Off To London!

Well tomorrow I'm going to London to the 'Game On' exhibition at the Science Museum and later in the evening, I will be listening to Professor Mark Griffiths from Nottingham Trent University talking about the phychology of interactive technology and video games today.

I'm hoping once I've seen the presentation, I can really start to kick in in terms of work for my dissertation (as I haven't done so much recently because I've been working on preparing my piece ready for animating after christmas).

Lip Sync Test With My Spade

This is the first time I've had a go at lip syncing so I rendered it and here are the results:



Unfortunately, it's lost alot of quality with the upload but you get the idea!

Renders

I figured it was about time I put up some renders of characters and scenes I have been working on this past week. They have been rendered with the Brazil renderer, and after playing with afew settings and sorting out the lights, I have to say, I'm pretty impressed! Check them out:

Inspiration

Well after some sketches of ideas for my main character (the spade) I decided I wanted to give it a set of eyes (to give it more expression), and I wanted to use it's handle as a mouth.

I actually remembered a game I played on the Nintendo 64 called Conker's Bad Fur Day, which is where the inspiration for my chosen character has come from. In the game there are hundreds of inanimate objects that are brought to life simply by giving them a way to speak and slapping on a set of goofy cartoon eyes. Here are a couple of pictures of the pitch fork that immediately sprung to mind when I was designing my character:

Spades Gallore

Ok, this was probably abit OTT but after a quick look at spades (to get a rough idea of what to sketch for my main character), I found there were alot more types than I realised?!

My First Idea

After discussing my initial ideas so far with my dad, we both started to come up with improved versions in a mini brainstorming session and actually came up with a half decent idea!

On the Dad Rocks album I bought my dad for his birthday there is a song by Deep Purple called Highway Star. (Click here for all the lyrics.)

First Verse:
Nobody gonna take my car
Im gonna race it to the ground
Nobody gonna beat my car
Its gonna break the speed of sound
Oooh its a killing machine
Its got everything
Like a driving power big fat tyres
And everything

After coming up with various scenarios for animations based on my escapism theme, we decided that one was by far the best:

The idea was that a spade in a toolshed could start singing this song, but his 'car' is the wheelbarrow in the shed, and his 'girl' (who features later in the song), is a garden fork. We thought it would be really funny to explore this idea as a lighthearted take on my theme. The spade (in essence) would be using his dreams as a form of escapism.

In instrumentals I was thinking I could even have the dream sequences when the spade is driving his girl around on an american highway or something!

This idea from a technical point of view would be a good one as I have not explored lip-syncing at all and it would be a useful still to get to grips with. Recently, I have also got my hands on the Brazil renderer for 3DS Max, and I really want to have a play with it, so I will post up some renders of character ideas and maybe scenes soon :D

Knick Knack

One of Pixar's earliest animations about a snowman character attempting to escape from his snowglass cage:

What are we escaping from? - EXTRACT

Escapism
By Yi-Fu Tuan

Creating our own reality is part of human experience. Escapism is a certainty. But what are we escaping from? What are we escaping to? A cultural geographer, Yi-Fu Tuan turns his surprise enjoyment of his own visit to Disneyland into a profound discussion of escapism and reality, imagination-driven culture, and heaven and hell.

A product of eastern and western cultures, Tuan weaves subtle and intricate stories that spiral into captivating portraits of life, humans, culture, and landscape. He takes advantage of the perspectives of cultural geography, seeing escapism as the outcome of the transformative nature of the interface between the natural and the manmade. Tuan believes that “a human being is an animal who is congenitally indisposed to accept reality as it is,” that humans “see” what is not there.

In his early chapters “Earth,” “Animality,” and “People,”Tuan discusses culture as escape from nature and escape into nature as culture and the use of imagination, language, and the culturally created landscape to escape the essence of being animal and feeling disconnected.Whether of the Chinese who saw the earth and heavens as orderly and their emperor as the ultimate mediator, or of the insecure Aztecs who practiced human sacrifice, or of Renaissance princes who created a theatrical alternative to heaven, “high culture” is escape from “bondage to earth.” Yet imagination can give us both “hell” and “heaven.”

In his final two chapters, Tuan looks at imagination’s distortions, from haunted and satanic worlds, children’s destructiveness, the caste system, Nazi Germany, and sadomasochism, to imagination’s more uplifting, pleasurable, and necessary engagements of enchantment and fantasy: dance, song, and pictures. Is heaven the great escape? Tuan’s reluctance to answer engages us in more escapist activity.

Both a spiritual and a scientific examination of our existence, Escapism encourages us to think about that which is quintessentially us. Tuan’s intimate experience with and understanding of multiple cultures creates a picture that draws from the breadth of history, exemplifying the oneness of the experiences. Exploring our escape from nature into culture simultaneously celebrates and cautions our humanity.

Review by L. Elizabeth Wellman

Source: Field Notes - Volume 1, Issue 1, Spring 2005

Fly Guy

After looking around on the web for animations that were either escapist or involve escapsim in some way, I found (surprisingly) that there weren't many! One interactive animation I found was Fly Guy. It is really basic, but surprisingly fun and has a very 'escapist' feel.

Escaping with YouTube

Here are some links to animations that involved escaping on YouTube:

Madagascar Penguins - Cool HP Advert

The Great Escape - Another penguin animation!

Escape - For some reason this keeps repeating the same bit of animaiton?

Agent Hugo - Escape Blooper (I don't actually like this... the animation isn't quite right).

Escape From Monkey Island Intro - Ok, this isnt 'escaping' as such, but its a good intro and a great game!

Escape 3D - This is a good little animation of a guy trying to get out of a room.

The Escape - Not an animation, but probably one of the most elaborate chase and escape sequences ever!!

Flying High - The description was '3d Animation clip of a fantasy escape story, a rocking horse dreams of flying and goes off his rocker'... this could have been exactly what I was after (could being the key word lol)

Flipbook Escape - This flipbook animation is amazing!!

And lastly this one for the amusement factor (Mario and Luigi 'escape' into the world of GTA):

Forming Ideas For My Piece

In terms of my dissertation, I seem to be on the right track. I have a topic, plan, and quite afew resources to look at and explore. While I was on holiday I started to think about projects I could do for my main piece.

Going right back to the beginning when I was told it is usually easier if your piece and dissertation are related, I tried to relate any ideas I had to Escapism.

My Initial Idea
I actually thought about one of my initial ideas of creating animation from sound or a soundtrack. I thought maybe I could do this in a light hearted way based on Escapism or Escaping. I went on a *cough* perfectly legal *cough* music hunt to see what kind of tracks I could find to base my animation on. Here's what I found:

- The Great Escape (Theme Tune)
- I Wanna Get Out Of This Place - The Animals (Rock and Roll)
- Escape - Hoobastank (Rock)
- The Great Escape - We Are Scientists (Punk/Modern Rock)
- The Great Escape - Boys Like Girls (Punk/Modern Rock)
- Escape - Enrique Iglesias (Cheese)
- Be My Escape - Relient K (Christian Pop/Punk)

I think we can safely say they got progressivly worse lol! I might be able to use them though? We'll see!

In terms of the animation its self, I was thinking of an animal trying to escape from a cage or something along those lines. Pixars - Knick Knack is a good animation for me to look at ;)

Game On

Stuart Nolan (one of my tutors) sent me an email while I was away about Game On, an event at the London Science Museum being held on the 21 October 2006 til 25 February 2007.

"Explore the history, technology and culture of computer games in this new special exhibition. From the PDP-1 of the 1960s to the latest consoles, Game On examines the technologies that have revolutionised the gaming world. See the ten most influential consoles of all time, learn about the design process behind games such as Tomb Raider, investigate the relationship between films and gaming and play over 100 games including classics Space Invaders and Super Mario Brothers!"

I looked at the special events that were running throughout the event and one stood out that could be very useful:

"28 November, 19.00-20.00

Gaming in Mind
Professor Mark Griffiths, Nottingham Trent University
Do video games represent a new way to learn and interact in our increasingly digital world? Or do they make us more violent and addicted to the gaming buzz? Find out about the psychology of interactive technology and video games today with Professor Mark Griffiths."

I will do my best to get to this as Professor Mark Griffiths will be talking about quite a few of the issues I want to address in the dissertation. I have also found his email and will probably contact him in the near future for an interview (if possible) when I have a set of questions I can chat to him about.

I'm Back!

Well I got back yesterday and the holiday was great! ...I suppose I'd best get back to work now :P

I read the essay on Escapism and Video Gaming and it's quite useful in the sense that it has given me an idea of how I could structure mine. Some of the issues he has covered are quite good and the way he has split up his sections will is handy. He has also used some good references that I can also look into. Unfortunately, I can't help but feel like he has missed out huge chunks of information in areas where they should blatently be (e.g addiction in gaming doesn't even exist in the essay). He has also assumed quite alot to almost get the conclusion he wanted to write. It makes me wonder if he has missed out information on purpose so that the essay is written to give a pre-determined conclusion...

I don't want to write my essay in this fashion. I am hoping that through my findings I will have a positive conclusion to how escapism affects people, but if my findings blatently oppose this, I am not going to 'alter' them so that I get the conclusion I want.