Final Cut FMV

Here's our trailer. Unfortunately compressed rather a fucking lot due to things. Mainly ones I don't understand.
Pretty pleased with it. Music is 'Police in Helicopter' by Congo Natty and Topcat.
So the game idea:
Melvin is a mouse that can turn into an old man. He lives in a big ol' house on top of a huge indestructable pole with only his magical flying pet tiger Sihir for company. When he got Sihir, Melvin mistakenly thought he was a Sumatran tiger so gave him an Indonesian name, he is in fact a Bengal tiger.
Melvin never leaves his home, not because he likes being lonely but because he likes being human, which he can only do in his house.
One day Melvin hears some very loud and irritating sawing coming from below his house. He discovers the noise is coming from a mysterious hooded figure sawing at the base of his pole.
Quite content with his lonliness Melvin is rather annoyed, as you would be, at both the noise and the Hooded Figure's apparent intentions of getting him to come down. Nevertheless he decides to ignore the fruitless sawing (the pole is indestructable remember), mainly by playing his favourite jungle music really loud to drown out the noise, and carry on writing his diaries as normal. That is until He realises Hooded Figure has hired some animal minions to go out into the world to retrieve a set of fabled 'supersaws' which will cut through Melvin's indestructable pole like, well like a normal pole.
So now it's up to Melvin to travel, as a mouse, with Sihir across the world in an attempt to find the supersaws before Hooded Figure's minions so he can live out the rest of his life as a happy recluse.
We haven't thought about the Hooded Figure's identity too much as it wasn't particularly relevant to the trailer and maybe if there was a game it wouldn't even need to be revealed. However we had an idea that it was a woman who, when she was little and before Melvin found the house that enabled him to transform into a human, used to go adventures with him. She is trying to get Melvin down as she doesn't like him be alone and, more importantly, thinks that life as a human isn't all it's cracked up to be, especially when you're lonely.
So, as I've mentioned before, depending on your point of view, the game's win and lose scenarios' roles are potentially reversed. The game over screen will be Hooded Figure successfully getting Melvin out of the house and completion will be him living out his life as a lonely human. I think this could be an interesting take on games' outcome scenario and how the interactive elements of the medium could affect play and story. BYE.

Crit

Crit went ok. Some problems with the file caused some pixelation, distortion etc so some bits looked crappy.
Main point was the unecessary buttercup explosion at the end. And maybe an establishing shot of the house at the start, although that was supposed to be a surprise at the reveal. Also we could have gone for a lighter more varied palette to be more exciting and help amplify the vivid world in which the game is set.
Video up soon. BYE.

...chain round dem neck and gold chops pon dem wrists...

Finished our game trailer and handed it in today. We're both really happy with how it turned out.
Having seen the animations so much they start to show their flaws but I think our audio brings it back up. Very happy with the pacing and flow of the FMV and I think in some places it feels like a proper trailer.
Was playing Infamous earlier on the PS3 and some of the animations were dire, maybe on the same levels as ours but this is a major current gen title we're talking about.
Will post our video tomorrow after the critique and probably some explanation of the story and characters, hope it goes down well.
Need to cut my hair, haven't done it since before christmas and it's over a centimetre long, with mixed responses from the public. BYE.

Geoffrey the Gardener

Geoffrey is a gardener who just loves picking buttercups. One day he decides to embark on a buttercup picking marathon.

Geoffrey will appear in the loading screens picking his way across a field full of buttercups. When he picks the last one though, the sky explodes (as shown unposed below).

The original storyboard.

Sihir

Sihir is Melvin's loyal friend and pet magical bengal tiger. He can fly and farts rainbows. Sihir is one of the playable characters, the other being Mouse Melvin. Getting there now :) Looking at how long we've got left we've cut down the number of textured tiger heads from four to two plus one simply textured head for the puzzle scene where Sihir is turned to stone.

Sihir's gonna fuck you up bad. Especially if you're a pelican.

RAAAAARRR!!!!

The title feature: Melvin's Lonely Home

It's all alone on top of a big indestructable pole.

Sihir the tiger (melvin's pet)

Just got to do the heads now. We have four different heads for Sihir that we will alternate to show mood rather than rigging it. I can't remember why off the top of my head but there was definitely some justification for doing it that way. Maybe tiger heads are hard to rig...

The top of Sihir's back doesn't line up exactly but it's good enough.

Oh yeah and I did this when I was fucking around on photoshop during the snow.

Hmmmmm...

Looking at Rich's puzzle scene I started wondering why Melvin never turns human on his adventures, so I thought perhaps he can only turn back into a human when he's in the house. That would explain why he wants to stay at home and why he's never human when he leaves.

I also just realised that our game's win condition is the bad ending and the lose condition is the good. Crazy.

At some point I will explain the game's story to hopefully tie all this information into making sense.

Meet Melvin...

Some weird shadow behind his protruding brow.

About to kick some ass.

Fix Up, Look Sharp.

Just got to texture his head now.

Skanky old man hands.

FUCKING FINALLY...

A real character. Untextured Human Melvin.

Looking a bit mousy you could say. Heehee! Job? Go away then.

Had the painters in :P

Put some wallpaper up. It's a bit dark but you get the picture. Also laid down a smart victorian rug but you can't really see that. May need to mess around with the lighting a bit more. Maybe place a dull ambient light without shadows just to add a tad more light.

And some lovely wood panelling.

Just the chair now!

Lighting Melvin's room

With a Directional light pointing through the windows and an elongated Area light facing down into the room from the ceiling.

There wasn't enough light on the assets at the end of the table, especially the front of the radio, so I added another small Area light from the chair facing down the table towards the door.

It took a while and a lot of tinkering to get the balance right but I think this looks good. Hopefully a backdrop behind the radio will get the buttons on top to stand out more, if we decide to use this version of it.

Just need to do the chair and walls now and replace the pen with the textured version and the scene is ready to go.

More Maya? You're spoiling us Ollie!

My version of Melvin's boombox.

Some lovely victorian decor.

Watching The Innocents on Film4 now. Creepy as fuck.

Even more Maya

Melvin's Book.

Melvin's glossy table

Gorilla

Textured Gorilla minion. He's a silverback that's why the back half is white.

Still got a lot to do.

Check out my partner Rich's blog to see more of the production:

http://richardcgd.blogspot.com/

Thought I'd better post some work today...

So here's the textured hedgehog (gorilla's on his way). It's a bit rough but he's quite far away and moving and only shown for a few seconds.

Bit more Maya

The poisonous coral snake minion, that will be riding the pelican, in a very unsnakey pose. Not to be confused with the harmless king/milk snake. You can tell by the arrangement of their stripes.

The pole supporting Melvin's house that Hooded Figure is trying to saw through.

Melvin's all important fountain pen.

Some textured Maya stuff (more on the way)

Inside the robot baddie.

Hooded figure with its big saw.

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.