Reading Response

Well, I realized after reading the first page or two that I had no knowledge of most of the references in the article, so I didn't know what was going on right from the start.  It wasn't until the 18th page that I sort of got what was going on.  Basically all these new narrative types using new media either critique pre-existing narrative forms and/or are meant to create their own realities instead of just representing reality, which is what current mainstream narrative forms do.  There is a lot of potential in this, but I think there needs to be more development of these forms before they really could make an impact.  

The one name I recognized in the article is Bill Viola, whom I was exposed to in my transmedia studio class last year.  From what I was told, he is considered one of the greatest video artists of all time.  From what I know about video art, I could believe it, because from merely a craftsmanship standpoint his work seems to be better than most others, since most video art looks like a giant mess of random, and dumb, shit.  His stuff, from the clips I remember then and the clips I'm looking at now seems like they could be impactful and may be cool to watch.  But, like the rest of the genre, there is a severe flaw, most of it doesn't make sense when you watch it.  Now, I think this is one of the points this article is trying to make, that these new forms of narrative are meant to defy the prexisting forms of narration, so, "of course they are going to be harder to follow".  But, there is a problem with that, generally, any piece of art that extends over a period of time is going to demand a reason for watching by the viewer.  If it doesn't make sense, then why the hell should people sit there and waste their valuable time watching something.  Watching something isn't fun for the sake of watching, people do things (for the most part) because they think what they're doing is going to be a benefit somehow either to themselves or to others.  Watching something that doesn't make any sense to the viewer means that they either can do two things, get nothing out their narrative experience, or try to understand and make the most of their experience.

Where does this lead?  Well, how do we get to the point where these new narrative systems actually thrive like the current mainstream narrative forms, as opposed to surviving through their small hardcore followings.  I don't believe the people making these new narrative works of art  have bad intentions or anything, but the truth is, while I don't believe the artists have bad intentions, I also believe that they think their artworks should be completely done on their own terms, without any respect to the viewer.  That's idiotic.  Just like how D.W. Griffith came up with various editing strategies and shot techniques that enabled viewers of Birth of a Nation and Intolerance to understand what was going on, ultimately leading to the state of Hollywood films today, people working in these new narrative forms have to do the same damn thing.  

Entertainment, which is what narrative forms fall under, has a function.  Just like a car or a table or a paperclip, entertainment does have a function.  Like how a car is used as transportation, but also has secondary functions such as showing social status, entertainment's primary function is to entertain and has secondary functions as well, like teaching a lesson or something.  Also, to create these items such as a car, a table, or a paperclip, you have to have specific ingredients put together in a certain way to make the thing work.  Entertainment obviously has a wider range of ingredients to work with and can end up with far different results, but there STILL IS a right and wrong way to do things. 

 Why the hell does somebody want to watch an excerpt from a film that is slowed down immensely to the point where the pre-existing narrative is gone, who cares about the new narratives that pop up?  It's not fun and it's lesson is not worth the time spent to experience it, therefore it is failed entertainment. Using these car, table, and paperclip analogies, it's no different than a carpenter making a table with thin balsa wood.  It fails it's job.  You can look into it if you want and try to find the positives out of it, but in reality, human beings do not live eternally, they certainly can spend their time more efficiently.  So if the people making these new narrative forms actually want their pieces interesting past the fact its a new experience/ spectacle, then you better make concessions to make it understandable, in whatever way that is possible.  The excuse that it's a "different experience" can only last for so long before it needs to stand on its own merit.

P.S.   This isn't attacking all the narrative forms found in the article, just the ones that seem to go against narrative conventions without  respect for the viewer. 

progress report

Well, rigging and weightmapping and all the stuff in this part of the animating process blows.

Currently between car 321 and 430 I'm in roughly the same spot in the animating process. Perhaps you can say I'm a little further in 321 because I HAD to start animating yesterday, but in an ideal world, I'd still be trying to figure out how to rig and weightmap.  I've tried a bunch of rigs and weightmap combinations, but they all suck.  Also, it seems as though no matter how many times I make new lightwave scene files and try to do everything correctly, when I re-open the files they always leave the mesh of my character in twisted mess.  It must have something to do with the bones and the weightmaps but I've yet to find answers to these problems.  I'm currently working on a new rig that I hope will turn out great, because there was a scene file provided with the tutorial so you can see the finished product and it seems to be awesome.  By de facto,  if the rig and weightmaps work properly I hope my scene files will end up working as well, but we'll see about that. And, hopefully I can finish this as soon as possible so I can move on!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

All Nighter before class post 1

Currently, I'm working on the hands.  I began to fix the sizing of them, but after a little inspection I realized how bad the underside of the fingers and palm were.  So, I re-worked the pinky, then pasted it in its own layer, split it in half, centered everything, mirrored it, and now have much better fingers.  

I'm beginning to get a little worried because I'm slowly finding that I want to re-do EVERY part of the model.  Before, I was just satisfied that I was able to make a model that when subpatched didn't have a million imperfections, but now I see past the glory and want to improve this piece of crap.  Ok, I'll post again later.

PIGMAN updated

k heres a little update for today so far... I'll probably be stopping soon but I thought it would be a good point to show the progress since the new head is now attached to the body... Viewing my character in layout makes me notice a bunch of flaws in the body, so I'll have to work on those next...

Pig ears

Ok here are the pig ears .... I'm almost done with the face, I still need to work on the shape of the mouth and chin, add eyelids, and then obviously attach the 2 halves together and smooth them out, but I honestly think that this guy is about as close to my vision of him as he will get. 

 This gets me excited since my approach to this character has been to learn and do whatever it takes to reach my vision, as opposed to skimping on things since I may not have known them yet.  I think this bodes well for the rest of my project, since this act of learning on the go can de-rail you because of the side-tracking and obstacles that always come up, but if you can manage it well, then it will exponentially benefit in the long run because of all the new things you can do. And, since I've seen that its possible for me, I think I can replicate this process over and over and hopefully have it get easier and easier.  

Ok, I'll do another post later, cya

Manning up

I said I was going to make a change for the better and pick up the pace and that's what I'm trying to do.  I'm working on my crap right now so when I end for the night I'll post what I have completed.  Currently I'm finishing up the modeling of the guys head, I'm adding the pig ears for his suit right now.  I'll post an image when it's done

10/7/08 update

Alright, well since last class, I basically reworked a lot of my guy because of what Josh and Andrew told me about the poly flow stuff.  My model's body was done following a pretty strict tutorial so I did not have many poly flow problems there, but I still moved things around to get the proportions a little better.  I followed an interesting tutorial that showed how to connect polygons more realistically in the form of real muscles.  It showed how to connect the pectoral to the deltoid the way they are in real life, which I did.  I'm not sure how to show that in the image though because I don't know how to show the wireframe so I guess I'll show you next time.  I still haven't done the feet yet because I might just make them boots, a.k.a. a lot quicker to model and animate.

The head was completely redone.  I didn't attach the new one to the body yet because I wanted to compare the two, the second one I feel has a ton more character, annnd the poly flow is much better.  This whole poly flow thing is pretty annoying because there is alot of deleting and connecting of new edges, which I'll surely forget they are supposed to happen.  I guess I'll have to keep using the tutorials until I get it.

I started to work on the storyboard now, but I started working on the final scenes first. The final scene involves the inside of the bad guy's flying ship, which I know for sure will be part of the animation, in case I end up cutting out my initial vision of a city for the beginning scenes, since going by how long its taking to model my character, I don't think I can model an entire city right now.  

I said that by today I'd have my model completely done and I'd be done with the storyboard, so I'm behind on my schedule, but I'm going to try to pick up the pace now so I'm starting to learn from my mistakes on this first attempt at essentially freelancing a project.  I think the key is to never let up,  never to think you have a day or two where you can ease up and not work on the project at all, because I'm starting to regret that time I've wasted.   I've been good the last few days, hopefully I can keep it up.......

MIKE

Pre Critique update

Ok, so this is what I got for our critique today.... I have a model of my super hero that is not quite 100% finished, but it is pretty close and actually looks like it may have potential to be good. I hope having a model is good enough for the critique??? I've been behind because of my indecisiveness on my initial idea so I'm not sure if I'm at the right pace yet, but I can assure everyone else I spent a pretty damn good amount of time making the model since I wanted it to be good and had never gotten this far on a human model before.  

I have a general idea for the story but I have not had time to make a storyboard yet, that will be for next week.  Ok, hopefully I don't fail the critique.

9/9 update

hmm.... I can't seem to figure what the heck I want to do.  I know the visual style I want to create, but I can't make my mind up on the damn story.  I know based on the arts styles which I want to emulate that I want to create a story about an adventure, but an adventure where WHAT happens? I do know the type of characters I have in mind as well, just need to shape up that story.

this is now my CAR 430 blog

yay yay yay yay awesome

I've been trying to come up with some cool mechanics for our next game, but trying to piece everything together is pretty scary.  I've been looking through 2 books recently, in order to gain a better grasp of coding, called Essential Actionscript and the Actionscript Bible.  I think they are starting to help, since when I read code I understand it a little better and I'm slowly figuring out how and why things are structured the way they are in object oriented programming.  I would love to magically understand coding by the time this project is due, but ehhhhhh I probably won't. 

My concept is to have a visually interesting game that ultimately reveals an allegory of something larger through a cool twist in the story.  I found a website that seemed to have more concept based games called gotoAndPlay.com which gave me some inspiration of how to implement a concept within a game.  Alright well it is class time I'll update again later!!!!!!!!!!!!

The closing of Wafaa Bilal's exhibit

After reading all the information available about the suspension of Bilal's  exhibit, I think I am still on the fence about the whole thing.  I do find that the actual suspension itself to be unfair, and how the powers that be are going about it is pretty sad too, the doors not complying with the code regulations for example.

The problem that I have is not with the exhibit, but with the game itself.  I find that art work is best when it can speak for itself, and I believe this is a case when it clearly can't.  From what I know about the game, if you heard nothing from Bilal to put the game in context, you would probably think the game was conveying the same message as the "Quest for Bush".  While he has good intentions for his piece, I think this is a irresponsible use of the video game medium.

Just like any other medium, I think artists should have some sort of technical skill in the media they are using, otherwise a few things can happen.  One thing, which happens in Bilal's case, is that because he does not have the technical ability, his message is not portrayed with clarity.  

Here’s a description, from RPI’s Arts Department:

After learning of the real-life death of his brother in the war, he is recruited by Al Qaeda to join the hunt for Bush. This work is meant to bring attention to the vulnerability of Iraqi civilians to the travesties of the current war and racist generalizations and stereotypes as exhibited in games such as Quest for Saddam; along with vulnerability to recruitment by violent groups like Al Qaeda because of the U.S.’s failed strategy in securing Iraq. The work also aims to shed light on groups that traffic in crass and hateful stereotypes of Arab culture with games like Quest for Saddam and other media.

Reading the description from RPI's Arts Department about the game, there are many things that this work is meant to bring attention to which is probably never conveyed in the game itself.  I don't believe that this game can effectively shed light on generalizations and stereotypes when it is so close to being the very same game that it is trying to criticize.  Again, this is an issue of Bilal not having the ability in the video game medium to properly convey what he is trying to do.

Image of Tank exercise

This shooter exercise was pretty straightforward.  Just a normal tank that shoots people parachuting to the ground.

I'm still trying to figure out the coding itself.  I wish I could just understand this but I guess it takes time.

IMAGES of the different car exercises

Like I said, I must be out of the loop on how to get the SWFs on to the blog, so I just have images here for placeholders....

This first one is MyCar1, where the car is angled 45 degrees to the bottom right, and by pressing the up and down buttons you can go forward and backward, with acceleration and 

deceleration.  With this one, even though the product wasn't anything special, I was trying to figure out what exactly atan, or any trig function thing does... I'm slowly getting it I 

think. 

The second image here is my second car swf.  This one I took the forces example and applied it to the car.  I also took the gravity example and applied it to the car, causing this car to bounce with a force pushing it forward, causing it to eventually stay on the ground and just roll off the screen on the right side.  This one was pretty cool, I felt like I started getting a handle of the trig functions on this one since the forces example had a lot of them.  

This last one is a continuation of the second car, except I tried adding the physics from the Balloon example into it, so it floats up to the top of the screen, then drops back down.  I think after doing all these I'm finally starting to break through the mental wall I've had with the trig functions.  I've looked over those handouts so many times I think it's overdue, but 

let's hope it really is true, because I'm getting a little tired of sucking at coding.

Can't figure out how to post these swf files on here.

I guarantee this is something that  we've gone over a million times, but I just never pay attention during those times.   

Nonetheless, there was less work than I thought I had to do, only one of the car animations and fixing my character with the Improved Gesture Han Solo was not completed yet.  I feel a little overwhelmed with all the work that needs to be done to make a game by next weeks class, but hopefully everything comes together, since I have most of the pieces in place (I think).  Let me not get ahead of myself either, we didn't have class today yet, maybe we will go over things that will make the process easier.

Finishing up all assignments tonight

It is 9:30 the night before class.  Most of them are done but suck.  I am going to fix that, now.

progress like 45 minutes later

I tried doing the keys using CASE stuff that I had used from a project last semester, but there are still animation issues that I have no clue how to fix.  I'm going to quit that part for now and start working on something else...

progress so far

Ok, well thanks to a few little annoyances my progress has been impeded.  I cannot figure out why when holding down the left and right keys to move left and right my animations stop.  I've looked at other people's projects and theirs don't have that problem.... its pissing me off so I figure I would post to take a mental break.

In other news, 

I colored the homeless guy, instead of leaving him with that monotone brown color. I'm not sure if I like it with the color actually, it gets rid of the bleak mood I was going for, but it does make him look less like a wizard now.  I'll probably mess with it again.

I began working on the setting, storyboarding stuff, etc... I already knew what my vision for the game was, but I think this is honing me in now.  I don't want to give too much of the game away, but the game is shaping up to be an action/puzzle game.  I'm excited about it!!!!!!!!!!!!!

exercise 2 sprite sheet

Alright, so here is the homeless guy.... the process was relatively straight-forward, but it took an awfully long time to do something that seemed really simple.  Well, I drew the guy by hand then took pictures of it, then cropped the individual body parts in photoshop and put it together in flash.  I'm pretty satisfied with the character but the animations aren't really done yet because I could easily tweak little movements of the guy to make it look much better.  The walk may look jerky but I like the crack-addict look that goes on from it.  I'll probably add some more accessories too .

part 1 exercise 1

okay, someone deleted my file in the lab so I basically had to redo this half of the assignment... not much different than the work in progress....

The idea behind it is straightforward, Roger Clemens looks towards the media in a press conference realizing that he is in deep shit with this steroid stuff, and  the other image is Pinhead from Hellraiser... I combine the two and I think the pins signify his "possible" guilt and the act of injecting yourself with roids at the same time.  He looks pretty stupid with those pins in his head, and that Yankees symbol sucks too.

clemens work in progress

clemens work in progress

uhhhh hi 1st post

Alrighty, well my research into flash games has been intense this past week, and I am excited to show my findings.  I played a bunch of games and here are a few that I remember for better or worse.

worse -- Skies of war -- way t0o complex, you have to go through too many screens making too many decisions for a simple flying around game

better -- parking zone -- cool style of those puzzle games that where you have a picture that you have to rearrange with only one open block

 

better -- acne be gone -- fun take on games based on speedy clicking and mouse accuracy 

better -- 4 wheel madness 2 -- side view racing game where you have to drive your monster truck as fast as possible past obstacles like cars and jumps.  Have to be good with balancing the weight of the truck.

worse -- beer monster -- fun take on typical side scrolling platform games... bad collision detection and repetitive.  cool creepy ass music though

worse -- halo capture the flag -- horrible game where you run from one side of the screen to the other, pick up a flag and run back to your side.  enemy and flag re-spawning is horrible and there is really no point to playing this game.

worse -- stink game -- shitty catapult game 

worse -- heat man 2 -- this game had such a long introduction that I didn't even get to the point of playing the game

worse --  age of war -- this game seemed cool at first but I've been playing for over an hour and basically nothing happened.  You also couldn't pause the game which pissed me off beyond comprehension because I wanted to eat my baked chicken SON 

I played quite a few others but these were the ones I remembered..

Reading the flash demystified article didn't tell me much I didn't know already about flash, except for a few of the reasons why flash is not the best for video games.  I think some of these deficiencies are sort of understandable though just looking at most of the games you see online, they obviously aren't going to get that sophisticated.

Well I am excited for this semester I am planning on making some good games, still not sure on what type of game yet however...