Oct/090
Eurogamer Expo ‘09
Me and Tom went to the Eurogamer Expo '09 on Wednesday (I forgot about it on the Tuesday) and it was well worth it. I'd never been to a games expo thing before so wasn't sure what to expect but it was just basically a massive roomw ith loads of new games and a lot of other people who are interested in games.
I was there trying to get reseach and where as Selby was just busying running around queing for the new releases. We got glimpses into games such as Assasins Creed 2, Left 4 Dead 2, Halo ODST, God of War 3 and loads more.
The highlight for me was Batman Arkham Asylum. This was because not only did i get a few clips of the cape (my research material)
But we got to play the game in 3D! now I couldn't get a video of this because obviously you have to wear the glasses and everything but the game just looks amazing in 3D. There is a slight issues I reckon with the HUD, the charcter and the background and the objects flying at you, all being on a different level and this perception of depth can get a bit annoying so i don't think i could play for more than a hour with out taking a break but it does look amazing.
Oct/090
HR Giger (+18 years only)
HR Giger was braught up in a lecture today. It was a good lecture but i did disagree with one comment about the inspiration of the Alien Queen. I did some study on HR Giger a few years ago and loved his work, mainly because it was ALL porn and i was in high school, so this might be all wrong but here's what i felt:
The alien queens head
was said to have been inspired from:
Amy winehoues's big hair (not neccessarly her hair but similar) + A three pronged crown.
I think its a massive vagina. I see how it looks similar to the hair and crown but i still belive the main influence is the vagina
Espcially if you look at the Alien Male head.
or the alien hatch lings
i wonder where that idea came from? lets have alook at how the hatchlings attack in the film..
ah i see.
and this one's just amazing, i think the whole image was part of a building or structure and some one has cropped this out but still amazing how hes worked it in.
Oct/090
Parrallax test 01
I've been looking into the whole css parrallax technique even more and after a few days of trying to figure it out i've finaly managed to create a very basic example.
I've also created a .swf to show what it should look like and it was just to see the difference in affects and ease of creation.
As you can see the problem with the CSS parrallex is that the animation looks very solid and will take alot more work to make the transistions seem fluid.
Oct/090
Storyboard – 01
Rouch idea of my current story board. I like using Flash to make these, they are simple to make and i can get a rouch idea of timing and what i need to work more on with little effort.
From this quick example i can see that there are a few time issues and i need to decided weather the final animation will be 30 seconds long. i think the duration of the sequence will change with the method i use as well so i think further research into other techinques is still needed.
Oct/090
Human-stop motion 01
This is quick attempt at trying to re-create a similar style by Oren Lavie with the help of my little sister (age 9) obviously i didnt take nearly as much time or attention to detail as the video, this was just a test to see how and if I could use this technique for my final animation.
I found the technique quite nice and effective if used correctly. I think it could work with the animation I have in mind but i think the person doing the poses would have to have some experiance in holding thier body still. only because of the shape the charcter in the animation would be in, mid swing and when releasing the rope.
Oct/090
Pig and wolf
Found this great piece of animation a while ago but forgot to post about.
I am seeing this style pop up every which made me remember this piece.
Oct/090
Some fly work
Bet you aint seen creativity like this 
Think two's enough if you want to see more go to www.zee.me
Oct/090
Typophile Film Fest
The Typophile Film Fest 5 is a one hour selection of typographic films hailing from all over the world including Argentina, The Netherlands, Russia and the United States. The films vary in subject matter and style; creating a dynamic presentation of motion design, typographic animation, short stories, documentaries and interviews. Typophile
Film fest 5 open sequence
Typophile Film Festival 5 Opening Titles from Brent Barson on Vimeo.
I've never heard of this before so it will be good to see the entries and winners they show. I think the opening sequence has loads of great tepography and kenetic typodgraphy already and from what I can see on the reviews and blogs about Typophile film fest the opening sequence is one of the things people look forward to most, so here are the perivous Typophile opening seqences
Film fest 1
Film Fest 2
Film fest 3
Film fest 4
Oct/090
Parallex
I was introduced to the parallax a few months ago and thought that it was just a nice little bit of css but that as good as it was, it wouldn't really be anything amazing. It was just a nice touch which makes backgrounds and other elements look more interactive.
(I think the first person to use parrallax on a website was Silverback If they wern't the first they are definitly the people who made it mainstream.)
My opion of the css parallex techique changed after I went to future of web design because one of the creators of the silverback site was telling us how people have taken that idea and now moved it on a bit and made the CSS Parallax: The Horse in Motion effect.
The idea simply combines the css parrallax techinque with a zoetrope, producing a stunning animation using only css and html and two .pngs.
I think limitations of this is that long and complex animation can't be reproduced and even some simple animations will be quite complicated to make.
Oct/090
Protected: BaseCamp
Oct/090
Different animation styles
Had my first animation practive lecture Thursday and the presentation Darren Wall did contained some really nice experimental animation styles.
The first was some standard stop motion, using human pixels.
The nice thing about the music is its made up of human voices as well. I would say its amazingly directed but wait till you see the next one which is human picles but this thim in one shot.
We come back to stop time animation for "Roofsex" which is created by PES and what makes it special is how he is showing us how good animation can really make any inanimate object come to life. Just the simplicity of the male chair being bigger and the girl chair having a skirt all help give the feeling that this really is two chairs having sex
We moved on to some stunning time lapses looking at the Northern lights
next is Strata - cut which is very new to me. From what I can tell it is basically a tube or block of play dough, clay or wax (originally used by Oskar Fischinger)
with all the frames made inside the tube and they take away the top layerand so on
And the last and most impressive is Strata stenci, the example is by Javan Ivey and is just really nice. All of thi si made from card cut outs so it must have taken ages but it's probably well worth it. The effect can be made on the computer but im sure it feels a lot more rewarding when done by hand.
Oct/090
Protected: Making Lara
Oct/090
Panel beating
Had my first 3d Tutorial the other day and... i feel behind!!
My thouhgt process to changing course was.. I've tried everything out in multimedia. did ok so im sure i'd be fine in animation and SFX. i was wrong, i kind of forgot the fact that when I was in multimedia doing general stuff, people in animation and sfx were actually doing just animation and sfx (doh!)
so i feel slightly behind every one and thats why i've spent alot of time trying to learn 3ds!
The first tutorial we were given was to change a cube into a shpere.
I think it turned out ok.. the tutorial did seem to dump in a section and got kind of complicated so I decided to do my own thing 1/2 way through and it looks ok (ish)
Andy took some interest to it all and refered to it as panel beating but easyer. I guess it is similar to panel beating casue you do try to get all the lumps out but fortunatly you can undo if you get the wrong but unlike in real life panel beating.