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My last completed project before the cancellation of school due to the coronavirus was the idle animation project, where I had to create my original character and animate it doing something. For this project, I chose one of my favorite original characters that I created long ago and drew a lot. The character is a sci-fi style plague doctor, that I got the inspiration from many places (games, media, movies). For the majority of the project, I spent it designing the character in Illustrator (where I may have put too much detail into the character) and created the background for the animation. I put the different moving body parts in different layers then grouped them to make it easier to work with once in Animate. Before I had made all of this, I had made the staff the character would hold and grouped his hand with it so that they would move to the same place and be much simpler to handle. Now was the time for the animation. Originally, I was going to have the character in a fighting game style pose and bob side to side like fighters in those style games would. However, I knew that it would be far too complicated to work with due to all the moving limbs (and including the fact that I put too much time into the character itself). Instead, I had the character stand and “stomp” the staff on the ground as if he were some guard, protecting a door. This animation was very simple luckily and I finished it in only one class, of course before I had even written the one-paragraph reflection that was required for the assignment, which I had to finish the next day and take a -5 point late penalty. This project, as simple as the animation portion was, got me more familiar with Animate and helped me learn how it works a little more, which I’m glad about, and hope to do more projects with it in the future.
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In class we needed to create an animated “sketchy” gif in photoshop. This could be done with the Timeline tool, which puts a series of images up for a specific amount of time for it to appear animated. For this project I made a crow with the “sketchy” animation style.
To make this animation, I had to get an image of something of my choosing, which was a crow, and then add a gradient to the back. The gradient I chose was purple to orange, to mimic one of the first photoshop projects we made which was the colorization of images, where I made a lake purple-ish with an orange sunset sky. I then made another gradient above the crow, lowered the opacity, masked the background of the crow image to show the gradient behind it, and that way it showed the crow with the color gradient on it while also being visible above the first one. The next step for this project was to draw over the object in a very sketchy style 10 times, although each frame could be done quickly it did take a while for me to make them all. At last at this point I only had to animate it, this was done by going to ‘window>timeline>create frame animation’, setting the delay between images/ how long the image is up for to 0, and setting it to loop forever. Although most the things done in this project involved lessons I’ve already learned, I still learned a few things, like always checking the second monitor for a pop-up, and always look thoroughly through the video tutorials as little things can mess you up. Even though this project was slightly difficult at times, I still enjoyed it greatly and hope to do more in the future. Warframe is a 3rd person cooperative scifi PvE ever expanding game that includes fast combat and special abilities, both small random generated and large open world maps, and an interesting story. Keep in mind that Warframe has a lot of gameplay mechanics/lore, so I’ll only cover the basics. Warframe’s combat is very fast paced, with many different ways of mobility like rolling, sliding, gliding, and even flying at times. In this game, you are way more powerful than the enemy (individually, at least),as you feature special abilities called “warframe abilities” that give you the power to heal yourself and allies, damage enemies, spawn allies, leech enemy health, and everything in between, depending on your selected Warframe(aka chosen “character”) but the enemy comes in large hordes in an attempt to overwhelm you, accompanied with their own special abilities.
Warframe’s gameplay, personally, is very fun to me. It’s fun to whiz by enemies to get to your objective/ eliminate them. It’s so satisfying to clear a room of difficult high-level enemies. However it can get a little annoying when enemy scaling starts to get too difficult, and they gain too much armor (which is a form of damage reduction, and when it gets too high they can become virtually invincible to low level attacks); which brings me to my next topic: difficulty. Warframe is not a difficult game for anyone who’s played a shooter, as you’re practically invincible if you can dodge enemy attacks/ make a good defensive build. Most weapons at mid-level are fairly effective against almost all enemies and are good enough for late-game. STORY (some minor spoilers) Warframe has a lot of lore that is continuously added to, so this will be the review on the story so far. Warframe’s lore in the beginning was very mysterious, hinting at what happened before the events of the game with relics and descriptions of certain things, but many updates later they added 3 mainline story quests that really expanded the universe. The first mainline quest, called The Second Dream. Where a great foe known as Hunhow the Sentient has reawoken and sends a killer and his fighters to kill you and your species, motivated by hatred of his destruction that happened thousands of years before the events of the game takes place, and that the protagonist had caused but had long forgotten it. The story was a little cheesy, but had some great moments and reveals and a wonderful soundtrack. It also added some new characters and some depth to pre-existing characters, such as The Lotus, your guide in the game, and the Stalker, a killer that hunts down you and other Tenno (what the race of your people are called). The second mainline quest, called The War Within, introduced a few more characters and more depth to other pre-existing characters, featuring the leaders of one of the enemy factions, the Twin Queens, on their quest to take control of your warframe, as you fight back and stop their plans. Possibly the best mainline quest (in my opinion) as it didn’t have a lot of bad moments, the characters were consistent and had goals that made sense, and added more lore to the table (like the previous quest but even more). Last but not least is the newest installation to the story, The Sacrifice. The Sacrifice, which had a great betrayal, the rescue of an old warrior, and a huge reveal that changes everything for the player, and gives you a lore-heavy greatsword at the end of it. More characters were added and more lore about the past was given, like how everything came to be, and why the Sol system (where everything takes place, our solar system) is in its current state. These quests were pretty well written in my opinion and had a good overarching story. It was very engaging and interesting, I often found myself watching lore videos and reading things about it for hours (probably because i’m obsessed with lore but I'm sure others have too). However there is one main problem and that is that later installments retconned things a billion times over, saying one thing was caused by this, but later stating it was caused by that. Sometimes dialogue would be generic and basic, but there are some very good lines. I think the gameplay style and lore were for the same demographic, I can't explain why, but the fast paced “space ninja” fits perfectly with the story and your powers, so someone that would like one aspect of the game would like the other. VISUAL STYLE Warframe has a very magic-y futuristic style to it, which fits nicely with the “space ninja” feel it has. This game was made 6 years ago and with few updates to the visuals it still holds up today, with smoothly made animations and modeled characters and a pleasing pallet. Some maps feature different pallets in this game like different faction maps. Corpus, basically “futuristic space pirates” have a bright white and blue pallet to fit with their technology and cold environment, while the Grineer on the other hand which are militaristic and use old mechanical designs have a more gritty pallet, like using green, orange, and dark colors to show the mentality of the war-like faction. The animations in this game are very well made and choreographed at times and is pleasing to the eye (when you can see it, of course). That is, there are a few awkward animations in the game. For example, a recent update changed how melee works but did not update the animations, and for greatswords (the ones I use all the time) that hit once, and the character raises the sword anticipating another strike, but goes back to its resting position. Sometimes when you’re in the archwing (how the player can fly in certain maps) gun animations will not register properly with your pose, causing an awkward position. Luckily with the fast paced nature of this game you can barely realize the tiny glitches your warframe can make. Character models work really well for a 6 year old game, there is no clear specific polygon showing (by that I mean things look organic and not like a bunch of random shapes) and can look really nice with the proper skins/armor/etc. AUDIO/OST The music in this game is great, there are ost’s that really represent the enemy you’re fighting, with more electronic music playing with the technologically advanced Corpus and more militaristic gritty music with the Grineer. There are also great scores that play in important parts of the story to deliver a feeling of panic or relaxation. The sounds are well made with none being extremely annoying to the point of wishing to mute them, and the sound effects do fit with the style of the game. Overall, the sounds and OST work perfectly with the environments they are in and emerge you in your surroundings. INTERFACE AND ACCESSIBILITY Generally most interfaces are user friendly, they’re simple and don’t need a lot of work to navigate through, they are easy to understand and organized, text is easy to read and can be customized to fit your suiting, a great system overall. However, a recent update has added many unnecessary additions like pop up menus, where the information could have simply been displayed in the first place instead of needing to be hovered over. The controls of the game works very well, both with keyboard and controller, and are fully customizable. They don’t make the gameplay feel clunky and allow for very intricate moves. The only players I feel that could be excluded are people that are photosensitive epileptic, because this game can have a lot of flashing lights and explosions going on at times (ESPECIALLY with some warframe abilities). TECHNICAL The game runs smoothly and as of having 700 hours (exactly) I have not experienced any huge game breaking bugs. I have, however seen friends get some bad visual bugs where character models will glitch around and cover the screen, or just straight up have a black screen. There’s also some bugs where you can get launched through a wall and fall under the map and continuously fall without dying/repositioning. I’ve had this problem before and you can solve it by using the command `/unstuck` which can also get you out of corners you’ve trapped yourself in. I’ve only had the game crash but that is because warframe works differently as when you turn off your console (i'm not sure if it’s the same on PC) it will continue to run, and kick you out once you turn your console on again, making you have to restart it. Overall, not many bad bugs in the game unless you purposely try to break it (as many people have tried) ENJOYABILITY + CONCLUSION I’ve really enjoyed this game when I played it, the gameplay is phenomenal and the story is great, and at the cost of nothing, because it’s completely free! (minus the microtransaction, but every free game has those). Whenever I would log off I felt satisfied with the progress and always anticipated new updates regularly checking to see if any big things have been announced. As of now, I wouldn’t say I quit but i’ve taken an extended break due to burnout and boredom, but that happens to every game. The main problem of this game is simply burnout and not having new content, but there are still millions that still enjoy this game since Day 1 and support it. I would rate this game 4.5 stars, for the fun times and would totally recommend to others Today I finished my Cheeseburgers in Paradise assignment, which was that I had to make a burger, add a background, and copy and paste it 3 times so that there would be 3 burgers. This project was one of the more enjoyable ones, because of how simple it is and how easy it was to make and to look good. In this project we were on Illustrator, using the Pen tool, the Shape tools, Gradient tool, Curvature tool, and a new one, the Mesh tool.
First we created a circle that we cut in half, and shaped slightly to resemble the top bun, which we added a mesh to, which could make a sort of "shadow/glare" texture to it. Then we copy and pasted, mirrored, then shaped that bun a little to resemble the bottom bun. Now that we had the buns we needed the patty, which was very easy to make. For the patty we simply got the curved rectangle tool to make a long rectangle that slightly spanned out the bun, colored it brown like cooked beef, and added a few details using little, transparent shapes that we would copy and paste and rotate to add more texture to the meat. After the meat, I made the lettuce which all I did at the time was make a green rectangle, used the curvature tool to bend it around a little, and put it where it belongs. After I was mostly done with the project, however, I shrunk the lettuce and used a few more, new, pieces of lettuce to make it look like it was a bunch of little slices of lettuce. After I was done with the lettuce I had to do the cheese, which wasn't as hard as I expected. We added the Drop Shadow to the cheese to create a sense of depth, and used the Mesh tool to make some "shadows". I created one and copied another right next to it as if there were two slices of cheese (which I now just realized is kind of weird). Once I was done with that I added a few sesame seeds which were just oddly shaped circles with a smaller one inside another. When I completed the burgers I added a background which was a rectangle that covered the back with a gradient that went from the middle out. There I pasted the two other burgers and shaped them to resemble the "allow us to introduce ourselves" meme, which was popular a few months ago but I decided to do anyways. Once I finished I learned a few lessons from my errors, like adding small colored squares around the art board for future use, or googling color codes for specific color that could be difficult to replicate on a color wheel, or even just remembering to arrange things correctly so I don't have things covering things I don't want it to. This was one of my more fun projects with good lessons, and I hope I can do more like this. Recently we have started working on a new Adobe software, Illustrator, to make our projects. So far from my experiences with Illustrator I have enjoyed it and haven't gotten frustrated trying to work the tools (except for the pencil tool which we haven't used yet), and working with illustrator was very simple and easy. My last project was making digital badges for a video game/anything, so what I did was made difficulty symbols for Halo. I had to replace the preexisting difficulty badges/symbols with my own and it had to show an increase in difficulty/accomplishment within the symbols without having to be told what the achievement was for. For that, I used Elite (or Sangheili) helmets to show difficulty, and even if someone who doesn't play halo or take care to enemy's helmets sees the helmets, they can still tell it's a higher difficulty due to the colors:
Normal difficulty- Elite Minor (blue helmet) Heroic difficulty- Elife Zealot (red helmet) Legendary difficulty- Elite General (golden helmet). I made these helmets with a grey shield behind them, like the original badges had, and added a second shield shape to cause a 3D effect on it. In order for me to make these helmets, I couldn't just use normal conventional geometric shapes to make these rounder objects, I had to use the Curvature Tool to bend the shapes around to make what I wanted. Unfortunately we have not found/ there is no way to make shapes symmetrical when you are shaping one side, so that means you have to be pretty good at making both sides the same by hand when you are warping it. I also had to work with multiple layers just to make one shape or object, because if I only work with one shape to make one thing it would usually look very simple, and you don't want a helmet to be extremely simple in a badge (only a little). So set out some shapes in one segment, bent and manipulated them how I wanted, connected them all, and then selected them in bulk to become practically one object. All things considered this project was fun for me, I liked making the shapes into whatever I wanted them to be, I liked merging multiple things together to one whole, and I liked having the satisfaction of finally finishing it. I look forward to working more with Illustrator and making more art with it, and hope to enjoy it. As we progress through the year and get more assignments in our Digital Design and Animation class I've experienced a range of feelings with them, from frustration to enjoyment.
One of my favorite assignments was colorizing black and white images, where we had to use the select tool to select sections of an image that were the same thing yet different colors like say, a lake that is white at the top and dark grey at the bottom where otherwise, the Magic Wand tool would only select the white section. I chose the seaside image because I knew I could do a lot with it and it's colors, so what I did was that I got an image of a sunset over the ocean and put that in a second tab in Photoshop, so that way I could copy some colors from their and move them over without having to make them up with the color wheel. From then on everything was mostly smooth, I mixed two colors for the ocean, a dark purple mixed with a medium-dark orange to make the sea look reflective under the sky, made the sky a dark orange with some vibrant orange to the side which were connected using the Blur tool, and made the pier a darker brown. After all of that I had a few more things to color one of which was the boat, which even though it was super small it was ironically one of the hardest bits to do, as I didn't know what color to make it, I thought about making it blue like a lot of boats are, but that didn't look well in its environment, even if blended with orange. So I concluded with a tan-ish color to make the boat, and even after that is when I realized I made the water around the boat tan too. So once I was finished with fixing the water at last came the dock and some sections surrounding the water, which either were colored brown or had no color at all. Some of those sections couldnt be changed as it was part of the original image, and others were easy to change. Yet after all those struggles and small annoyances, I completed the assignment and was proud of my work, and learned a few things. Those things will help me in future projects. |
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My name is Mario, and am currently studying Digital Design and Game Art in DSA. This is my class blog Archives
January 2023
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The views and opinions expressed in this blog are solely those of the author and do not represent those of Durham School of the Arts or Durham Public Schools.
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