Pretty little Bugses

First page: Done when I wasn't really sure what I wanted to focus on. I did these all in pencil first, then went over them in biro and watercolour later on, after painting the first thirteen bugs on the second page.

Second page: Bugs copied from Micheal Chinery's Collins Guide to the Insects of Britain and Western Europe.
Top row: Epilachna chrysomelina, Subcoccinella 24-punctata, Coccidula scutellata, Scymnus frontalis, Hippodamia 13-punctata, 7-Spot Ladybird, Eyed Ladybird.
Second row: Thea 22-punctata, Propylea 14-punctata, Wasp Beetle, Plagionotus arcuatus, Chlorophorus varius, Calosoma sycophanta, Common Swallotail.
Bottom row: Black-veined White [Aporia crataegi], Large Blue [Maculinae arion]. Large Blue larvae are pink to begin with, feeding on wild thyme flowers. They are then carried into certain ants nests, where they feed on antgrubs until they pupate.
Picture in the bottom left corner of page is of a hall with a ceiling decorated by beetle shells.


Third page: Oleander Hawkmoth [Daphnis nerii], Hoplia caerulea [top right], under that is the Spanish Moon Moth [Graellsia isabellae], and bottom right is Pterostichus cupreus.


Fourth page: Very quick colour studies of Calosoma sycophanta, from photos found on the net.

Me likey Anamorphosis

[Source photo here]

Calosoma sycophanta

Looks a little messy maybe, but my eyes keep seeing the back end as 3D in the second photo :)

Small entry I know, but it is Freshers fortnight... More paintings to put up later.

Politics, Wellbeing, and that thing we call Currency.

One of the major reasons I haven't been spending all my time doing the work I should be doing, has been Affluenza by Oliver James [my sister bought it because it sounded psychological and interesting, the same reason I even started reading it in the first place]. It's all about how money doesn't make you happier, but it goes much deeper than just making that old statement.

Oliver James travelled around the world to interview people in different English-speaking countries, giving snapshots into their personalities and emotional lives, and showing how their environment could have contributed to each. He's also extremely anti-Selfish-capitalism, and by the end of the book I had decided I really dislike adverts that tell you that if only you had their product, you would be so much happier.

Funnily enough, his book also gives his suggestions to avoid the "Affluenza virus" [known symptoms include wanting to be famous for the sake of being admired, wanting to have lots of nice things that you don't actually need in order to keep up with the Joneses, and thinking of people as commodities - including yourself - who will help you in your career or else you're not interested, as opposed to friends you like to spend time with], thereby reducing your vulnerability to emotional distress, giving you a chance to be happier. The difference between me saying that and an advert is that, if you buy Oliver James' book, I won't be getting any money for it. I'm spreading the word, not selling a product - there's a very fine line. It's one of the reasons I thought Lostprophets were awesome when I went to go see them in Newport. One of them said to the crowd that he didn't care if you downloaded their new song illegally, so long as you spread the word. Then again, I suppose they know enough of their fans would buy it anyway.

So what's all this got to do with computer games, eh?

Well. I was thinking about the politics of it, what Capitalism was all about, and I realised I didn't really know a lot about it and it's alternatives. I knew my friend Tito likes to write political things on his blog, apparently he's an Objectivist, and again, I didn't have a clue what that meant. He wasn't about at the time, so I googled it to give myself a vague idea. Then I had a look at what Socialism, and Communism, was all about, and then it struck me: how come I've not heard of any virtual worlds that try to put these ideas into play in the game? [If you know of any I could look at, do leave a link for me to check out :D] The unpredictableness of some players would be useful in seeing how such systems would work [or not work].

I thought about WoW and how it seems to involve a lot of [virtual] materlism. You kill one thing and what do you get? Copper. Silver. Gold. Maybe an item. Complete a quest and you get gold, or items. As you level up you get more gold to buy better items to increase your stats. When you get to the end level, your focus shifts towards group work to gain items in raids that have better stats that help you get better items in raids to give you even better stats. It's similar in the Sims in one way too - they NEED money.

They need it, not just to eat, but it's also decided that their happiness depends on the items they own - the items that are the most satisfying to Sims in-game are the ones which happen to be the most expensive. And [ignoring the money cheat for a moment] if your Sim doesn't have a job, you can't meet your needs very well, your Sim gets unhappy, and then it can't get a job. Then it dies or something. I'm not sure, I've never done a deprivation experiment on Sims, but I have witnessed how difficult the game got for one Sim a long time ago, probably before Sims 2 or 3. He ended up very depressed, and angry, and his wife left him. It was endgame for him then, because he had no one else in the house to bring in money for food, and he wouldn't get a job because he was "not in the mood", and we didn't know the money cheat at the time so we couldn't save him.

It might sound like I've just been stating the obvious. But in real life, it's not always the most expensive things that make people happiest in the long term. "The best things in life are free". If you think about it, this system of materialistic punishment and reward is something many of us have taken for granted in games. I'm probably going to be spending a lot of time now considering what the alternatives may be and how they might be implemented.

I don't know if this post has made sense to anyone at all, seeing as this is all quite new in my head and I'm sure I have a few contradictory thoughts floating about. Oh well. Here's some more reading, an article I just stumbled across but have yet to decide on how I feel about it: Happiness, the new currency in France.

Only a FORTNIGHT to Go!

Only a fortnight til I get to be back in uni :D

It might not look like it to the casual observer, but my mind is that hyper about the thought of going back that I'm actually losing sleep at night. Can't imagine how I'll be in a week.

I've started to pack by putting everything I brought back from uni into a big heap on my table. Now I just need to sort through it, and try to bring back only what I need [dad wasn't kidding when he said I'd accumulate junk there].

On top of that, I've got my Summer Assignment to do... For some reason, I had tons of motivation during my first month home, although I didn't actually do much proper work, and then after a few weeks it fizzled away so I could get on with holiday fun. Oh how inevitable of it. I feel like I'm at that point again where I don't know what to do, so instead I do nothing but ponder.

On the flip side, it took me 8 minutes to clean a shower-room at work today. 8 minutes! It used to take me like half an hour, because I'd have to think and try to remember what to do. But now I've got myself into a routine, I can spend those 8 minutes thinking about more important things as I clean... such as what on earth to do for my Summer Assignment.

It's not all bad I guess though, I'm making it sound like I've done no work. I've drawn, gone over in biro, and watercoloured the images of 13 pretty bugs in my book for use as reference [pictures to come]. Except they kinda only take up part of an A3 page... Hmmm...

Jonas Brothers - "Fly With Me" Cover Contest

I was going to wait until we recorded a little segment to add onto the proper animated video, but I have a feeling that's not going to happen for a long while now, if ever. Basically, just over a month ago, my sister, Gen, found this video:



Win a guitar? Yes please! One of Gen's ideas to make our entry a little more original [other than completely change the melody and chords... haha] was to do an animation for it. So... guess who did the animation... :)


Gen kept listening to the JCB song, and we liked the simplicity of the video, which is why I went for the scrolling sky thing and cartoony us's.

Although, in the actual entry, the sky wouldn't scroll... because I'm not quite an expert on Flash [yet..] and I ran out of time trying to figure it out. But I've remade it now, so that when I exported it as an avi, it actually worked properly... It involved a lot of copying and pasting, but I got it done in one night. I think rotoscoping that wind up box thing took longer, haha.



Everyone you hear is a Gyseman gal :)
Me: Background singing, guitar and backbeat [...which was actually just me hitting the guitar]
Gen: Singing, and background singing
Abi: Singing
Yvette: Singing with Abi

Gen came up with the tune [the day before the deadline!] and did most of the sound editing. We didn't actually win in the end :( But so far all the commenters have loved how original it was :)

Aion Online

By the people who brought you Guild Wars, Lineage and City of Heroes, NCsoft have got a new game out soon, Aion Online. I saw this video and thought, "Oooooooh, ahhhh!"



I like the pretty places, I like that you get to fly, I like the customisation options in the character creation... but I have a minor complaint. In the videos I've seen [I've not played the beta] I think the running animation looks a bit weird. Like they look like they should be going faster than they are.

It's like the opposite of what bugs me about the kodo[?] mount run cycle in WoW [they're so massive, but their legs move really fast, and they sound like little gnomes when they run through water. It's actually kinda amusing now I think about it].

I dunno. Mebbe they tilt forward that far because of.. the gear they may be carrying? *shrugs* Maybe it's to create the illusion of speed, and the camera angles I've seen it at have just made it look weird. Or maybe, I'm being fussy :p

"When I grow up..."

I've been thinking over the last few days about what it is I actually want to do. I haven't figured it out yet. This is after reading about finding your true calling on The Lazy Way to Success blog.

So far, I've figured out that:

- I like cleaning. And tidying, restoring, and generally making things and environments look and feel nice. I'm not sure where I'm at with my 'collecting-junk-to-make-things-out-of habit'. I guess I try to organise things so that all those little bits of junk get their own drawer, out of the way of all the useful things..

- I don't really like deadlines. Which is why I tend to prefer cleaning my house over cleaning the lovely lodges at work.

- I like finding out the truth. Getting to the bottom of things. Kinda like a journalist I guess. I've only noticed that recently, while writing these blog posts about things I've read online. Ever since finding out Jeff Goldblum fell off a cliff and died, the same day as Michael Jackson, I've realised I can't believe anything I read on the internet just because someone I know believes it [for those who hadn't heard about him dying, Jeff Goldblum didn't die. Or even fall off the cliff. Or was even on a cliff that day].

- I like making stuff. Especially stuff that, when someone looks at it, makes them say, "Charlotte! How did you make that?" I also like it when someone says, "Charlotte! How did you do that?" I think I kinda like teaching, too. But at the same time I like being able to do things, where people do not have a clue how I did it. Like magicians. Illusionists. They create experiences and stories out of thin air with the help of the viewer's imagination. Sounds like good fun to me.

- I like learning stuff. I'm not sure if this is because I just like to know how things work, or because I don't want to end up sitting on a stool for a week waiting for the lights to turn back on. Not that that's what I'd do in such a situation... [Watch the video below if you've never seen it, he makes a very good point, hehe].



- Following on from the learning stuff point, I've noticed I've kinda forgotton about my like for science. As arty as I am, I did wonder whether to go for the other Games course [a BSc] that UWN offered. In the end I applied for both the Animation and the CGD course [both BA's], thinking I'd get to involve plenty of sciencey know-how in terms of Physics. That said, when it comes to designing games... you can design games about anything. I remember somewhere, somebody said that we, as game designers, come to find out all kinds of odd bits of knowledge while researching for projects.

So yeah. I'm supposed to figure out what it is I can do to create a service, product, or something like that for other's to pay me, while I do work that doesn't feel like work. Uni doesn't usually feel like work to me, which looks like a good thing. I think the deadlines won't bother me as much if I'm loving what I'm doing, because I'll always be inspired to get things done on time. But I've gotta say, I've always liked the idea of becoming an Entrepreneur. One thing I have wondered is whether this blog can generate any easy income [after reading about a thing called Project Wonderful]. It won't be long before I get to try it out and see how it goes. Sounds good for a bit of pocket money.

Twilight: The Video Game?

Daemon made me aware of a link last night that Craig had put up on Facebook. Apparently there's been a little bit of chatter on the net regarding "Twilight MMO". Before anyone gets too excited/enraged at the thought, I should tell you that [at the moment], no, it's not actually happening.

From what I can tell, what seems to have happened is Twilight Source put up a news post stating that there would be a Twilight MMORPG, probably after reading about it on Artuji, who may have possibly come across the story first on The Examiner. I think. I kinda stopped halfway through writing that paragraph and lost my train of thought to watch an episode of Psychoville with my sister.

One look at the actual website of this game however, tells you everything you need to know:

- The game is being created for academic purposes.
- Brandon Gardner is the Game Director and Lead Programmer, Steven Danielson is the Concept Artist.
- The game is not going to be an MMO.
- They are going to surrender the game and all it's materials to Summit Entertainment once it is finished, and it's up to Summit Entertainment whether they want to actually publish it or not.

If you want to know more, I suggest heading over to the "actual website" link above and checking it out.



On a more personal note, I seem to still be living in a sheltered world.

I'm a fan of the books and the story, and all the girls I know who have read the books loved it [as well as a few mums and a couple of librarians who had been introduced to them too]. It seems to be a chickflick of the book world. So it's no wonder to me that it's became so popular, that they made movies for it, and that anyone would consider making a game for it.

What did surprise me was the reactions of most of the articles I read about it. Such as this one on Massively. To put it simply: They didn't like it. Some thought the books were rubbish, poorly written and/or lame. Some thought a Twilight MMO would be the end of the world.

At first, I thought that point was a bit dramatic to make, just because one is not into the idea of romance and videogames [and people wondered why there weren't enough women into games...]. But then, I thought about it. Maybe, they're scared of the idea of a Twilight MMO. Women everywhere could take such delight in it, that their other-halves and/or sons would have to fend for themselves. Oh, the horror.

Imagine playing on COD4, or WoW, or whatever your addiction is, and suddenly finding that you're absolutely starving because the lady who normally brings you food has disappeared from reality. The thought of it kinda makes me wanna laugh and say, "Get over it, and stop playing that game for two seconds, or you can eat pixels for dinner." But on the otherhand, the idea of a game as addictive to women as WoW seems to be to, um, people who can't seem to stop playing WoW, is understandably scary.

I think the only way I could condone such a game would be if it helped women develop personally as they played - rather than turned them into one of those people that sit around letting their reality fall into disrepair, while they get sucked into an imaginary fantasy world because their reality sucks, because they've let it fall into disrepair... And if you don't think games can help a person develop as an individual, stick around. It'll happen. If a person can come away from a film feeling like they've learned something or been enlightened, I really don't see why a game can't be capable of the same and still be entertaining.

Age of Conan, The Last Bastion, and The Order of the Silver Dragons

I am so very intrigued right now. I came across the MMORPG, Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures, and now I really really want to play it. Here's a "re-review" of the game, from curse.com.

I'll be honest, part of the attraction for me is the fact that it sounds different to WoW in gameplay. I was trying to play WoW the other day and found I'd forgotten how to play my belf rogue. Button mashing, anyone?

However, I also found what I've seen of the world to be quite pretty as well. Shiney water make Lottie go, "Oooooh! ^_^". Also, I kinda have a thing for watching the sun and shadows move in games as time goes on...



While researching AoC, I found out that somebody called Zsolaith has started an epic machinima series, The Last Bastion, inspired by the player Silverar in the guild they call the Order of the Silver Dragons. I'm intrigued by not only the way The Last Bastion came into being, but also by the idea of the Order of the Silver Dragons.

The Order of the Silver Dragons (OSD) are a long-standing multi-wing gaming community that was founded on January 9th, 2006, and exists well beyond any one game, being involved in many gaming environments. What makes the OSD unique is their ongoing commitment to mature interactions, their proud display of civility and concern, their desire for adventure and their healthy placement of value on individual effort and communications. They are known across many gaming servers for taking the high road when situations arise, and they pride themselves in the knowledge that they will always strive to help others. Their continued success stems directly from the OSD officers of this order whom take it upon themselves to uphold these virtues, reminiscent of the fabled Knights of the Round Table, which in turn are mimicked by the community of players within the guild.

- Zsolaith

Anyhooo, I've found Zsolaith's channel on YouTube and I'm about to watch what he's got there. You're more than welcome to join me :)

XFIRE: Now you can spy on me gaming.. or lack of it.

Just joined the Xfire site and downloaded their thingy. I'll admit I've not come across anything quite like it, but I'm not a proper gamer yet, so I guess that'll be a given. I'm impressed though. How does it know how to find what games I have installed? Clever little thing :) But yeah, the point is that I've joined partly to see how much gaming I do, and maybe encourage me to game more. Not so sure the last part will work. WoW is probably the only thing that'll gain hours, if any..

Time for some focus?

I'm having a little bit of trouble with this summer assignment, namely, I keep staring at things in my garden and doing little much else. Just had a bit of a revaltion now though, because I keep noticing the dreamcatcher-like things I made and hung up to decorate the BBQ area in my garden last summer, and the actual spider webs that have come to decorate the place in the time since.



I'm thinking bugs. Bugs and insects, and beetles and creepy crawlies. Butterflies. Moths. Dragonflies. Spiders. Lots of lovely shapes and sizes and colours for me to choose from with bugs.

And I'm thinking: I reheheally fancy some cheese on toast first.

Top Secret Project!

Okay, it's not really all that top secret and amazing, but I figured it would be more interesting if I titled it this way.

Remember the Dogbot character I made?
And the post where I mentioned David Freeman's book on Emotioneering?

I'm gonna be trying out a few of his techniques and design a game around the dogbot, and for some reason I'm also imagining a little green blobby alien that takes over the dogbot...

No idea how far I'll take it, but if anything more interesting happens with it, I'll post it up.

As for the Summer assignment, I've spent more time thinking than doing at the mo. I got about this far before I joined the family in the BBQ area in our garden.


Something like bamboo with windows in... and the other one was.. something like... willow branches? Yeaah. I think I'm gonna have to start taking a few pics of stuff in my garden for inspiration and do some proper sketches.

Plot to Take Over the World: Stage 1 - COMPLETE

Officially passed 1st year CGD with a respectable load of B grades [B11, B12, B13 & B13, in that order]

Now I have a Summer Assignment: Natural and Man-Made Form, Micro and Macro.

I am supposed to produce a series of drawings for the design of a virtual environment, inspired by forms in nature, paying "particular attention to differences in scale, from small to large, micro to macro..."

Sounds good, I'm pretty excited for next year already.

Also, I spoke to my friend Dan [a.k.a. the BigBlueLion] and showed him the little flash clip I made. He loved it.

Changing the topic once again, tonight I removed all labels from my posts. My previous system was... barely a system, to be honest, so I'm going to be re-labling [how does one spell that word?] all my previous posts and all posts that follow in a much more useful way. Also added Twitter to my sidebar... although I rarely use it at the moment...

Why Guitar Hero is a Beautiful thing.

It introduces kids to classic songs they may otherwise have never heard of.

How many kids go on youtube and purposely seek out this stuff? Not many. Proof that games can introduce kids to more than just a billion different types of gun - it can also introduce them to old music styles in a fun way. Take that, critics of the idea that games can't teach anything!!

Big Blue Lion & co.

The other day [yesterday?] just for fun, I began making a series of flash clips, using voice clips my friend Daniel sent me via MSN during a random conversation [or three]. It's almost like a follow up to the AIR project I had been involved in recently.

[AIR - Animator In Residence. Basically the animator, Ian Gouldstone, would make a 5 second video clip for us to make a response to. We would have 24 hours to make our 5sec or less response. He would then respond to that, as if we were writing animated letters to eachother, creating a dialogue between two characters that were created by us as the story went on. Click HERE for the result...]

The project went on for a few weeks, and I found it a good way to practice different animating techniques or try new ones I haven't done before, such as the digital rotoscoping maya method Eric and Rhys introduced me to.



This is a video of one of my entries. Bit frustrating as I haven't figured out why I can't export Quicktime movies from Flash, so it wasn't in the format requested. I also ran out of time to do what I originally intended, which was to have a picture of a joker on the side of the red cuboid - like a pack of cards - which would have an animated facial expression.

Also... in the previous clip done by our character, we called Ian's character a leprechaun... I wanted to make a leprechaun style "Jack" pop out, but also didn't have time to get it done. I made the box and handle in maya, animated it in maya, and then put printscreens of each frame into photoshop and traced over the action there. Rotoscoping is a cool technique, but rather time consuming. Especially at 25 fps -_-

But yes. I'm going to show Dan the first one before I put them up anywhere, to see what he thinks. I imagine he'll end up laughing. I know I am, and I haven't even gotten to the good part yet.

Watch out for HEADCRAB ZOMBIES...

I'd apologise for finding this funny but... no. Hahaha :D

This is, without a doubt, the greatest film adaptation of a piece of literature ever.

-- whichwayfilms

Assassins Creed 2 & My Maya grade...

Kieran told me we got a B13, yay! I've just emailed Corrado so I think he will be emailing me some more indepth feedback later.

Onto the next thing:
Just caught this trailer on YouTube...



Verry naiice.
Very cinematic.
Very sorry for the poor dude near the start.


Now for some commentated gameplay..



Leonardo Da Vinci gadgets... It's like James Bond set in the Renaissance.

Eric just made me j*zz in my pants.

Forgive the rocker in me, but words cannot express just how awesome this video has made my day.

Video Games | Brutal Legend | E3 09: Trailer

XBox 360 | Playstation 3 | Nintendo Wii

Super Monster Candy Attack!

Went to the 3rd Year's Grad Show the other day, it was pretty good [it's still on, til the 5th June 09 - click here for more info]. Pretty interesting to see what kinds of things we'll be expected to do when we get to Year 3, and the atmosphere was really lively compared to some of the other Grad shows going on.



I wonder why.



CGD, knows how to party hehe :) But I guess the theme was Super Monster Candy Attack, so it wouldn't have been right without some candy!



A lot of the playable pieces were very glitchy, but still cool, and I'd like to see them when they're all done up proper. I heard some are heading to Game City this year, which I am totally attending as last year was Suhhhweeet :) As was breaking the world record for the most number of zombies recorded in one place...



1227 of us :) Anyhoo, back to the Grad Show. Here is a photo of the best thing there.



Am I talking about the mutant chicken thing in the background, or the fan? Blatently gotta be the fan. Just check out that structure, the choice of textures, the fact that it works when you press the "on" button...

I'm joking, however, it was absolutely boiling hot in that room with all those people and computers. It's because CGD is so damn amazing, hehehe.

Also because somebody decided to put the table of sweets in front of the window.. and then somebody decided to have the blinds pulled down so the wind wouldn't blow the sweets away.

Oh! On another note, I've finished playing Fable II. Well sorta, I got to the finale of the game, but I haven't yet experienced the consequences of my wish before leaving the Spire. Am I the only one who got creeped out by the way Theresa spoke at the end about the Spire? But yeah. I was well miffed when Lucian shot my dog. Even if it was just pixels, and the only name I had given it was "Dog", or "Doggy"...

Dating for WoW Fans

Just saw this random Ad on the Adsense section on here and thought it too funny to not mention.

Hilarious. The thing is, I play WoW and I'm not a geek. I took a highly scientific test, and got the following result...

To be fair, I do say dude a lot. I suppose that's what happens if your childhood heroes included Bill and Ted, and Wayne from Wayne's World.

The First Maya Animation

Kieran has uploaded it onto his blog, so to save me the trouble of doing the same: here is the link to it :)
Clicking on the picture above can also lead the more observant among us to an insightful message. Teehee.

EDIT: Apologies, Kieran has since deleted his blog so I will have to get up a video of this animation when I can get hold of a copy of it.

Congratulations, it's Igor.

The past few days have been proper hard. I felt quite ill some of the time, and my sleeping pattern has definitely been affected. That said, I'm proud of what we've produced, and we were lucky that not too much of our work did a Seth on us.

I've gotten so far behind in updating about it on here, but in my defense it was because I was at Kieran's working on the project where I can't just steal the internet anytime. Often it'll be because when we're not working, he's using his internet to play WoW. I can't laugh, cos they've finally managed to persuade me to get back on too. Paid for three months, with the intention of not playing it in August due to the sunny weather that might grace Pembrokeshire, or wherever I happen to be!

Anyway, enough of that. I might wander a bit, it's quarter past 6 in the morning and I'm not sure when I'll go to bed.. but I just got back from finishing Maya, so I can grace you with some photos of the sketches we did during PrePro [hehe, I'll keep calling it that, it amuses me]. Oh, and a plasticine man.

"Fancy a beer?"

Initially we wanted to make Seth walk aswell, but time constraints, knowledge limitations and needing to learn how to use Maya alongside creating the full on [..well, primitive doesn't mean it has to look like crap, does it?] Maya animation persuaded us to try something simpler. After the crit, I may put the video up. Before then I might put up the playbasts taken from Maya.

It's kind of funny how our PrePro video is longer than the animation itself. I'm immensely proud of how the flickering of the welding looks, but ever so slightly worried that it might cause an epileptic fit when it's shown with the big projector like usual... Anyhoos, I need sleep! I've decided that the fact that I can hear the blood pumping around in my brain is a sign that I really should be asleep right now.

Fable II and its Reviews

I've decided to write my essay on Fable II. Initially my plan was to write about the good/evil or pure/corrupt system, or how making the different choices in the games lead you to different scenarios, but I found a book in the library which has been very interesting. It's called Creating Emotion in Games, by David Freeman, and offers many tips on making game characters, stories and worlds more interesting and life-like through the medium of... emotion. This is the area I'm going to focus on in my essay.

Now on to the main subject of my post: The reviews I have read on Fable II as part of my research.
I've noticed a great divide in the reviews here about the game, ranging from "a total waste of money" to "It's just Fabalous I say... just Fabalous. Or should I say... Fable-ous!"
Many of the reviewers seemed to like the game, although a lot of comments were made about how disappointing it was that two players could not play their own full characters during co-op mode.

Of some of the more extreme comments made against it, it seemed to me that these players were either angry because they had heard a great deal of hype about the game and were not given what they were promised, or they are stuck in this idea that the game needs tons of "cool armor", "awesome weapons" and a "big boss fight" at the end. This following comment in particular showed me how some players just don't understand what game designers need to do to encourage the games industry to develop.

fable 2 is simply stated an entire let down. you CAN'T DIE!? and there is NO MANA!? this game was built up so high with promises that ended up being total lies. The co-op is terrible. NO ARMOR!? The dog finds all the keys and items for you. The game was set up to be the easiest RPG in the world. They should have added difficulty settings. It is not better or more genuine than the past 10 years of Final Fantasy! i can't believe they said that. The game is 100% spoon feeding, from the trail to the dog to the no death. Why are there still Rez Phials?!? The choices for clothing and weapons and spells are way to minimal.

Yeah, I know, it makes me cringe too.

There's nothing wrong with a game that doesn't let you die. There's nothing wrong with a game that has no mana bar [seriously, WTF. Mana bars are just an imaginary limitation that someone introduced one day. I may be a bit on the agnostic side to say this, but I know enough to know that "Thou shalt design games involving magic to have mana" was not a Commandment. And there's nothing wrong with a game that has no armor. Does PacMan have armor? NO!

And why should they have added difficulty settings? This game is about the story, be that the main story you can follow, or the stories you help create yourself, such as when your character marries someone in the game and you have a baby boy named Ross, and then Alex divorces your character because you're always being chased by the law because you may have gotten caught killing a few people because you wanted to see how many you could kill one by one before you got caught, and then you decided to resist arrest instead of paying the fine. And then your son gets taken away when somehow your husband died after they moved to another region and you're unable to look after Ross because your destiny to find the three other heroes won't allow it.
I did find it somewhat humorous to return home after ten years to find that my caucasian spouse and I had managed to produce a dark skinned child, as if the first one had escaped like a pet and Alex had replaced it with one that was not quite the right shade. But I still felt the loss when social services wouldn't let me have him after Alex died.

...Anyways, back to my point. It's about the story. I mean dude, the clue is in the name. You do know what "fable" means, right?

It also intrigues me how many people have mentioned how long it took them to "beat the story". I may just not quite be down with all the terms seeing as I'm not a hardcore gamer, but the idea of "beating" a "story" doesn't quite make any sense to me. Sometimes, it's the journey that's important, not the destination. If you rush through the game without taking the time to observe and appreciate the characters, then of course you are going to be diasappointed.

It's times like these I realise how far I've come on this course. A year ago, I would have seen that person's comment and thought, "Oh look, an angry person."
Looking at it now, I'm thinking, "Oh look, an angry person who doesn't have a clue."

Papercraft

It's funny how things happen. Last night I got tricked by Kieran, who decided to pretend to be our friend Vicki on MSN. "Vicki" told me that the boys had managed to persuade her to start playing WoW too. Such a monumental event had actually caused me to want to resubscribe to WoW, leading me to the WoW europe site and almost doing it. I got distracted by this article.

Imagine, having a life sized gnome in your room! Pure awesome.

It reminded me of a time years ago, when my brother had a book that had a big paper skeleton that you were supposed to put together. I'm not sure if we even managed to get halfway before something went wrong, like something getting squished or broken on missing. It was that long ago that I actually can't remember what happened to it.

But yeah. I'm not going to resubscribe now to WoW, not just yet.
I've gained a new interest. Or rather, regained an old interest :)

If you want to check out the other awesome WoW papercraft models, you can find them here. They've also got some friends, I think, doing Pokemon ones :)

How to Break a World of Warcraft Addiction

Get a hypnotist to hypnotise you into thinking you are Charlotte Gyseman.

I've noticed a funny thing about myself. I have played WoW, and I still have my WoW account, but I just can't be bothered to re-subscribe. I had to unsubscribe because I lost my Magic Money Card [I've lost it only twice and yet I'm on my fifth one, amazing], and had to replace it. That was weeks ago, and I have still not had the urge to start playing again. Well, sort of.

Dancing on Thrall's throne in nothing but a tabard was fun, but I'm sure it would be more fun in real life. And the sight of Luke dancing like a female blood elf in a tabard would be hilarious.

I've felt like it now and then because of the friends that play it, but I always get a voice in my head letting me know that I've got better things that I want to do, or that I'd rather have fun for free. I did wonder if it was because I have a dislike of spending my money, but that doesn't explain Black & White 2. Kieran lent me the game to see what it was like, and when I showed it to my sister... she got addicted. The last time I went home, my mum said that Gen [my sister] had asked her to tell me to make sure I bring B&W2. A similar thing happened when I introduced her to Twelve Sky.

This sometimes leads me to wonder if there's something wrong with me, which then makes me wonder if there's something wrong with me for wondering such a thing. Surely a lack of addiction to games is a good thing, right?

Note: For those readers who actually want to break a WoW addiction and have no hypnotists to hand, the wikiHow article is here. I must admit, I laughed when I saw it and laughed when I noticed that it's the first one on the list when you type "addiction" in the search box. By the way, I have no idea whether following the steps actually helps. Apparently I've never had to try them.

Projects and Essays

I've received the marks for the Flash Postcard [we got a B11 or B12, I can't remember at this second] and the 2,000 word essay we had to write on how digital games have exploited their technology of delivery to produce a play experience unavailable in pre-digital games [I got a B11], and it's looking good so far.

Next up we have the Maya Project and the Second Essay [ooooh, ahhh], and then that's it for the first year.

The Maya Project - Primitive Theatre

You are asked to produce a character animation sequence of strictly no more than 2 minutes in which primitive character constructs communicate a nuanced and expressive performance of an emotional scenario of your own creation. The piece should feature no dialogue, though sound must be utilised to emphasise the emotional registers of the piece. Pay particular attention to the lighting, colour and compositional elements of the piece, through a clearly structured pre-production process. The use of camera will play an integral part in the construction of meaning.

I'm now working with Kieran, with Daemon working with Scott, so we can experience what it's like working with different types of people. As a result, elements from our projects will probably be merged to create something new. The characters Kieran and I have brought to the table to develop are Seth and Igor, and the scenarios we come up with will centre around an interaction between them.

The Second Essay - 2,000 words

Isolate one key element of a game. This can include, but is not limited to, any of the following:

- A specific game mechanic, which might be thought of as a cycle of exhange between user and software to create a change in the game state
- The user interface (including the HUD)
- Narrative structure and its organisation
- Structures of progression
- The specifics of level design unique to the game in question
- Systems of reward/punishment

Your game analysis essay is not an appreciation ("I enjoyed this because") but an analysis of the details of how the design affects the experience of the user ("how does this function/operate to produce event or meaning?"). It should be supported with reference to the published literature, and must go beyond industry publications to include scholarly work.

At the moment, I don't know what I want to write about. Maybe the fact the you can be a girl in Pokemon Crystal version on the GameBoy Color. Or maybe I'll just go check out the books in the library and see what interests me.

URRGHHH!!!

I'm really annoyed.

Why, oh why, did I think it would be a good idea to check out how the Tim Eves stories were doing.

I'm really annoyed because of this. And this. And this. Oh and definitely this. Uch! This too [it let me write the comment out before telling me I had to be logged in? Shut. Up]. This one didn't annoy me at first, but then I started reading the comments. Bad idea. It started to annoy me. This and this? Also annoyed me.

Basically, every blue-instead-of-purple link that came up on the first two pages when I searched for "man dies playing wii fit" on google, which led to a site that required me to register in order to post a comment. This would have annoyed me, were it not for the fact that I had already registered to EA in a moment of spontaneity to find out about a game called Battle Forge [which, in the end, I didn't spend a lot of time finding out about due to needing to pack to go home for Easter hols]. I thought I'd better stop at page two when I noticed there were about 187,000 results at the moment.

The reason I want to comment is to educate people, as a lot of the articles just pull the term "Sudden Adult Death Syndrome" from the articles they find as their source, causing lots of people to think its some stupid name given for when doctors don't have a clue how someone died. Often these people go on to blame the kebab he had just ordered and the glass of port that was waiting for him.

I had been thinking about the "Jade Effect" before following up the Tim Eves thing, the term that has come about to describe the fact that loads of people have been trying to find out about cervical cancer since Jade Goody died - to be fair, it's not something I had ever thought about before. I could say that Jade dying was a good thing, but it sounds horrible when I put it like that. It made me think, "Hmm, maybe annoying sensationalist crap can be good for something. If that Tim Eves story makes people aware of SADS, then it can't be that bad a thing that sites like the Telegraph's have reported it". I was going to write a follow up on here while [at the time] in a less annoyed mood saying exactly that, when I decided to see what new stories had sprung up.

Unfortunately, it's not quite been the same. Each time the story is reproduced, something else gets chopped out or rephrased, and soon enough people are reading about some kebab eating, port drinking, trying-to-get-fit-with-a-Wii-fit-cos-he-MUST-have-been-really-unhealthy-on-that-kind-of-diet dude who happened to in the process of trying to get fit. Cue the eye rolling groan. It frustrates me how uninformed people have become along the grapevine, but there's not a lot I can do. Sure, I could register to every site just to post a comment stating the original story. But seriously? I have a life [honest, I do].

It also annoys me how angry it's making me look through my blog. I probably should stop writing these things in the heat of the moment and maybe leave it to sink in first, before writing something that I just have to post now, because it's there, finshed and done, while the Publish Post button keeps staring at me in all its orange glory.

Urgh.

I promise, I will start writing about work again soon.

Actually... I'll start now.

I had an extension on Kieran's Igor idea: Igor comes home from work with re-animated Seth statue, gets changed out of the Igor costume, freaking out Seth because he thought the costume was his real skin? Hmm... It might work. Again, more on that later. My laptop and I are running out of energy.

New Headlines, Same Old Story

I recently stumbled upon a headline worthy of an Ed Byrne comment.

4th March 2009, Tim Eves dies suddenly. 28th of March 2009, this article appears.

Going to the article may lead you to the question, "...how is that headline worthy of an Ed Byrne comment?" The answer is, it's not. This was just the earliest story [that I could find] that quite likely led to a stream of other stories a couple of days later, including the one that first came to my attention when I logged into my MSN to check out my emails.

Note under "Today's Picks" the second headline: "Man, 25, dies playing Wii Fit"

Pretty shocking, even more shocking when I eventually found seven more articles that had been posted yesterday [30 March 2009] about him and two more that were posted today - and those are just the ones I could be bothered to look at before writing this. I have no doubt that more will spring up today and tomorrow. I think it's lame how many people will read these headlines, simply because somebody read the first article and thought it ironic that somebody happened to die while doing something that is supposed to help us live longer and healthier lives. The Ed Byrne joke I have been referring to of course has been the one where comments on Alanis Morissette's song, "Ironic".

The family were told he could have been killed by Sudden Adult Death Syndrome.
Also known as Sudden Arrhythmia Death Syndrome, it is a disorder of the electrical system of the heart

- Mail Online

To that annoying person causing another waterfall of diss to the games industry [and by association, me and all my course mates], inadvertently or otherwise: Tim Eves' death was not ironic [that is, if he did die from SADS and this site is anything to go by].

If he had been in need of some exercise to the point where his life expectancy was affected, and then he purchased a Wii Fit in an attempt to extend his life expectancy, but then died while using the Wii Fit because the lack of exercise up until the decision to purchase a Wii Fit had caused him keel over... That would have been ironic.

Hell, it would have been ironic even if he had died carrying it home due to not being accustomed to any kind of exertion at all.

As it is, he was thought to be perfectly fit and healthy before he died. He helped to lead the First Belton Scout Group. He played in a band called Turnstone, which became Distant Sun [I presume as the drummer, as he was buried with his drumsticks in his hands], he enjoyed cycling, and fishing. My condolences go out to the people who knew him.

His death was simply unfortunate, and I should like to give you - the annoying story twisting sensationalist [and all those who saw your story and repeated it with similar headlines] - a good kick up the bum, not only for continuing the games-are-evil train of thought in such a pathetic manner, but also for causing thousands to register Tim Eves in their minds as "that 25 year old dude who died playing that Wii Fit thing...".

Let's get this show on the road.

Here is what I should have posted a week or two ago... We've have since handed in the work and had the crit where people look at our work and we discuss what works and what doesn't.

Ours was recieved pretty well, in that the comments made were generally expected ones. Someone said more explanation of what was going on would have been nice, and we did initially intend to have a third shot of the deaths, to better explain what had happened, but had to take them out because we felt the standard was not good enough at that point. Dave said that was good decision making. Woo.

There were a few things he didn't like, such as the lamp lady turning on during rollover instead of on a click. I have to say, I was a bit annoyed that I missed out on a day of work near the end because I got ill and ended up in bed literally all day, but I reckon if anything is really annoying me about it I can have a secondary pop at it for my own personal satisfaction. There will be more criting tomorrow, as we didn't get through everybody today before the Maya tech.

The Maya tech was good, I learned how to make a ball bounce. It was very exciting stuff, I can tell you. I have the video Playbash or whatever it's called on a stick somewhere, so I'll put it up soon.

---

Less than a week to go before our deadline, and we just need to:

- Get all the assets done..

- Import it all into Flash

- Make it all interactive

- Add sounds

- Make sure it all works

- Make sure it does what the brief said

- Make any neccessary adjustments

...I think we can get it done...

Temporary picture of the pool, a combination of our efforts

Temp picture of the pool at night.

...Pictures of some unfortunate person's hand...

Based on a small lamp, this will be a life sized lamp in the scene, which will cause a death due to some kind of power surge.

This poor girl above will eventually have a shard of glass in her eye... Also some more definition that will be taken from the source photo will be added. Oh, and some blood, lots of lovely trickly blood

Let's do the Time Warp again

I found a rather nice clock.

It was in a stock on dA, found here.

Also, I have a lot of updating to do, as a fair few weeks have passed. I had an idea to make it so that when you click the clock, it zooms into the clock, fastforwards through time, and then settles at and zooms out to show the pool at night, where the viewer can click on something to accidently sabotage it [well, accidently at first, no doubt some people will begin purposefully trying to find things to click once they realise that doing so would result in a little animation for them].

Then I had a second idea - what if the view before you is just a decrepid, deserted pool, out of business, and clicking on the clock sends you back in time so you can see what happened to make it that way? Then I suggested this to Dae, who then came up with the surveillance camera idea. The viewer is looking at surveillance footage of the pool. Clicking on things in the "video" would show the viewer somebody's death. Mousing over the cursed statue would cause some interference on the video [see the very quick knock-up video below - BEWARE, the white noise might be a bit loud on there]. There would also be some interference whenever something gets sabotaged and while the statue's eye is glowing.

Here's Seth. Except he won't really be doing anything in the final piece, I just did it as a warm up for drawing and colouring him for real, to get an idea for colours. Also I wondered whether I could scare Dae into thinking this was the peak of my drawing abilities. Hehehe.

Below is the proper Seth linework, aswell as some colour testing done in chalk pastels.


More colour testing... Most pictures I found of Seth shows him with blue hair, but most of the text I found about him mentioned how he is often depicted with red hair. A meeting with Dae decided that we'd give him a black face and red hair, to link him more to death and evil-doing.

Brought into photoshop and blocked in with colour, not actually finished at this stage [note the arm bands], and I will be making it look a bit more 3D later.
Oh.. I've also just noticed he has no tail, and most of my sources say he's supposed to have a forked one.

We've also been playing around with perspective a bit [or in my case a whole lot].

This next picture is one Dae sent me over MSN that he had done so I could have a look. I'm liking the POV, although some of the perspective is pretty out of whack [such as the diving board and the clock].

Here I've taken his drawing into photoshop and tried to figure out perspective, basing it on the lines of the pool, because I liked them...

Just yesterday we were given the handbooks telling us the brief and the aim of the project, which was a bit lame as Dave pointed out considering we're two thirds of the way through already, but better later than never.

"..create a set piece of interactive flash animation. The concept and development of the project should follow the premise that the work is a postcard from some remote place. That place might be a surreal world, something ordinary, posted from within a dream; it is up to you to develop in pairs a conceptual design to be created in Macromedia Flash.

...

Brief:
Grouped into pairs, produce in Macromedia Flash a set-piece, single-screen illustration. This illustration should feature a degree of interaction in the form of 'clickable' or 'scripted' elements, and should focus on the communication of an emotional sense of place and environment."

Hmm... Well, the emotional sense of the place is probably going to be quite a hostile one. Possibly quite unstable as Seth is the Egyptian God of Chaos, and tinged with hints of the anger and frustration of the manager [aka Angry Tech Support Customer].
When I read the brief, I realised that we were trying to do too much, sort of turning it into an interactive mini movie when really what we want to do is create a painting, one that moves when you poke it. I mentioned this to Dae, and suggested we just flash some grisly images of death rather than fully animating them.

On a seperate note... look, a walking robo doggy, and a rope! [Guess what happens next..]

It was finally co-operative enough to upload my animation for me :) I got a B13 for it overall [which is like, a B+] and a B12 for the character design of the first red dog [equivalent of a normal B].

Thats all for now. I really should update this more frequently, it would makes things much simpler when uploading as I wont have a billion images to have to rearrange because Blogger likes to put images at the top of the page instead of after everything.

Flash Project: Interactive Horror Themed Postcard

The next project we're working on is a Flash project, with the theme Horror, if you couldn't tell from the title of this post. We're working in pairs, and Dave gave us all two "monsters" at random to include in the world that we decide to show, and we have 6 weeks to do it [well, 5 now I think].

I'm working with Daemon, and the "monsters" we were given were Angry Tech Support Customer and Rusty Sculpture. Yeah... I then proceeded to take a picture of Scott and Kieran labelled as appropriate, hahaha.

That's Scott's new iPhone in his hand, but moving on - Dae and I came up with a few ideas, which included:

1: An alien ship malfunctioned, crashed into a palace that is owned by a clown, that happens to contain rusty sculptures. The alien is the angry tech support customer.

2: Rusty armour that is possessed by a ghost, who wants a refund on the rusty armour, because it is rusty...

3: Tech office worker to be murdered by angry customer. The sculpture would be on his desk. Or the Tech guy turns into a murdering monster.

4: Swimming pool with a haunted statue, moved in to decorate the pool. Statue kills people indirectly via "technical difficulties", causing the owner to get angrier and angrier as his pool loses customers... literally.

We ended up picking number 4 to develop, probably because of all the ways we could think of to get people killed in a swimming pool. Nice bit of variety..

Thought we'd give it a bit of an Egyptian theme, figured it would be nice what with all the cursed stories you can hear about sometimes. Seth is the Egyptian God of Chaos, and murdered his brother by drowning him in a coffin in the Nile, so he seemed like a good candidate for the evil Rusty Sculpture. The statues eyes will flash red in the night, which is where the tech sabotage happens...

To make the pool seem a bit posher we've given it one of those slopes that come right up out of the water. It's a bit like the one at the Blue Lagoon where dad works [well, that's what it reminds me of]. Dae thought it would look sleeker with square or box shaped ducts above the pool instead of the round ones.

And yes, a section will be falling on top of someone at some point. We're also thinking of killing a clown in a cruelly comical fashion on the diving boards, skinning someone alive in the slide, cooking some people in the hot tub, sucking someone with a fan at the bottom of the pool, and perhaps having a shark or crocodile swim into the pool too. Fun times.


I sent the pool pic to Dae so he could explain what he meant about the darker walls, gonna do it properly in a bit. He's working on the Angry Manager, I might put a few pics up of him another time if I can. Now I'm really hungry, so watch this space, and do give input if you feel like it'll help.