VIDEO PITCH

SHOW REEL

Here is the final show reel that I made in after effects.

The Presentation

Its time for me to come out from my dark dungeon of a workplace that I call my bedroom and venture back into uni to meet and talk about our presentation. I feel extremely relieved to have done the majority of my work successfully. I can now sit back and bask in awe of the busy semester it has been for me. I haven't stopped working for a single day (I shit you not, not a single day). I am extremely proud of myself and have found a new work ethic I never knew I had. Its strange doing work that you truly enjoy and love. 

For the presentation we really wanted to set up a bedroom-like situation with a bed, pillows, wallpaper, toys, etc. All the things you'd expect to see from a little boys room. We want the audience to really experience the game as though they are playing the boys dream. The wall mounted TV will be used to look like a window of some sorts with curtains on either side to hide the frame. I think this is a great idea and is very fitting to the theme. We also thought it would be interesting to place items that you see in the game around the bed room to show how the dream has been influenced. I personally want to use 2 walls but unfortunately there aren't enough to go around so we may have to settle for one unfortunately.

At this stage I am very confident in our group and happy with what we have produced. 

4 Arms Animation Complete

Here is the final animation for 4 arms, the first 33 frames are him idle standing under the lamp while the rest are for the dialogue that the group provided me with.  I really tried to convey a creepiness to the character which definitely matched up well with the audio. Great final result.

CRYPT COMPLETE

I finished texturing the crypt, I got lazy and just decided to do an overall texture so I didn't have to spend  hours on it. It looks decent enough though. I really gave it a rotting, decaying look which fits perfectly to the game. 

The Formative Presentation Feedback

Basically what was said about our project is exactly what I had expected. I felt as though we had trailed off a bit on the project and we needed to get back on track. It was stated that we needed to not only make the game itself but also test out our theories and experiment with what we had produced to improve upon game mechanics for the means of story telling. I fear that in our time frame this will not be accomplished as we are still working on implementing the features within the game. I also don't think  the tutors had a good idea of how the game looked overall, they didnt really see my contribution at all. We just flicked passed the renders of the 3d models I had done. Not to worry, they will be seen in the game! (granted the time frame they were not able to actually play though the entire game) hopefully their concerns will be addressed on the final presentation.

In regards to actually interpreting the game and improving upon it. Perhaps it would be a good idea to actually leave forms for people to fill out in respect to what we could improve, what they liked the most, etc.  This way our presentation could be used as a means to gather information about our game if we did chose to continue it next semester.

Overall I was happy with how it went, and how we have picked up our game in the last few weeks. Things are really coming together now which is great to see. I can only hope that we can get the AI up and ready before the final presentation day....fingers crossed.

Evil Baby Walk Cycle

Ok so I've completely the Baby walk cycle. I really tried to play around with it to match the character. Because the character has such an exaggerated head I wanted to show that it was dead weight that had to be carried around. Not only that but I also tried to incorporate a limp into the character so that it better resembled a zombie. Its still a bit rough and I think the head bob could be greatly reduced to make it look smoother but overall I am happy. At this point I cant afford to nit pick on small things.

Evil Baby Character

Ok so for the past few days I've been conceptualising my evil baby character and trying to model him. I've looked at many images but the main one which really stood out and inspired me was one I found from deviant art:

After finding a nice orthographic picture of a baby on-line I decided to use it as a base for the character giving it an over exaggerated look to the character with a huge head and small body. I did this because i did not want to fall into the same trap as I did before in making realistic models. It only made life hard especially when using low poly geometry modelling. I figured that since the baby wont be focused on as much as the main character it wouldn't be necessary to have as much detail in the model. Learning from my prior mistakes I realised that I should base most of the detail of the UV maps instead of the model itself. There will be large amounts of babies on the screen at the same time when the game in complete so this also emphasised the point that it did not have to be very very detailed. As long as there was enough geometry in the joints to move and animate I was happy.

As for the texture I chose a nice flaky effect with gave the baby a zombie like appearance mixing dark colours and blood together. I contrasted this with the colours of the nappies to give it a strong aura about the character. It looks scary but at the same time cute. Ultimately I am extremely happy with the final outcome. Instead of painting I primarily used pre-made textures that I overlayed on top of each other to give the desired effect.

                                                                       

Walk Cycles

I have also been putting a lot of my time and effort into walk cycles of the main character. It meant that I had to set up a mirror in my room so that I could watch myself walk across the room. I examined human movements and used this information to make a walk cycle. The first walk cycle went well, however I realised after making the rig that I had not froze the transformations of the controllers which meant it was very hard to make it symmetrical  Not only that but I did not attach a global control to the rig which meant that the model walked across the canvas instead of in one place. This meant that when the model was imported into unity it actually walked away from the camera when you pressed 'W'. 

Because of this I had to create a whole new rig and start the animation from scratch which allowed me to correct my mistakes. In the end this was the best thing for the walk cycle because the final result was far superior than the first. Practice makes perfect. Not only that but from watching the character in the game I realised that in order to go up stairs the character had to jump so I thought it would be wise to add a jump cycle as well as a stationary pose. Here are the final results: 

Overall I am quite happy with it at the moment, the feet look quite static but that's because I used a reverse foot lock technique in the feet, evidently it works great on high poly characters but not so well with low poly. I will keep this in mind for next time. 

Environment Modeling

While working from home I also began working on the crypt model within the game. This modelling is A LOT easier than character modelling as you can block out major shapes with simple objects like walls/floors etc. I'm developing a workflow for buildings where I can reuse objects to save myself a lot of time. This was the first attempt at modelling a building and it turned out better than expected. There are 2 tombs, with stairs in both leading down to a secret room where the player will encounter the 'music box.' This is just one of five scenes in the game that players will encounter. All I need to do is UV map the building and its finished. I have however already given Tim the base mesh for him to play around with and position within the game.

I modelled a few different versions to show the team and find out which one they liked best. Here is the final outcome:

UV Mapping

I was not happy with the colouring of the last character. This was because I was using straight colour shaders from Maya which made the character look very plain and bland (what I like to call Iceblock material). This really made the character feel tacky. I wanted the audience to 'believe' the character in the game world and so I decided to UV map the entire character instead. I also did this so that the group could have some input as to what they wanted the character to look like. With my workload already taking up all my time I figured it might give other team members a part to play in the character. However in the end I decided to do it myself as it was too hard to explain how to paint the UV map and know where to place certain shading to emphasize shadows on the model. To help me regulate where exactly I needed to paint I used the 3d paint tool in Maya to highlight areas where I wanted to add more detail.

From there I imported the files into Photoshop where I used an oil painting technique to layer on the base colour of the character. From there I added details and shadows to the character. The last step was to use the Photoshop function 'Overlay' to combine real life textures of the top of the clothing, skin, and hair to give the character a more realistic look. 

NEW CHARACTER

Ok so I made the decision to make a whole new character because I was not happy with the original character. Not only was it very high poly but the mesh did not distort well when a skeleton was applied to it. I decided to simplify the character down to be sure that the poly count was under 4k. This would ensure the game would not slow down if it was to be run on a laptop.

I found that with designing low polygon characters it was a lot more challenging because you have to use every polygon efficiently so that the character will distort with the skeleton without artefacts appearing on the mesh. This was harder than I thought it would be. I learned what I needed from the first character so not all was lost from that time spent. I also designed the new character keeping in mind the earlier problems. For example, I made the limbs slimmer which would deform better and studied human anatomy to work out which direction muscles flow in the body to generate more life like rotations and bends.

Communication is Key.

As the title states, I am finding that as we draw closing to the due date me and Tim are having to communicate a lot more which is changing the dynamics of our workflow. Because we are both learning the programs we have no idea what will and wont work. After creating a whole new model and walk cycle animation I gave the FBX to Tim which produced some very interesting results. Results that transformed my character model into something that resembled a retarded Tweedledum.

I was trying to solve the problem for days, remaking the rig, altering scale ratios of the rig controllers, changing units. But nothing seemed to work. Surprisingly enough after a bit of playing around I found that the problem could be solved by changing the settings in the actual FBX file from inches to cm. This fixed the problem because unity works in metric units and was being confused by the FBX format. We sighed with relief because it meant that Tim could play around with the animations.

That is another issue with our workflow, it seems that for a specific task to be done it means that someone else has to finish their task. Its like a hierarchy. I cant model till I know what exactly is in the game and Tim cant progress in unity until I finish specific models. If someone doesn't work it means that all of us suffer.

Insane Workload.

I think we should definitely have thought more about what roles were assigned to people. Im unsure of what everyone else is doing. The only people in the group with a solid role is myself and Tim. It seems every time I come into uni people are just doing their own thing instead of focusing on the project and hacking away at things which really need to be done. I keep coming into uni and seeing conceptual drawings being done by other members in the group but it is far too late to keep producing them. I think the group needs to focus on the final product and stop drowning in concepts. I keep saying that we need to actually start producing items which are going to be USED in the final presentation. Such as the animation cut scene at the start of the game. I'm becoming increasingly frustrated when team members play games during studio time where I'm working my ass off all day everyday till 2am trying to learn Maya. This seems to be an everyday thing and I cant stand it any more especially since we have so much to do in so little time. I know that with only 2 people on the technical side of the game we are going to bare the brunt of the majority of the workload. With that said I am getting a lot of work done and I am now fairly fluent with Maya.

This also bring up an important issue that I am having. Because I am working so hard to learn this program it does not really allow me get too involved in the conceptual side of the project which worries me. We agreed at the start that we would have people dedicated to sorting out the story but it has just taken far too long to get a clear idea as to what exactly I need to model and animate because things keep changing. I wish I could partake more in the conceptual side of things but with 5 people in the group things are just getting way to complicated. In a way I am glad that I have a concrete role in the group because I know exactly what I need to do for the day when I wake up in the mornings. There's no "wondering where to go from here" thoughts which is absolutely great.

I  think from now on I will just work from home as I just get far too distracted at BCT, its not a good environment for me to work in especially modelling on a small laptop. I haven't been to uni in a week and I have accomplished more than I have in the entire semester.

Assignment 1b

Nicholas Hodgson 1113154    176004: Intellectual Entrepreneurship and Innovation Management

1A:   (1198 words excluding bibliography)

The two most influential entrepreneurs I have choses are Arnold Schwarzenegger and Steve Jobs. These two men have greatly changed the way I think and act in more ways than one. All throughout their lives, these two men have faced hardships and many hurdles and they continuously break down the barriers in front of them. They both have a very unique and individual ‘never say die’ attitude to life and its possibilities.

Arnold Schwarzenegger is predominantly known for his bodybuilding career however, many people fail to realize that Arnold was actually a millionaire before he even considered Hollywood at the age of 22. Arnold represents pure determination, and this determination he applies to every aspect of his life. All throughout his life to the present day he was an unstoppable force. He set ridiculous goals for himself and conquered all of them. He applied the same mentality he had for body building into his business ventures also. In 1968 Arnold and a friend founded a bricklaying business anticipating the demand following the Paris earthquakes. Following the bricklaying business the profits were invested in a mail order service where fitness equipment and instructional tapes were distributed. He also invested in property in his early 20’s which has led to him owning hundreds of millions of properties to this day. (Carlos Lim, 2011) Arnold quotes, “The mind is the limit. As long as the mind can envision the fact that you can do something, you can do it, as long as you really believe 100 percent.” (Michael E. Angier, December 1, 2004) This singular quote truly has altered my mentality towards life in more ways than one. It shows that literally anything is accomplishable no matter how impossible the goal may seem as long as you want it enough.

 Arnold solely has taught me to crave perfection in every aspect in life. If I do not put all my efforts into something I feel ashamed and disappointed in myself. After all, I am representing myself and only myself in this world, and my efforts in life are what define and reflect who I am as a person. Another important philosophy of Arnold’s is this, “Strength does not come from winning. Your struggles develop your strengths.  When you go through hardships and decide not to surrender, that is strength.” (EDBERG) This quote of Arnolds made me realize a long time ago that life is not perfect; it is the imperfections and hardships of life that molds who a person is. When you get knocked down, get back up again and realize your mistake and improve upon yourself. Arnold has taught me that determination and perseverance is something that should be applied to everything in life. I have learnt a new found respect for myself and my potential. We all have inner power to drive us forward but we must visualize success before we can reach success.

Arnold completely altered my work habits by making me realize that while “I’m out drinking partying, someone out there in the world is working harder than me, and someone is getting smarter than me.” (Schwarzenegger, 2009) I have focused a lot of my energy learning 3d design, spending more than 4 hours a day studying it in my spare time. I asked myself, what do I want to be? Not what my parents and teachers want me to be, but what makes me happy?”(Schwarzenegger, 2009) I want to break the rules, and I’m not afraid of failure. It is out of these failures of mine that will ultimately lead to success. Steve also reinforces this showing me that even the darkest moments of life can bring about prosperity, creativity and innovation. Even after he was fired from his own business, (Jobs, 2005) he realized that he was free from overbearing colleagues and able to think in a completely different way. Life is not a straight road, and Steve has taught me to use my curiosity and inquisitive nature to deepen my knowledge because no matter how small or insignificant it may be. It may well be one of the “dots” that connects your life together. Just like Arnold, I love to be told by the “naysayers what I can’t do.” (Schwarzenegger, 2009)   It simply fuels my desire to succeed to prove people wrong. When I set my mind to something I want to be the best at it, I don’t want to be like everyone else, “what’s the point in living if your goals are the same as everyone else’s.” (Schwarzenegger, 2009)  

I personally relate to Steve early life because just like him I also dropped out of university. I knew computer systems engineering was not for me, so “what was the point?” I did not want to settle in life doing something I hated. However this taught me something valuable. Having to do what I absolutely hated for a year and a half taught me a great deal in work ethic. Although I was only just passing, it was a huge accomplishment having never studied physics or programming. Steve quotes, “The only way you can do great work is to love what you do.” I believed that there was no way I could have excelled because I never truly had my heart in it.  “Believing in the dots will give you the confidence to follow your heart even when they lead you off track.” (Jobs, 2005) I have faith in my dots; after all, if I had not left engineering then I would not have discovered my passion for 3d design. For once in my life, I do what I love and love what I do. I now completely agree that “the only way to be truly satisfied in life is to do what you believe is great work.”(Jobs, 2005)

These 2 entrepreneurs’ paths in life could not be more contrasted, however at the same time they both apply a very similar mentality to their lives. They not once rolled over and accepted defeat. Both these men followed their dream and what they loved. Ultimately because of this, it gave them the drive to push themselves in life and accomplish great things. I once viewed myself as an embarrassment and a failure, however my mentality has changed and I have adopted a whole new perspective of my own life. Arnold fought tooth and nail to become what he is today, having not even being able to speak English when he came to America. Steve also managed to regain his foothold despite being fired from his own self-created multimillion dollar company. If I have learnt anything from studying these two men it is that if I have a dream I must chase it no matter the cost. However there is a difference between these two entrepreneurs and their practices, Arnold used casual reasoning, diligently seeking ways to achieve a goal. Steve on the other hand harnessed effectual reasoning as he did not believe in following a prescribed path or predictions; he took in everything that happened on life’s journey into consideration.  (Relating to the quote about life’s dots)This showed me that once again, the path to success can be reached in more ways than one.

Bibliography

Carlos Lim, R. C. (2011). Arnold Alois Schwarzenegger Biography. Retrieved from arnoldaloisschwarzenegger.com: http://arnoldaloisschwarzenegger.com/biography.html

Cristina. (2009, May 15th). Six Rules on How to Be Successful. Retrieved from GraduationWisdom: http://www.graduationwisdom.com/speeches/0067-schwarzenegger.htm

EDBERG, H. (n.d.). Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Top 5 Tips for Building the Life You Want. Retrieved from PositivityBlog: http://www.positivityblog.com/index.php/2010/08/19/arnold-schwarzeneggers-top-5-tips-for-building-the-life-you-want/

Michael E. Angier, S. P. (December 1, 2004).101 Best Ways To Get Ahead

(2006, March 6th). Steve Jobs Stanford Commencement Speech 2005. Retrieved from 

YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1R-jKKp3NA

Jobs, Steve (2005, June) Steve Jobs Stanford Commencement Speech, Stanford University

Schwarzenegger, Arnold (2009, May) USC Commencement Address, University of Southern California

Assignment 1a Video Presentation

KARBASFROOSHAN, A. (2012, May 17th). Why Entrepreneurs Fail And Most Startups Are DOA. Retrieved from TechCrunch: http://techcrunch.com/2012/03/17/why-entrepreneurs-fail/

Buchanan, L. (2011, Feb 1st). How Great Entrepreneurs Think. Retrieved from Inc.com: http://www.inc.com/magazine/20110201/how-great-entrepreneurs-think.html

Jobs, Steve (2005, June) Steve Jobs Stanford Commencement Speech, Stanford University

Schwarzenegger, Arnold (2009, May) USC Commencement Address, University of Southern California

NUUUURBS

OK so i did a bit of experimentation as to how I could construct hair on the model. I spent a lot of time working with nurbs to construct my first design. Mid way through its development I realised too late that unity3d DOES NOT accept nurbs into the engine. Instead it will only take polygons. Great. Once again I am held back because I quite simply do not know the capabilities of the game engine OR maya.

BTW, i am aware this hair style makes the character look like the medieval village idiot  hahaha

More modelling

Ok so today I made a lot of progress working from home because the group was doing other things. I have been racking my brains as to why I keep encountering problems and I think its because I am trying to make things way too realistic. Our game is not all about the graphics nor is going to be immensly details and close up on the character, hence why I have decided to just freestyle model and try something entirely new.

A few of these attempts were a giant waste of time, but in saying that with every model I make I learn something new which I apply to the next model. Here's a botched concept I was working on earlier today.

And through all the chaos with no reference here's what I came up with today. I am quite pleased with it because it looks like a small child but at the same time there's just SOMETHING creepy about it and I just cant quite put my finger on it which is very fitting to our nightmarish game.

I also attached the head onto the body to see exactly how it all fit together. Overall I am very proud for producing this base mesh, all that is left is to add details such as hair, clothes etc and I'll be ready to rig and animate this character.

The Crit

After our crit I realised that we have been focusing more on creating a game than actually focusing on our concept of exploring story telling through games. I feel as though we need to once again go back to the drawing board and rethink exactly what we are trying to do with our project.

I think that we can rectify the situation by expanding our world to tell the same story in multiple ways. For instance, when someone is playing a game they always assume themselves to be the 'do gooder.' However perhaps we can have another character within the game that is playable so that players can experience playing the game through the villain's point of view.

I found our crit very rewarding as it has set us on the right track again.

DAVID CAGE

David cage heavy rain - investigate this person

GREAT IDEA?

I was just thinking to myself while watching some tutorials online about how to model woody from toy story in Maya. I thought to myself that we could mould our current story about a boy waking up in limbo with a story about a boy who falls asleep and wakes up in a fantasy land where he himself and the environment around him has been transformed into a world of toys and plastic. I was thinking that this would drastically reduce the amount of detail needed in models and make generating things like buildings and structures very easy as it wouldn't require a whole look of minute details to immerse the player. Because at the moment we are looking at a details environment with a not to details model. Which is a bit contradicting. If we were to use toys I I could for example replicate models such as Lego men and apply different textures to the lego men to greatly cut the amount of work needed. Just a thought. I know everyone will hate me for bringing up another concept in the works and mucking things up but regardless it cant help to suggest new things especially when we are stuck in a rut.

I have also been working on my edge flow within my 3d models as I intend to be animating the character. This is imperative because if the edge flow is terrible it means that the characters movements will look very jagged and nasty. I am in the midst of creating a male human character which could "potentially" be our main character. Although we are talking about using a child as the main character. This could come in handy at some stage no doubt. I have been working in very low poly so that the character wont slow our game engine down a whole lot. I have also investigated Z brush and become familiar with is however it is mainly used for fine details and bump maps which I don't think we will be needing for our character.

Most of the work I have been doing has been aimed at learning 3d software like Maya. I have become quite good at it however I have run into many problems with the software. For example, i made a few models and at the end of making them realized that the vertexes were doubling up on each other because a certain setting had be unchecked. Hence all my work went to waste and it meant I was not able to rig up anything earlier. However i think i had addressed the issue and am now working on a character model that is almost complete. I have set up several meetings with Karin and have some very nice tutorials to go off. I feel as this stage fairly confident that I will be able to have a rigged model ready for Tim to add into the game.

New World

We decided to go along with the story style of something similar to Limbo where the player is dropped into the world without a clue of what has happened to them or why they are there. They are in search of reason and explanation of why they are in the position they are in and how to escape it.
I came up with an idea of using a shadowy figure to guide the player through the game. They player could interact with items and other objects to reveal his past and piece together what happened to him. In a way we are using the platform of a game to turn the pages of a book in a way, allowing the players to generate and interpret what happened with their own understanding.

I also feel as though the roles are cris-crossing a lot within our group. I thought we have designated a someone to focus on story, programming, modeling, etc. But we always seem to be questioning each other in regards to the story. I think we are always confusing each other by having so much participation in the story itself.

We really need to go back to square one and define the world, then the story, then the game aspects. We always seem to be running around in circles and heading dead ends because we are focusing far too much on the fine details before the overall picture has been concreted into our minds and visualized.

The story

In the winter wasteland story we came up with the idea to use fire as the symbol of life. The world became so cold an baron after  the winter god and the fire god clashed in an epic struggle of dominance over the world. With the fire gods last breath he cast down his essence onto the world in. It is the players job to find these essences and restore life to the world once again.

I liked this idea at first but I feel as though with our capabilities in programming and 3d modelling, we couldn't really make something great out of it. The aspect of fire I feel is far too limiting for the story and corners us into a very tight spot.

The Winter Wasteland

Winter Wasteland

Here snow blankets the land and the trees are all black with death—strangled by the frost. Here the sun doesn’t smile. The night is eternal. The moon is nothing but an empty shell and the stars don’t sparkle like ours. They’re dull and faint, like stale bread crumbs scattered across the sky.

Fire is a rare gift, but make sure to panic if you see that friendly, warm, yellow light; the dwarves have resorted to cannibalism and they’re not the only ones. Everybody wants to live.

It’s so cold that you can’t even feel your hands. Oh, that’s right. You don’t have hands any more. You had to get mechanical ones because yours froze and broke off years ago.

This is just a concept we came up for within the world. We realized that we needed to define a world before a story which is why we were running around in circles about game mechanics and story line. However in this world, being the 3d modeller, I can imagine a LOT of work that would be needed in order to complete the game. For example with many different factions of characters I would have to model and rig everything which in a semester on my own would be hell.

I drew up a quick piece of concept art in 2 hours to represent how I saw the world.

Meet half way?

I think before we think about the environments we need to have concrete idea of how the game mechanics work. For example, perhaps we could use a different medium than a mouse and keyboard to communicate with the game, or use the mouse and keyboard to communicate in a different way. I know James wants us to push things to be more than a game. If we were to do a 2/3d game, the mouse and keyboard could simply represent a method of "turning the page of the story." I say this because just like We could for example have a character run across the screen in a particular environment with a narrative/text of writing. When he crosses the line to the next environment (by exiting the right of the screen) it will generate a new environment for the character to interact with. In a sense it combines reading a book with a game. Pages could be unlocked and joined together to complete the book bringing a sense of drive to keep playing and unlocking pages. More so leaning towards the story rather than actualy gameplay. The animations and interactions don't have to be extremely complex. They will just be used to help the player visualise the story. I love the style of machinarium, and this is kinda the style I intrigued by. We could use the snow environment easily here, (i would imagine digital painting a lot of scenes in snow would be much easier than darker shades). I think focusing on the environment and imagery within the game would really benificial rather than spending heaps of time on the character because it would help viewers visualise the environment and world to which the story is based.

We can still incorporate 3d modelling in this concept also for houses, chacaters etc etc even though it is rather 2d. 

Where to start?

So we have decided on a game, but the question remains as to how we are going to create it. We orginally wanted to use unity however I thought it would be best to explore other avenues before deciding so I did a bit of research on other game engines such as ex2D, DarkBasic, Blitz3d, GameStudio, Ogre, and CrystalSpace. But first things first, we needed to decide if we were going to design a 2d game or a 3d game. A 2d game would be a lot simpler however this simplicity might take away from the story that we wanted to tell. Most 2d games in todays world have a very simple objective such as 'save the queen.' We wanted to do something more complex and outside the box than that.

Although we wanted to do a 2d game at first, we decided to do a 3d game instead for a few reasons: 1) Tim had experience with 3d within unity.
2) We knew the programming language to an extent.
3) Unity is not great for 2d games and 2d animations which is what we originally going to use.
4) Players would be more immersed in a 3d environment rather than a cartoonist world

 We LOVED the art style of Limbo and Botanicula in the way the 2d environment was transformed into something almost 3d through the use of background blurs and layers of texture which gave the game depth. The story of Botanicula wasn't all that impressive, on the other hand Limbo was extremely interesting to us. I had a very atmospheric world and art style of actually being stuck in limbo, the story itself was not dictated to the player, instead the player was left to interpret the story in their own way. Just like great books such as The Great Gatsby, the viewer is left to interpret their own meanings from the story. At the end of Limbo you actually are left wondering, "was I bad? or was i good?" This ambiguity is something that we really want to incorporate in our own game as it is an aspect of story telling that is not commonly used in a game format.

The Game

In the starting weeks we dedicated ourselves roles to generating the game and having a solid workflow. I was specialising in the 3d modelling aspect of the game mainly the character and its animations. I personally have always been very interested in this which is why i jumped at the opportunity to design a game. In the first week we mainly spent most of our time researching game such as bastion, Journey, Botanicula and many others. We were intrigued by these games because not only were they fun to play but they told a story in a different way to most games. Journey for example is a very open ended game full of exploration and virtually no dialogue. The story itself is derived from the players curiosity to travel and progress. Bastian is the complete polar opposite of this due to the fact that the story is dictated in a very narrow way via a narrator telling the story over the top of the game as you reach key points.

From a gaming most of my life I have realized that every game has repetition, however what makes a good story and a good game is the way the creators hide this repetition from the player. I am scared that our skills may not be developed enough by the end of the semester in order to hide the the games flaws. We only have a small amount of time to actually create a game from start to finish which is worrying, however I am all too willing to give it a try and take the risk.

EDITING and SPECIAL EFFECTS

The team originally wanted to submit just a plain video however from the beginning I knew that editing would play a major role in fine tuning our project. A lot of our footage was quite bare and I felt did not convey what we wanted to show as strongly as I would have wanted it to. I really wanted to learn after effects as I never had the opportunity before so I nominated myself the lead of effects. It was only at this time in the project that we began to go our separate ways and isolate our workload on different areas of the film. I felt as though I did my absolute best in after effects, spending almost every waking hour of the week and a half designing and animating interfaces, however I cant help but feel I could have done more than just motion track. If I had dedicated all my time over the semester to after effects I could have constructed a masterpiece instead of squabbling with the group pointlessly over concepts.

I had a rough idea of what I wanted to place over the top of the film from the very beginning of the project. I wanted to implement I kind of interface that followed the money around highlighting the emotions of the people who interacted with the money. Once again, I felt this was important due to the fact that our film did not do our concept justice. The problem was that I had a week and a half to learn to the program before the due date. I was sure that I could use a program called Boujou to motion track for me however the footage we took was far too shaky for this program. It was very precise for slow moving footage. Evidently this shattered my hopes however I worked around this problem by using the inbult adobe motion tracker instead. It was not perfect but it did the job just fine. And probably saved me a lot of time looking back. I started off making simple interfaces and slowly learnt how to animate them better over time.

I slowly worked out a workflow within the program and simply rinsed and repeated the same pattern over and over. I tried not to reuse anything from prior clips just to keep things interesting. However I got to the point where I needed to do further research to discover a new range of designs. Minority report was a perfect example where I took out elements and combined them with others. Originally I planned only to have the effects at the interactions where the money was transferred but I chose to challenge myself and try animate as many scenes as possible with the interface without taking the attention away from the footage itself.

The interface follows the money around from person to person highlighting emotions as it travels its journey. It shows that no matter where or who you are, emotional attachments to money will always exist. There is no escaping the system that you are trapped within. I wanted to show not only emotions but also other aspects of money such as the way that people view you in society based on your worth. For example when the drug addict is walking through the tunnel with strangers staring at him, I highlighted words such as 'ignore, shock, and disgust.' This was done so show how people may in fact view someone differently based on their place in society and ultimately this can be connected back to money. I also wanted to show how money has very different meanings to people. An example of this is the juxtaposition between for example the mugger and the mother. The mugger mugged someone for 'street cred' as shown in the interface where as the mother put all here hope into a lotto ticket to pay off her excessive bills in order to support her family.

I also played a major role in the editing of the film in regards to removing certain unwanted elements and also learning Boris FX to insert the animated transitions between videos within adobe premier.

Overall I feel that we as a group accomplished a lot in the past few weeks. All it took was a little bit of pressure to kick us into gear. If only we could have found this drive earlier in the semester.

Development

We have ONCE again decided to completely change our idea and venture away from the interview concept. I for one always wanted to do this because I thought that our questions we rather pointless and trivial to networks. Not only that but I did not want to confront random strangers on the street. It was risky, and unreliable. After doing a few tests with students and lecturers in the class we found that the answers they were giving were extremely similar.

We completely changed our direction into a short film, (which is what we wanted to do in the beginning I might add). The only trouble was coming up with a witty story that was both artistic and relevant to the topic of networks. Coming up with ideas proved to be our downfall. It seemed that everyone was on a different page as to what they wanted to create. I had a firm vision for what the film should be like but I felt that influences from other people in the group lead me astray and away from my vision.

I found that our workflow was extremely poor. We literally could not stay on task for more than 20 minutes without going completely off topic. I put this down to the fact that we all got along together TOO well. There wasn't really anyone in the group who made a stand and put pressure on everyone to get work done. We had discussed concepts for half a semester and researched many aspects of the money network however I think this was our main problem. The money network was so vast that our minds were scattered with thoughts and ideas that formed a jigsaw puzzle that did not fit together. However this greatly influenced the second half of the semester because we recycled many ideas that helped develop the final film. For example. We experimented with me sitting on the side of the footpath on queen street pretending to be a homeless man for 10 minutes while people walked  passed. I felt embarrassed and ashamed, feelings that I haven't felt in a long time. This influenced the tunnel scene in the film for example where people are judging the drug addict. It made me truly aware of the opinions that people have other other people both positive or negative. It gave me a new perspective to live a different life influenced  by money.

Every single time we would meet as a group we would leave at the end of the day agreeing on a certain idea but then the next day people would change it. And others would forget completely what we were talking about not having documented it in their workbooks. Eventually we decided to start from scratch to make sure we were all on the same page. I made a a list of every single emotion that I could relate to money such as hatred, love, jealously etc. From there we started piecing together certain events that could link together. After researching a few short films and examining their contents we eventually decided to go along with a cyclic style of short film. Where as the money would start at one point and eventually make its way back to its origin. By doing this it really showed the network within money.

However the filming was not very smooth at the beginning. We ran into many problems. The reason being is because we had not fully developed the story and were shooting the beginning of the film without knowing where the scenes were leading. This meant that most of the footage we shot (although very nicely done) was useless and was discarded. However this stage of development was not all a great loss. we discovered that we all were terrible actors. And because our film was aiming to highlight the emotions that people feel because of money, this was not ideal. Not only that but we needed actors for our film and we were not sure if we could find anyone this late in the semester to help us film. Because of these factors we decided that it would be the best option to shoot in first person for most of the film. It also allows the viewers to put themselves in the shoes of the actors and feel what they feel in their situations.

Ideally we would have wanted to use a wide angle lense on the camera but none of us wanted to spend 250$ on a lens. After looking at a few home-made fps 'Call of Duty videos' we decided to build a rig using a helmet so that we could mount the camera on it. After drilling a few holes and lathering a bolt in epoxy glue we finally finished our masterpiece. However we soon realised that we created a few problems for ourselves.
1) You could barely see where you were going while wearing it.
2) Without a wide angle lens it was almost impossible to see your body and arms when looking downwards, you had to physically move your hand in front of the camera to see anything. This made picking up objects extremely difficult.
3) Footage was also fairly shaky, but at the same time this shakiness gave a the film a 'feel' to it that you were looking through the eyes of the character.

All of the filming itself was shot over about a week and a half. Prior to this we travelled around to different locations to confirm what would be appropriate. But with all honesty it was not a very well orchestrated method of planning. I was loosing hope in the project looking at the footage we were accumulating. I felt as though we were extremely rushed in shooting. For example, in the dairy scene that I organised we could only shoot a few shoots because the shop owner did not want us in the shop for too long. This meant that re shooting the bad shots was out of the question. However we had a plan to overcome this during the editing by using the 'blink' transition effect to cut out the bad features of the film. During this time period Supa was filming and directing majority of the shots as he had experience with camera work in the past. However we all played a vital role in this stage of the project as we all gave input as to how things could be improved.

Experimentation

I experimented with a range of techniques for the interface well in advance of the final production. One of the techniques that I liked a lot was the chalk outline technique that I learnt from youtube. It gave a really nice effect and I could use it to show the transfer of money however I knew I would encounter many problems in the process. For one thing, you had to draw everything frame by frame which was extremely tedious and time consuming. We were shooting 50fps on the camera so this meant that it would be next to impossible to actually use this technique.

Questions!

What do you do? And how would you describe youself?
-By adding in this question we really connect with the person and begin to understand their answers


What does five dollars mean to you? / What does fifty thousand dollars mean to you?
Change: If you were given 50$ how would you use it?


Do you think the amount of money you have affects the person you are today?
Change: How has money affected the person that you are today?




Have you ever judged someone that you assumed to have more or less money than you? If so, how did this change your perspective of them?
Change: remove it


New Question: What do you think of the financial system put in place?




How has money effect your relationships with other people? Negatively or positively?
(Optional Question) How much money do you earn a year?
Change: How has money affected your relationships with other people?