Monday 22 March 2010
As Addictive as Vicodin...
Well, yeah first thing has gotta be that I've been watching House which has turned out to be much more awesome than I first thought. Getting quickly hooked on it actually. Same with the third season of Ghost Whisperer but I'll have to wait till I have any money to watch the rest... Which isn't looking too good at the moment, with the overdraft looming over me. Really need to pay it off soon.
Uni wise I'm pretty excited. We went for a talk on getting an integrated masters after our Ba Hons Animation degree. Well it's integrated so we apparently go straight on to it next year and come out with one degree and rather than pay 10,000 for a separate masters it costs the same as an extra year.. Wooo. Looks like we'll be learning a lot more next year too from our 3rd year "diet" as he called it. Just got to work on getting that first I want this year now. It starts with a hell of a lot of research on the Westernisation of the games design industry and the factors that went into it. It's pretty fun, I spent a good five hours in the library learning about the history of the games industry from stuff like Nintendo's globalisation and specifically how it affected the Final Fantasy franchise and looking through various books on economics (which were far too complicated and specific for me to undestand, think they were 2nd or 3rd year Economics texts). Well once I get through the two books I ended up getting out, my other blog, the one for my Fantasy, Fandom and Franchise module will be updated so follow if you want a somewhat simplified outlook on the games industry http://chrisw45.wordpress.com/ ).
Other than that lesson, I'm still looking for stuff to animate for my music video but I did model a CG Guitar the other day. It does need some extra detail and I need to learn how to texture it properly but so far I think it looks pretty good so far.
Oh well, I'm off for now. If you enjoy games and media then have a look at my other blog, and follow :) Night all.
Uni wise I'm pretty excited. We went for a talk on getting an integrated masters after our Ba Hons Animation degree. Well it's integrated so we apparently go straight on to it next year and come out with one degree and rather than pay 10,000 for a separate masters it costs the same as an extra year.. Wooo. Looks like we'll be learning a lot more next year too from our 3rd year "diet" as he called it. Just got to work on getting that first I want this year now. It starts with a hell of a lot of research on the Westernisation of the games design industry and the factors that went into it. It's pretty fun, I spent a good five hours in the library learning about the history of the games industry from stuff like Nintendo's globalisation and specifically how it affected the Final Fantasy franchise and looking through various books on economics (which were far too complicated and specific for me to undestand, think they were 2nd or 3rd year Economics texts). Well once I get through the two books I ended up getting out, my other blog, the one for my Fantasy, Fandom and Franchise module will be updated so follow if you want a somewhat simplified outlook on the games industry http://chrisw45.wordpress.com/ ).
Other than that lesson, I'm still looking for stuff to animate for my music video but I did model a CG Guitar the other day. It does need some extra detail and I need to learn how to texture it properly but so far I think it looks pretty good so far.
Oh well, I'm off for now. If you enjoy games and media then have a look at my other blog, and follow :) Night all.
Saturday 13 March 2010
Over and Over
So I did so very well at keeping up these blogs.. I'm just gonna do them as they come to me and not put any pressure on it, that clearly doesn't work.
So recently what have I been up to. Well a fair bit of Uni work for starters.
In our Animation Workshop module i've been set the task of portraying a story through a set design. Taking any scene that I want to design and adding scenery that I have designed myself I have to tell some sort of a story through it using lighting, prop design and generally creating an atmosphere inside of a box. Since i've recently been watching a lot of Wuxia films, I decided to go for a Chinese throne room or chambers set in which I will lay a small kimono (admittedly crafted by my mum who's great with textiles). I want to give the feeling that something has happened in this room but not blatantly point out that it's a murder like most people have done with a splash of blood here and there but go for a more elegant and serene scene with (probably) arrows scattered all around the kimono but none piercing it giving an inference of some sort of attack. It's a bit all over the place at the moment with other projects but so far i've designed and built a throne with balsa wood (going quite into detail with smaller pieces) which i've painted with gold leaf paint. The is also a hand stitched cream and gold cushion (again not my work) to go on top of it. I also went on a search for things to put in this scene while I was at home a few weekends back and happened to come across a small stall run by two nice old chinese ladies who had crafted and painted loads of things that I had to buy. One thing I got from them was a wooden varnished Buddah that I will place at the back of my scene and a piece of card with a dragon on that they kindly wrote the kanji for "Imperial" on for me. That just finished things off. There are a few more things such as some quite authentic looking draped curtains and a chest and all I have left to find is some mosaic tiles to act as miniature tiling for the floor and to construct some walls using tracing paper. I think it will look great when it's finished, it's taking enough time.
Sounds a lot more boring than it is I assure you. This class has to be one of the best ones this semester, the other assignment for it is to animate a music video to a song of out choice which first of all I though would be really tedious but now i've found the right song (Hide Another Mistake - The 88) it's going great. I've hand drawn some detailed pictures of the band members (well the ones from 2005) and I'm going to work out how to animate them and break down the song into layers and it should look really good. We have to use equal amounts of 3D, 2D and stop motion animation and I'm really glad we're finally getting the chance to practice them all.
My other projects are good too, I'm not so pleased about one but that's mainly due to the lack of say we have over the content of it so the less talked about that the better. My theory project is all to do with Final Fantasy and the Westernisation of the franchise and what things have brought this about, such as the economy in both Japan and the West drastically changing in recent years. It's pretty interesting stuff and it's really making me want to do loads more independent research. But that'll have to wait for the summer.
That's about all I have to say right now.. oh other than Final Fantasy XIII is awesome. Some of the best story i've played in a game, almost like being in a movie, hats off to the guys at Square Enix for this one, hopefully i'll be there one day. Anyway, night all who are reading.
So recently what have I been up to. Well a fair bit of Uni work for starters.
In our Animation Workshop module i've been set the task of portraying a story through a set design. Taking any scene that I want to design and adding scenery that I have designed myself I have to tell some sort of a story through it using lighting, prop design and generally creating an atmosphere inside of a box. Since i've recently been watching a lot of Wuxia films, I decided to go for a Chinese throne room or chambers set in which I will lay a small kimono (admittedly crafted by my mum who's great with textiles). I want to give the feeling that something has happened in this room but not blatantly point out that it's a murder like most people have done with a splash of blood here and there but go for a more elegant and serene scene with (probably) arrows scattered all around the kimono but none piercing it giving an inference of some sort of attack. It's a bit all over the place at the moment with other projects but so far i've designed and built a throne with balsa wood (going quite into detail with smaller pieces) which i've painted with gold leaf paint. The is also a hand stitched cream and gold cushion (again not my work) to go on top of it. I also went on a search for things to put in this scene while I was at home a few weekends back and happened to come across a small stall run by two nice old chinese ladies who had crafted and painted loads of things that I had to buy. One thing I got from them was a wooden varnished Buddah that I will place at the back of my scene and a piece of card with a dragon on that they kindly wrote the kanji for "Imperial" on for me. That just finished things off. There are a few more things such as some quite authentic looking draped curtains and a chest and all I have left to find is some mosaic tiles to act as miniature tiling for the floor and to construct some walls using tracing paper. I think it will look great when it's finished, it's taking enough time.
Sounds a lot more boring than it is I assure you. This class has to be one of the best ones this semester, the other assignment for it is to animate a music video to a song of out choice which first of all I though would be really tedious but now i've found the right song (Hide Another Mistake - The 88) it's going great. I've hand drawn some detailed pictures of the band members (well the ones from 2005) and I'm going to work out how to animate them and break down the song into layers and it should look really good. We have to use equal amounts of 3D, 2D and stop motion animation and I'm really glad we're finally getting the chance to practice them all.
My other projects are good too, I'm not so pleased about one but that's mainly due to the lack of say we have over the content of it so the less talked about that the better. My theory project is all to do with Final Fantasy and the Westernisation of the franchise and what things have brought this about, such as the economy in both Japan and the West drastically changing in recent years. It's pretty interesting stuff and it's really making me want to do loads more independent research. But that'll have to wait for the summer.
That's about all I have to say right now.. oh other than Final Fantasy XIII is awesome. Some of the best story i've played in a game, almost like being in a movie, hats off to the guys at Square Enix for this one, hopefully i'll be there one day. Anyway, night all who are reading.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)