Feathercut

Sehr Gut.

Gameswipe

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00n1j8q/Charlie_Brookers_Gameswipe/

Probably going to make reference to Graham Linehan's thoughts of Captain Price in my Games and Animation Studies essay as they are extremely relevant.

Maya work so far

Some screenshots of some of the work I've been doing in Maya for our trailer project. None of them have been textured yet. And this isn't all of them...

Melvin's house outside.

Melvin's house inside.

The mysterious Hooded Figure.

A Hedgehog minion.

A Gorilla minion that the hedgehog will be riding.

Look at me

blogging away like a douche. Offer me a job.

IK WIL MEER

My mate Rory introduced me to Steen a while ago with his performance of 'Haat', with Spinal, on the Dutch rap sessions site 101barz. I've really gotten into his music. Rory suggested that the Dutch language really lends itself to rap and I definitely agree.
I find Steen's sociopathic Sid Vicious persona exciting and believable. It fits seamlessly with his dark rap style known as kadaverrap (dead body rap haha). Spinal is ok but Steen's genuineness overshadows him I reckon.
Steen is the one wearing the black baseball cap who starts second.

Backgammon

I watched the series Games Britannia on BBC Iplayer recently and enjoyed it. I was especially interested in the part about Backgammon where it was explained that the gameplay relies on equal parts Chance and Skill. Got me thinking.

My Dad

is a farmer. Farming is the only "proper" job.

Day of the Triffids on BBC 1

It's not long. I was interested and looking forward to the new adaptation. I haven't read the novel but I want to. I haven't seen the 1962 film and according to Corrado I don't want to. I've seen bits and pieces of the 1981 BBC series and I want to see the rest. Really wasn't keen on the new two-parter though. I remember the old series reminding me of old Doctor Who in terms of production at the time. Laughable effects looking back now etc. Looking back on this weeks version, in the future, I think people may make similar comparisons with current Doctor Who. It looks like Doctor Who vs 28 Days Later. I'm not quite sure who it was aimed at either. The first part was about the blinded people and the second part was about the Triffids. I don't think that's how the producers would like it described. The two parts felt completely segregated from each other. The Triffids weren't characterised at all in the first episode. Maybe they were but it was so badly handled I didn't notice. I think I would have done a better job. Then in the second episode they just felt like background characters. They are the title characters. Their design was particularly unadventurous as well. I think the old series' Triffids were better designed. More exotic. I designed a Triffid for a horror postcard project last year and I think mine was more interesting. The special effects deserve some praise. The CGI was very good on the roots of the plants. A lot of the time it was hard to tell if they were real or computer-generated. That may be because it was so dark though. The blinded were ok. Not as good as the old ones by any means. Then in the second part they didn't feature at all. Nor the american guy. Thought he was going to be shit but turned out to be one of the more believable characters. Not particularly difficult a challenge to be fair. The brilliance of the whole blinded thing is that they're essentially the zombies of DOTT but at the same time just blind humans caught up in mob mentality. They almost got it down in this version. Then they disappeared. Not good. uuuuuummmm. The script and dialogue weren't good. The performances were bad. The action was nothing but what we've seen a hundred times before. The two children characters in the second part were ridiculous. There was absolutely no successful creation of mood, tension, fear, emotional connection or the vital impending danger. The cinematography was as conservative as possible. Except when it makes no sense. There's one bit in part two where Eddie Izzard's main baddie character arrives at the goodie's dad's house where they're all hiding and it's all filmed showing only his feet and trouser bottoms. I didn't understand this at all as it was immediately clear it was him. He wasn't a new character and we knew who it was just by his shoes. No mystery so why not just show his whole fucking body? I'd like to think I could do a better job. And where did all the guns come from? Every policeman seems to have a pistol on them. It's set in Britain. I don't really know what happened at the end. Offer me a job.

Avatar

can fuck off if it thinks I'm watching it.

Trailer Project

I'm currently working with Rich to produce a 30 second trailer for a game concept we have created. Ours is being done mainly in Maya with elements of hand drawn animation, if all goes to plan. [Just seen on the news that a British man was executed in China for drug trafficking heehee I couldn't care less why is this news?] I really like working in Maya. I got a cracked version of 2009 on my laptop [lol dead soldiers on the news] but for some reason it only shows half the workspace, the rest is just plain grey, any help on resolving this would be much appreciated. I've got it running properly on my home PC over Christmas despite it taking about half an hour to open.
Well this blog has already become incredibly boring. Anyway our game has been developed from a basic idea I had at GameCity Squared and has turned out to be quite hard to explain [man shoots daughter :)] concisely but basically it's an action adventure game about a man called Melvin who can turn into a white mouse and his magical tiger Sihir. I hope it turns out well and does itself justice . Maybe I'll do some updates on here. Offer me a job when I finish uni, that's why I'm writing this after all.