Sketch book shot

Have a sketchbook drawing cause I haven't been posting anything else.

I should remedy that.... I HAVE been working, I swear!

Certifiable

So this happened!

Fancy Walking

Homework assignment. Simple walk cycle with a bit of personality. Nothing fancy, except for Stewart who is quite dapper indeed.

Avatar Style!

So I'm deciding on visuals for my game. I've got a fair bit of stuff done, but the character has been a problem. First pass was too minecraft-y and I wanted a pixelly style, but not something so similar.

So I looked up some pixel art online and came up with this!

This is Aang from A:TLA done for Simple CG's TV character challenge!

This will also very likely end up being the style of model I end up using in my final game.

Call and Response – Thoughts on Fun

­In making my first game I’ve noticed that building mechanics around the idea of “Call and Response” to be something that greatly improves the fun of a game, and that such call and response ideology is far too rare in game design these days. To explain what I mean I’m going to look at a few other art forms first. In music, a particular instrument will play a melody and another set of instruments will respond with a particular phrase. In dance, the drums might play a particular rhythm cueing the dancer to begin a particular movement. These are called, you guessed it, calls and responses. They serve as a sort of dialog between the pieces of a performance, and this interaction makes that performance much more interesting to watch.

This call and response mechanic applies directly into the world of games as well, and not only does it apply, it’s actually a favorable outcome. Chess is a game that’s been around for a very long time and for a very simple reason. As each player moves a piece, the other player must respond directly by moving a piece that counters the previous motion. One player calls, the other responds.

Magic: The Gathering, a more contemporary example, is the same way. The game is built around building a deck of cards with an assortment of calls and responses. Each turn is setup to allow each player to call and then respond to every move made. Say I draw a card. In response to my draw, you cast a spell that makes me discard and lose life. I respond by countering your spell. You respond by sacrificing a creature to remove the spell from the stack. I respond by hitting your creature with direct damage, etc, etc, etc. Call, respond, call, respond. Magic decks are built around the idea of outsmarting your opponents by including calls to which they can’t respond, but the fun in the game comes, not from deck building, but in the playing the game and actually testing those calls and responses. Some people may derive more joy from the deck building, but I guarantee that without ever having seen the flow of the full game, they would not enjoy building a deck on its own.

What I’ve noticed is that this carries over into video game design as well, but it’s not something taken advantage of as often as it could be. In video games most devs give you a single call. You’re able to call damage down onto your opponents. You can shoot fireballs or rockets or bullets or call the hand of God down to smite your opponents, but regardless of the form it takes these are all the same call. I’ve noticed that top-down games like Magicka, League of Legends, or Diablo all have a much greater variety of call and response available to them. You can summon walls to block your opponents, put them to sleep, leap forward to catch them with your sword, or summon illusions to confuse their responses. The best game of this ilk, in my opinion, is NoX. NoX is a game built around a wide assortment of calls and responses. You could shoot fireballs at your opponents, yes, but you could also just make a wall of fire in front of them. Or just a wall. Or you could redirect their fireball back at them. Or just counter their spellcasting. Or give yourself protection from fire damage. Or swap location with the caster just as their  fireball is approaching. Or just make yourself invincible for the duration of the spell’s hit. The volume of calls and responses available in NoX was astounding.

 So why do so few games do that? Why don’t we see more shooter games with the ability to make walls to block our opponents’ path? And then to lay explosives to knock those walls down? Why don’t we see more abilities in games like Skyrim that let us switch locations with an opponent or redirect an incoming attack? Why don’t we see more arcade racing titles with the ability to set your opponent back to a previous point on the track, or yourself forward on the track? Why are almost all games made today made with only a small handful of calls and almost no responses? Why do games go out of their way to include features like being able to open doors in new and creative ways, yet leave their combat systems out in the cold?

Almost all games are built around the idea of fighting an opponent, yet almost none of them allow you to approach this any way other than mindlessly spraying them with bullets.

Why?!

Well the answer is obvious enough, it’s because it’s difficult. It’s much easier to control balance in a game where there’s only one call and one response. But we must not settle for this. We must not be content with a song only played by one instrument. We must not accept a dance with only one combination of steps. We must call for more options in our games, we must call for more choice in how we approach our problems.

Dutch Turn Table

A little bit of simpleCG food for a themed event a friend is running over at simplecg.tumblr.com!

Nothing to write home about, but it does mark the first work I've done since school let out. Based on the old dutch master still life paintings.

And So It Begins

With this post I take my first step down the path of Game Development!

The following is a link to the address on my website where my game is being hosted. The subsequent two links are a simple list of controls and a zip file containing the JoyToKey software and the control files that I set up to use for a PS4 and Xbox360 controller.

This is a 2 Player game, so bring a friend!

The Game

The Controls

JoyToKey
(With premade controller mapping, and jpegs to explain them)


And if you prefer, here's a link to the JoyToKey page though I don't like their website's ads, they pretend to be download links.

At any rate, give this a play through, and let me know what you think about it! I'll be working on this over the course of the next year to refine it and make it as amazing as possible!

Also keep in mind that this is a really rough version of the game and is in need of several adjustments that I discovered through a playtest session I did a few weeks ago. I'm aware of several issues, but if you feel the need to offer some more feedback, I would love to have it!

Second Year Film

Gaze in wonder at how awful a film-maker I am!

This film was made entirely by myself in a small army of software. The body rigging was done with Advanced Skeleton, but the rest of the film is entirely hand-made by me (unless specified otherwise in the credits. I have a wonderful team responsible for the sound).

Alright, so this year I decided to experiment in a number of ways. I tried to make a film using the same processes that I would use to make a game. There are no post-effects in this film, it's all directly out of Maya. I also tried to keep things low-poly as if they were actually going to be included in a game. Even the lighting is simple enough that it could probably work in-engine with a few adjustments.

Unfortunately, this ended up making the film look really sloppy and I wasn't able to devote enough time to the animation to really sell this as a film. The result is a film I'm largely not satisfied with, but it was an experiment so you live and you learn.

And I've lived and learned that I should just make games and skip the films thing. So next year I'll be doing exactly that. Expect a slew of blog posts about my process in making said game to start appearing in the very near future, including a playable web demo of the earliest possible stage of said game within the next couple of days.

Music by Kerri Shak: https://soundcloud.com/kerri-shak
Sound Design by Veronica Mullins: http://www.veronicasounddesign.com

Making Game Thoughts

So I feel I’m at a good point to start in on that “Explanation” portion of my blog’s banner (although I think "rambling" would be more accurate for this first post). A bunch of people have been coming to me asking questions about video games and how they’re approached. I’m starting up my project for next year, and it’s going to be a video game rather than a film, and since I’m starting up on that and doing a ton of research on game design, I thought I would share some thoughts.

CalArts isn’t exactly known for its video games, but it IS known very well for its stories. CalArts students are well known for our clever approaches to story, and having been around the school for a couple of years I’ve seen a lot of those being told. Those have all been films, however. I will be attempting to focus that CalArts creative energy into a slightly different direction.

The Process

As I’m easing into production of my game, I’m realizing quickly just how different films and video games are at very fundamental levels. In a film you tell a story based on cinematic angles chosen to best convey specific thoughts, feelings, or ideas. You draw a series of images based on a vast array of rules and such that have been proven to work over years and years of trial and error. Video games have only really been around since the 80s (yes, I know that games started more in the 50s and 60s, but things didn’t get really serious until the 80s), so there aren’t a whole heck of a lot of firm rules about their creation, and even fewer about telling stories in games since so few people have really gotten that right.

Beyond that, the fundamental building blocks of story in a game are very different from in a film. In a film you see the main character and the story that unfolds around them all taking place in choreographed scenes. The camera tags along with the protagonist or whatever combination of cohorts best suit the telling of the story, and you get a very linear narrative played out in front of you. In games, the approach is entirely different, the main character isn’t someone you will ever meet or know anything about and yet you somehow have to manage to convince them to play out your story exactly the way you think is best.

The way you do that is with clever design tricks and gameplay mechanics. When you’re telling a story in a film, particularly an animated film, you start off the process with a series of drawings called story boards. These story boards convey the camera angles you want to use to best showcase the actions and reactions taking place on the screen. The problem is that video games don’t always use cameras that show anything other than the back or top of a character’s head. In fact, the few times that games do try to be cinematic, they end up being watered down crap. There are exceptions, of course, games like Dishonored, Shadow of the Colossus, Half Life2, and many many others all use cinematic staging to make particularly notable scenes really pop out at the player, but they do so in extreme moderation. The point is, you can’t just set up a series of camera placements and expect a game to be playable from those angles, so you have to approach things a little differently.

Telling the Story

The key concept you have to understand in telling a video game story, to my mind, is the level design. Good level design is like good cinematic staging in that it will present the information most important to your game in the most efficient possible way. Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time is a particular favorite of mine when it comes to story-telling, because its level design conveys everything you need to know about what the character is feeling without that character ever once having to open his mouth to speak. When you’re first placed in a dungeon as a child, the environment is frightening. The walls are covered with spiders and there are many barriers you have to break down in order to find the strength to keep going. Once you DO make it through that dungeon you’re thrust out into the world, and it’s HUGE! An enormous expanse of open field awaits you outside of Kokiri Forest. Eventually you go through a few dungeons and you’re confronted with the master sword. Picking it up, you awake as an adult into a confusing world that seems to have fallen apart in the blink of an eye. The first thing you see is horrifying group of walking, screeching corpses shambling through castle town, further reinforcing that horror. The first dungeon you experience as an adult is a twisted mockery of the tranquil forest it resides within, a building filled with disorienting passageways, confusing block puzzles, and the literal ghosts of the past haunting you. The final boss of that dungeon is even a twisted memory of the person who did all of this to you!

What Ocarina of Time does best is telling you the story by allowing you to experience it. Rather than trying to convey the main character’s feelings by stating them in words, as a book would do, or with acting as a film would do, Nintendo decides to cause the player to feel those emotions instead, effectively making the player at home an avatar of Link rather than the other way around. This is a type of story-telling that is distinctly video game from the ground up, and it’s something I've been trying to keep in mind as I go through the process of writing my game.

As I worked on my film this year, my teachers were very adamant about making “beat boards” or drawings that represented the major plot points that happen within the story. These don’t need to be the exact shots you want to eventually use, but they should convey the same sorts of information, just in a much more condensed way. Well in video games you don’t go through the process of story boarding at all, so you have to approach the “beat boards” with even more emphasis (though drawing them is entirely optional in this case). What are the major events that happen to your character? How do they react to these events on an emotional level? Why? These questions will help you tie these things into your level design and will cause your player to feel more attached to your character.

Pacing

Another difference is the pacing of the story being told. In a film your story moves in a slow arc progressing from the initial stages of laying out the plot of the film, and eventually leading to a climax as those events all come to a boiling point. This is the same story structure as is found in books or plays, so it’s a formula known very well. In games you have a similar overall pacing arc to deal with, but you have another set of arcs you have to include as well. In a game your player is going to be involved for a very long time. Most movies are 2 hours long, most games approach closer to 40. In order to keep attention for that long, you have to set up a series of smaller climactic events that lead up to the major conflict of the story. In many games, these arcs take the form of dungeons and boss battles. In a lot of recent games, people have been questioning the need for boss battles. In Deus Ex: Human Revolution, you are given the ability to craft a character whose talents are suited to whatever among a series of skills you feel is most important. Personally, I made my character excellent at sneaking around undetected and setting off explosives when things fell apart. Unfortunately, the makers of this game didn’t take that into account and they forced us into boss battles against foes balanced to take down combat-oriented characters. For squishy characters like the one I built, we had a very difficult time of things indeed. In this game, the bosses felt unnecessary to the overall flow, and it would have been better served by another form of climax. Because of games like this, players have started to question those boss battles and demand other approaches to pacing. Games like Dark Souls solve this problem by putting bosses intermittently throughout a level. In some levels you find the boss at the very end, in a very traditional place for a boss to pop up and slaughter you. In other places, however, you’ll turn a random corner and be confronted with a demonic knight glowing with red energy. Games like Mercenary Kings solve the pacing issue by giving the player a series of tasks instead of specific levels. As you go through the game, you revisit the same level many times, but each time you’re approaching it for a very different reason. Some times that reason is a boss battle, but other times it’s just to collect some materials you need, or shut down a power station, or any number of other tasks.

Each of these approaches places a different sort of arc inside of the larger one defining the story as a whole. They act sort of like the chapters in a book, but usually with a more distinct rising action, climax, and resolution. There are as many ways of approaching pacing in a game as there are stories to tell, and so long as it works out in the end you’re free to do as you wish. You cling loosely to the arc you find in a film or book, but the extended time investment required to play a game requires that you shake things up a bit.

The End

Basically, what I’m discovering through the process of writing my story and generally thinking through the first parts of making a game is that while there are a lot of similarities between video games and film, the approaches you take towards those similar processes are worlds different. It’ll be interesting to see if I manage to pull this off despite a complete lack of formal education directly related to game design.

Demo Reel Update!

Updated my demo reel in preparation for the CalArts portfolio day.

You should hire me. Yes. You.

The Bug King!

This is a model based on a concept painting by the CreatureBox design studio. I freaking worship at those guys' altar, and when I saw this character I just HAD to sculpt him! HE'S SO SQUISHY!

Here's the original concept painting that I yanked directly from their facebook page (hopefully they don't mind!)

The model was first done in Maya and then brought into ZBrush for detail, and I was considering baking it back down, but decided that it was too much work for right now and left it at the high poly stage. I'm responsible for the modeling, painting, and lighting of this thing.

Someone Else's Animation!

This week, I blatantly steal someone else's work and claim it for my own!

This was 100% my idea and my animation and is definitely not in any way copied from this:

http://paulrobertson.mechafetus.com/flipkick.gif

which was definitely not done by Paul Robertson for a Gravity Falls thing.

Ain't Scared

Just a lip sync test done in 3D Animation class. Nothing particularly note worthy here.

Jump! Jump! Jump!

Just a jump animation test. Done in like 30 minutes or so. Maybe an hour with refinement.

Progress test 2

So through the winter break I decided to do another progress test to try and see where I could go with a more complex character model and texture for my portfolio.

This started off as a World of Warcraft character design since they're running a contest, but I realized that this doesn't exactly suit their style, so I didn't bother sticking to that.

Anyway, enjoy my robotic archmage!

~8k tris
1x 1024 texture for the mage
1x 512 texture for the staff and stand
 Hand-painted
No lighting

And a turn table render in video form: