Back from Easter

It's really hard to get back in gear after the Easter Holidays but I'm trying really hard to work.

First of all I've asked a couple of people to look at my intro of my film and the comments are really positive.
I asked Duncan who said "It feels really nostalgic because I grew up with that era of games." So my aim was already archieved within the first 30 seconds of my short film and I'm happy with it.
He really helped by saying that the scanline effect wasn't too stood out and it blended in very well or it made eye strain.

Oh yeah I decided to name my film G.U.4, when you pronounce G.U. (Jiyuu) it means freedom in Japanese "自由", the 4 number is just a parody of sequels of game leading to 4 and up.

My thoughts of of name consist of:

• Generation-up 4
• Glitch-up 4
• Game-Up 4
• Game-unlockable 4
• Ghost-User 4

I pretty much almost finish the menu interface besides from the name.

Maya Vector

Hello fellow bloggers and reader, it's been ages since I've posted something partly because I'm working and it's the Easter Holiday.

One of the things I've done is trying Maya's Vector render. Because there will be a transition of flash and 3d.

After testing it out, the rendering takes longer compared to my previous render so I think I should abandon the vector render. Although I do like the outline shaded look but it is a very time consuming process.

Production Stage

I've started the production today.

The intro for my film:

Some of the print-screens I've taken while making:

I've used Flash to create some of the menu interface.

I've used after effects to composited the clips together.

Animatic in progress

I haven't posted up my progress of my film and I feel really ahamed because the whole pre-production because I'm a slow worker and now I feel pressured.

Anyway this is my animatic for the beginning:

I will going to finish this by today for sure but I'm not really feeling motivated. But the positive side is that the story is completed and all needs to do is the storyboard and animatic and the making should starts in a hafty.

But after looking at my schedule I have to really kick myself to do the uni work because time really flies by.

Glitch

In my short film, the glitch is the cause/cataylst of making my character feel self aware of his surrounding. I imagine it to be some crazy visual effects.

The visual will be something like this:

The Pokemon glitch in the Game Boy.

I also like the pixelating of this corrupted image:

The rainbow colour glitch:

Here is a tutorial on how to make a Digital glitch effects which I found in Computer Arts.

Game Covers

I've noticed that when I hand in work it's always a last minute burn DVD so I don't go for the extra mile. But this time will be different. For example I am going to make a DVD cover for my final thing.

I've looked at Kotaku website and found this interesting article that someone is making classical covers of modern games:

The person who started this creative repackaging is Olly Moss.
http://hellforge.gameriot.com/blogs/Hellforge/Classic-Covers-for-Video-Games

I really like the texture of the game covers and also the simplicity of design, colour and layout.

Here are some real classic Artari Game covers, so I can have a reference:
http://mightygodking.com/index.php/2008/04/21/fun-from-yesterday/

I also looked at another article about making fake atari games:

And finally a tutorial on how to make a artari game cartridge on photoshop:
http://psdtuts.com/tutorials-effects/super-retro-game-cartridge-design/

Game Boy-inspired screenshots of recent video games

Recently (and by “recently” I mean “over two years ago“) Pixelation ran a little contest on their forum to see who could create Game Boy-inspired screenshots of more recent video games.

I've taken 3 images and made a comparison to it's original game. The games are Bioshock, Final Fantasy XII and Ico.

I think the whole Gameboy style visual is pretty nice expecially the lighting is green which gives a mood. For example in the Matrix, the lighting is green because it represents Matrix world while in the real world it is filtered blue.