Maltings) into a fortress, complete with look out towers and a main fortress structure. Students agree that this should be done for real, mostly to keep out those vikings.

Lastly I did some more work on a 2D platform game that I was designing before I came to uni, I simply added some new level designs for Level 6, my theme was aimed to be a glittery underground cavern full of gems and such, I have yet to complete a background for the level.

One Shot Film

2007-11-22T01:55:00.000Z

Single Shot Evaluation

This is our one shot film, from the beginning we had the idea to do something about remembrance day mainly because it was close to the day. We also had the idea to use a poppy symbolically in the shot and we were going to shoot it at the polish war graves. Me and Richard already knew the layout of the place and could estimate a good shot to take. Personally I feel this is a good shot, this is the third angle we tried, looking at it from this perspective you can see the good use of negative space, taking advantage of the rows of polish graves. Combining this with filtering the red through the black and white meant that the viewers focus is drawn towards the significance of the poppy. Altogether this shot talks more than if it was say on a higher angle which we tried before. If I could improve on anything it would be the weather conditions and my sloppy walk up to the grave.

Old Work- Shooting Gallery

2007-11-13T20:04:00.000Z

This is an old animation I did for my FMP at Newark College, this isnt my final piece it is just something a little extra I did to assist the project. It involves a game layout where the player shoots my tutors and fellow students... great eh? (I bet if my new tutors read this they will be a little scared.) Despite all this I dont like the sound effects used (I think they are too dominating over the music,) and would like to change them. Firstly I thought I should mention that the media course at my college does not have Flash MX or any software like Flash MX. I got a copy for myself at christmas 2005 and since then I tought myself how to use it. At first I had a slow rubbish computer and did the best I could with it. But thanks to my shiney new laptop I got last May I get to spread my wings much more.

I got the inspiration by simply looking down an old part of the College. I dont know what sparked the idea but I think it was the shape of the buildings and the many places a person could just pop up out of nowhere. So on that note I got everyone to pose for me holding weapons and took there pics using a Kodak Easyshare 5 mega pixel camera. Then I took a pic of the area I was going to use paying careful attention to what shapes I could fit into the frame. I needed several shots of guys, and 2 shots of girls so they were the targets your not suppost to shoot. Also I took a few funny pictures for a laugh but one turned out to be very useable in the game/animation, which was a funny looking head that could be a bonus target.

After I had got these pictures home I used Flash and for some Adobe Photoshop to cut them out and put a rough white frame around them. Then using Flash MX 2004 each image was named and stored in the file's library then through that an image could be re-used as many times as I needed. each use of the image was given its own size and movement path to follow. The scenery was cut up into several layers so objects could go in between each building so to give the illusion that they were popping up from places. The crosshair movement, bullet holes, scoreboard and when the targets shake from being shotwere all manually done frame by frame. I prefer to do this technique where relevent because its more personal and you can get more from an animation, I've got endless patience for things like this so i dont mind hours of the same thing at all. Finally some music which I chose from an old Sega game called Sonic CD. The finished piece had to be played over several hundered times to look for errors or problems that needed fixing. But by the end it looked really good, the master version looks crisp and highly detailed compared to its lesser Youtube version.

I'm planning to do another one, featuring Nottingham Trent or my student flats. Any comments or ideas are welcome.

Sorry

2007-11-12T18:52:00.000Z

Sorry about this everyone but i lost my password for my old blog. So im in the process of re-submitting all the work from my old blog to this new one. And dont worry ive wrote down this password and put it somewhere where i cant loose it. Plus pretty soon once i get used to using this accout i wont forget it. Yay!

Pixelation

2007-11-12T17:09:00.000Z

This is a pixelation animation we did for multimedia. It was hard for us to think of an idea initially. Our first idea was something in a grave which had no real edge over the norm idea of someone moving around in unusuall ways. So later we had the idea of doing a sillhouette which turned out to be a good and unique idea. Although this was good for us actually thinking of what we could do for shadows was hard.

This animation could be compared to media productions from the early movies and theatrical proformances dating back hundreds of years. Despite the fact that there are no feature length sillhouette movies, shadows play and important part in films. Used to emphasise mood or shape. Film Noir movies such as Double Indemnity make heavy use of shadow to give an almost artistic setting to the shot. On the other hand sillhouettes have made brief appearences in films such as Gremlins 2 as a comedy sketch. In this case some of the Gremlin characters have broken in to the projection room of a cinema and are making funny shadows with their hands. Theatrical uses of sillhouettes are more widely used such as Shadow Play puppets which is an ancient form of Chinese shadow puppetry, which is widely used in over 20 countries, but isnt as popular as it once was.

Manovich, The Language of New Media

2007-11-12T15:32:00.000Z

The Language of New Media
IV. The Illusions

Summary

This chapter opens with a short story about an ancient Greek painter called Zeuxis who lived in the 5th century BC. it’s a story about his competition with another painter called Parrhasius. Before he begins he then tells the reader that this story is an early example of the struggle for illusionism. The chapter opens with this because he references it quite a lot during the first half. Afterwards the story of Zeuxis is compared to a modern day piece of technology called RealityEngine. This comparison shows us that compared to these stories of early illusionism RealityEngine may not be as detailed or as good as Zeuxis but it has a few things that Zeuxis didn’t have in 5 BC, such as a user being able to interact with an object.

During the bulk of the first half he gives a swift scan of illusionism, its history and its applications in past and modern day media. He covers such subject as, the fact that previous illusionist things photography, film and video are being replaced by digital computers and how this is one of the biggest driving forces for the new media’s expansion but how the new media is also obsessed with visual technology. He then moves on to tell the reader about the animators quest to produce photo-realistic images of sets and people and that the quest to simulate the perfect reality is the driving force for VR (Virtual Reality.) Other subjects are then covered for the argument, for instance he shows that the medias obsession for illusionism isn’t to sole driving force for the new media but it is one of the key factors, he then goes on to ask How is the “reality effect” of a synthetic image different from that of the optical media? Is computer technology redefines our standards of illusionism as determined by our earlier experience with photography, film and video? The first half is finished by answering these questions.

The last half of this chapter is filled with three topics that illusionism in the new media may raise. The first shows us that there is a parallel between representational and photorealistic computer imagery, and gives a brief look at the growth of this technology in the media and is always reflected back at artists through these ages. The second section discusses feats in visual computer technology such as blur and colour range and how these may be impossible to tell apart from real colours and blurs in photos with the naked eye, they are created differently using pixels and mathematical equations and algorithms. This section ends by asking will cinematography be replaced by other more superior forms of imagery of which Manovich answers no because cinematography has distinctive characteristics. The third and final section is summarising 3 common features in arguments about theory’s and history relating to illusionism he breaks them down into:

1. Illusionistic images share some features with the represented physical reality (for instance, the number of an object’s angles).

2. Illusionistic images share some features with human vision (for instance, linear perspective).

3. Each period offers some new “features” which are perceived by audiences as “improvement” over of the previous period (for instance, the evolution of cinema from silent to sound to colour).

Manovich also discusses that computer media changes these because our demands have changed and become more complicated since then. This section finishes with a look at interfacing and the extensive research gone into trying to get movement in a computer generated reality to simulate to movement of real objects in real life, such as how a glass smashes on the floor of how a car moves when it hit’s a wall, what it takes to make a realistic creation of a human being and what factors play a part in user’s assessment of the reality effect of the image.