Well since handing in my last project, on that day we were given a new one. A Big One!
Basically we are to create a 30 second FMV sequence that will advertise a game of our own design. Usually this is limited to 10,000 polygons and a few other restrictions but because the industry is getting harder to get into we have no limit apart from the 30 seconds. This means that we can work on anything we desire with no technical limitations either. We can produce the best work we can...and my god me and my partner in this project are trying!
Since Tuesday we have come up with our game idea and pretty much written a whole concept document and lots of drawings to accompy this document. We are today going to convert this concept document into a smaller pitch document and present our idea.
We have pretty much between us worked 8-10hours a day on this so far. I didnt work Saturday due to visit from my parents but after a few texts and phone calls with my partner I knew that he was working all day. Actually feels so good to work so much like this though, feels, professional maybe...
Just waiting for my partner to come over today now and finalize some things for tomorrows lecture. Hopefully start on the storyboarding today too.
Monday, 23 November 2009
Monday, 16 November 2009
Concept Complete!
Finally just burnt it all to CD and printed everything out for the final time.
Feels sooooooo good!
I cut the 8 pages down to 4 pages of text in the end, but after all the trimmings of contents and concept imagery it became 9 pages. Odd to think that the last 6 weeks hangs on 9 pieces of paper and a compact disc.
What im looking forward to know is presenting my presentation next Thursday, was ment to be last week but it was put back due to illness of tutor, and then afterwards relaxing for a weekend.
Its back to work after then but ill tackle that next Monday.
So for now, a hot shower, some loud music and then some gaming!
Feels sooooooo good!
I cut the 8 pages down to 4 pages of text in the end, but after all the trimmings of contents and concept imagery it became 9 pages. Odd to think that the last 6 weeks hangs on 9 pieces of paper and a compact disc.
What im looking forward to know is presenting my presentation next Thursday, was ment to be last week but it was put back due to illness of tutor, and then afterwards relaxing for a weekend.
Its back to work after then but ill tackle that next Monday.
So for now, a hot shower, some loud music and then some gaming!
Saturday, 14 November 2009
Concept Design Document
When im not awake writing this document, I seem to be dreaming about it. Problem is, ill have a good idea im my sleep but then forget about it in the morning (or midday, lets be honest) and then I spend ages trying to remember it before I get into my work again. GAH!
Ah well, im onto page 8 now of my document. Still just writing down blurtted sentances and paragraphs. Almost finished the first run through so to speak and then I just need to make my notes and stupidly constructed sentences into meaningful sense. Really enjoying it all though, its great to look back and think, god, I wrote all this...!
What is getting to me though is knowing when to rest, when to write and when to sleep really. Like last night I did shed loads of work and before I knew it, it was 3am. So I jumped into bed, watched an episode of house to get my mind clear of work and slept. Forgetting that it was 4am when I shut my eyes, my alarm went off at 10am and after pressing snooze a few times I realised midday had past...shit! But again though, I feel as long as im getting the work done at a good standard it shouldnt matter too much.
Going to eat now then continue typing. I noticed that I press "Ctrl + S" so much to save that my S button is starting to rub down. Heh, looking at a new keyboard for xmas maybe anyways.
Ah well, im onto page 8 now of my document. Still just writing down blurtted sentances and paragraphs. Almost finished the first run through so to speak and then I just need to make my notes and stupidly constructed sentences into meaningful sense. Really enjoying it all though, its great to look back and think, god, I wrote all this...!
What is getting to me though is knowing when to rest, when to write and when to sleep really. Like last night I did shed loads of work and before I knew it, it was 3am. So I jumped into bed, watched an episode of house to get my mind clear of work and slept. Forgetting that it was 4am when I shut my eyes, my alarm went off at 10am and after pressing snooze a few times I realised midday had past...shit! But again though, I feel as long as im getting the work done at a good standard it shouldnt matter too much.
Going to eat now then continue typing. I noticed that I press "Ctrl + S" so much to save that my S button is starting to rub down. Heh, looking at a new keyboard for xmas maybe anyways.
Monday, 9 November 2009
Baudrillard, and how to offend me...
For my GAS presentation in a few days time I have been researching Baudrillard who to sum up was a "one of the most famous and controversail writers on postmodernism" (to quote "Jean Baudrillard" by Richard J. Lane). I found an amazing passage on the "Hyperreal" that I thought I would share with you all.
"Baudrillard argues that there are three levels of simulation, where the first level is an obvious copy of the reality and the second level is a copy so good that it blurs the boundaries between reality and representation. The third level is one that produces a reality of its own without being based upon any particular bit of the real world."
It continues to explain deeper into it all but I thought that one piece alone was a brilliant passage. Im talking about the 2nd level a lot in my presentation.
Anyways, Richard J. Lane, the author of the book continues a while afterwards to explain more about everything and says something that at first I found funny but then thought, shit, thats just summed me up. Here is what he says:
"An example of "absolute" speed is the contemporary publie-road "sports car", which actually goes slower than, or at the same speed as, a turbo-charged family saloon; the family of the saloon looks like the slower of the two and would never be owned by someone who wants to be indentified as "living in the fast lane".
I have a "sports car"! Ok so it is a sporty looking hatchback but still, it looks great and it does actually look slightly quicker then it goes I think but its like, he just summed me up! Heh ah well.
I think people who are interested in Hyperreality and such things should look more into Baudrillard and his later writings. I say "later" because some of his early stuff is much more focused on Marxism and how he reworks it all.
Anyways, work to be done...
"Baudrillard argues that there are three levels of simulation, where the first level is an obvious copy of the reality and the second level is a copy so good that it blurs the boundaries between reality and representation. The third level is one that produces a reality of its own without being based upon any particular bit of the real world."
It continues to explain deeper into it all but I thought that one piece alone was a brilliant passage. Im talking about the 2nd level a lot in my presentation.
Anyways, Richard J. Lane, the author of the book continues a while afterwards to explain more about everything and says something that at first I found funny but then thought, shit, thats just summed me up. Here is what he says:
"An example of "absolute" speed is the contemporary publie-road "sports car", which actually goes slower than, or at the same speed as, a turbo-charged family saloon; the family of the saloon looks like the slower of the two and would never be owned by someone who wants to be indentified as "living in the fast lane".
I have a "sports car"! Ok so it is a sporty looking hatchback but still, it looks great and it does actually look slightly quicker then it goes I think but its like, he just summed me up! Heh ah well.
I think people who are interested in Hyperreality and such things should look more into Baudrillard and his later writings. I say "later" because some of his early stuff is much more focused on Marxism and how he reworks it all.
Anyways, work to be done...
Friday, 6 November 2009
Work Work
Yea I understand that I have hardly posted anything since my Windows 7 purchase but I have been working a lot on projects, been a bit ill and had my 22nd birthday.
Work has taken up a lot of my time. I have 3 things on the go at the moment. My Concept Document work, GAS (Games and Animation Studies) Presentation and GAS Essay.
The concept document has taken up most of my time though as we were asked to do a few high resolution renders to submit with the document. Now, im in no way the fastest digital painter and I get fustraited easy due to knowing what I want to see but not being able to produce it correctly. After a lot of time and effort, and thinking about the style (too much) I have finished my renders. Im 90% happy with them but I think its just lack of digital painting skill that is making the extra 10% illusive. The document itself im actually enjoying writing, going over, writing again etc etc. Its great to see how far I have come since beginning the course and how differently I now think.
The GAS presentation I have spent a lot of time thinking about due to having a very open subject. Basically we have been given the following statement and asked to present a 10minute presentation as a reply:
"In an increasingly digitised media environment, we are seeing greater and greater blurring between fantasy and reality, which impacts in complex ways on people’s everyday lives."
I have considered things such as HDTV and its effects such as "clearer and better pictures" to the fantasty of how facebook keeps people in contact but in reality its just text and pictures - no emotion. I have settled on an idea about pictures that advertise, more specifically though, pictures that advertise holiday locations and how they always look beautiful. In my presentation ill be talking about how photographers use camera tricks to imply this beauty (the "Golden Hour" for example). I will also be saying about how even if there is no tricks used, how the chances of seeing whats printed in glossy is small. (That doesnt sound quite right I know, its a work in progress but thats the drift of it all).
Im not going to talk about the essay at the moment though due to still looking at opinions to write upon.
So yea, better get back to work now... or maybe a game of Halo first...
Work has taken up a lot of my time. I have 3 things on the go at the moment. My Concept Document work, GAS (Games and Animation Studies) Presentation and GAS Essay.
The concept document has taken up most of my time though as we were asked to do a few high resolution renders to submit with the document. Now, im in no way the fastest digital painter and I get fustraited easy due to knowing what I want to see but not being able to produce it correctly. After a lot of time and effort, and thinking about the style (too much) I have finished my renders. Im 90% happy with them but I think its just lack of digital painting skill that is making the extra 10% illusive. The document itself im actually enjoying writing, going over, writing again etc etc. Its great to see how far I have come since beginning the course and how differently I now think.
The GAS presentation I have spent a lot of time thinking about due to having a very open subject. Basically we have been given the following statement and asked to present a 10minute presentation as a reply:
"In an increasingly digitised media environment, we are seeing greater and greater blurring between fantasy and reality, which impacts in complex ways on people’s everyday lives."
I have considered things such as HDTV and its effects such as "clearer and better pictures" to the fantasty of how facebook keeps people in contact but in reality its just text and pictures - no emotion. I have settled on an idea about pictures that advertise, more specifically though, pictures that advertise holiday locations and how they always look beautiful. In my presentation ill be talking about how photographers use camera tricks to imply this beauty (the "Golden Hour" for example). I will also be saying about how even if there is no tricks used, how the chances of seeing whats printed in glossy is small. (That doesnt sound quite right I know, its a work in progress but thats the drift of it all).
Im not going to talk about the essay at the moment though due to still looking at opinions to write upon.
So yea, better get back to work now... or maybe a game of Halo first...
Thursday, 29 October 2009
Sunday, 25 October 2009
Windows 7
I made a decison and I invested in Windows 7 Professional 2 days ago. Now, I am a Vista hater and an XP lover. So what are my thoughts? I love it! Ok, so it visually looks and feels like Vista that I hate so much but it just seems to work, and its very fast, faster then my performance in XP too.
I did have a few issues though. When I first installed it I used a newly formatted hard drive and disconnected my others. This ment I could still boot up on my XP drive if needed. When trying to install it though, it kept on asking for drivers for my DVD-RW drive which I didnt have. Now I have never been asked before for drivers for an optical drive upon an OS installation. I used my 2nd DVD drive which was also already connected up and it worked perfectly first time. The installation took about 15minutes....thats fast considering XP takes about 30minutes for me usually.
I started to play with Windows 7, installing updates, anti-virus, drivers etc and then I thought I would install something from DVD-Rom. This is where I started to loose my hair for the next few hours. My DVD-RW drive that gave me issues with the install process, after a few hours seemed not to be compatible with Windows 7. I knew it wasnt the drive or cables due to it working fine on XP when I booted it up to test. My other DVD drive doesnt like me at all, well it is about 9years old bless it, so that gave me issues too. It just doesnt like reading big DVDs.
I bought a new SATA DVD-RW drive the next day which I replaced both my drives with and suddenly my system came to life. Everything seems to be working (except games which ill explain in a sec) and working VERY fast. Photoshop, Maya and even office applications work and run smoothly and fast. Weird to think that just by changing my OS it would speed up my PC so much. I thought I would be hooked on the easy and cleaness of XP for years to come yet but I have been proved wrong.
Games. Well, this is where I have been having some issues. Games that I have bought recently like Wolfenstein work faultlessly, but older games like Age of Empires II seem to still have issues. I know that AoE2 hated Vista and it actually poped up on Vista saying "I cannot play on this OS" (not like that obviously but you understand). On Windows 7 it works but all the colours are distorted. A little research later I discovered that its due to the explorer.exe process of Windows 7 uses a colour process or something like that that AoE2 wants to use at the same time and the OS wins. Disable explorer.exe and it works fine. Im yet to try out many more games, Civilization 4 has my attention yet again and that seems to work fine at present. Ill blog back another time if I find any annoying games that refuse to work.
I keep saying that the speed of the OS is faster and I know its becuase I ran 32bit Xp and this is 64bit Windows 7 and its finally using my Quadcore 64bit CPU to its fullest and actually seeing my 4gb of RAM (when XP only sees 3gb, never understood that though...), but I didnt know it would be this good. The amount of applications now im downloading in 64bit versions is insane, 64bit iTunes doesnt crash at all when 32bit always did for me. I just want them to make 64bit Winamp then ill really be smiling, Winamp is my "Media-player love of my Life".
The XP mode im a little cofused about though. Basically its a virtual machine that runs XP on it. I have used VMs before with Linux and such on them and they work well but I have read that this VM doesnt allow XP to use my graphics card to its fullest nor my RAM...so ill have to investigate a little I think. Not really that bothered though as its not top of my list.
So overall, yes I had to buy a new DVD-RW drive to make Windows 7 work and yes for a small time there will be drivers and applications that probably will refuse to work and so forth but if this is the face of Windows to come, sign me up!
I did have a few issues though. When I first installed it I used a newly formatted hard drive and disconnected my others. This ment I could still boot up on my XP drive if needed. When trying to install it though, it kept on asking for drivers for my DVD-RW drive which I didnt have. Now I have never been asked before for drivers for an optical drive upon an OS installation. I used my 2nd DVD drive which was also already connected up and it worked perfectly first time. The installation took about 15minutes....thats fast considering XP takes about 30minutes for me usually.
I started to play with Windows 7, installing updates, anti-virus, drivers etc and then I thought I would install something from DVD-Rom. This is where I started to loose my hair for the next few hours. My DVD-RW drive that gave me issues with the install process, after a few hours seemed not to be compatible with Windows 7. I knew it wasnt the drive or cables due to it working fine on XP when I booted it up to test. My other DVD drive doesnt like me at all, well it is about 9years old bless it, so that gave me issues too. It just doesnt like reading big DVDs.
I bought a new SATA DVD-RW drive the next day which I replaced both my drives with and suddenly my system came to life. Everything seems to be working (except games which ill explain in a sec) and working VERY fast. Photoshop, Maya and even office applications work and run smoothly and fast. Weird to think that just by changing my OS it would speed up my PC so much. I thought I would be hooked on the easy and cleaness of XP for years to come yet but I have been proved wrong.
Games. Well, this is where I have been having some issues. Games that I have bought recently like Wolfenstein work faultlessly, but older games like Age of Empires II seem to still have issues. I know that AoE2 hated Vista and it actually poped up on Vista saying "I cannot play on this OS" (not like that obviously but you understand). On Windows 7 it works but all the colours are distorted. A little research later I discovered that its due to the explorer.exe process of Windows 7 uses a colour process or something like that that AoE2 wants to use at the same time and the OS wins. Disable explorer.exe and it works fine. Im yet to try out many more games, Civilization 4 has my attention yet again and that seems to work fine at present. Ill blog back another time if I find any annoying games that refuse to work.
I keep saying that the speed of the OS is faster and I know its becuase I ran 32bit Xp and this is 64bit Windows 7 and its finally using my Quadcore 64bit CPU to its fullest and actually seeing my 4gb of RAM (when XP only sees 3gb, never understood that though...), but I didnt know it would be this good. The amount of applications now im downloading in 64bit versions is insane, 64bit iTunes doesnt crash at all when 32bit always did for me. I just want them to make 64bit Winamp then ill really be smiling, Winamp is my "Media-player love of my Life".
The XP mode im a little cofused about though. Basically its a virtual machine that runs XP on it. I have used VMs before with Linux and such on them and they work well but I have read that this VM doesnt allow XP to use my graphics card to its fullest nor my RAM...so ill have to investigate a little I think. Not really that bothered though as its not top of my list.
So overall, yes I had to buy a new DVD-RW drive to make Windows 7 work and yes for a small time there will be drivers and applications that probably will refuse to work and so forth but if this is the face of Windows to come, sign me up!
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