Games

Not done a hell of a lot of animation since the last post. In the past month I’ve decided to collaborate with a friend on making a game. We’re not sure what kind of game yet. Just a game.

In truth I’ve never been much of a gamer. I had a ZX Spectrum when I was younger (remember those?), but I’ve been mostly oblivious to the way games have evolved in the last decade and a half. So I bought myself an Xbox. I’ve only had it a week so not played a huge amount on it yet, but already I’m impressed with the graphics of the current generation of games. I knew they were good, it’s difficult to ignore them since you get trailers for them everywhere these days, but the level of detail in them is really incredible. As an aspiring animator I’m particularly impressed with some of the creature animation I’ve seen. Take a look at these gameplay clips from Dragon’s Dogma…

Or this one from Dark Souls:

I realised some time ago that I’d be at least as likely to work as an animator in the games industry as for films, so maybe this plan with my friend has come along at the right time. Having a specific objective to aim for is always better. Lacking a proper aim has been one of the biggest setbacks to my animation progress.

So to that end I’ve bought another book. I’ve also been following Jonathan Williamson’s excellent tutorial on creating low poly game characters. It feels good to be learning this stuff. In all honesty I’ve felt a bit fraudulent till now, learning animation with borrowed models and rigs. Stupid, but there you go.

In other news, I saw Brave last night. It’s not bad actually. Somewhat better than I was expecting. It doesn’t feel like a Pixar movie though, it feels like something DreamWorks might do. The animation is excellent, but then none of the major studios is producing substandard work, so that’s not saying much. There’s just something kind of overtly commercial about it. There’s a song within the first five minutes. Cute baby brothers. A bear. Obvious humour based on human and animal physicality traits. As a colleague of mine put it, it’s not bad but it’s not going to be anyone’s favourite Pixar movie. The best moment is when Queen Elinor as the bear suddenly turns on Merida, more bear-like than human. The animation is really well done: she just turns and all of a sudden she’s more like a bear than she’d been till then. 7/10.