Archive for February, 2008

I got sent this link today regarding a new mocap studio in India. The picture says it all…

On Tuesday I fly to San Francisco for this year’s Game Developer’s Conference so have drawn up a schedule below, (despite not being 100% fixed on many talks due to the amount of overlap on my topics of interest). Decisions are in bold, while same-time alternatives remain should I change my mind. Hope to see some of you there :)

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Cameron Fielding has uploaded this excellent video highlighting some of his work on the recent Turok from Vancouver-based Propoganda Games. I’ve only played the demo, but found the 3rd-Person knife actions to really make this game stand out from other 1st-Person shooters.

On the challenge of moving from a cartoony background to a realistic style for this project, he says, “I had always wanted to animate stuff like this, so I was totally up for it. I am still surprised with ultimately how similar the two approaches are, particularly with how exaggerated you can go with the movement of the creatures. The realistic human animation I found the most difficult, and used video reference frequently to solve a lot of the problems I encountered.”

Fellow Deus Ex 3 team members Thierry and Sebastien (BARONTiERi and Reinart respectively of STEAMBOT Studios) have just released their first Gnomon instructional art DVDs. Not animation, but Character Design and Matte Painting.

Go buy them and laugh at their funny French accents.

During game development, we often refer to fighting games as the best example of where real-time animation can be pushed due to the genre typically concentrating on only two characters in an enclosed arena, though unfortunately most often in terms of “We can’t do that - we’re not making a fighter…”.

As noted on the previous movies, these recent screens of SFIV point towards some pretty animation-intensive details, sporting bone scaling, cloth and an impressive detailed facial setup, as well as what must be some form of muscle deformation to maintain volume in the limbs. On top of all this is a look-at system between not only the two main protagonists but also the crowd of onlookers - something that will become standard in the near future to overcome the lifeless gaze of previous-generation videogame characters.

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I just read that THQ picked up the award for Best Animated Videogame of 2007 at the 35th Annie Awards. That’s very impressive in a year that also brought us Assassin’s Creed and Team Fortress 2. The complete list of nominees were:

• Avatar: The Last Airbender “The Burning Earth” – THQ, Inc.
• Bee Movie Game – Activision
• Ratatouille – THQ, Inc.
• Transformers: The Game – Blur Studios

Congratulations to the team at THQ - beating off such stiff competition must have really taken a lot of hard work and talent, and I look forward to your future output. And congratulations to the Annie Awards jury for such a keen and incisive analysis of the current state of my industry - I also look forward to your future output.

Recently Watchdog, (a UK consumer complaint show), ran an article on DS Brain Training / Brain Age supposedly discriminating against accents - especially those of Northern England and Scotland. As silly as this sounds, I actually found it to be entirely true when playing despite commanding a relatively well-spoken Scots tongue myself, though was impressed enough that the voice-recognition worked as well as it did. Nintendo were even thoughtful enough to allow the omission of the voice-recognition element from the Brain Age test.

The thing they don’t mention in the segment, however, is the blatant discrimination against a particular way of writing the number 4. In order to avoid being labeled with the mental age of a seventy year-old I had to relearn something that’s come naturally since childhood, with a numerical brainwashing so thorough I’ve never been able to go back to the old way since.