I found some further inspiration, some inspiring videos and also Christian videos which have a lot of professional creativity within them.
The one bellow is called ‘You’re Revolutionary and talks about how you have the potential to become great with reference to the bible. The dark text and white background really make it seem clean and clear.
You’re Revolutionary
Another video called ‘God is Faithful’ uses a great deal of motion tracking all throughout and achieves a great amount of realism with the text and the walking characters. The walking aspect also catches my eye.
Another video that particularly gained my interest was a short video about how video games ‘waste’ your life when played excessively and the person in the video tries to persuade his audience to really think about how much video games you play, as well as how much facebook you use.
Life Changing Video Games
The flash animation he created is another angle in creating your own media experience.
Another video that personally inspires me everyday to try harder at university and to try and do my absolute best in any given situation, for the sake of my family and friends, to not let them down. The preacher Eric Thomas’s speech is overlayed with an athlete in training. It is really inspiring.
How Bad Do You Want It? (Success)
Do you want to succeed as much as you want to breathe? that is the persuasive spin and the hook that gets the audience. It really has a lot of impact in such a short video, although the music track in the background does help.
I am a Champion
This is another video that has a great impact, this shows how much influence the background music has on changing the feel of your video, so without a doubt the audio is something that should be looked into beforehand.
The visual inspiration which I want to focus on is inspired from the video ‘I’m On’ by Trae Tha Truth. The clean text upon a blue sky background brings such an intense amount of contrast and a really great professional look.
Also, another aspect of music video that inspires me, is the use of text motion effects on screen, some great examples are Sway Dasafo’s video Level up and Chamillionaire’s recent mixtape videos. All the text is really dynamic and at the same time it is easy to read and engages the audience which makes the time fly by as you watch.
Sway – Level Up
The text effects within this video are really fast paced and engaging, coming from all different types of angles and speeds to suit the rapping.
Chamillionaire – On My Way
This video has a 3D car which is the central focus of the video as the text flies by. The contrast of dark colours and white text really bring out a professional feel in this video.
To start off with my inspiration, I stumbled upon the video:
The video is by a Christian group trying to witness to their audience about God. It strikes me so much because it really displays so much emotion and so much contemplation within such a short clip of only 2 minutes long. The impact is so strong because of the relatable footage of the different scenes of the persons life. This really inspired me to do something similar and to try and experiment with hitting a chord with the audience in such a small slot of time.
Finally, the last step, other than the voice syncing the vocals, was the editing of sound. I noticed as each sound was put in, the animation came more and more to life, it comes to show how important the sound in any given form of entertainment is. Overall I am quite pleased with the end result although it was a lot of investment and learning, I feel that 3D animation is thoroughly enjoyable once you know the basic ins and outs.
Finally, the 3rd and last scene, much of teh focus here was to rinse and repeat the techniques learned in previous 3D animation.
Part of the animation, he shoots a projectile out of his walking stick, in order to make the shot look powerful, I squinted the characters eyes as well as exaggerated the movement of the recoil as he flies back and slides on the ground.
The explosion itself was made using a tutorial online which talks about Maya’s fluid creation. Which automated animations of particles within a box are displayed and can be varied in settings. I wanted the explosion to look a bit more magical than the conventional type to convey that he has a magical walking stick.
Here is a snippet of the first scene playblasted, which I had problems with the codec settings as well as the playblast screen size, which would distort the screen and no sound would come out. I managed to fix most of those issues.
Syncing the sound with the mouth movements is a bit of an easier job when your mouth is a beak. Talking is more of an opening and closing affair, although widening the lips and playing with blend shapes, does help give the sound a more realistic feel when he talks.
Moving onto the next scene, making more use of the blend-shapes to give the character a more realistic emotional expression. He is scared as he hears the motorbikes coming again for the second time. The eyesbrows go up as the eyes widen, and his mouth starts to frown as he moves hi head back.
The blendshapes have to be keyed in the right attributes to get the right effect. Ideally, only moving 2-4 blend-shapes was most effective, as if too many are moved, it starts to deform the model.
In this particularly part, he jumps up in fear. I used the torso controller to move his body back as if the sound wave of the bike passing by pushes him away. His mouth opens up wide as shown in the previous sketches. He also drops his walking stick to convey more of a shell shocking impact.
He is then traumatized into curling up into a defensive stance. using the controllers to of the torso and hands to squeeze him into a defensive shape.
The hand moves off of his head as he darts his eyes around to see if everything is safe as he contemplates.
Finally, I had to animate him crawling on 4 legs as if he were a dog or horse, even though he is a bird. Looking at the way 4 legged animals crawl was quite fascinating. After looking at the video above, I got to understand that both leg and hand have to move at the same time in diagonal opposites.
The walk cycle was mainly done through moving certain controllers of the body. Some of which make the movement look even more human like, if combined in the right way.
Starting off with lifting the foot con upwards and forwards. Also at the same time moving the walking stick and the right arm upwards. At this same time, you also move the left arm backwards.
To make the walk cycle more convincing. When the foot hits the ground, the torso should also move down to accompany the wight of the movement to create the look of weight being applied by the character.
When the left foot rises and goods forward, aligning with the right foot, the character’s height is at it’s highest point so you move the torso controller up.
When the character moves with an object (such as the walking stick) that is used to lean upon, the object stays still whilst the character is making his move.
Finally, when the character is about to stop, he slowly eases into his stationary position as the tempo slows down.
Starting the animation, I had to take into account various different gestures that the character might possibly display. All of the different facial expressions and the characters overall mood had to be taken into account.
Particularly the character’s shocked face when the vehicle is to zoom by him. Seeing how the bird’s mouth structure is different from that of a human being. The jaw opens much wider and much more freely. The eyes also widen at the same time.
Here are some examples of very quick character model sheets in which different emotions are expressed. Notice again the wise opening of the mouth.
Starting with the every basics of animation, such as getting the desired beginning pose right.
Blinking is an essential part of making an animation look more realistic within your characters emotive expression. On average, a person blinks 16 times per minute. So within the 30 second animation, he should at least blink 8 times, plus the added blinking because of being abruptly surprised.
At the start he is pretty content with himself and his situation of trying to cross the road, although later on, his mood and facial expressions start to change. The mouth flaps about as well as opens to try to conceive a more realistic impression of sound coming out of the character’s mouth.
So recently I found out from a friend of mine Eriko Kobayashi, that there will be a volunteer trip to Africa which will be an expenses paid experience in which 30 scholarship students will be able to go to Kenya to help out with volunteering.
I thought this was the perfect opportunity for me to assist and aid the world once again after I went to Tanga in Tanzania to build the primary school. That experience was so precious for me and even since I went there I feel that I want to go back, that is my true calling. Often at university I feel so useless, I feel that sometimes I am wasting my time studying things which often don’t interest or inspire me, wasting precious years of my life in which those years could be lived out there in the wilderness helping other people and making a change to society.
The opportunity which Virgin Atlantic has supported is a great opportunity for those inspired to help and those financially less assured or well off then others to lend a hand and experience Africa. If you have always wanted to get out there and help, any students who are reading this from the UK, here is your chance this year and the years to come.
The main influence my game idea Roborush is inspired by is the classic game Megaman.
The thing that mainly inspired me about this game is it’s fast passed action and it’s emphasis on the characters actions which you part take in. Funny thing was tho, after finishing my Game Concept I realised that there are a few similarities between my game and Megaman, such as the professor who brings Megaman to life had a good purpose and Megaman goes around the world defeating different bosses and gaining abilities.
I came to notice that those certain aspects of the game were aspects which I greatly appreciate in a good game, a good game to me means it should have a great or original story, even if it is short. What also clicks as a good game to me is a game that resonates with my feelings towards wanting to do good and having good moral ethics and being inspired to help others.
The Gameplay would be the main separatist aspect of my game. Although I would like the impact and controls to be very similar to the fast flowing pace of Megaman.
The difference being that Roborush would be completely fast passed and angled at being really reflex based but at the same time, easy for users to pick up and really competitive in the combo region.
The kind of feeling and general look of the game would be similar to Vanquish but done in a 2d side scrolling basis.
The gameplay is also a factor which clings onto me with this game, other than it being 3D, it has perfect elements in it which really appeal to me as a gamer, for me I prefer a game to have fast paced action in which you feel like you are in control and are able to to change your own reality and the things you do give you merit. The skills you display are what you as the main user trains to develop and gains a better sense of satisfaction once the game has been conquered through effort and intense split second action sequences which is what Vanquish possesses.
The Gameplay will be similar to Megaman, but the screen will constantly moving. The main spin on the game is that you can’t stop or slow down, if you do, you end up in a different game mode, called Triple S (split-second-shield) mode in which you have to absorb enemies with your shield to gain enough power to continue to run for your destination. You can only absorb the enemies if you press the shield button at the right time, the split second they hit you, hence the split-second-shield. During the main play through, you will be able to pick up scoring/health objects such as multipliers and energy packs (health). This idea was inspired by Pokemon Stadium and the Metapod shielding game.
Other Aspects of Vanquish which I like is the general feel and setting of the game. The way the emotion can burst out even though it is only a robot, similar to how Wall-e captured so many viewers hearts. I want my main character to posses something similar.
The Inraid design was somehow inspired by a mix of the Street fighter Twelve Character and a mix of the Heartless form Kingdom of hearts. I find these simple enemies have such a unique and appealing presence as an opponent.
The Title screen and the Audio will be similar to the style of ‘Metal Gear Solid’ where things are very futuristic and the sound is really atmospheric.
The Audio of Metal Gear Solid is really built upon with emotion and it really delves into your heart and gets you inspired to do things in the game.
Often I find it in Metal Gear Solid, that the gameplay can be quite slow so the hype is easily killed, although in this game I hope to rectify that.
The general atmosphere and scenery will be quite torn apart with a mix of technology and a mix of barren lands and destroyed cities.
The places are abandoned or inhabited by the Inraid. You will travel through various different environments and setting throughout the game and immerse yourself into a world different to the one we currently know.
The overall impact of the game as a whole is that it was give the user a unique experience and a chance to save teh world after the Inraid invade. One of the strongholds will be the beautiful and elegant art style the game will incorporate to give the user a gratifying and pleasing experience.
Computer Arts 