Game Anim » interview

Blogcritics Interview

Jonathan — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 04:07:45 +0000

A few people at work have pointed me towards this audio interview I gave after the MIGS talk at the end of last year (a summary of which is still forthcoming, but you can see the slides here if you have a magnifying glass). If you can put up with the dodgy accent there may be something of use in there.

Montreal International Game Summit 09 – Blogcritics Interview

It covers a few points I missed out of the talk and some thoughts on ME2′s romance custscenes. Having a long enough break from the project I’m now playing through the game with fresh eyes, and seeing everything in context I’m most happy with the Thane romance but can only see the green guy on Youtube as I’m not playing female.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Voicing Complaints

Jonathan — Sat, 24 May 2008 11:53:25 +0000

Three years ago, when I first began this site, I posted this about voice actors complaining over the videogame industry’s position of not providing the same financial rewards as other more traditional media given their percieved profits – most notably residuals, (an ongoing stream of payments for the completion of past achievements). Since then, I’ve not only worked on more than a couple of projects with a heavy focus on high-quality voice acting, but also directed motion-capture actors in hollywood. This has given me a better appreciation of the artform and of the difference that a real talent can bring to a performance.

Nevertheless, I still got really mad at this recent interview in The New York Times with Michael Hollick, voice (sometimes mocap – though if all the actions in the game are done by one guy I’d be surprised) actor employed to breathe life into the main protagonist of the recent hit GTA4, Nico Bellic.

Mr. Hollick is understandably upset about the fuzziness of his contract that, unlike those offered in the mediums of film, television or radio, does not offer him pay whenever his contribution is featured in promotional materials, and perhaps that should have been made more clear to him. However, if he or any other voice actor believes that the work he provides is IN ANY WAY comparable to the years of intensive creative labour, off-hours problem-solving, and let’s not forget, unpaid overtime by the hundreds of talented developers at any given game studio then he is very, very mislead. I wholeheartedly agree with the below statement from the piece:

The actor whose appearance or voice is used is more analogous to a session music for a band. The session musicians donâ€™t get residuals on the sales of the CD. They get paid a session fee.” – Ezra J. Doner, a former Hollywood executive who represents entertainment companies as a lawyer at Herrick, Feinstein in Manhattan, N.Y.

Funnily, an interview in the April issue of EDGE magazine sees series creator Sam Houser talk of Ray Liotta’s similar comments following the huge success of GTA Vice City:

…I hate that kind of chat. It’s like, be cool. You know? I hate that – it’s so cheesy. Like he’s saying, “Next time I’m really going to pin it to them”. Well, how about we just killed off your character? So he doesn’t exist – there is no next time. That’s how we handle that.

No more Nico Bellic then.

Mass Effect VFX Interview in HDRI

Jonathan — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 03:25:17 +0000

The latest edition of HDRI Magazine has a front-page article on an interview with Shareef Shanawany, Visual Effects Lead on Mass Effect. There are some details on the post-processes that really defined the look of the game, as well as the fantastic work employed for the biotics using the crust system.

I’ve always thought Mass retained something of the same look as all the other games rendered in the Unreal 3 Engine, but perhaps we did manage to put our own stamp on it with little tricks like the grain filter and custom depth-of-field, (the DOF in the image above was Unreal 3′s default at the time). And if I wouldn’t love to make a game locked at 24fps with motion blur.

As far as I’m aware, this is the first time they’ve run a cover story on videogame VFX, which is usually the territory of film and television only. Definitely a great step forward and some great recognition for the excellent work done by Shareef and the rest of the VFX team, even if they did kill the framerate throughout (and to a degree, post) production ;-)