The Derby Crush

By, perhaps stupidly, saying yes to almost every opportunity that came my way after wrapping up the course I produced this short piece of animation for Kernow Rollers, the local roller derby league. It was to act as part of a larger instructional video, which I've also embedded below.


It was all slightly more rushed than I would have liked, I thought it was even going to render in time for the skate event at one point, but then I realised I'd turned unified sampling and motion blur on when I didn't need either. I went all out with the shaders in this one, spending a good deal of time texturing the floor and using specular and bump maps to get that glossy gym floor look as good as I could.

Kernow Rollers introduce Roller Derby from Kernow Rollers on Vimeo.


I also used a great tutorial that Jake showed me on creating satin, or velvet cloth effects using the mia_material in Maya. Using a colour ramp in the reflection colour you can get a great iridescent effect which I used on the balls and stars that feature in the animation. I wish I'd had more time to add some props to the set, and add more than the 2 lights I used. Perhaps next time.

This was a great project to try some things I'd been meaning to use for a while but still hadn't got round to learning. This one Joe showed me, and its a way in photoshop to paint along a curve you've made using the pen tool using the selected brush. So effectively you can tweak a vector, and then apply a nice looking stroke to it. I used this to get the track shape, and then paint evenly around it.

The layered shader in Maya is a great tool, but isn't compatible with the mia_material. So I found a cunning tutorial that basically embeds the final result of the shader inside a surface shader, which IS compatible with the layered shader. I was planning on using it to put the Pivot player's stripe onto specific balls, but in the end it was easier just to make a bespoke texture, than wrestle with a headache of nodes.

I kind of cheaped out on the animation by using motion paths, curves drawn in 3D space which objects can then follow, with some tweaks to timing it worked reasonable well, and then are even some fancy settings for banking into each curve's turn. Only the jammers are hand animated.

For the motion blur I broke out my friend the mental ray production shader "mip_motionblur" who creates vector based motion blur on each image after rendering, this way I can have fast motion blur without using compositing software I don't own. Though it does unfortunately mean that its baked into the image and therefore non-editable.

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I've also been slowly making moves on the Kernel fixes. I think I'm going to add an opening title. Tasteless and unpopular as the idea seems, I'm effectively admitting defeat and creating some expectations for the audience so they're not completely in the dark about the story at the outset. Im also planning on adding two shots which will clarify a couple of the plot heavy props. But these need discussing with the relevant team members before I can start working on them.

Re-Comp

Pixel Propaganda

An excellent article was written by the consistently interesting Kirk Hamilton, on writing videogame dialogue, in particular the enemy barks the player hears.

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 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.

Emotive Change

This animation is supposed to show a change of emotion using only body language and poses, instead of relying on blatant facial expression. I'll let you watch before I explain and taint your perception of whats going on the characters mind.



I imagined a scenario where the character is anticipating the bliss of cold ice cream on a sunny day, and seems eager, almost impatient. Then as he fumbles for some cash to pay the ice cream man he doesn't pay attention to the angle at which he's holding his ice cream and the scoops tumble from the cone onto the floor. Devastated at the waste of ice cream he forlornly pokes with his foot, then as loss turns to rage he raises his foot and stomps on it violently. I'm reasonably pleased with the final  animation though it looks a little broken due to me playing with the focal something in the camera settings. Motion blur is back! (along with its good friend lens flare) and my god have I missed it ;)

In other news I'm still continuing my half life 2 play through, I have just started Episode  II and for some reason it barely runs, visually it looks about the same as episode one, and I used to play on nigh on mazimum settings, now I have to play it looking like sh*t just so it'll run smoothly. I don't get it.

When I read Extra Lives by Tom Bissell, there was a quote on the back of the book from a guy called Michael Abbot. Michael Abbot teaches a course at a university that studies readings of importance, be it cultural aesthetic of otherwise. The term readings is very broad and students on the course will read novels, plays, watch films and, for the first time, play a game. When pitching this addition to the course the game chosen was Portal. This game was chosen because of its antagonist; whose role in guiding, fooling, and delighting the player has great relevance to other texts on the course, and is also a leading example of the sophistication that is possible, but painfully absent, in contemporary games. Everyone go play it.

Michael Abbot runs a blog and podcast called The Brainy Gamer which functions to provide analysis and critique on gaming and the industry as a whole, its well worth following. Another aspect of the Brainy Gamer blog in the Vintage Games Club, a club that anyone can join that serves to bring people together for communal play throughs of "vintage" games that many gamers from this generation may have missed or never even heard of, its a great way to discover some of the best games from yesteryear and then have a whole bunch of people there to discover it with you, and discuss each others experiences. Currently they're playing Planescape: Torment, and for the first time I've joined them.

Its nice playing an old game, where conventions like cut scenes don't disrupt the game play, and heavy handed tutorials don't treat the player like a cretin. Planescape is a game where the themes are tightly woven into the gameplay, its about discovery and death/life, so when you "respawn" there's a plausible context for that occurance that reinforces the game mechanice of dying and resurrecting, you literally start in a mortuary every time you die.

Due to the protagonist's amnesia, you know nothing about yourself, so the player is free to explore, uncover memories, have conversations with NPCs that reflect who you want the character to be, and support the core gameplay of exploration. The conversations are all text based excpet for a few key lines from the supporting characters, but because of this text, the developer was able to create a world where nearly everyone has something to say and a branching conversation for you to take part in, this makes the Planes feel like a rich and alive place, though it does make for a lot of reading. God forbid we should have to read text in a modern console game.

Walks

Sorry, no motion blur, again...



This guy just looks like he should be whistling a happy tune, so I know I got something right even the the route I took to get the end result was hardly direct. This wasn't what I planned.

Problems:

• I didnt come up with the double bounce
• His head is kind of immobile
• No motion blur
• One arm swings back more than the other

Strongman

The 11 second club is an online competition where 11 seconds of dialogue or sometimes just a sound clip is uploaded to the website each month, people entering the competition then take this dialogue and animate to the best of their ability. Marks are given based solely on the quality of the animation.

So as one of our first assignments we will be entering! In order to hone our skills a bit first we were set a heavy weight lifting animation, to help us get back on form and re-establish the animation principles in our minds: timing, anticipation, overlap, squash and stretch, etc.

The video embedded above is my own attempt using the Dee rig. I filmed some reference using the only means to hand (cameraphone, guitar amp) to get accurate poses and timing:



I've also been hard at work on a model of my own face which I'm trying to get as photorealistic as possible. It was looking good until I tried to texture the hair on, now I look all kinds of special. I'm really enjoying mudbox, its pretty accessible once you get used to it, and to think my crafts teacher said "Olly finds it hard to make friends with the clay" or something. Who needs clay with mudbox? More on this soon.

Here is your Interesting Article for the week. A piece on "agency" in games written by Clint Hocking himself.