New York City is alright. Its a town of hustle and bustle, and a place where you get off the subway and get yourself lost in no seconds flat.
Its full of annoying things like raucous taxis, yuppies, crowded sandwich shops, stores full of clothing that's more expensive than god, posers, those little dogs that like to bark at you for no reason, advertisers, and people.
Its also full of awesome things like stage shows, famous people, non-crowded sandwich shops, stores that have anything and everythin in existence, artists, ice skating rinks, reliable public transportation, and people.
The technical expertise here is very nearly palpable, -tastable-, you could practically squeeze it between your forefinger and your thumb, some places you go. Or at least, all the hundreds of godforsaken powerwalkers who flock and swarm along Fifth Avenue and Forty Second want you to think that.
New York is everything and anything, in the end, and that includes a self contradiction. The city is quite possibly one of the most confrontational cities around and it gets in your face like its got something to show you often. But more often then not when you stop and look and show your face back, you find in the end that nothing too much was looking you down in the first place.
So what have I been doing while I've been sitting pretty here in the Big Apple? Well let's see...
Anathema is complete. At long, long, long last.
How about I take you on a journey through its creation?
Yeah that sounds like a good idea.
IN THE BEGINNING, God created the animals.
No wait, that's too far back.
SO FIRST, I came up with the idea.
No wait, that's still too far back.
According to this blog the last thing I showed you guys was the animatic. So let's start from there, shall we?
The Story Reel, a sideways glance at a first look at a beginning:
So in any video project worth its salt, there ought to be video....footage plates shot onto which the effects and everything else are added and edited against.
Bit of a no-brainer, this one, I shot my footage somewhere around October when my most gifted talent, Joanna "Akemi" Micco was in town. She did a bangup job of the role I asked her to do, adn there's nothing like looking at a bit of raw video plate and saying "yeah this is gonna be awesome."
STORY REEL WAS HERE
I would know. That's what I did.
The Rough Cut + Color Correction, chipping, chipping away:
A rough cut, as any video editor/producer worth his salt would know, is first pass at editing a piece, after the footage has all been slotted into their placeholders, marked out in the animatic.
A little while ago, a friend of mine, working on the same project, asked me what the difference between a Story Reel and a Rough Cut was. And so I told him. His response was that meant that they were the same thing, since a good portion of the editing was supposed to have already been done in the animatic.
I didn't have a response to that.
ROUGH CUT BEHIND HERE
I did all my color correction in the same pass. Why? It was a button. Well, a button and a slider, and a few more buttons and some adjustments and a couple more sliders....what I'm trying to say is that I did it, and I did it because there wasn't that much tweaking needed for the editing.
The Effects Pass, like a backstage pass into WHOA (not really):
Here's where the brunt of the work happened.
X - HERE BE EFFECTSPASSES
The aim was to terrify. And every single effect, filter, slider, and button that I inserted into this was made towards that goal. If anything seemed like it didn't more rightly align the piece towards something unnerving, something discomfiting, something that would give the viewer that sense of -unease-, it got chucked.
At the same time my knowledge with Aftereffects, as I'm doing this is about as stable as a palsy victim tapdancing on a seesaw.
Continually change, continually morphing, and acquiring new parts like some hideous metallo-bionic collective, I found myself having to throw out half of the effects that I started with whenever I found something better.
Radial blurs got replaced with horizontal-restricted gaussian blurs. Manual camera shakes got replaced with time squeezes and remaps.
Text was added and adjusted in ways that I hadn't anticipated before and as is evident, even the ephemeral title sequence got a complete workover.
But I like it.
The Sound Pass, a valley of audio connecting the Sound Valley to the Sound Plains:
Sound effects are horror. They are what makes the scary terrifying, what makes the disquieting unnerving, and the disturbing horrifying. It adds that extra thick filmy layer of immersion that is so essential to pulling your audience in when you're trying to disturb them.
In other words, I had fun with this.
HEREIN LIES SOUND PASS, GOOD IN LIFE, BETTER IN COMPLETION
Putting together the sound effects for this monster was a bit of a doozy. I wanted to keep the backing "music" track, I'd refrained from inserting that particular track into any other project specifically for the purposes of this very project.
So what else? It didn't really feel cohesive unless the individual cuts had some other sound things going on top of it.
Originally I recorded a bunch of audio using my lovely little headphone mic...gasps, wails, groans, and strange mumblings.
Exactly ten seconds after I put them into the track, I threw them out. Homemade audio is not conducive to scaring people, unless you're going less for "scary" and more for "really freaking sketchy".
So I went back to the library of ambient tracks that I had originally pulled the backing "music" from and began slicing and julienning things as I saw fit and sliding them onto the tracks.
And I liked it.
The finished product that made it onto the DVD deviates exactly none from the finished Sound Pass. Everything up until that point had been polished out nicely before I moved on to the next step so I felt no real need to go back and whip a dead horse that's already primed for the races. ... ...
...
More on my other projects later.
Stay tuned.
Tuesday, December 25, 2007
Thursday, November 01, 2007
Lock, Stock and Some Other Things That Might Be Smoking
A few more highlights in the project, to show how things are coming along, more on all of this later.
This is the shot list, the name of which sounds kind of like a drunkard's to-do list. Aka fantastic.
Linky
MORE LATER
This is the shot list, the name of which sounds kind of like a drunkard's to-do list. Aka fantastic.
Linky
MORE LATER
Wednesday, October 31, 2007
What's He Storyboarding In There?
So in the motion visual arts industry we have this thing called a "storyboard". What is a storyboard? Well for the three of you out in the world older than 21 who don't know what it is, a storyboard is a board that tells the story.
Quite literally, when the storyboard was first invented deep in the bowels of the media infant that was dubbed "Disney", which would later grow monstrously and terribly into the media giant that was dubbed "Disney", it was a series of boards, likely cardboard or foamcore or whatever they used in those days, upon which an entire Mickey Mouse cartoon would be laid out in text and drawn frames. Each drawn frames represented a key moment in the animation that would help all the animators know what was going on.
Cut to the present day, two thousand seven, the cusp of a brilliant era that gave birth to high definition television, touch screen displays, motion capture, holograms, computer chipped coffee machines and weird subliminal Sprite commercials involving guys in huge green suits that really don't make you want to drink more Sprite. Really.
And a storyboard is still a series of boards, likely cardboard or foamcore or whatever. The difference now though is that they are not only limited to cartoons, and they are not only limited to Disney's inner sanctum.
After all. If they were, how in the world would I be using for my in-development Anathema project right now?
The answer is: pure willpower.
Quite literally, when the storyboard was first invented deep in the bowels of the media infant that was dubbed "Disney", which would later grow monstrously and terribly into the media giant that was dubbed "Disney", it was a series of boards, likely cardboard or foamcore or whatever they used in those days, upon which an entire Mickey Mouse cartoon would be laid out in text and drawn frames. Each drawn frames represented a key moment in the animation that would help all the animators know what was going on.
Cut to the present day, two thousand seven, the cusp of a brilliant era that gave birth to high definition television, touch screen displays, motion capture, holograms, computer chipped coffee machines and weird subliminal Sprite commercials involving guys in huge green suits that really don't make you want to drink more Sprite. Really.
And a storyboard is still a series of boards, likely cardboard or foamcore or whatever. The difference now though is that they are not only limited to cartoons, and they are not only limited to Disney's inner sanctum.
After all. If they were, how in the world would I be using for my in-development Anathema project right now?
The answer is: pure willpower.
Friday, October 12, 2007
Zoom In On That Thing Right There
It's called "Anathema".
Or rather it will be called Anathema, once it gets made.
The assignment is I will have thirty seconds to scare the everloving fuck out of you and yours.
Now, like any good obsessive artist/filmmaker/motiongraphicisisist/closet psychotic I want to avoid cliches when making something like this. It helps that the cliches of the modern day horror extravaganza don't really consist of terrifying people anymore.
Certain horror flicks go with gore. All over the place. Intestines and stomaches and hearts and brains and chainsaws and knives and more intestines and more knives and hey how about some more intestines guys I think this scene needs more intestines what do you think more intestines, yeah more intestines. And that works sometimes, it gets a reaction out of the crowd.
Others go with LOUD NOISES.
....
....
....
LOUD NOISES
And that's always guaranteed to get the audience to jump, right?
But is it really scaring them?
Showing a few dozen liters of red liquid in a scene and throwing in some screams, murder weapons and maybe a lampshade made from human skin isn't really terrifying someone, as it is more of a elaborate and puppeted disgust dressed in the trappings of fright. Also unsanitary.
Flinging loud noises and sudden scary imagery onto the scene is the movie equivalent of jumping out of a corner and going "BLAGHLABLGKHAL". This too isn't scaring someone as it is just surprising the crap out of them.
Its cliches like these that I will seek to avoid. The gore, the gotcha moments, the sudden loud noises and things rushing towards the camera going "AAAHHH!"
Instead I will rely on things more substantial...chilling imagery, the unseen, the implications of the unknown and a vague conceptual story about a curse, or a possession, to grab you by your ribs and leave a mark.
Or, at least.
That is the hope.
The script has been revised, and a style sheet is available for your viewing pleasure. Check it ouuuuuttttttttttt. T.
Or rather it will be called Anathema, once it gets made.
The assignment is I will have thirty seconds to scare the everloving fuck out of you and yours.
Now, like any good obsessive artist/filmmaker/motiongraphicisisist/closet psychotic I want to avoid cliches when making something like this. It helps that the cliches of the modern day horror extravaganza don't really consist of terrifying people anymore.
Certain horror flicks go with gore. All over the place. Intestines and stomaches and hearts and brains and chainsaws and knives and more intestines and more knives and hey how about some more intestines guys I think this scene needs more intestines what do you think more intestines, yeah more intestines. And that works sometimes, it gets a reaction out of the crowd.
Others go with LOUD NOISES.
....
....
....
LOUD NOISES
And that's always guaranteed to get the audience to jump, right?
But is it really scaring them?
Showing a few dozen liters of red liquid in a scene and throwing in some screams, murder weapons and maybe a lampshade made from human skin isn't really terrifying someone, as it is more of a elaborate and puppeted disgust dressed in the trappings of fright. Also unsanitary.
Flinging loud noises and sudden scary imagery onto the scene is the movie equivalent of jumping out of a corner and going "BLAGHLABLGKHAL". This too isn't scaring someone as it is just surprising the crap out of them.
Its cliches like these that I will seek to avoid. The gore, the gotcha moments, the sudden loud noises and things rushing towards the camera going "AAAHHH!"
Instead I will rely on things more substantial...chilling imagery, the unseen, the implications of the unknown and a vague conceptual story about a curse, or a possession, to grab you by your ribs and leave a mark.
Or, at least.
That is the hope.
The script has been revised, and a style sheet is available for your viewing pleasure. Check it ouuuuuttttttttttt. T.
Friday, October 05, 2007
Footslogging
There's new recent developments all over the damned place.
But for now:
Link (not Zelda)
Linkimus Rex
More on these later.
But for now:
Link (not Zelda)
Linkimus Rex
More on these later.
Friday, September 28, 2007
Dr. Media Or: How I Learned To Love The Message
Marshall McLuhan said that the medium is the message.
If this is true, then the message of most media these days is
LOOK AT ME LOOK AT ME PAY ATTENTION TO ME PLEASE AAHHH I CRAVE ATTENTION AHHHH mixed in with more than a healthy dose of "buy this because its awesome do it right now why are you still standing here looking at this go."
Needless to say, the last month has been a pure, unabashed and shameless complete orgiastic flood of media in all of its shapes, sizes and forms. Magazine, ads, books, video, ads, movies, DVD, billboards, video games, ads, and oh hey did I mention the ads?
In case you missed it, they're everywhere. On cars, on trains, on bathrooms, in the subway, in the sky, on the ground, on the sides of buildings, AS the sides of the buildings...
But the other day I was walking down 33rd street the other night, staring at a big cuddlepuddle of billboards on top of a collection of apartment buildings, telling me to get this new cel phone, and to buy more Gatorade in an extreme manner while sweating unhealthy looking colors. And I realized I was alright with it. And for this reason.
New York City is a city that breathes. Like you, me and that cat lying in the corner, it moves, pulsates, breathes and is alive, and not only that, it manages to pull off looking really cool in addition to that. And why?
The ads.
The billboards and the posters and the near technicolor eyegasmwashimitude of all the ads takes what would normally be a city full of stolid, sterile looking towers and skyrises sullenly staring down at the flood of people on the street and makes them all dance. It gives them color, it gives them expression, even if that expression is you need to stuff your face with this burger right now. Its like a masquerade ball, where instead of people its buildings, and instead of gold feathered masks its ads talking about how great juice is (especially this brand of juice which you need to go out and buy right now).
If it weren't for the ads, a lot of the city would be blocks. As a digital artist, I'm a whore for well done visuals, so I love all the billboards and ads ripping through the entire city.
The ads themselves look incredible too. We've come a long way from the day and age of curio-based ads and photo ads with helvetica and futura set on a drab gray background. Hell, even design itself has taken ginormous leaps and bounds since the days of Jugendstil and Art Nouveau.
I recently swiped a bunch of magazines from your friendly neighborhood bookstore. Check this out.
This is SoftImage's theme for their XSI software, lifted from 3D World magazine. Right here you can begin picking out the inspirations that drove the creation and the idea behind this piece. Its very centered. Strong, balanced.
Its human-centered, and revolves around the human in the ad, even though hoodie guy is completely anonymous. Newer influences that shaped this come from Hollywood, comics and film standbys...the strong shadows, the exaggerated pose that you could look at and you would swear it was a photo taken while the guy is in motion, even though it was probably set up over the course of four hours and the guy is probably sick of standing in the same position for the entirety of said four hours.
Not to mention the logo, a mystical, magical effect, the look of which was ushered in by ye olde After Effects generation, when suddenly making glowy mystal magical things wasn't so hard anymore.
Not to say everything is nothing but new and moving forward. Design tradition oldies are still goodies:
This is the first page of an article reviewing Adobe's interactive website advertisements in Communication Arts' annual publication.
Here we don't the fancy trappings of Lots of Fucking Effects and Filters, unless you consider text and lines to be Lots of Fucking Effects and Filters. But as a page, as a whole, it is well put together. Well designed, one might say. Why? Because even as a page that need bear the load of blocks and blocks of text, it still adheres to the formal elements of design, design standbys that have been with us forever, clocking in now at a millenia and a few centuries' change. Most importantly, the piece is balanced.
And finally:
Concept art for an unholy abberation against god, nature and every fluffy puppy in the world named "Schism", from the soon-to-be-released Silent Hill 4.
This is the new face of the terrifying, o ladies and gentlemen, and it is oh so very telling. Long time ago, horror consisted of a bunch of standbys, most of which were pulled from books and stories which had no visuals in hand to slap you in the face with: Frankenstein's monster, the Werewolf, Dracula, the Mummy, Zombies.
Ever since Hellraiser came out in the late eighties, however, that sort of thing took a bonesplitting surge forward.
Why is this so telling? Ours is an era where both art and design has flowered outwards beyond our diminutive little frames, our normal modes of thought. Some would say it has become even greater. Its become one of the big cornerstones of our new generation, and that's fast evolution.
Here's how it goes. Someone watches a bit of media. Its not really that out there, but it breaks new ground. This someone, being an artist or a designer, sees the ground broken and immediately pushes past the broken area into the new areas beyond. His work subsequently becomes more out there, even more groundbreaking, and even more evolved beyond our normal modes of thought. Someone else sees this artist's work, its kind of far away, but the vast area of this new ground expands her mind.
Then she sees the ground broken, and she, being an artist or a designer, immediately steps past the broken area and into even newer areas, pushing it farther. The next artist comes along and does the same, though their mind must expand that much further from their "normal" modes of thought.
If this trend continues one day art and design will both be beyond the reach of human comprehension while being infinitely accessible at the same time.
But Patrick! This sounds intimidating and scary and... worry not dear reader, for you can always remember two things.
One: I'm one guy, one short, asian guy sitting in front of a computer. There are probably thousands of short asian guys sitting in front of computers who could tell you I'm crazy.
Two: Design and art are almost always moving forward and changing, but its memory and its filial piety are near impeccable. Art and design are, in the very end, nothing more than expression and communication through unusual means. Art and design both started as cave paintings scrabbled all over some walls, and to this day, this method of expression through art and design can still leave a mark. I am of the belief that art and design will never forget its roots, even if its artists and proponents do.
That's what makes it so excellent.
God bless you, mediation. Bless you right in your stupid, stupid face.
PS: I have a new project idea, now in treatment format. Its here -> Chain Link Fence
If this is true, then the message of most media these days is
LOOK AT ME LOOK AT ME PAY ATTENTION TO ME PLEASE AAHHH I CRAVE ATTENTION AHHHH mixed in with more than a healthy dose of "buy this because its awesome do it right now why are you still standing here looking at this go."
Needless to say, the last month has been a pure, unabashed and shameless complete orgiastic flood of media in all of its shapes, sizes and forms. Magazine, ads, books, video, ads, movies, DVD, billboards, video games, ads, and oh hey did I mention the ads?
In case you missed it, they're everywhere. On cars, on trains, on bathrooms, in the subway, in the sky, on the ground, on the sides of buildings, AS the sides of the buildings...
But the other day I was walking down 33rd street the other night, staring at a big cuddlepuddle of billboards on top of a collection of apartment buildings, telling me to get this new cel phone, and to buy more Gatorade in an extreme manner while sweating unhealthy looking colors. And I realized I was alright with it. And for this reason.
New York City is a city that breathes. Like you, me and that cat lying in the corner, it moves, pulsates, breathes and is alive, and not only that, it manages to pull off looking really cool in addition to that. And why?
The ads.
The billboards and the posters and the near technicolor eyegasmwashimitude of all the ads takes what would normally be a city full of stolid, sterile looking towers and skyrises sullenly staring down at the flood of people on the street and makes them all dance. It gives them color, it gives them expression, even if that expression is you need to stuff your face with this burger right now. Its like a masquerade ball, where instead of people its buildings, and instead of gold feathered masks its ads talking about how great juice is (especially this brand of juice which you need to go out and buy right now).
If it weren't for the ads, a lot of the city would be blocks. As a digital artist, I'm a whore for well done visuals, so I love all the billboards and ads ripping through the entire city.
The ads themselves look incredible too. We've come a long way from the day and age of curio-based ads and photo ads with helvetica and futura set on a drab gray background. Hell, even design itself has taken ginormous leaps and bounds since the days of Jugendstil and Art Nouveau.
I recently swiped a bunch of magazines from your friendly neighborhood bookstore. Check this out.
This is SoftImage's theme for their XSI software, lifted from 3D World magazine. Right here you can begin picking out the inspirations that drove the creation and the idea behind this piece. Its very centered. Strong, balanced.
Its human-centered, and revolves around the human in the ad, even though hoodie guy is completely anonymous. Newer influences that shaped this come from Hollywood, comics and film standbys...the strong shadows, the exaggerated pose that you could look at and you would swear it was a photo taken while the guy is in motion, even though it was probably set up over the course of four hours and the guy is probably sick of standing in the same position for the entirety of said four hours.
Not to mention the logo, a mystical, magical effect, the look of which was ushered in by ye olde After Effects generation, when suddenly making glowy mystal magical things wasn't so hard anymore.
Not to say everything is nothing but new and moving forward. Design tradition oldies are still goodies:
This is the first page of an article reviewing Adobe's interactive website advertisements in Communication Arts' annual publication.
Here we don't the fancy trappings of Lots of Fucking Effects and Filters, unless you consider text and lines to be Lots of Fucking Effects and Filters. But as a page, as a whole, it is well put together. Well designed, one might say. Why? Because even as a page that need bear the load of blocks and blocks of text, it still adheres to the formal elements of design, design standbys that have been with us forever, clocking in now at a millenia and a few centuries' change. Most importantly, the piece is balanced.
And finally:
Concept art for an unholy abberation against god, nature and every fluffy puppy in the world named "Schism", from the soon-to-be-released Silent Hill 4.
This is the new face of the terrifying, o ladies and gentlemen, and it is oh so very telling. Long time ago, horror consisted of a bunch of standbys, most of which were pulled from books and stories which had no visuals in hand to slap you in the face with: Frankenstein's monster, the Werewolf, Dracula, the Mummy, Zombies.
Ever since Hellraiser came out in the late eighties, however, that sort of thing took a bonesplitting surge forward.
Why is this so telling? Ours is an era where both art and design has flowered outwards beyond our diminutive little frames, our normal modes of thought. Some would say it has become even greater. Its become one of the big cornerstones of our new generation, and that's fast evolution.
Here's how it goes. Someone watches a bit of media. Its not really that out there, but it breaks new ground. This someone, being an artist or a designer, sees the ground broken and immediately pushes past the broken area into the new areas beyond. His work subsequently becomes more out there, even more groundbreaking, and even more evolved beyond our normal modes of thought. Someone else sees this artist's work, its kind of far away, but the vast area of this new ground expands her mind.
Then she sees the ground broken, and she, being an artist or a designer, immediately steps past the broken area and into even newer areas, pushing it farther. The next artist comes along and does the same, though their mind must expand that much further from their "normal" modes of thought.
If this trend continues one day art and design will both be beyond the reach of human comprehension while being infinitely accessible at the same time.
But Patrick! This sounds intimidating and scary and... worry not dear reader, for you can always remember two things.
One: I'm one guy, one short, asian guy sitting in front of a computer. There are probably thousands of short asian guys sitting in front of computers who could tell you I'm crazy.
Two: Design and art are almost always moving forward and changing, but its memory and its filial piety are near impeccable. Art and design are, in the very end, nothing more than expression and communication through unusual means. Art and design both started as cave paintings scrabbled all over some walls, and to this day, this method of expression through art and design can still leave a mark. I am of the belief that art and design will never forget its roots, even if its artists and proponents do.
That's what makes it so excellent.
God bless you, mediation. Bless you right in your stupid, stupid face.
PS: I have a new project idea, now in treatment format. Its here -> Chain Link Fence
Friday, September 21, 2007
And We're Live In Three....Two....
In a perfect world, this is where I'd fill in one sentence to stand in as the body of my blog, and leave the rest of you, oh dear sparse and few readers and spammers copious and plenty, riding the edges of your seats. What is he going to say next? He left off at two...what happened to one?? What happens when he gets to one??? Will there be prizes, and damned if I should submit....pie?!?!?
In a perfect world, you would be doing that, instead of reading this.
In a perfect world, there would be rainbows and kittens and bunnies.
In a perfect world, I would have seventeen ho-jillion dollars, and an army of robotic sex slave concubines that are capable of dominating the world for me while simultaneously delivering ice cream and massages to me every six seconds.
This is not a perfect world.
But hey, not that I'm complaining. As I write this, I'm currently sitting deep within the bowels of the concrete, metal, shitstained beast they call Brooklyn, New York. I'm a twenty minute subway ride from the heart of Manhattan, bar none one of the greatest cities in existence. There's gatorade in my fridge. There's a grocery within pissing distance of my apartment. There's a broken down car in front of my apartment building. And I have no bed.
Its like I'm living one of the best damned dreams ever.
God bless grad school.
Also, god bless debt.
But hey, its not a perfect world.
In other not completely unrelated news, rabid ferrets have invaded my apartment and are trying desperately to sell me life insurance.
Actually that's a lie, that's not as unrelated as you'd think.
But I've got one big project coming up. This one's on delivery courtesy of CADA at the NYU SChool of Continuing and Professional Studies. Chances are it'll fuse a lot of AfterEffects, and a little bit of Photoshop.
THe problem here is, of course that I barely know anything about AfterEffects. I'm like a toddler, who's had new feet surgically implanted onto his ankles. I don't know much about what I'm supposed to do.
I was however, asked to come up with some ideas for projects that I could do.
Some thoughts thus far:
STYLE: Horror
TECHNIQUE: Blending effects and filters, with strong emphasis on composition in general.
Using these tools, I'll attempt to create in motion one of my favorite ambiances that I have been creating for so long in stills: that of the horrific. The fusion of metal and flesh, the horrors of death, the horrors of life, all the things surreal and terrible that place us on edge.
STYLE: Punk/Rebel
TECHNIQUE: Rotoscoping and that neat line-drawing/scrawling effect that everyone and their mother uses.
Lots of moving around is planned, and heavy emphasis on aspects of punk/rebel culture will be used to portray the feeling. Expect graffiti, tattoos, mohawks, and kids that have bad attitudes. Or at least look like they do.
STYLE: Nu-Medieval
TECHNIQUE: Streamlined motion, 2d image layering, lights and other solid effects
A style of medieval that merges the ancient with aspects of modern design and technology that I dreamed up one day is going to be the focus of this one. It will celebrate a culture that has no gunpowder, has standardized bioengineering and has fused the primitive and the advanced that will hopefully be described as beautiful anachronistic.
In other words, I have barely any idea what I'm doing. I've been tooling around with AfterEffects for about two, going into my third week now, and I still have a whole metric fuckton to learn. I'd be more confident about taking on this project if I knew more. In a perfect world, I'd know AfterEffects like the back of my hand, and I'd have some storyboards by now.
But this is not a perfect world.
In a perfect world, you would be doing that, instead of reading this.
In a perfect world, there would be rainbows and kittens and bunnies.
In a perfect world, I would have seventeen ho-jillion dollars, and an army of robotic sex slave concubines that are capable of dominating the world for me while simultaneously delivering ice cream and massages to me every six seconds.
This is not a perfect world.
But hey, not that I'm complaining. As I write this, I'm currently sitting deep within the bowels of the concrete, metal, shitstained beast they call Brooklyn, New York. I'm a twenty minute subway ride from the heart of Manhattan, bar none one of the greatest cities in existence. There's gatorade in my fridge. There's a grocery within pissing distance of my apartment. There's a broken down car in front of my apartment building. And I have no bed.
Its like I'm living one of the best damned dreams ever.
God bless grad school.
Also, god bless debt.
But hey, its not a perfect world.
In other not completely unrelated news, rabid ferrets have invaded my apartment and are trying desperately to sell me life insurance.
Actually that's a lie, that's not as unrelated as you'd think.
But I've got one big project coming up. This one's on delivery courtesy of CADA at the NYU SChool of Continuing and Professional Studies. Chances are it'll fuse a lot of AfterEffects, and a little bit of Photoshop.
THe problem here is, of course that I barely know anything about AfterEffects. I'm like a toddler, who's had new feet surgically implanted onto his ankles. I don't know much about what I'm supposed to do.
I was however, asked to come up with some ideas for projects that I could do.
Some thoughts thus far:
STYLE: Horror
TECHNIQUE: Blending effects and filters, with strong emphasis on composition in general.
Using these tools, I'll attempt to create in motion one of my favorite ambiances that I have been creating for so long in stills: that of the horrific. The fusion of metal and flesh, the horrors of death, the horrors of life, all the things surreal and terrible that place us on edge.
STYLE: Punk/Rebel
TECHNIQUE: Rotoscoping and that neat line-drawing/scrawling effect that everyone and their mother uses.
Lots of moving around is planned, and heavy emphasis on aspects of punk/rebel culture will be used to portray the feeling. Expect graffiti, tattoos, mohawks, and kids that have bad attitudes. Or at least look like they do.
STYLE: Nu-Medieval
TECHNIQUE: Streamlined motion, 2d image layering, lights and other solid effects
A style of medieval that merges the ancient with aspects of modern design and technology that I dreamed up one day is going to be the focus of this one. It will celebrate a culture that has no gunpowder, has standardized bioengineering and has fused the primitive and the advanced that will hopefully be described as beautiful anachronistic.
In other words, I have barely any idea what I'm doing. I've been tooling around with AfterEffects for about two, going into my third week now, and I still have a whole metric fuckton to learn. I'd be more confident about taking on this project if I knew more. In a perfect world, I'd know AfterEffects like the back of my hand, and I'd have some storyboards by now.
But this is not a perfect world.
Friday, September 15, 2006
Sleep Is For The Weak. And The Sane.
I have no idea if its been a week or not since my last post. Everything beyond a few days before....uh....yesterday....is a blur. I vaguely recall going to class somewhere and ending up being seated behind a huge white pillar and having to stare at it for the entire class. Also something about gay sex on the computer screen, alcohol, Robot Chicken, kittens (particularly one named Sophie), and a metric fuckton of development on my projects.
No matter.
The last one is the one I want to talk to you today, all you total of three people who will end up reading this.
The zombie game has been splashed, after a huge step back, with a healthy, steaming bucket of perspective.
Right now, we have three people on our team, and oh man if it doesn't take at least three times that many to make even the simplest of RTS games.
I can at least say with confidence that in terms of design and art, we have just about as many people we'd need (barring cutscenes, but Ramon's apparently all over that).
There's me, and there's Ramon. One (me) on general art, texturing, and all the rough-and-tumble 2d design work including interface design, drawing pictures of zombies, designing levels, writing up design docs, laughing maniacally, and killing hookers. One of those isn't actually true. Ramon is on everything else, namely, the 3d stuff, namely, modelling, animating and the cutscene that he's working on for 430. This ensures a pretty constant and even workflow for the both of us.
Which leaves George.
George has gotta shoulder everything else that's -not- art. The code, basically. I've told him that I'll help him with any code that he needs. I've also made some hefty recommendations that we need more programmers, but based on his generally cold-shoulder reaction to all of it (he wants to pull it all himself) and all the humming-and-hawing and subject-changing that he did while we were talking about the prospect of getting more people to help with programming, I'm not sure how likely that is to happen.
I don't know George too well. I'm not gonna make any judgements on his capabilities, in fact, I've heard from a bunch of sources that he's a hand with the stuff. We'll see how it goes.
In the meantime I'll hope this entire thing doesn't turn into some sort of cosmic horror and eat me.
On the lighter sides of the news, thousands of capitalist pigs are sure to die in a space shuttle crash on the moon.
No wait, that's from Airplane.
On the lighter sides of the news, we've made some progress. We've settled on an engine to develop this thing off of.
BEHOLD. IRRLICHT. -ENSTEIN.
Yes we've chosen the Irrlicht engine to wrangle this thing to the ground with. With luck, we'll have better luck than Steve Irwin did with the stingrays.
In art news, I'm currently typing up a design doc, which first and foremost will outline what will be done by the end of the semester. Its not going to be a working game. In fact, it wont' even be a fully developed demo level. But it will be something, and you will be able to both blow up zombies and use zombies to eat people's faces.
And for now, really, that's enough.
In the meantime, the full Design Doc for the game is going to be written in case we want to pick this up at some later time, and all the designs will continue in spite of the pace of the rest of the game.
BUT ENOUGH TALK
GIMME MY WAFFLE SUNDDAAAAAEEE-
I mean
GIMME MY PICTURES OF ZOMBBIIIEEEZZZZZ-
These are just a few of the zombie designs I've dredged up, only about three of which will probably be in the game.
Coming up:
THE PATHETIC HUMAN FORCES
Fuckall I'm never going to get any sleep.
No matter.
The last one is the one I want to talk to you today, all you total of three people who will end up reading this.
The zombie game has been splashed, after a huge step back, with a healthy, steaming bucket of perspective.
Right now, we have three people on our team, and oh man if it doesn't take at least three times that many to make even the simplest of RTS games.
I can at least say with confidence that in terms of design and art, we have just about as many people we'd need (barring cutscenes, but Ramon's apparently all over that).
There's me, and there's Ramon. One (me) on general art, texturing, and all the rough-and-tumble 2d design work including interface design, drawing pictures of zombies, designing levels, writing up design docs, laughing maniacally, and killing hookers. One of those isn't actually true. Ramon is on everything else, namely, the 3d stuff, namely, modelling, animating and the cutscene that he's working on for 430. This ensures a pretty constant and even workflow for the both of us.
Which leaves George.
George has gotta shoulder everything else that's -not- art. The code, basically. I've told him that I'll help him with any code that he needs. I've also made some hefty recommendations that we need more programmers, but based on his generally cold-shoulder reaction to all of it (he wants to pull it all himself) and all the humming-and-hawing and subject-changing that he did while we were talking about the prospect of getting more people to help with programming, I'm not sure how likely that is to happen.
I don't know George too well. I'm not gonna make any judgements on his capabilities, in fact, I've heard from a bunch of sources that he's a hand with the stuff. We'll see how it goes.
In the meantime I'll hope this entire thing doesn't turn into some sort of cosmic horror and eat me.
On the lighter sides of the news, thousands of capitalist pigs are sure to die in a space shuttle crash on the moon.
No wait, that's from Airplane.
On the lighter sides of the news, we've made some progress. We've settled on an engine to develop this thing off of.
BEHOLD. IRRLICHT. -ENSTEIN.
Yes we've chosen the Irrlicht engine to wrangle this thing to the ground with. With luck, we'll have better luck than Steve Irwin did with the stingrays.
In art news, I'm currently typing up a design doc, which first and foremost will outline what will be done by the end of the semester. Its not going to be a working game. In fact, it wont' even be a fully developed demo level. But it will be something, and you will be able to both blow up zombies and use zombies to eat people's faces.
And for now, really, that's enough.
In the meantime, the full Design Doc for the game is going to be written in case we want to pick this up at some later time, and all the designs will continue in spite of the pace of the rest of the game.
BUT ENOUGH TALK
GIMME MY WAFFLE SUNDDAAAAAEEE-
I mean
GIMME MY PICTURES OF ZOMBBIIIEEEZZZZZ-
These are just a few of the zombie designs I've dredged up, only about three of which will probably be in the game.
Coming up:
THE PATHETIC HUMAN FORCES
Fuckall I'm never going to get any sleep.
Friday, September 08, 2006
PLACES! LIGHTS! GET THOSE CURTAINS UP!
A year ago I left this little scrap of blog to the wild, dark and forbidding depths of the interwebs.
But a good creator never forgets about his baby, so here I am, after a yearlong hiatus full of sex, drugs and rock n' roll, except without the sex, drugs and rock n' roll.
Now you all may be wondering "But Patrick, an entire year has gone by! Surely you'll tell us about what's been going on, and relate to us all of the crazy adventures/wild parties/bear hunting expeditions/explorations of lost civilizations/mary-had-a-little-lamb-riding-a-goddamned-unicorn experiences that you've had? Or at least tell us what lamb-sacrificing insanities you're up to now!"
And boy, wouldn't I.
But I won't. I won't go into everything I've done in the past year because if I would, this post would be a ga-fucking-zillion pages long, and I'd be so laden down with hubris I wouldn't be able to walk to class without looking like a long-haired, asian Quasimodo.
As for the now, its September, and once again I'm loaded with more projects than Southern Chicago.
Let's go through a quick tally shall we?
-"Dusk of the Dead" a real time strategy game
-"Royal and Manchester, Cybernet P.I.s" a animation
-"Euphoria Inc." a graphic novel
-"Hellhounds On My Trail" a graphic novel
-"They Came From The Internet" a webcomic
An RTS, a 3d animation, TWO graphic novels and a webcomic. Out of these five projects, only two of them are -not- related to school, and those are the last two. I held back from going forward with Hellhounds On My Trail as a class project because as far as I know, AK isn't going to get me the next part of the script for the thing until he's fifty fucking years old, and I personally feel the webcomic could be kept up without any people stabbing me in the face to get me to do the work.
Needless to say, I got my work cut out for me this semester.
Of particular interest though, is the new game that I'm working on: Dusk of the Dead.
Yes, its a real time strategy game, its going to be a fully functional real time strategy game. Yes, its a play on "Dawn of the Dead," and yes...its a real time strategy game about zombies.
I'm working on this with two other guys, one is in charge of programming, the other is in charge of 3d animation and modelling, and me? I'm in charge of game design, specs, texturing, sound design, catering, being the fluffer, and all the things that no one else really wants to do. HAH, just kidding, I don't cater.
Are you excited? I am.
The basic idea is thus. Like any good real time strategy worth its salt, there are two sides to the conflict. And like any good zombie game, its set in an urban environment that's been completely and utterly destroyed.
The two sides are, to be expected, humans and zombies.
The humans are your typical real time strategy peoples. They collect resources, and crank near limitless amoutns of new units out of clown-car like factories, build fortifications, and send out waves of units to conquer the opposition/survive the impossibly huge onslaught.
The zombies are a little different. We haven't quite decided on a solid scheme for how they'll be implemented but my thoughts are thus: they collect resources, but instead of pulling stuff out of mines and piles of junk lying around, like the humans do, they have an entirely different set of resources: bodies.
The idea is in this hopeless, remnants-of-human-civilization world, not only will there be packs of congregated civilians seeking refuge in barely protected shelters, there will be bodies littering the streets of our cities, and using these bodies, the undead will bolster their forces.
I think its solid.
No.
I think its absolutely fucking kickass.
And this thing is going to be made. Dammit.
But a good creator never forgets about his baby, so here I am, after a yearlong hiatus full of sex, drugs and rock n' roll, except without the sex, drugs and rock n' roll.
Now you all may be wondering "But Patrick, an entire year has gone by! Surely you'll tell us about what's been going on, and relate to us all of the crazy adventures/wild parties/bear hunting expeditions/explorations of lost civilizations/mary-had-a-little-lamb-riding-a-goddamned-unicorn experiences that you've had? Or at least tell us what lamb-sacrificing insanities you're up to now!"
And boy, wouldn't I.
But I won't. I won't go into everything I've done in the past year because if I would, this post would be a ga-fucking-zillion pages long, and I'd be so laden down with hubris I wouldn't be able to walk to class without looking like a long-haired, asian Quasimodo.
As for the now, its September, and once again I'm loaded with more projects than Southern Chicago.
Let's go through a quick tally shall we?
-"Dusk of the Dead" a real time strategy game
-"Royal and Manchester, Cybernet P.I.s" a animation
-"Euphoria Inc." a graphic novel
-"Hellhounds On My Trail" a graphic novel
-"They Came From The Internet" a webcomic
An RTS, a 3d animation, TWO graphic novels and a webcomic. Out of these five projects, only two of them are -not- related to school, and those are the last two. I held back from going forward with Hellhounds On My Trail as a class project because as far as I know, AK isn't going to get me the next part of the script for the thing until he's fifty fucking years old, and I personally feel the webcomic could be kept up without any people stabbing me in the face to get me to do the work.
Needless to say, I got my work cut out for me this semester.
Of particular interest though, is the new game that I'm working on: Dusk of the Dead.
Yes, its a real time strategy game, its going to be a fully functional real time strategy game. Yes, its a play on "Dawn of the Dead," and yes...its a real time strategy game about zombies.
I'm working on this with two other guys, one is in charge of programming, the other is in charge of 3d animation and modelling, and me? I'm in charge of game design, specs, texturing, sound design, catering, being the fluffer, and all the things that no one else really wants to do. HAH, just kidding, I don't cater.
Are you excited? I am.
The basic idea is thus. Like any good real time strategy worth its salt, there are two sides to the conflict. And like any good zombie game, its set in an urban environment that's been completely and utterly destroyed.
The two sides are, to be expected, humans and zombies.
The humans are your typical real time strategy peoples. They collect resources, and crank near limitless amoutns of new units out of clown-car like factories, build fortifications, and send out waves of units to conquer the opposition/survive the impossibly huge onslaught.
The zombies are a little different. We haven't quite decided on a solid scheme for how they'll be implemented but my thoughts are thus: they collect resources, but instead of pulling stuff out of mines and piles of junk lying around, like the humans do, they have an entirely different set of resources: bodies.
The idea is in this hopeless, remnants-of-human-civilization world, not only will there be packs of congregated civilians seeking refuge in barely protected shelters, there will be bodies littering the streets of our cities, and using these bodies, the undead will bolster their forces.
I think its solid.
No.
I think its absolutely fucking kickass.
And this thing is going to be made. Dammit.
Tuesday, May 10, 2005
The Final Hurrah. OR IS IT.
Hell week.
Crunch week.
Finals week.
Call it what you will. At this point you could call it fucking Great Uncle Ichabod's Superhappy Funride and I wouldn't really care. Because Great Uncle Ichabod's Superhappy Funride just spent two weeks soundly kicking my sorry ass for some unnamed and as of yet unrevealed crime.
But I remain strong.
In the midst of the near anal violation offered by having a semester's worth of procrastination come down on my head like a 6-ton wench launching itself off the Empire State Building, I have worked, steadfastly, on the little project that we like to call Astro McFly.
Game designs, art-wise now consist of the game screen, recolored designs for the ship, background tiles, asteroid obstacles, five or six different stars from the grand ol' 70s including Charleton Heston, Clint Eastwood and Jean Seberg, and components for eight or nine different drinks, and enough flashy flavor text and kitchy looking stars to take over a small country. Anyone feel like a Harvey Wallbanger? I'll just have a screwdriver without the orange juice if you don't mind.
The collective gathered again a few hours ago, it was a party. And by party I mean 'coding fiasco'. Once again the ability of ActionScript to baffle rears its ugly, ugly head. Problems with the arrays and the appearances of some certain drinks in the menu bars kept the program from being complete and did a real bang-up job of frustrating the hell out of Jared and Sean.
Hopefully we'll get a chance to keep working on this. All of us really want to see this come out to be a good game, especially after we merged the graphics and what we had of the code last night. Let me tell you it looked fucking AMAZING.
If we do we've got three or four days left.
In those three or four days I also must complete my Java final, and a five minute soundscape that I have not yet begun.
Yay for Great Uncle Ichabod's Superhappy Funride.
Crunch week.
Finals week.
Call it what you will. At this point you could call it fucking Great Uncle Ichabod's Superhappy Funride and I wouldn't really care. Because Great Uncle Ichabod's Superhappy Funride just spent two weeks soundly kicking my sorry ass for some unnamed and as of yet unrevealed crime.
But I remain strong.
In the midst of the near anal violation offered by having a semester's worth of procrastination come down on my head like a 6-ton wench launching itself off the Empire State Building, I have worked, steadfastly, on the little project that we like to call Astro McFly.
Game designs, art-wise now consist of the game screen, recolored designs for the ship, background tiles, asteroid obstacles, five or six different stars from the grand ol' 70s including Charleton Heston, Clint Eastwood and Jean Seberg, and components for eight or nine different drinks, and enough flashy flavor text and kitchy looking stars to take over a small country. Anyone feel like a Harvey Wallbanger? I'll just have a screwdriver without the orange juice if you don't mind.
The collective gathered again a few hours ago, it was a party. And by party I mean 'coding fiasco'. Once again the ability of ActionScript to baffle rears its ugly, ugly head. Problems with the arrays and the appearances of some certain drinks in the menu bars kept the program from being complete and did a real bang-up job of frustrating the hell out of Jared and Sean.
Hopefully we'll get a chance to keep working on this. All of us really want to see this come out to be a good game, especially after we merged the graphics and what we had of the code last night. Let me tell you it looked fucking AMAZING.
If we do we've got three or four days left.
In those three or four days I also must complete my Java final, and a five minute soundscape that I have not yet begun.
Yay for Great Uncle Ichabod's Superhappy Funride.
Thursday, April 28, 2005
Astro McFly...Now In Technicolor
More on this soon. I mean it this time.
Sausage Link (Get it?!? Cause its a link....and...)
More more and more in a few days coming.
Sausage Link (Get it?!? Cause its a link....and...)
More more and more in a few days coming.
Tuesday, April 26, 2005
Parody Me This
I never thought I'd be able to hammer this out in one and a half weeks.
But here it is, in all its Flash animated glory...
I present to you....Project Two. Or is it Three? Jesus, I don't fucking know anymore. Its a parody project, and at 3 AM in the morning that's more than enough of a damned identifier for me:
FuckingFinally
This was one hell of a ride to create.
The moment I got the idea for the project I opened Notepad and immediately began jotting down ideas.
Everyone (well not everyone...a lot of people) has seen those commercials done by the US Army. They feature closeups of soldiers standing tall and proud, silhouetted against the sunset, or standing stoically over their work from their field of expertise, like a mortar, and saying simple phrases meant to stir the heart like "If there is terror overseas...I shall confront it" or "I am a protector of our country".
This continues while a heart swelling, patriotic tour de force plays in the background until it ends, finally, on one soldier saying "I am an army of one" and everyone watching goes "Wow" and their hearts are supposed to swell with pride as they are inspired to get their fatsacks off the couch to enlist for a few years of getting your ass kicked.
I'd also recently watched the flash animation "I am Resident Evil" by Legendary Frog. If you haven't seen it, just google "I Am Resident Evil" and it should be the first one that pops up. It takes the same style as the commercial, except applies it to the popular scare-your-pants-off zombie survival game Resident Evil.
So I thought why not apply it to executives of big corporations?
...
It made sense at the time.
ANYWAYS...first came the obvious ones: Starbucks, WalMart, Enron, Shell, Microsoft.
Then I hit up some of my friends and asked them for some names of corporations that had a reputation for being asses in general. This dug up some more names: Reebok, McDonalds, the RIAA, ConAgra, Disney, Firestone.
Once I had all my names, I could start animating...all I needed was voicework.
Thank sweet fuck almighty god that the internet exists.
If it weren't for the internet, there is no way I would have been able to have received all of my voicework in the time I did.
But there it is.
"I Am Corporate Greed", presented by yours truly.
I'm going to bed.
But here it is, in all its Flash animated glory...
I present to you....Project Two. Or is it Three? Jesus, I don't fucking know anymore. Its a parody project, and at 3 AM in the morning that's more than enough of a damned identifier for me:
FuckingFinally
This was one hell of a ride to create.
The moment I got the idea for the project I opened Notepad and immediately began jotting down ideas.
Everyone (well not everyone...a lot of people) has seen those commercials done by the US Army. They feature closeups of soldiers standing tall and proud, silhouetted against the sunset, or standing stoically over their work from their field of expertise, like a mortar, and saying simple phrases meant to stir the heart like "If there is terror overseas...I shall confront it" or "I am a protector of our country".
This continues while a heart swelling, patriotic tour de force plays in the background until it ends, finally, on one soldier saying "I am an army of one" and everyone watching goes "Wow" and their hearts are supposed to swell with pride as they are inspired to get their fatsacks off the couch to enlist for a few years of getting your ass kicked.
I'd also recently watched the flash animation "I am Resident Evil" by Legendary Frog. If you haven't seen it, just google "I Am Resident Evil" and it should be the first one that pops up. It takes the same style as the commercial, except applies it to the popular scare-your-pants-off zombie survival game Resident Evil.
So I thought why not apply it to executives of big corporations?
...
It made sense at the time.
ANYWAYS...first came the obvious ones: Starbucks, WalMart, Enron, Shell, Microsoft.
Then I hit up some of my friends and asked them for some names of corporations that had a reputation for being asses in general. This dug up some more names: Reebok, McDonalds, the RIAA, ConAgra, Disney, Firestone.
Once I had all my names, I could start animating...all I needed was voicework.
Thank sweet fuck almighty god that the internet exists.
If it weren't for the internet, there is no way I would have been able to have received all of my voicework in the time I did.
But there it is.
"I Am Corporate Greed", presented by yours truly.
I'm going to bed.
Thursday, April 21, 2005
What Do You Want From My Life???
Still haven't figured out how to make this dungheap work.
Please god someone help me.
Link...He Come To Town...Come To Save...Th- Nevermind
(The link above doesn't have any of the music files attached to it, since I finally got that already figured out, for fuck's sake. All code involving the sounds attached has been commented out.)
Please god someone help me.
Link...He Come To Town...Come To Save...Th- Nevermind
(The link above doesn't have any of the music files attached to it, since I finally got that already figured out, for fuck's sake. All code involving the sounds attached has been commented out.)
Show Me The Money! And By Money I Mean Sketches!
We may.
Just may.
Have progressed out of the initial planning stages of things.
I am a link. Hear me roar.
There is the initial gamescreen design for the game that we have (temporarily) christened "Astroy McFly"
Here's the concept: you play as Astro McFly, someone who is very Astro, and Fly.
You pilot your spaceship, unofficially named by me as the McFly Express, through the dangerous byways and flyways of space, avoiding asteroid debris, dodging the fuzz, who are trying to shoot you down, and collecting parts to mixed drinks, which just happen to be floating in space, to please your cargo of celebrity partygoers.
Awwww yeah.
I too am a link. Hear me roar.
In other news this is the first time I've ever been able to tell someone "I just drew a spaceship with an afro" and mean it.
(For those of you who are easily lost, the link goes to sketches for some potential designs for the McFly Express)
I am a link. Here me mumble incomprehensibly about roaring.
That is the game schematic....a sort of map of how the game is going to go from one screen to the next, starting from the loading screen all the way up til the Win/Lose screen at the end of the game.
Its not pretty. If it had a name, it would be "Grigor" and would have the unusual hobby of wrestling bears into submission using the weight of its ugliness alone.
Russian bear wrestling by ugly aside, that is what we have so far....there seems to be a general consensus that its a good design for the game. Though our lead programmer seems to be missing.
I'll get back to this at a later date.
Just may.
Have progressed out of the initial planning stages of things.
I am a link. Hear me roar.
There is the initial gamescreen design for the game that we have (temporarily) christened "Astroy McFly"
Here's the concept: you play as Astro McFly, someone who is very Astro, and Fly.
You pilot your spaceship, unofficially named by me as the McFly Express, through the dangerous byways and flyways of space, avoiding asteroid debris, dodging the fuzz, who are trying to shoot you down, and collecting parts to mixed drinks, which just happen to be floating in space, to please your cargo of celebrity partygoers.
Awwww yeah.
I too am a link. Hear me roar.
In other news this is the first time I've ever been able to tell someone "I just drew a spaceship with an afro" and mean it.
(For those of you who are easily lost, the link goes to sketches for some potential designs for the McFly Express)
I am a link. Here me mumble incomprehensibly about roaring.
That is the game schematic....a sort of map of how the game is going to go from one screen to the next, starting from the loading screen all the way up til the Win/Lose screen at the end of the game.
Its not pretty. If it had a name, it would be "Grigor" and would have the unusual hobby of wrestling bears into submission using the weight of its ugliness alone.
Russian bear wrestling by ugly aside, that is what we have so far....there seems to be a general consensus that its a good design for the game. Though our lead programmer seems to be missing.
I'll get back to this at a later date.
An Addendum
For those of you who care (and you shouldn't, considering you're still reading this despite the title of this little thing), it has occurred to me that there is a chance that I may be absolutely fucking wrong in everything I said in the post below this one.
If that turns out to so you all have permission to beat me with a sack of oranges.
If that turns out to so you all have permission to beat me with a sack of oranges.
O Heart! Or Parody!
Thank heaven for parody or we'd all take the world a bit too seriously.
http://www.penny-arcade.com/view.php3?date=2005-04-15&res=l
http://www.penny-arcade.com/view.php3?date=2005-04-18&res=l
http://www.penny-arcade.com/view.php3?date=2005-04-20&res=l
^
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I am of the firm belief that Jerry and Mike have once again proven themselves online comics masters by pulling this out of their collective asses.
Its a pure mark of perfectly orchestrated internet genious that Penny Arcade has managed to not only make fun of the absurdity of webcomic breakups, but to make us actually believe that they are experiencing one themselves.
...webcomic breakups?
For those of you who out there who actually have social lives outside of the computer and the world of webcomics, there have been a few notable breakups of fantastic webcomics created by multiple author/writer/illustrator teams, most notable of these the breaking off of Largo from the writing team of the much-celebrated comic Megatokyo.
Many viewers have, since then, had nothing but beautiful, glowing flames and complaints to heap on the new one-man Megatokyo comic.
I remember first reading the Penny Arcade news post for that first comic that I linked up there at the end of last week.
I thought it was for real. Gabe and Tycho, the two-man cornerstone of the webcomic world, were breaking up. It couldn't be happening. It couldn't possibly.
It would be an event that would affect the world of webcomics forever....as while Tycho's writing defines the humor of Penny Arcade, its Gabe's art that is the visual identity of the comic, which is almost as important given that its a comic...not one of those ebooks that you get off of obscure literature websites.
I remember my heart skipping a beat when I first lay eyes on the comic the next day and found Gabe's art gone....and not in the way it skips when you see a burning fox of a woman walking down the road. No, this was more the OH GOD ITS HAPPENING ITS FUCKING HAPPENING WHAT THE F- kind of skip. It was the end of an era. The end of an -age-....a golden age of comics. Tycho couldn't draw to save a bag of dog droppings. I was watching history unfolding before me, a new era in webcomics was beginning, and I had a feeling that it involved a lot of good old fashioned downhill rolling.
Thank heaven for parody or we'd all take the world a bit too seriously.
Long live Penny Arcade.
http://www.penny-arcade.com/view.php3?date=2005-04-15&res=l
http://www.penny-arcade.com/view.php3?date=2005-04-18&res=l
http://www.penny-arcade.com/view.php3?date=2005-04-20&res=l
^
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I am of the firm belief that Jerry and Mike have once again proven themselves online comics masters by pulling this out of their collective asses.
Its a pure mark of perfectly orchestrated internet genious that Penny Arcade has managed to not only make fun of the absurdity of webcomic breakups, but to make us actually believe that they are experiencing one themselves.
...webcomic breakups?
For those of you who out there who actually have social lives outside of the computer and the world of webcomics, there have been a few notable breakups of fantastic webcomics created by multiple author/writer/illustrator teams, most notable of these the breaking off of Largo from the writing team of the much-celebrated comic Megatokyo.
Many viewers have, since then, had nothing but beautiful, glowing flames and complaints to heap on the new one-man Megatokyo comic.
I remember first reading the Penny Arcade news post for that first comic that I linked up there at the end of last week.
I thought it was for real. Gabe and Tycho, the two-man cornerstone of the webcomic world, were breaking up. It couldn't be happening. It couldn't possibly.
It would be an event that would affect the world of webcomics forever....as while Tycho's writing defines the humor of Penny Arcade, its Gabe's art that is the visual identity of the comic, which is almost as important given that its a comic...not one of those ebooks that you get off of obscure literature websites.
I remember my heart skipping a beat when I first lay eyes on the comic the next day and found Gabe's art gone....and not in the way it skips when you see a burning fox of a woman walking down the road. No, this was more the OH GOD ITS HAPPENING ITS FUCKING HAPPENING WHAT THE F- kind of skip. It was the end of an era. The end of an -age-....a golden age of comics. Tycho couldn't draw to save a bag of dog droppings. I was watching history unfolding before me, a new era in webcomics was beginning, and I had a feeling that it involved a lot of good old fashioned downhill rolling.
Thank heaven for parody or we'd all take the world a bit too seriously.
Long live Penny Arcade.
Thursday, April 14, 2005
OFFICIAL (very offical) PROJECT PROPOSAL
Game Genre: Suspense/Horror Exploration and Puzzle Solving
Working in a group that consists of both artists and programmers, I am of the belief that any project we undertake should balance both of these aspects of creating a game in Flash. Not too art-heavy, yet not too code-heavy, either.
A suspense style or survival/horror type game would be perfect in this situation. The artists of the group (and myself) get to flex their imaginative muscles on drawing environments, critters, backgrounds, objects, and creating the visual and audio ambience of the entire game, while puzzles and environmental and even possibly time-based events will keep the programmers busy figuring out how to incorporate code into a graphical environment while still making the puzzles and mini-games easy enough to play, yet interesting enough to drive the story along.
The specific theme…..whether it be vampires, zombies, lycanthropes, abstract spectral beings, cosmic horrors, or ghosts….is unimportant. Its equally easy to be frightened by a shambling ghoul as it is to be frightened by hands bursting from the walls. What is important is that the game must play towards the viewer’s fear of the unknown, the unseen, while still driving the viewer to explore and discover further. The setting can be any number of places…a park, a manor, an underground lab.
I’m hesitant on deciding on story-wise and environmental specifics without the rest of the group’s input…if everyone can agree on a theme or setting that they like, it makes the project that much easier to work on.
As it is, I, personally, have always wanted to work on a project where I could stretch the more twisted parts of my imagination and show them to a wider audience.
That, and its fun to try to scare the flying pants off of people.
Working in a group that consists of both artists and programmers, I am of the belief that any project we undertake should balance both of these aspects of creating a game in Flash. Not too art-heavy, yet not too code-heavy, either.
A suspense style or survival/horror type game would be perfect in this situation. The artists of the group (and myself) get to flex their imaginative muscles on drawing environments, critters, backgrounds, objects, and creating the visual and audio ambience of the entire game, while puzzles and environmental and even possibly time-based events will keep the programmers busy figuring out how to incorporate code into a graphical environment while still making the puzzles and mini-games easy enough to play, yet interesting enough to drive the story along.
The specific theme…..whether it be vampires, zombies, lycanthropes, abstract spectral beings, cosmic horrors, or ghosts….is unimportant. Its equally easy to be frightened by a shambling ghoul as it is to be frightened by hands bursting from the walls. What is important is that the game must play towards the viewer’s fear of the unknown, the unseen, while still driving the viewer to explore and discover further. The setting can be any number of places…a park, a manor, an underground lab.
I’m hesitant on deciding on story-wise and environmental specifics without the rest of the group’s input…if everyone can agree on a theme or setting that they like, it makes the project that much easier to work on.
As it is, I, personally, have always wanted to work on a project where I could stretch the more twisted parts of my imagination and show them to a wider audience.
That, and its fun to try to scare the flying pants off of people.
Friday, April 08, 2005
DON'T DIE ON ME NOW
I've told people that a computer's operating system is much akin to whatever it is that connects the human brain to the rest of the human body. Without it, the computer is retarded. Nothing but a brain, which, as wondrous and complex as it is, is about as useful as a spongy lump of fat and cholesterol can be in any other situation when it has nothing else attached to it.
I'm sending this post out now from the Syracuse University computer labs located near Kimmel Dormitories, because my computer has turned into a paralyzed vegetable capable of only four words.
"Operating System Not Found"
Tomorrow morning I'm going to try to wrangle myself a new hard drive from the student store and get Windows installed on it, and hopefully, the data on my hard drive will still be salvagable.
Glee.
I'm sending this post out now from the Syracuse University computer labs located near Kimmel Dormitories, because my computer has turned into a paralyzed vegetable capable of only four words.
"Operating System Not Found"
Tomorrow morning I'm going to try to wrangle myself a new hard drive from the student store and get Windows installed on it, and hopefully, the data on my hard drive will still be salvagable.
Glee.
!@#$
It's come to my attention fairly recently that I swear a lot in my blog. Namely the word 'fuck.' Well, not a lot, but more than is to be expected....the profanity is there, in other words. Especially when you note that this blog is supposed to be for a class, though I post other non-class related stuff in there as well.
But why, Patrick? Why the dirty mouth? Surely there are other ways of expressing yourself that doesn't involve the words fuck, shit, and damn.
Well I don't know about 'damn' and 'shit.' But I would like to say this.
"Fuck" has got to be one of the most versatile words in the English language.
I can make it mean anything. Nouns. Adjectives. Verbs. Adverbs. Conjunctions.
It can be used to punctuate a sentence, to add an extra emphasis to a sentence or to take away from a sentence.
George Carlin even proved that fuck could be just as effective put inside another word too, i.e. in-fucking-credible, or unbe-fucking-lievable.
It can be used to get an idea across very quickly, and very effectively.
"Fuck off" has half the length, and about three times the punch of "Leave me alone."
In other words, I like the word fuck.
Its a valued, versatile, and hardworking member of my vocabulary.
If any of you have a problem with it....
....too fucking bad.
But why, Patrick? Why the dirty mouth? Surely there are other ways of expressing yourself that doesn't involve the words fuck, shit, and damn.
Well I don't know about 'damn' and 'shit.' But I would like to say this.
"Fuck" has got to be one of the most versatile words in the English language.
I can make it mean anything. Nouns. Adjectives. Verbs. Adverbs. Conjunctions.
It can be used to punctuate a sentence, to add an extra emphasis to a sentence or to take away from a sentence.
George Carlin even proved that fuck could be just as effective put inside another word too, i.e. in-fucking-credible, or unbe-fucking-lievable.
It can be used to get an idea across very quickly, and very effectively.
"Fuck off" has half the length, and about three times the punch of "Leave me alone."
In other words, I like the word fuck.
Its a valued, versatile, and hardworking member of my vocabulary.
If any of you have a problem with it....
....too fucking bad.
Thursday, April 07, 2005
Damn My Eyes. Or Fingers, Rather
So.
When my instructor told me oh so many weeks ago to -save- constantly, and to -save- many versions of your Flash work in seperate files.
He wasn't kidding.
...obviously.
Of course, I, being the collosal dum-dum that I am, didn't listen until I've already lost a metric fuckton of work in my last Flash Actionscripting exercise.
The original idea was to create a lens flare effect, similar to the one I posted down below a few posts ago, except to elaborate on it and make it look not-quite-so-crappy.
Attach a sound, change the shapes, bind the lens flare to the mouse. While not quite as easy as pie, there's still a progression there.
However, as I have taken care to mention before, I am a colossal dum-dum.
Somewhere along the line I managed to totally lose any semblance of sound or mouse-tracing in the entire project. The code for the sound is -there-.
This:
mySound = new Sound();
mySound.attachSound("WAAAH1");
mySound.setVolume(100);
mySound.start(0,9999);
...which is the code for creating a new sound object, is sitting -right there- in the middle of my code.
All things considered, the moment I hit Ctrl+Enter, I should hear the sound of a grown man crying from some unspoken atrocity being committed on him.
But instead, I am greeted with the stony silence of the ages. And some circles that drift across the screen when I click the mouse.
I have managed to do the simpler things like bind object alphas and the actual drifting to the click of the mouse:
http://web.syr.edu/~pctsao/LensFlarePyramid.swf
But any semblance of the tribal wonders of a lens flare shining behind a the silhoutte of a colossal, nameless pyramid have thus far been lost in the seas of my stupidity.
Damn my eyes. Or rather, my fingers. Damn my fingers.
When my instructor told me oh so many weeks ago to -save- constantly, and to -save- many versions of your Flash work in seperate files.
He wasn't kidding.
...obviously.
Of course, I, being the collosal dum-dum that I am, didn't listen until I've already lost a metric fuckton of work in my last Flash Actionscripting exercise.
The original idea was to create a lens flare effect, similar to the one I posted down below a few posts ago, except to elaborate on it and make it look not-quite-so-crappy.
Attach a sound, change the shapes, bind the lens flare to the mouse. While not quite as easy as pie, there's still a progression there.
However, as I have taken care to mention before, I am a colossal dum-dum.
Somewhere along the line I managed to totally lose any semblance of sound or mouse-tracing in the entire project. The code for the sound is -there-.
This:
mySound = new Sound();
mySound.attachSound("WAAAH1");
mySound.setVolume(100);
mySound.start(0,9999);
...which is the code for creating a new sound object, is sitting -right there- in the middle of my code.
All things considered, the moment I hit Ctrl+Enter, I should hear the sound of a grown man crying from some unspoken atrocity being committed on him.
But instead, I am greeted with the stony silence of the ages. And some circles that drift across the screen when I click the mouse.
I have managed to do the simpler things like bind object alphas and the actual drifting to the click of the mouse:
http://web.syr.edu/~pctsao/LensFlarePyramid.swf
But any semblance of the tribal wonders of a lens flare shining behind a the silhoutte of a colossal, nameless pyramid have thus far been lost in the seas of my stupidity.
Damn my eyes. Or rather, my fingers. Damn my fingers.
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