The Imaginators

I remember the first time I got to use my Mum's Panasonic camcorder when I was maybe somewhere in between 6 and 9 years old. The first thing me and my sister did with this fascinating device was to film an epic starring our cuddly toys. Not just one epic though, "The Beanie & Boonie Comedy Show" ran for a good 10 episodes over two or more mini DV cassettes constituting over 3 hours of footage. I loved that thing, the way the stories we'd been playing out could now be immortalised and shared kept me filming for years, even in those early days I was already mimicking film conventions before I really new what they were for, there were crazy close ups, slow-motion (faked, naturally), titles that were no more than sheets of paper with my appalling hand writing on. The structures and ideals that media embed into our malleable minds from a very young age would flow from my imagination with fully formed narratives involving heroic ducks, evil monkeys, hysterical elephants and the domestic troubles of a pair of owls. Its amazing how watching these things back; the mind edits out the hands holding the toys and the voices appear to emerge from the characters themselves, but I can only imagine that to a viewer who didn't participate in these film's creation, all that appears on the screen is two kids playing with toys.

Watching the Toy Story 3 bonus features suddenly reminded me of The Beanie & The Boonie comedy show, and perhaps brought me to the root of why these films had such meaning for me, and anyone who remembers a similar childhood. The beauty of Toy Story for me is also in the premise itself. It was the first computer animated feature film and what does it choose as its subject matter? The imagination of a child and the act of bringing inanimate objects to life through imagination. How perfect is that as a comment on the medium and a start to a flawless run of animated films? (nobody mention Cars). When Woody runs, the exaggerated flailing of limbs and excess of energy is such a perfect depiction of a Toy imbued with imagined life that the audience is always reminded of what the Toys live for. I am now 20 years old, and I didn't hand on my toys to a little girl under a Pixar sun, in a suburban American garden, bathed in purple shadow. I'm holding on to every bit of that past, there's a reason I became an animator...

On a different note. I recently purchased Castlevania: Lord of Shadows. What a pile of crap. Its basically Crash Bandicoot but much much shinier. I love me some Crash Bandicoot, it was the first videogame I ever played, in the days of the original Playstation. It's linear level design, fun platforming gameplay, charm, and one the best theme tunes in gaming all helped establish Crash as a mascot for his platform and genre. 14 years later and Castlevania: Lord of Shadows is employing much the same design techniques well over a decade too late. Its almost as if the developer's realised this and decided they needed to cobble together some more gameplay elements to create a bit of variety, so they stole some more stuff from Naughty Dog with a simplified version of Uncharted's platforming, they stole a few boss fights from Shadow of the Colossus-even nicking their grab mechanic and power points that had to be stabbed. This all amounted to something a little like a diluted God of War so they added some quicktime events just to complete the overall sense of deja vu thievery, if you're wondering what Kojima's contribution was to this smorgasbord of plagiarism it would probably be the pointless cut scenes that break up the "gameplay" (again, I love metal gear solid's cut scenes but they don't really add anything to Castlevania when they show you walking into the next area every 2 minutes).  Castlevania: Lord of Shadows, from what I hear, is almost nothing like the franchise its supposed to be based on, so why not draw from that and bring it onto the current generation of consoles instead of just taking a quick look at what some of today's games are doing and pilfering it.

In other news the 11 Second Club results are in and I came a mildly disappointing 70/295. I was hoping for a top 50. Its interesting how some I was sure I'd beat were popular and others that I thought were masterpieces didn't do nearly as well. My animation clocked an impressive 24 comments (well, I was impressed) nearly all remarking on the vomit inducing handicam-seriously fuck you, its awesome, and the shiny rendering- yeah I know it was a cheap shot. But others were genuinely constructive. Here are some highlights:

• Matt 3 days ago
  Rander and effects are awesome, but animation needs improving, maybe by making some stronger poses to make the character look more agressive i.e have him point the shovel and the dude on the ground when yelling you stole it! But still nice job though!

• Edgardo C. Padilla Jr. 3 days ago
  I don't see any problems here but I kinda wish there were more close up shots of their faces since its dialogue driven.

• Olly Skillman-Wilson 3 days ago
  frame that shit tighter next time Olly, cant even see their bloody faces.

• Alexander Baert 3 days ago
  Very nice piece! The gag with the lightning could have a bigger impact with a cut to a wider shot, more sky (he could be strecthed more also, making a stronger pose, and we would see the top of the spade, attracting the lightning going from top to bottom through him), and him actually getting burned or ellectrocuted, now it seems a bit 'on top' of him. Nice animation, both the guys dropping is very well done! The hands of the angry guy needs attention when he climbs out, they seem flat all the time. Cheers!

• Tyler Johnston 2 days ago
  This is good. I think it will rate higher based on the great production values. I am 50-50 on the camera; while I think the movement is really well done, I'm not sure what purpose it serves to drive the story. Is it supposed to be another person's POV? Is the camera supposed to be floating on the water? I think you might want revisit it (but that's just one person's opinion). I think the animation itself is good, but given the cinematic treatment you have given it, I think you could have pushed it a bit further. When looking past all the glam, it seems a bit on the timid side. Obviously you've got a solid skill set here, so I think you can handle the harsher critique. I do like the staging, although with the lighting I feel like we loose out on the emotions of the characters somewhat, especially the angry guy. Nice work overall, keep at it =)

•   Adriano Mariotto 2 days ago
  more appeal, the camera movement distracts, the faces not be able to read. good body mechanics, good poses, good idea.
  
  keep animating! 

• David Wardell 1 day ago
  Concentrate less on the high-tech handheld look and the unnecessary action and special effects. You're a good animator, but you need to improve your timing and exaggeration if you're gonna make it. 

  Yeah that's right, I commented on my own video. This is probably the last post before Christmas, I'll keep blogging hopefully as I have a couple of things planned.

11 Seconds of Forever IV

My brain is the consistancy of that mush that bananas turn into when they rot, so no fancy prose today. Here is just under a months worth of animating in fully rendered form. I say fully rendered, I'm still not convinced by this motion vector business added in post, though thats coming form a purist ;)
I fear my dabbling in render passes will turn out to be more experimental than my experimental project, but I'll see what I can do to rectify that over the next few days.

I would love for this to do well in the competition, these things matter to me in the silliest ways, at least it matters when I've invested so much time and effort. And time. Did I mention effort?

Part of whats motivated me is this GDC business, to have something I'm proud of that showcases core skills which is purely my own, this ticks all those boxes, and will hopefully be an important addition the slowly expanding showreel. Something to show people who I am should I meet anyone or even get there in the first place. I've got to say it makes brilliant repeat viewing!

I implore you watch this full screen HD.

11 Seconds of Forever III

All animation for the 11 second club is now done except for the lip sync on the second character so here is one final work in progress before the final submission. Lip syncing has turned out to be surprisingly quick, mostly because I haven't done it to a particularly high standard. Considering the handicam style cinematography you just can't see his face that clearly and any flaws that appear in a close up just aren't noticeable, at least not in a high resolution playblast. This is both welcome, and a shame, I may have to experiment with different camera techniques to best frame the scene. The second character is more aligned with the camera so hopefully I'll be able to get some really expressive dialogue from him. Youtube willing I'll have the clip up here, but right now its refusing to upload anything so for now here are some shiny renders:

And the obligatory motion blur, you love it ;)

Meanwhile the gaming critique blogosphere continues to churn out prose on yesterdays, today's, and tomorrows games. Here is a place to find the best of it, including a particularly interesting article which talks about something I've always thought about in relation to war games, and a presentation on social gaming, realism, and gamification which devolves into a crazed rant. Fascinating all the same, I wouldn't put this stuff up if it wasn't important (to me at least) or thoughtful so please give them a read/watch.

11 Seconds of Forever II

Another week goes by and production seems to slow rather than quicken, its as if time creates a membrane through which my animation has to pass, each frame becoming harder to key.

Recently Dan posted a video that caught my attention (not least because of my recent Half Life experience of admiration, mild obsession, and ultimately disappointment). This  epic animation was done by James Benson who has some interesting tutorials demonstrating his approach to animating, which is more akin to stop motion than CGI. I found these pretty helpful, they're worth your time.

Here's my work in progress for this week, its developed quite a bit since last week but not necesarily in the ways I intended, for example less animating and more:

• Camera Shake
• Lighting
• Fixed Eyes
• Set Decorations

 

Click to enlarge:

Shiny Shot No. 2:

I'm just starting to hit my stride so with more hard work I'll have a finished block through for next week so I can start lip syncing! Thrilling stuff.

11 Seconds of Forever

click to enlarge:

coming soon...

I thought I'd see if i could procrastinate some more and avoid animating by:

• Making shiny SSS (sub-surface-scattering) shaders
• Finding a suitable background image
• Creating a lighting setup
• Breaking Norman's pupils
• Adding god-rays from the moon in after effects
• Adding fire and smoke from the torch using Particular

Masterclass

Here is my work in progress for the 11 second club so far.



But this clip is more of a disguise because what I really want to share is this blog post and the information it contains. The Witness is what Jonathan Blow, Braid creator, is currently working on, and in this blog post he address the quality of most game texturing and how it often detracts from the beauty of the modelled geometry. I happen to agree. I think its the reason I love ambient occlusion so much, it describes a three dimensional object's form in the purest way:

Mr Blow goes on to reference a particularly important pdf of Naughty Dog's art direction presentation at GDC this year. As I was reading it I realised I actually didn't have much of an idea of what game geometry looked like and what kinds of detail were possible, it was fascinating to see how techniques like instancing, shader blending and all kinds of crazily innovative design methods allowed Naughty Dog to create what is probably the most stunningly beautiful game I've ever played. How they budget detail on everything from models to textures to lighting and rendering is what makes this presentation a masterclass in how to make a game look good in the most efficient way possible.

Thespian

Our month of the 11 second club has begun. I have been pondering various ideas for different scenarios that could explain the dialogue in this month's sound bite, the one I've settled on isn't especially original and I'm sure there'll be numerous other entries like it but it ticked a number of boxes including explaining the crackle of flames in the background, it allowed for the conflict between the two characters, and it allowed my to give the character's props that would give their hands something do whilst the scene plays out. This first reference video is before I had decided to add props so theres a lot of flailing which, while comic, isn't very expressive.



This next one involves one character holding a shovel and standing next to the freshly dug hole, while the other is holding a flaming torch to see by in the dead of night, dramatic I know. For some reason the sync is off a bit on the sound in the this one but don't let that tarnish your enjoyment of the fantastic, and nuanced acting exhibited here:



At this point I'm resisting watching the original clip for fear of it manipulating my view of the scene and limiting my clearly immensely creative idea. I just know if I watch it I'll end up subconsciously working it into my animation, maybe when this month is done I'll watch it in its entirety.