Today we were introduced to the main program we will be using in the games side of the course. The program Unity is a tool used to create video games and everything they include, such as characters, scenery etc.
Considering the professional level of this program it is surprisingly easy to use and makes a change from the madness of Maya. Unity allows you to create environments easily and efficiently. Obviously the more time you spend the better and more detailed your environment will be but its very easy to get good quick results.
Unity also allows the importing of models from maya which means you can create complex and detailed models in Maya (because you can't do this in Unity) and then import them into Unity where you can animate them or walk around with them as your character.
Chris O'Neill is a YouTube animator who has created parodies for Left 4 Dead and GTAIV. His animation style is really nice and clean and the voice actors he uses are really good. His animation style is quite retro like early days Cartoon Network productions. This appeals to me as it reminds me of some of the classic cartoons of the past like: early simpsons and the looney toons franchise.
Below is Left 4 Speed which is a parody of Left 4 Dead the Xbox 360 game. It employs satirical humour as well as a lot of dark humour. It also takes the piss out of the ridiculous situations the characters find themselves in, in the actual game. Such as the 'originality' of being trapped in a 'mall' with loads of zombies
I have also decided to blog about a PS2 game i played about 7 years back. It was essentially the world as we know it but people were tanks. The gameplay was fun but a bit repetitive it was fun back then but would probably be boring if I was to play it now. Anyway the point is that it uses tanks and they're animated which is why I am blogging about it.
As well as Wii Tanks i also thought of this as inspiration for my environment and my models. The tanks in Seek & Destroy were a lot more kitted out than the ones in my animation but the reason for the reference is because the tanks moved in a very blocky way which is what i wanted to represent in my animation
Heres a video showing the gameplay from Seek & Destroy
As my animation is based around Tanks moving i thought it would be a good idea too look at some other animated tanks across the internet. Tanks (as I have found) are fairly easy to animate as they use simple blocky movements, turning when still, and moving in straight lines. Obviously tanks are much more mobile than this but this blocky movement is classic in terms of old style animated tanks, and i wanted to keep that going.
I also researched the old Wii Tanks game. This was a mini game on the Wii where you played a small toy tank and your objective was to shoot and destroy the other enemy tanks in the arena. The best thing about this game was that the game wasn't trying to make it realistic but it was essentially a electronic game with wooden tanks. This game was the main source of inspiration for my animation and I looked at videos during the development of my environment, models and animating them
This is a video showing the simplistic and charming style of Wii Tanks
For my animation module I have decided to do a post on one of the greatest animation studios gracing the planet today. Pixar have been making quality animated films for 17 years and have some incredibly talented animators on staff.
The film i'm going to talk about is 'Bugs Life'. I grew up watching this film and its only after studying animation can I appreciate the time and effort it takes to animate and render characters and environments. The most impressive thing about the film is the way the animators make you feel like one of the ants, the camera angles, and perspectives, make you feel really small and insignificant. The way the tiniest thing like a grass seed is massive and hard to carry for them.
I have also noticed the hidden cultural applications of this film as it can be applied to the USA as well as the world in general and how it is run. The film makes the point of the poor working so the rich get richer, which is essentially happening in Africa with the corrupt governments and in USA with the rich being taxed less than the poor.
I'm going to talk about the hit film 127 hours starring James Franco. Its based on a true story about a horrific canyoneering accident in which Aron Ralston (Franco) is forced to amputate his arm. The film was not only inspirational and moving but the shots and camera work used is truly a sight to behold.
The film was directed by Danny Boyle and is one of his greatest works, Boyle shows us into the life of Ralston as he pursues his passion for rock climbing and canyoneering. One of my favourite shots in the film comes just before the disaster. The camera follows his hands running and skimming over the eroded rocks and you can feel, as you sit there, how smooth they are. The shot really tells you of his passion for climbing and it makes you want to go out and explore the world on foot like him.
The plot of the film summed up is essentially ''guy gets stuck and cuts his arm off'' Now this doesnt seem like a really riveting story but the way Boyle showed his anguish and his suffering makes for an really emotional and exciting film. As the plot suggests it is mostly about him being stuck in Blue John Canyon but his descent into madness as well as the simplest of tasks becoming suddenly herculean make you really connect with the character and even knowing how the story ends you always hope that maybe someone hears him and rescues him.
As well as the shots and quality of the acting being incredible the music is also pretty outstanding. The video below is the soundtrack for the scene where he is riding his bike across to Blue John Canyon. The upbeat pace and tempo of the music really fits well with the action on screen.
I think the film encapsulates that you don't need special effects and costumes to make a truly outstanding motion picture. This film is very simple and the budget of $18 million is used by way of stunning camera angles and the truly life like severing of his own arm. The arm scene actually caused nausea to a lot of the customers in the cinema which is credit to the make up team on 127 hours
These are just some final screenshots of the environment. I changed a fair few things to get to this stage as i wanted to make it look more realistic.
- I changed the gate into a guard tower as it looks much better rendered and it added more complexity to the piece.
- I scrapped the original crappy trees to make way for some coloured and textured ones. For the spherical ones i created a sphere and used the edge tool to warp it into a tree shape, i also did the same with the cone shaped ones. I added images to make them look like trees and added bump maps
- I also added some bushes which are essentially the top part of the trees with a different texture map.
