Week - 6 - Cinematic - Modelling

So yesterday I didn't come to class and didn't do any maya related work because I was feeling super sick.

Today (1/4/2016) I was told by my team mates that I needed to scale down the arms, make them look skinnier and scale the feet shorter

Week - 5 - Interactive Narrative

Are the “choice situations” in the game obvious or subtle? Do you know the outcomes of your choice prior to making a decision?


For this week I decided to play The banner Saga, I really enjoyed playing this game and can't wait to finish it.
The game has a lot of similarities to a game of chess, they are both based around tactics and strategies, trying to figure out what the opponent or enemy might do during their turn, this means that every choice you make should have an impact or a reason behind it, because it is a game based around turns.

I think the choices that I made in the game were subtle or at least I tried to make them subtle rather than obvious, I would have a reason to every single one of the moves I made with each of the characters, sometimes I would have to make some sacrifices in order to beat one or more enemies, therefore I already know the outcome of my moves, but like in any game based around strategies and tactics you can never be too sure about your moves, you always need a second plan, just like in a game of chess, sometimes I would sacrifice a pawn in order to destroy my opponent's tower with my horse.

In terms of the story, it didn't really caught my attention, sometimes I wished there was an option to skip all the talking and get straight to the game, but apart from that, the game is super enjoyable and fun to play, good thing it's a long weekend and I can keep on playing it.

Week - 5 - 18th to 23rd - 3D Modelling

On friday the model sheet was finished and I started working on our character's 3D model. We decided that I would model the entire "body" and everyone else will get assigned a piece of the armour to model, which will then be added to the final model.

I didn't do any modelling on saturday and sunday, I was super tired :) , but I managed to finish the body on monday.

On tuesday Jacob began modelling the leg's armour, I gave him some advice about what he needed to do and how to do it easier as well as giving him feedback.

On tuesday I finished the helmet of our character and a few final touches on the head as well as fixing some of the topology of the character, and in the evening I started working on the front chest armour which I finished that evening.

Today (wednesday) , I went to class and started working on the pelvis armour, it was a bit tricky to model but I managed to get it done too.

Everyone seems to be doing fine with their modelling and I believe we can get our final model done sooner than expected.


Unsmoothed version.

Week 4 - Sculpting

On friday Michael and I went to the life drawing room to look for the sculpture that I had been working on wednesday or thursday(I think), sadly the sculpture was no longer there and we couldn't find it, I want to believe that it got teleported to another universe and someone else is trying to finish sculpting it :) .

So we told Keat about this situation and he gave me some clay to take home and work on a new one. Sadly with so little time to work on it and no clay sculpting skills I couldn't finish it and I couldn't get it looking good either (it was quite frustrating and annoying).

Cinematic - Week 4

during this week I didn't have much to do since Matt and I finished the storyboard on tuesday, meaning that I had to wait for the turn arounds to be finished before I could start 3d modelling, but during that spare time that I had, I did quite some research about working with Maya and Mudbox as well as some after effects tutorials.

On tuesday Michael began working on the concept for the synth lord, he did some concepts based around the concept that Rhys came up with last week. I gave Michael some feedback on what he needed to do to make it look more physically appealing because I thought it was looking too plain, on friday I told Michael that I was gonna try to come up with a design for it(based around Rhys's concept) Because I had an idea on my mind about how to make it look "cooler". 

We then had another meeting with Dane and Keat, we got some good feedback and they seemed to like the vibe of the storyboard, they pointed out a few problems with it that we had already figured out and were fixed by Jacob in Animatic. 

Dane and Keat gave us really good feedback on how to make our synth lord look better, I took those feedback and came up with this concept that everyone in the team was happy with and would be used in the cinematic. 

On thursday and friday we took some photos of the theater room which is the location we'll be using for our cinematic.

The following post goes back to week 2 I believe, this is the early stage of the storyboard. These are really rough drawings that Matt and I came up with for the storyboard, a lot of these drawing were later used, others were fixed.

Interactive Narrative - week 4

How does morality influence the choices you make in the game?


 For this week I decided to play The Wolf among us, the first thing that caught my attention as soon as the game loaded was the animation and art style, it fits the game's story line quite well.
The game gives gives you four choices to chose from before anything else happens(but you can't take forever to chose your option) which is mainly based on morals, each option you chose leads to a different outcome in the story line, you can play the role of an ethically moral person or simply play the entire game by being immoral, I decided to chose mainly immoral options, because I wanted to see what path the story line would take, at the very beginning of the game, the character got into a big fight against another character who was beating a girl, prior to that fight, I decided to carefully chose my answer so that it would end up in a fight between the two characters, meaning that before anything happened I already knew that my answer was immoral and that it would lead to a pretty complicated or chaotic scenario, in this case the other guy got beaten up and ended up with an axe in his head, this made me think that people that have done horrible things in the past(eg crimes against humanity) were most likely aware that what they were doing was wrong and they simply didn't care about the consequences, of course some of them might have been blinded by their own ideals, but that is not an excuse to be forgiven.

for this game to be successful, The Wolf Among Us has to be interesting enough to motivate the player to do something, in "The Anatomy of a Player Choice" (page 115) argues "that if the player has absolutely no motivation, she would simply not do/choose anything", this is completely true, at times while playing the game, I got easily bored and had no motivation to keep playing the game and decided not to chose any of the options. This is a game driven by motivating or making the player more interested in its story.

The wolf among us is a really interesting game, because it allows the player to freely chose what path you want to take in the game, and you don't have to stick to a specific idea, you can chose moral and immoral answers or whatever you want.

Storyboard Final - 16/03/2016

On Saturday night I finished the storyboard's final drawings, and this is a preview of how they look before finalizing it.

After I finished this, I gave the original Photoshop files to Matt who then started working on it, adding the types of camera shots being used and adding details about what is happening in each panel as well as figuring out the timing.

This Storyboard work is an entire collaboration between Matt and I, and this is how the final product looks like.

Week 3 - Pre - Production

We are in the Pre - Production stage of our group projects. On monday everyone did some research about the style we want for our scene, we had some really interesting and good ideas that helped us define our cinematic's style much more.

On Tuesday Matt and I started working on the storyboard. We began by figuring out the type of shots we wanted to do and draw really rough sketches on paper, Matt knows a lot about film studies and camera shots so he came up with a variety of different shots that I believe will work great once we start filming and animating, I also came up with a few shots of my own that were approved by Matt.
We were constantly receiving feedback from Michael and Jacob which made the whole storyboard process a bit easier.

One of the problems we had that we managed to fix pretty early in the storyboard process was that we broke the 180 rule(Noooooooo!!!) luckily Matt noticed this and told me about it, we fixed it in a few minutes, after that we kept working and came up with more ideas for some of the shots.

On Thursday while I was doing the actual storyboard drawings in photoshop, Matt would be working on the final shots (we would constantly ask and give each other feedback or opinions on the piece we were each working on) and drawing really rough sketches on paper that he would hand to me once he was done drawing them. By the end of class on thursday we had already finished the storyboard's rough sketches and all that's left is to draw them in photoshop.

I really feel that Matt and I worked really well together in this storyboard process, I find it super easy to understand his ideas and the types of camera shots that he's thinking of using, making it easier for me to draw it.

Chosen Game : Sonic 2

Did linear storytelling in your chosen game(s) engage and excite you as a player? Explain why or why not.

I am a huge fan of old school games like Super Mario, Mega Man and Sonic. The linear storytelling of Sonic really engaged me as a player, it made me realize that Sonic is most of the time running super fast around a nature like environment with lots of trees and vegetation that is easy to recognize, which for me it seems like Sonic’s natural habitat, and I feel like the wide side view shot in which I’m playing the game is trying to tell me that this is Sonic’s home habitat, every time I think of Sonic one of the first things that come to my mind are the colors blue, green and brown which are colors that I used to use a lot as a child to draw an environment with lots of vegetation and sea (happy environment) and I believe that it makes kids and most people be more engaged in the game.

In one of the levels the game is no longer a wide side view shot but a back view of Sonic and we can see the highway type of environment that he’s running on, this change of shot makes it more interesting for me because it gives me more variety in the game which is something that I like.

One of the levels in Sonic 2 is really industrialized, this makes me think of how humans are slowly getting rid of nature for concrete, Doctor Eggman is us, the humans, and sonic is nature.

The only thing I didn’t like about the game is its game design, it becomes too repetitive and sometimes you don’t have as much control over the character as you’d like, sometimes Sonic just runs and you just sit there without really doing much.

Tasks - Pre-Production Cinematic

Today we kind of finalized the script for our story and we had a meeting with our tutors Keat and Dane because they wanted to see what our production schedule looked like and what everyone's roles are.

After that we were called up again for a second meeting in which some people were promoted to new roles. Dane and Keat assigned Michael as our new Director and Jacob as our Producer, so now they are not on the minimum wage anymore, with this promotion you bet they are earning some good money, on the other hand I kept my position as Head 3D.

This is what our final Production Schedule looks like now:








Michael also decided to do an schedule that explains what everyone needs to be working on during next week, this was his last job as our producer. Jacob will be taking over this job and upholding the legacy. We all wish him good luck.

4th - 13th of March's schedule.

Stuff in brackets isn't until the week after but is something to work on if everything is finished.

Matthew Coles: Storyboard > Rough Sound > (Clay Maquette)

Rhys Mckenzie: Style Concepts > Character Concepts > Environment Concepts > Colour Palettes > (Animatic)

Jacob Knight: Style Concepts > Character Concepts > Character Model Sheet > (Animatic)

Michael Fearon: Style Concepts > Environment Concepts > Colour Pallettes > (Environment Sourcing > Character Profiles)

Gabriel Palomo: Style Concepts > Storyboard > (Modelling)

Production Schedule in its Final Form!!

When we started working out on our production schedule we didn't even think of doing it individually, we gathered together and started off by hearing everyone's personal preferences on what roles each one wanted to do and how everyone felt about it.

In the end we came to a democratic agreement where everyone was/is happy with the production schedule that we established. The only change is that I decided not to work on the animatic and focus mainly in modelling, as head of 3D I want to have as much time as i can to work on the models and help everyone else, everyone in the team agreed on this decision .

This is what Our final production schedule looks like:

Week 2 - Never Alone

The game that I liked the most was Never Alone and I decided to answer on of the questions which I felt was closer to the game.

How does your chose game tell its story? Is it successful?

Never alone has a really interesting introduction to it's story, the way the person tells the story made me want to start playing the game as soon as possible.
As I was playing the game I begun to understand how the creator of the game added basic elements to the story, such as friendship, and the connection of humans with nature and the spiritual, Today these things(apart from friendship) seem to be recognized as legends or myths, this game made me realize how modern society has forced us through materialism to forget the connection we once had with nature and the astral or spiritual world, things that are essential to a lot of us.

Salen and Zimmerman state that "players are constantly shifting between cognitive frames that alternately place them “inside” their character in a relationship of direct identification and very much outside of it, aware of the character as an artificial construct and fictional entity, as well as their own status as players manipulating a tool or “puppet” according to the rules of the game", Never Alone does this really well, because the game and the story have already established two characters and a strong spiritual connection between them, and I believe that this connections is what drive players to play or keep playing this game because you can identify yourself in a way that we all have connections with either our family, friends,partner, etc,  and it makes you think about it even more, because the game also deals with survival, life and death and what it means to loose something or someone you care about and at least for me, it intrigued me to keep playing it

One of the things that caught my attention is how the story tells/shows the connection between the fox and the girl, they have such a strong connection that whenever the girl or the fox died(in the game) it felt like whoever of those two characters stayed alive felt what the other one was feeling at the moment of dying, and I believe everyone can relate to this, everyone has some sort of connection with someone, either your family, best friend or partner, so the story has a great impact on the player when one of the characters dies because we can put ourselves in their positions.

After I achieved different obstacles in the game a short cinematic would be played and part of the story will be told, and every time I watched these short cinematic animations I wanted to keep playing to find out the rest of the story, what comes next? and that is something that I really enjoy in video games, when a story gives me that feeling of wanting more. I think Never Alone has successfully achieved telling a superb story to the player.

I still haven't finished playing the entire game, and I'm looking forward to complete it.