Sin City presentation 2.0

As promised I am doing another presentation on Sin City as if I haven't done enough projects on it already; nevertheless I have finally decided to do my presentation on the second Sin City film; Sin City: A dame to kill for. So I have watched and taken notes on the film so far and I really like it; its not as good as the first but they had a lot of problems with timelines in this one, due to their being 3 separate stories in one and they all happen at different times. Despite the confusing timeline the film is really enjoyable and I am glad I have chosen to do my presentation on it; now I just have to watch it 20 more times. 

The films colours do seem to correlate however I feel that the new one uses colours more for visual appeal where as the first film used them for hidden meaning. There are some new colours used in the  film and I do have some theories of what they might mean.

Firstly Orange:

Orange is featured on Marv's pills, 'Kadie's Bar' sign and Sally's Hair.

• Orange can be seen as a fiery colour so it could mean that it is fierce or dangerous.
• "Orange offers emotional strength in difficult times. It helps us to bounce back from disappointments and despair, assisting in recovery from grief." (1)
• Orange is a self-indulgent colour.
• Orange represents Adventure and risk taking it also promotes physical confidence and enthusiasm. This links well to 'Kadie's Bar'.

Sally

Pink:

Pink is only used on Sally's lingerie.

• Pink is often referred to as being sexy.
• It is also a very bold and powerful colour, suggesting that she is a strong woman.
• It can also be seen as a calm colour which could show weakness.
• Pink "reassures our emotional energies, alleviating feelings of anger, aggression, resentment, abandonment and neglect." (2) This fits in well to the story of the character the pink could be showing that she has calmed down after a near death experience.

Blue:

Blue is used in the first film when information is being passed, in the new film Ava wears a bright blue coat.

• In the first film blue is also shown if someone is a traitor; this applies to Ava's character.
• "This color is one of trust, honesty and loyalty. It is sincere, reserved and quiet, and doesn't like to make a fuss or draw attention. It hates confrontation, and likes to do things in its own way." (3) Blue in our case could be used contradictory so that people feel as if they can trust Ava even though they cannot.
• Can be seen as being deceitful and spiteful.
• "It can also indicate manipulation, unfaithfulness and being untrustworthy." (4)

Ava

Finally natural colours:

By this I mean unprocessed colours; shown in all of the fire and explosions and in particular Marcy.

• Marcy is shown as the only person which natural skin tones; this could be to show that she is pure. This can also relate to the fire showing that it is also pure.
• It could show that she is full of life and that the darkness of Sin City has not yet gotten to her.

Marcy and Johnny

There is so much more I could research into but I think I am going to start writing my presentation soon or I will end up in a massive Sin City spiral and want to do a 20 minute presentation rather than a 3 minute one.

Cheerio for now.

References:

(1) Judy Scott-Kemmis. The Color Orange. Available: http://www.empower-yourself-with-color-psychology.com/color-orange.html. Last accessed 30/02/15.

(2)  Judy Scott-Kemmis. The Color Pink. Available: http://www.empower-yourself-with-color-psychology.com/color-pink.html. Last accessed 30/02/15.

(3) Judy Scott-Kemmis. The Color Blue. Available: http://www.empower-yourself-with-color-psychology.com/color-blue.html. Last accessed 30/02/15.

(4) Judy Scott-Kemmis. The Color Blue. Available: http://www.empower-yourself-with-color-psychology.com/color-blue.html. Last accessed 30/02/15.

Sally picture: http://sincity.wikia.com/wiki/Sally

Ava picture: http://www.denofgeek.us/movies/sin-city-a-dame-to-kill-for/238554/sin-city-the-hard-complete-timeline

Marcy and Johnny .gif: http://www.contestofchampions.net/sin-city-vs-sin-city

Off The Map: Behind the scenes

This week has been mostly behind the scenes work; by this I mean working on unwrapping, light mapping, engine work and texturing.

Denzil has been working on getting a waterfall to work by using a panner node, which has been easier than expected, now all we need to do is combine lots of different torn paper textures together to create a layer waterfall effect. He has also been working on getting rippled water for the pond near the end of the level. This is proving quite difficult by Denzil is smart enough to get the job done.

Testing out different types of water effects in engine.

Freddy and I also went to the library and scanned a lot of old books for our textures, hopefully this will help our level look like it has realistic elements. When it came to the unwrapping of the book models we ran it to a few problems; originally I gave each book a 512 x 512 texture sheet but after starting to texture we soon realised that they were too low res for something that is close to the screen. So Freddy juggled the sheets around but ended up getting confused so the two of us spent the day fixing the unwraps but nevertheless the sheets are fixed! We separated the spines, overlapped the covers and gave the loose paper its own texture sheet; now book 1 & 2 are on their own sheet, as are 3&4 and 5&6; all at 1024 x 1024 so we should have no issues with things looking blurry or pixelated.

At the beginning of the week I also decided to research the images that the library gave us for reference. It turns out they are flash photography photos of men working in a Cornish mine. The images are originally for a book called "Mongst Mines and Miners: Underground Scenes by Flash-Light" by "JC Burrows" we will hopefully be using this for one of the books in our level. Thanks to this blog: http://wchildblog.com/2014/05/24/photo-story-rare-early-flash-photography-images-of-cornish-miners/ I have found out a lot more about the mining in the Victorian era and we are now trying to incorporate this into the level more. We also found out that the miners tended to just use candles; stuck to their hats and to the walls; the miners had to buy these themselves therefore many of them didn't have the money to buy lanterns for work. The images are truly inspiring and I hope that we can get some of these elements to show in our game. 

The book that the images given to us came from.

Braden has been busy unwrapping and working on UI; He did a quick concept of what the pause screen will look like:

He has the pause and resume working at the moment but needs to hook up the checkpoint and restart to Denzil's blueprints. The finished screen is coming along nicely and I am very exited to see it when it's finished.

Dan has also been sulpting Alice's body and is perfecting it so that it will look beautiful when finished.
Here's a quick work in progress shot;

WIP shot of Alice.

This week I have mainly been working in Engine; I have fixed alot of blueprinting issues and have fixed a lot of sizing issues, due to me making a mistake with the level block out. One thing we do want to incorporate is dynamic cameras; cameras that will zoom in and pan at certain parts of the level. This was discussed after I put up this image;

We decided as a group that at the rabbits house we need to zoom in so that you can see all of the little details; such as the drink me bottle, therefore I will be working on this mechanic next week.

Here's a quick video showing what I have been working on; (the sounds a temporary until we find or record some better ones)

Finally here are some screenshots from the rest of the level.

Lighting still needs to be worked on and the postprocessing will be put in after a basic texture pass has been made. 

We are well on our way to finishing this project, the only problem is finding the motivation to finish.

We will hopefully have more to show next week.

Cheerio for now.

References:

Scott Pilgrim "But it's haaaaad." .gif: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/foodbeast/13-fascinating-facts-that_b_5839074.html

"Mongst Mines and Miners: Underground Scenes by Flash-Light" book cover: http://wchildblog.com/2014/05/24/photo-story-rare-early-flash-photography-images-of-cornish-miners/

The scary clowns and strong men continue

Last week I showed you the start of the Character project and how I moved onto a circus theme instead of a king and jester idea; continuing on from last week I have managed to get to the orthographic stage. We have also been given an extension on this project which means I won't be stressing and overworking myself too much, but anyway lets get onto looking at some work.

After finishing the sloth head variations last time I went onto doing the same for the tamarin:

I got feedback on these and the favourites were 1, 5 and 6. After getting this feedback I spoke to one of my tutors and he suggested I looked at bears and big animals and how they move; this threw me off and I got lost. I ended up drawing bears for the rest of the day:

However this wasn't a complete loss of time, I ended up looking at the shapes of my characters in more detail and decided to draw up some new silhouettes and then draw over the top of them.

Here's what I came up with originally, as you can see I still hadn't decided on the Tamarin's head at this point; this whole process helped me out a lot and I feel that my final designs shown bellow are better thought out and overall more visually appealing.

As you can see I didn't change the sloth much but I explored what the back of his suit would look like and for the tamarin I went with the blocky headed one and slimmed him down, gave him knobbly knees and elbows, I also made his arms a more realistic length, gave him little muscle bumps and sweat stains.

After this I drew my characters up and started to do value studies:

Number 3 for the sloth and 4 for the tamarin were chosen to go forward. After going through this stage I went onto looking at colours.

As you can see I have a lot more colour variations for the sloth; this is because I found it harder to find colour combinations that I liked; I originally looked at colour schemes often found in the circus (red, blue. white and yellow) but I'm still not sure which I like or feel that would work well with the tamarins outfit. However for the tamarin I loved them all but I ended up going for number 9 because the colour combination works the best and the gold dumbbell shows off his personality better.

After that hard decision I decided to move straight onto orthographics because of the lack of time left on this project and I want to ideally have both characters modelled; So I skipped out a final concept piece.

As you can see the tamarin is finished and ready for modelling however I am still working on the sloth but should have it done before Monday so that I can get straight into modelling and texturing.

This time next week I will hopefully be polishing both characters and getting ready for my presentation. Wish me luck.

Operation Catling gun

It's over! The Catling Gun is finally complete, and I am sad to see it end. This past week has been hectic 9 till 9 in the labs then working past midnight at home but it has all be worth it! Last week I showed you all my concepting I had done so far and my work in progress shots of my model; so lets carry on from where we left off...

To start here are my finished orthographics;

Orthographics

These are just a quick sketch to help you get the right shape and dimensions of your model; personally I don't find them helpful when it comes to non-human objects I prefer to free form the model. I get caught up on converting 2D into 3D so doing this was good practice.

Here is my completed 3D model; after finishing this I did some high quality renders in 3DS max so that I could do a final concept piece, which is also shown below.

Final model wire-frame render

Paint over

After finishing my paint over I went on to unwrap my model (this is when the fun stuff happens) and guess what? My unwrapping corrupted and so did my model. So 2 days worth of work had gone and I then had to fix everything; I managed to salvage most of my work and then fix all my unwrapping ready for texturing; this caused me to be even more behind and made for a very stressful long week. Amongst texturing and worrying about whether or not I would manage to get this project finished we got set another task! To make a poster so when I got fed up of texturing and working in engine I produced a moodboard of posters, I felt were interesting and suited my design then came up with 3 poster ideas, as shown below:

Poster moodboard

Poster 1

Poster 2

Poster 3

So whilst I was working on these I was also doing my textures which were easier to do than I originally thought, which meant I gained back some time I had lost. Here are my textures compiled together:

Turret Texture

Projectile Texture

I also had time to create a particle for my gun barrel get ready for a pun...

Particle Texture

Get it? because it says "mew" instead of "pew"... yea... I know, I should stick to 3D modelling.

UE4 screenshot

This is them working on the final gun in UE4.

Drum roll please! and... this if the gun finished in engine:

UE4 render

Doesn't it just look fabulous! I am over the moon with how this came out; I even made a video of the entire project with some real time game play at the end, showing off all of my fancy engine coding!

As you can see I managed to not only finish this project but I also hit most of my stretch goals including:

- Ambient Gun music

- Ambient Cat sounds

- Triggered gun pop

- Emissive textures

- Glass textures

- Physics based projectiles

And now its time for the Q & A round! *yay*

Q: What went well?
A: Every thing on this project went pretty well, in particular my texturing and concepting as a whole went well; I am really pleased with myself due to these not being my strengths and I feel that this is going to be one of the best things in my portfolio. My engine work also went well, it was tricky and confusing but after tinkering with settings and watching tutorials with my flatmate we managed to help each other out and learn a lot in the process.

Q: What didn't go well?
A: Mainly my time management but this was unavoidable due to illness and file corruption, my rendering was hard to do for my paint over and it glitched out which meant I spent more time on it then planned. 

Q: What did you learn?
A: I have learnt a sheer amount of stuff on this project I could write a book on it, but the main things are blueprints in general; I have learnt how to use sounds in UE4, create emissive textures, create glass textures and how to use and make particle effects. There is so much more I have learnt about the UE4 engine and I am enjoying it so much, I cant wait till we work on projects like this again.

Q: How would you approach it next time?
A: I feel that the way I approached this project was fine, I just had some unfortunate issues with illness and corrupted files. The only thing I would do next time is push myself to get my model done quicker so that I could do a high poly bake for my normals; which would make my model look more realistic and cleaner in engine.

Q: What can you take from this project and apply to others?
A: All of the things I have learnt about the UE4 engine and leaving room in timetables for unscheduled problems. 

Over all I am super happy with the project and I just want to make cat related things for all my projects now on! So for the time being I'm going to make myself happy with cat .gif's!

I am definitely calling in these guys to fix my technical issues next time!

References:

Cat .gif: http://www.catgifpage.com/page/3/

History of video games: 2000’s to present day

We have truly come a long way from the cathode ray tube in 1947, to the arcade games of the 80’s and now the wondrous consoles we have today. I am going to talk you through the console timeline adding in a few of my favourite games of all time, to show how much we as a market and industry have developed over the 64 years of video gaming.

At the start of the 6^th generation in 2000 the PlayStation 2 was released. The PS2 soon became the best-selling console selling more than 155 million units. Due to its success it was manufactured into several different smaller and lighter models; known as “Slimline” models. The PS2 software was distributed on CD-ROM and DVD-ROMs, this meant it could also play audio CD’s and DVD films; the PS2 also featured backtracking abilities which meant that you could play PS1 games on the newer PS2 console. In the 6^th generation there were four main consoles fighting for the top spot; Sony’s PlayStation 2, Sega’s Dreamcast, Microsoft’s Xbox and Nintendo’s GameCube.

A year after the PS2 was released Nintendo gave us the GameCube; one of my favourite consoles of all time. It used mini DVD format for its primary storage and memory cards for game saves; this mini optical disc drive meant that it was not compatible with regular CD’s and DVD’s, however this didn’t matter to Nintendo because it was all about the gaming. Despite not having CD and DVD compatibility Nintendo did make additional add-ons for the GameCube; they introduced the first console to support online gaming and connectivity to the GameBoy Advance, which let players access hidden in game features using the GameBoy Advance as another screen and controller.

The best game of all time and literally the entirety of my childhood; The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker. Released in 2002 on the GameCube, this game is the tenth in The Legend of Zelda series; the action adventure game was so successful it has been recently remade in HD for Nintendo’s Wii U. Unlike the older games Wind Waker uses cel shading graphics and a toon style, this was fairly controversial when in production but I feel like it was a great choice and it really captivated me when I was younger. My favourite thing about this game besides the wonderful bright colours and music is the use of side quests they are normally seen in all Zelda games however this game was so large that if you got stressed with the main mission you can go off and take pictures or play with some chickens (Cucco’s).

In 2001 at the same time the GameCube was released a computer company decided that they were going make a console and thus the Xbox was produced and distributed by none other than Microsoft. This was Microsoft first venture into the gaming console market; the Xbox featured Xbox Live which for a fee meant that you could access the internet and play online with others and download new content. Initially in 1998 four engineers from Microsoft decided they wanted to make a games console; they used parts from Dell laptops and constructed prototypes; this was how the Xbox originally came about.

Finally the 7^th generation has come and Sega is out of the picture; this is where the three way fight for the top stop begins; between Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft. In 2005 the first console of this generation is released; Microsoft’s Xbox 360. The main difference between this console and its successor is the power and graphics; it is a revamped improved version. In 2006 Nintendo and Sony both release their consoles; the Playstation3 and the Wii.

The PS3 was the most powerful of consoles in the 7^th generation meaning that the games were better looking and on one disc unlike the Xbox. The PS3 was the first console to used Blu-ray discs for its games; they also featured a free online service called the PlayStation network which meant that you could download games and add ons; you can also use the internet, play online and watch movies and TV on apps like Netflix. It also has connectivity with PlayStation Portable and PlayStation Vita.

The Wii was created for more interactive gameplay, I has two motion controllers with a sensor bar to follows the player’s movements.  Nintendo created the Wii for a larger demographic than the PS3 and the Xbox360; it supports lower visuals but more interaction; it is aimed at multiple players rather than one. The Wii features games like the Wii fit aimed at young women, Mario games for children to adults and shooting games for teenage boys; by having this wide of a target audience it makes the Wii very desirable and suitable for a family home.

After these consoles came out there was a massive gap until the next generation of consoles were released, I like to call it the gap of good games. My favourite games company Rockstar thrived during this time; their most famous series being the Grand Theft Auto, the first one came out on the PS1 and have just released the 11^th in the series; my personal favourite is GTA: Vice City. They also released a beautiful game called Red Dead Redemption set in western times, it featured amazing game play, a great open world experience, a truly amazing storyline, perfect online gameplay, beautiful graphics and truly fantastic music. This game even had an extension game with zombies, I mean what more do you want in a game? But my all-time favourite has got to be L.A. Noire; its dark gritty noire storyline set in the 1940’s is just up my street. It features a detective called Cole Phelps and you work though different cases making your way up the LAPD (Los Angeles Police Department) table and working for different departments. The main reason that L.A. Noire was so perfect for me was the realism; L.A. Noire features a newly developed technology used for film and now video gaming called motion scan. Motion scan used 32 cameras to capture the actors every movement and expression which is then transferred to in game animation.

Another notable game was The Last of Us; made for the PS3 is won 67 awards and is seen as one of the best games created. The Last of Us is truly beautiful to look at, it was made to show how good a game can be on the 7^th generation of consoles; this made it obvious to people how amazing the next generation of games would be compared to The Last of Us.

After the long gap of good games the 8^th generation started with Nintendo releasing the Wii U. The Wii U introduced a new control with a 6.2” touch screen that changes how people interacts with their games. The Wii U is also compatible with Wii the new pro controllers, the classic controllers, Nunchuk and Wii balance board; nearly all of the Wii software and accessories can be used with the new Wii U. Unlike the Wii the Wii U supports up to 1080p HD graphics, this is the same as the PS3 and Xbox 360 even though it is seen as the 8^th generation it is outdated compared to the PS4 and Xbox One; this was the same with the Wii.

The PlayStation 4 was released in 2013 and is vastly superior to it successor the PS3; it has a greater gaming rig with an 8-core AMD Jaguar CPU, along with an 800MHz AMD Radeon GPU and a 8GB of GDDR5 RAM. Compared to the PS3 which has a single core chip, 550MHz GPU and 256MB of DDR3 RAM, the speed maybe fast on the PS3 but with one single core processor and relatively tiny amount of RAM it is nothing compared to the PS4.

The Xbox One has seen a huge change compared to the Xbox 360; it now has an 8-core AMD when the Xbox 360 had a Xenos processor with 3 separate cores, nowhere near the same amount of power as the Xbox One. The Xbox One now has 8GB of RAM and 500GB internal memory compared to 512MB of RAM and 250GB on the Xbox 360. However due to the Xbox One’s mandatory installs they storage will fill up quickly. This is the current generation of consoles and they are still fighting for the top spot and it is still too soon to see which console will win overall.

However the PC is a dark horse in this battle of the consoles; it is a versatile type of console, the more money you spend on the console the better it will play games. The PC and be extremely powerful far better than the Xbox One or PS4, PC also has a massive following of dedicated users. One of the main game distributers for the PC is Steam; Steam is an online shopping site and app for PC gamers which allows you to buy and play games of their choice. Steam was created by Valve the same people that brought you the brilliant game Portal; Steam was finally made available to the public in 2003 for PC Window users in 2010 it was made available to Mac users. Steam was created so that PC gamers could get good deals and support indie game developers with games like Don’t Starve. The Steam community as expanded to beyond billions and now they are developing their own console called the Steam Box which would bring steam deals and great new content to the console market.

Another notable advancement throughout the last couple years is a device called the Oculus Rift, which is a virtual reality device which mounts two displays on your head like a large pair of ski goggles. The rift uses new technology which allows 360 head tracking, meaning that you can look seamlessly around a game environment like you would in real life. This device tracks every movement creating a natural and realistic gaming experience. I believe we will start to see more products like this one on the market to bring gaming into the future with virtual reality.

Overall we can see a drastic improvement throughout the past decade, the major advancements in the power of consoles has made the games truly beautiful and innovative. I predict that in the next decade we will be dominated by PC’s and phones more than consoles; I also feel that the PC and console will combine with virtual gaming software to create an amazing realistic gaming experience.

References:

Michael Poh. Evolution Of Home Video Game Consoles: 1967 – 2011.Available: http://www.hongkiat.com/blog/evolution-of-home-video-game-consoles-1967-2011/. Last accessed 21/04/2014.

Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. (2011). PLAYSTATION®2 SALES REACH 150 MILLION UNITS WORLDWIDE. Available: http://www.scei.co.jp/corporate/release/110214_e.html. Last accessed 21/04/2014.

Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. PlayStation®3 Features.Available: http://us.playstation.com/ps3/features/ps_multimedia.html. Last accessed 21/04/2014.

Kevin P. Casey . (2006). Nintendo hopes Wii spells wiinner. Available: http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/tech/gaming/2006-08-14-nintendo-qa_x.htm. Last accessed 21/04/2014.

Timothy D. Brown. (2003). The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker. Available: http://web.archive.org/web/20040327192232/http:/www.nlgaming.com/nl/asp/id_566/nl/reviewDisp.htm. Last accessed 21/04/2014.

Nintendo. Wii U Technical Specs. Available: http://www.nintendo.com/wiiu/features/tech-specs/. Last accessed 21/04/2014.

Stuart Andrews. (2014). Wii U review. Available: http://www.trustedreviews.com/wii-u_Games_review. Last accessed 21/04/2014.

Matt Egan. (2013). PlayStation 4 vs PlayStation 3 comparison review: buy a PS4 or save money and get a PS3?. Available: http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/reviews/game/3491517/ps4-vs-ps3-console-comparison-review/. Last accessed 21/04/2014.

Stuart Miles. (2013). Xbox 360 vs Xbox One: What's the difference?.Available: http://www.pocket-lint.com/news/121190-xbox-360-vs-xbox-one-what-s-the-difference. Last accessed 21/04/2014.

Oculus VR. NEXT-GEN VIRTUAL REALITY. Available: http://www.oculusvr.com/rift/. Last accessed 21/04/2014.