Games, Animation and VFX
Over this year, I’ve been building up a portfolio of my work that displays some of the best work that I’ve produced over the year. So to display my portfolio, I decided to create a video displaying my work and how I think I’ve improved over the year. The video shows off the best of my Drawings, Animations, VFX pieces, 3D Models and some aspects of Games Design that I have done.
Games and games design have changed over the years. In this blog post I’ll be talking about some games from the Grand Theft Auto series and how they have changed in terms of games design, technology, culture and audience both negatively and positively.
Grand Theft Auto (1997)
Starting off with the game that started the series off, the original, Grand Theft Auto. The late 90’s gave us this top-down masterpiece of a game that was available for the PlayStation 1 in 1997 and the GBA (GameBoy Advance) in 2004. This was definitely one of the best games of the time with it selling more than 150 million units as of September 2013.
As you can see by the screenshot above, the graphics of this game have came along way since the first game and the graphical capabilities of this game at the time were extraordinary, considering that only a few aspects of GTA were 3D at this moment of time (below shows a early mock-up of GTA or Race ’n’ Chase, as it was originally called).
However the game was definitely influential on other developers and even Rockstar themselves for the later Grand Theft Auto Game, Chinatown Wars, which was aimed at tablet and handheld console users in 2009.
The game was aimed at a mature audience however it was banned in some countries for some of its controversial and violent content.
Grand Theft Auto: Trilogy (2001-2005)
2001 brought us the release of GTA 3 2004 which began the Grand Theft Auto Trilogy, this being made up of GTA 3, GTA: Vice City and GTA: San Andreas. These games were 3D unlike the first 2 instalments of the series and were available on the PS2 and Xbox consoles. The trilogy sold a total of 64.5 million copies combined (GTA 3 selling 17 million copies, GTA: Vice City selling 20 million copies and GTA: San Andreas selling 27.5 million copies), therefore the trilogy generated a huge following.
The games in the trilogy were all in fully explorable 3D worlds from a 3rd person point of view.
This was definitely an advancement from the first 2 installments from the series which were from a birds-eye view. In terms of gameplay, the games gave the player the ability to run, jump or use vehicles to navigate through the game’s world. In combat, auto-aim could be used as assistance against enemies. When the player took damage, their health meter could be fully regenerated by using the health pick-ups. Body armour could also be used to absorb gunshots and explosive damage, but is used up in the process. When health is entirely depleted, gameplay stops, and the player respawns at the nearest hospital, at the expense of losing all weapons and armour, and a sum of money.
This appealed to audiences at the time due to this making the game look and feel more realistic to players, however this was controversial as it was said to have made the violence of the games more realistic as well, which was a problem. Also, with the graphical capabilities of the PS2 and Xbox, these were some of the greatest games to play for consumers at the time.
GTA 3 was the game out of the GTA Trilogy that’s design was impacted by culture the most.
The tragic events of 9/11 shook the world and the entirety of America, especially the developers of GTA 3. This led the developers to make many changes to the game before the release and with this, shortly after the tragic events on September 19, 2001, Rockstar delayed the game’s release by three weeks. One of the changes made shortly after 9/11 was the colour scheme of the police cars. This was because the original colour scheme of blue with white stripes specifically resembled that of the New York City Police Department. It was changed to a generic black-and-white design common with several police departments in the United States, such as Los Angeles and San Francisco. A few other changes included the altering of the flight path of a plane to avoid appearing to fly into or behind a skyscraper, removing a mission referencing terrorists, as well as some changes to pedestrian dialogue and talk radio.
GTA: Vice City was the next game in the GTA Trilogy.
This game was made one year after GTA: 3 and even then, the graphics were still improved. New and fresh character models, a new city, better gameplay; this game was one of the most successful in the series selling 20 million copies. However, despite the positive support the game had behind it, the game also faced a very serious issue that involved a consumer of the game.
In June of 2003, Devin Moore, 17 years old at the time and a consumer of the game, stole a vehicle and was later brought in to a Fayette police station for questioning. Moore then grabbed a pistol from one of the police officers at the station and shot and killed him along with another officer and dispatcher before fleeing in a police car. This obviously negatively impacted the game, stirred up a lot of controversy and later resulted in a lawsuit upon the makers and distributors of the Grand Theft Auto series claiming the games caused the teenager to shoot and kill three members of the Alabama police force in early 2005.
The next game and the final game in the GTA Trilogy was GTA: San Andreas.
GTA: San Andreas is arguably one of the best games in the series appealing to a huge audience selling 27.5 million copies. This game was created 2 years after GTA: Vice City, due to this having more features such as building up muscle and changing your characters overall appearance, as well as having more activities to do and a bigger map to explore. Again, even though this game had overwhelming support and many backers behind it, the game faced an issue that changed the games target audience.
On July 8, 2005, the ESRB announced that it was aware of and opening an investigation into the circumstances surrounding ‘Hot Coffee.’ The investigation examined whether the mod unlocks pre-existing code or is actually a purely third-party creation.
On July 20, 2005, the ESRB announced that it was changing the rating of GTA:SA from Mature (M) to Adults Only (AO). Rockstar stated that it would discontinue manufacturing the current version of the game, and produce a new version that would not include the content that is unlocked by the Hot Coffee mod. In the fourth quarter of 2005, Rockstar released this “clean” version with the “Hot Coffee” scenes removed (Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas 1.01), allowing the rating of the game to be reverted to its original Mature rating.
This was extremely controversial and resulted in the change of audience for the game entirely due to this ‘Hot Coffee’ situation.
Grand Theft Auto V (2013)
Last but not least GTA V, the most recent installment in the series.
This is arguably one of the most successful out of the series besides GTA: San Andreas 24 hours of its release, Grand Theft Auto V generated more than $800 million in worldwide revenue, equating to approximately 11.21 million copies sold for Take Two. The numbers nearly doubled analysts’ expectations for the title. Three days after release, the game had surpassed one billion dollars in sales, making it the fastest selling entertainment product in history. Six weeks after its release, Rockstar had shipped nearly 29 million copies of the game to retailers, exceeding the lifetime figures of Grand Theft Auto IV. On 7 October 2013, the game became the best-selling digital release on PlayStation Store for PlayStation 3, breaking the previous record set by The Last of Us, though numerical sales figures were not disclosed. This game first released in 2013 for the PS3 and Xbox 360 systems and following year for the PS4, Xbox One and PC systems.
In terms of gameplay players use melee attacks, firearms and explosives to fight enemies and may run, jump, swim or use vehicles to navigate the world. The game also allows the player to switch between 3 different characters: Franklin, Michael and Trevor. To compliment the map’s size, the game introduces vehicle types that weren’t Grand Theft Auto IV, the games predecessor. Vehicle types such as fixed-wing aircraft. Auto-aim and a cover system may be used as assistance against enemies in combat.
GTA V still had its controversial moments such as the way the game depicted women, however this games support was overwhelming with it making $800 million in the first 24 hours (as I said previously). The game release around about 3 years ago and the game still has amazing fans and support and the game has a thriving online community.
Compared to the other games graphically, the game has definitely advanced, more realistic character models, a bigger more explorable map, car customisation, character customisation; you name it and the game pretty much has it.
In my own opinion, I think that Rockstar have definitely made this a brilliant game because they listened to the fans and what they had to say. For example, many fans wanted the game to be like GTA: San Andreas, in terms of character customisation and so on, and Rockstar implemented character customisation into the game. Another example is that many fans complained about the driving in GTA: IV and said that it felt like you were driving on ice, and so the team from Rockstar made sure to improve this and so they gave us the amazing driving in a game that we see today. Therefore the fans are an influence on the games design of the GTA games.
In conclusion, I think that the design of the GTA games have definitely improved since the late 1990’s and even though the games stir up a ton on controversy in the news and news papers, they still have a good impact on audience and culture, however sometimes the impact can be bad.
If you read my last VFX blog post, then you’ll know that last time I finished the updated version of the UFO animation…
Well over the past few weeks I have been working on my VFX sequence and today I made the final adjustments to finish off my sequence. In this blog post I’m going to be going over the things that I’ve been doing to assure that this shot was successful.
First of all I masked out parts of the scene that I felt were necessary so that the UFO’s looked like they were coming around from the back of the college buildings in the scene. I also added a render of the mothership model as I knew that the model wouldn’t be doing much movement, which is why I decided to add it, plus we were short on time. Anyway, once I did this I then went on to put my green screen assets I had previously made, to use…
I did this by making the assets look like they were being abducted by the UFO’s in the scene and used my previous tests as reference…
However, to make the beams that would beam up the assets, I used the same sort of method that I did for the Lightsabre battle, by creating the shape of the beam and pre-composing it…
Once I had done this, I then went on to implement stock footage that I gathered earlier from detonationfilms.com and BlinkFarms Explosion pack Vol.3 (both royalty free). I implemented the footage when necessary and pre-comped the footage once I was done.
Once I did this, the shot was looking pretty good, however I didn’t want the shot to just be still, I wanted a bit of movement, like the hand held movement of the original shot. So with the use of expressions, I made the pre-comp I had previously created look like it was handheld by hitting ‘A’ on the keyboard to bring up the pre-comps anchor point and Alt and clicked the stop watch that was present. Once I alt clicked the stop watch, I entered the following expression: wiggle(1,12). I then went and brought up the rotation of the pre-comp and alt clicked the stopwatch once more, but this time I entered a different expression: wiggle(1,.5). The result gave me a nice looking handheld look (which I will reveal later). I learned how to do this by watching one of Film Riots tutorials where they do a teleportation effect. If you want to do it yourself the technique is explained at 7:10 of the video.
Anyway once I had done this I went on and added the news broadcast design that I previously created so that it wasn’t just the opening shot that had the news broadcast design on it…
Once this was done, I exported the footage and went into Premier Pro to complete the final edit.
In Premier Pro, I focused on adding sound effects and music. I also made edits where necessary, for example there was a scene where Louis (a member of the team) could be heard saying “Cut!”.
So I made a few finishing touches like adding static footage as a transition between scenes and so on and the final result is shown below…
I’m really proud of how this piece turned out and I’m really happy with this due to it being my first VFX short project. I think that I will do a bit more editing over the summer like perhaps adding better static sound effects or adding mothership sounds and hover sounds. Overall I’m extremely satisfied with how the piece turned out and I look forward to making more of these sorts of projects in the future.
Today I completed my Pixar inspired animation. In this blog post I’m going to be breaking down what I did in the final stages of this animation to complete it. If you haven’t read my previous post for this animation, heres a link for the blog post showing what I did in the early stages: ( Pixar Style Animation-Part 1 ).
Anyway, last time I got up to animating Jim Jim Bonks’ movement and animating Jim Jim Bonks jumping up and down on the ‘O’ on my name…
Once I had done this, I then went on to implement the Next Gen logo into the scene. I had created this earlier due to me using the logo model in my VFX scene for the Next Gen news logo. Your probably wondering why I decided to add the Next Gen Logo into this. The reason being is because I initially planned for the Next Gen logo to fall down and squish Jim Jim, after Jim Jim had looked left and right and then have the Kirbinator land on the Next Gen logo, have him try and attempt to do what Jim Jim did on the ‘O’ of my name, fail, and get squashed by the Next Gen text. The Next Gen logo that I modeled is shown below…
Once I had done the animating of both the Next Gen logo and the kirbinator, the outcome looked like this…
Once I was happy with what I had done, I went on and exported a PNG sequence of the animation and went into After Effects.
In After Effects, I basically added an orange gradient backdrop and adjusted the animation slightly, centring it so it looked evenly laid out. The outcome is shown below…
After I did this, I exported the scene and went and opened the scene in Premier Pro so that I could start editing.
So I started up Premier Pro and started editing. In Premier, I focused on adding cartoon sound effects and matching them up to my characters movements. For instance, when Jim Jim hops across the screen, I added a ‘boing’ sound effect and matched the sound effect up to his bounce as accurate as I could. With all the sound effects done and matched up, I added music just to finish the scene off. I then tweaked the audio so that it was all balanced and the result is shown below…
Success! My animated short was finally complete. I’m really happy with how this turned out and I will definitely work on this more as a few aspects of the scene need tweaking up still, just small details like shadows and etc.
Overall, I’m really happy with this animated piece and how its came along and I definitely intend on doing more animating in the future.
This blog post is basically a guide to some of my previous posts that are going to be assessed at the end of the year…
The Games, Animation & VFX industries
Self Analysis
My Personality Type and SWOT Analysis: https://joshcgblog.wordpress.com/2016/05/02/my-personality-type-and-swot-analysis/
Dream Job : Action Plan: https://joshcgblog.wordpress.com/2016/05/23/dream-job-action-plan/
Money, Legal Entities and Ethical Issues
How Companies Make Money : https://joshcgblog.wordpress.com/2016/06/07/how_companies_make_money/
Legal & Ethical Issues Games, Animation and VFX : https://joshcgblog.wordpress.com/2016/06/08/legal-ethical-constraints-affecting-games-animation-and-vfx/
Games Design
Understanding Audiences : https://joshcgblog.wordpress.com/2016/05/26/understanding-audiences/
In this blog post I will be talking about some of the legal and ethical constraints affecting the games, animation and VFX industries.
Cyber Security
Computer security, is the protection of information systems from theft or damage to the hardware, the software, and to the information on them, as well as from disruption or misdirection of the services they provide.
It includes controlling physical access to the hardware, as well as protecting against harm that may come via network access, data and code injection and due to malpractice by operators, whether intentional, accidental, or due to them being tricked into deviating from secure procedures.
Censorship/ Child Protection on the Internet
Censorship is the suppression of speech, public communication or other information which may be considered objectionable, harmful, sensitive, politically incorrect or inconvenient as determined by governments, media outlets, authorities or other groups or institutions.
Governments, private organizations and individuals may engage in censorship. When an individual such as an author or other creator engages in censorship of their own works or speech, it is referred to as self-censorship. Censorship could be direct or indirect, in which case it is referred to as soft censorship. It occurs in a variety of different media, including speech, books, music, films, and other arts, the press, radio, television, and the Internet for a variety of claimed reasons to protect children or other vulnerable groups, to promote or restrict political or religious views, and to prevent slander and libel.
Direct censorship may or may not be legal, depending on the type, location, and content. Many countries provide strong protections against censorship by law, but none of these protections are absolute and frequently a claim of necessity to balance conflicting rights is made, in order to determine what could and could not be censored. There are no laws against self-censorship.
Age Ratings BBFC
The BBFC works with a number of on demand services to provide trusted age ratings for video content available for download and streaming online. Some of these platforms also provide parental controls allowing parents to make available to their children films with an appropriate age rating for them. The BBFC and home entertainment industry recognise that this is helpful to parents when both they and their children are selecting film or TV content to stream or download.
Age Ratings PEGI
PEGI is the system used for new console and PC games. PEGI is used and recognised throughout Europe and is supported by the European Commission. Many thousands of games have been PEGI-rated since the scheme was devised and introduced in early 2003. It is important to note that in the UK, PEGI 12, 16 and 18 ratings are legally enforceable meaning that they cannot be supplied to persons below those respective age bars. The body responsible for applying UK PEGI ratings is the Games Rating Authority (GRA).
Pixel Gypsy
It is well documented that within the VFX industry, people / employees often have to move around from location to location following wherever companies go to enable them to continue working. As a result, they are usually never able have a settled personal life as they are always on the move.
Government Subsidies
A subsidy is a benefit given by the government to groups or individuals usually in the form of a cash payment or tax reduction. The subsidy is usually given to remove some type of burden and is often considered to be in the interest of the public.
Fixed Bid Contracts
A Fixed Bid is a contractual agreement to provide specific software services (requirements) for a specified price or price range. A client will pay the provider based on the number of hours put into the project plus any added material expenses.
In the Games, Animation and VFX Industries, there are many ways that companies are funded and make money. In this blog post I’m going to e discussing the various ways that companies make money.
Publishers
A Publisher is the company with the financial risk, which means if a product fails to make a profit they are the ones responsible for the debt.
In the games industry, when a development team want to make a game to release they would provide a pitch of the project to the Publisher, if accepted, a budget will be provided the company to produce game.
Crowd Funding
In this method of funding, the company will receive donations from fans until they reach a target they set at the start of the appeal. Two good examples of crowd funding are shown below, those being Kickstarter and Patreon.
Kickstarter
Kickstarter is a website in which a business or individual/s sets up a “kickstarter” page and people from the public can back the project (known as backers) and ask for money in support, often receiving rewards in relation to how much you put forward.
When the funding goal has been reached the backers bank accounts will be charged when the time on the page has expired. However, if the project does not reach the goal no one is charged.
Stretch goals often a allow additional content to be added even after the project has reached its original goal. As a result, another method to get more funds.
Patreon
Another example of a crowdfunding website is the incredibly successful Patreon. Patreon is a crowd-funding platform popular with YouTube content creators, musicians, and webcomic artists. It allows artists to obtain funding from their fans or patrons, on a recurring basis, or per work of art. This San Francisco based company was started by musician Jack Conte and developer Sam Yam in 2013.
Patreon is similar to Kickstarter however, artists set up a page on the Patreon website, where patrons can pledge to donate a given amount of money to an artist every time they create a piece of art, optionally setting a monthly maximum. Alternatively a fixed monthly amount can be pledged.
Grants
Grant is an amount of money provided by the government, local councils and charities to an individual / business for a project or purpose.
Whilst you do not need to pay a grant back, they are often difficult to have accepted as there is a lot of competition.
Tax Relief
In the creative sector within UK a Tax Relief program of tax incentives were implemented which encompass new incentives aimed at supporting the animation, high-end television and video games industries.
Creative England
Green Shoots
Creative England partnered with Microsoft to develop Green Shoots, a programme of financial and business support to help the development and growth of the games industry in England.
Creative England Game Development Fund
The CE Game Development Fund is much like the Green Shoots programme, helping by providing investments of between £50,000 and £150,000 to game studios that can demonstrate potential for growth.
Private Funding
Private funding is usually from a certain company or individual/s who have decided to fund a project. Not to be mistaken with Public Funding, which within the UK is funding received from the government.
Credit Cards / Loans
The use of credit cards serves as a useful function, with the ability to pay for purchases when you don’t have cash on hand or readily available. The credit card issuer essentially loans you the money to make the purchase, and you will be able to repay that loan at a later date, while usually being charged a certain interest rate.
Sales (Games, Receipts, Merchandise etc.)
A company will spend a certain amount of money developing and advertising a product, with an end aim of making profit.
Within the games industry, the majority of AAA titles reach their goal and will earn a healthy profit, some bigger names like Call of Duty and Grand Theft Auto can surpass their aim by a long margin.
Contracts (Fixed Cost)
Occasionally, a business will offer a contract that sets a price before a project which is usually not subject to change unless its necessary. With the payment being agreed at the beginning, elements such as the project specifications and costs have to estimated and agreed with the client.
Early Access
Within the games industry Early Access is used as a funding model which allows customers to purchase a game or project in its early stages of development and obtain access to playable, albeit unfinished versions of the game. This method allows the developer to of the game to obtain funds to further develop the game.
Advertising and Sponsorship
Advertising is one of the main methods of raising funds within the games, animation and VFX industries.
In-Product Advertising
This is where they will advertise products within final product, whether it be in game-play or cut-scenes. This technique is often applied in a subtle way with the product logo often appearing throughout the product or through player interaction. This is also known as product placement.
There are many types of companies in the Games, Animaton and VFX industries and there are also many legal entities. In this blog post I’m going to be going over these Legal entities.
Sole Trader
If you start working for yourself, you’re classed as a self-employed sole trader (freelance)- even if you’ve not yet told HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC).
As a sole trader, you run your own business as an individual. You can keep all your business’s profits after you’ve paid tax on them.
You can employ staff. ‘Sole trader’ means you’re responsible for the business, not that you have to work alone.
You’re personally responsible for any losses your business makes.
As a Sole trader your, Tax responsibilities are as follow:
If you are aiming to become a sole trader, then you must also register for VAT. This is if you expect your takings to be more than £83,000 a year of course.
Unincorporated Association
An ‘unincorporated association’ is an organisation set up through an agreement between a group of people who come together for a reason other than to make a profit. For example, a voluntary group or a sports club.
You don’t need to register an unincorporated association, and it doesn’t cost anything to set one up.
Individual members are personally responsible for any debts and contractual obligations.
If the association does start to trade and make a profit, then the association will need to pay Corporation Tax and file a Company Tax Return in the same way as a limited company.
Private limited company Limited By Guarantee (LBG)
A private limited company limited by guarantee, (LBG) is an different type of corporation used mainly by charities and other non-profit organisations. LBGs normally don’t have a share capital and they don’t have shareholders. They instead have members that act as guarantors. It is common for companies to retain their profits within the company in order to re-invest in its operations instead of distributing the money to its members.
Limited Partnership
Your liability for business debt differs depending on whether you’re a limited partnership or limited liability partnership (LLP).
In a Limited Partnership you can share all the business’s profits between the partners. Each partner pays tax on their share of the profits.
Partners’ responsibilities differ as:
General partners are also responsible for managing the business.
Limited liability partnership (LLP)
The partners in an LLP aren’t personally liable for debts the business can’t pay – their liability is limited to the amount of money they invest in the business.
Partners’ responsibilities and share of the profits are set out in an LLPagreement. ‘Designated members’ have extra responsibilities.
Every year, the partnership must send a partnership Self Assessment tax return to HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC).
All the partners must:
Again, you must also register the partnership for VAT if you expect your business’s takings to be more than £83,000 a year.
Private limited company limited by shares (LTD)
Look after everything to do with their business, its finances are separated from your personal finance. Directors often own shares but they don’t have to. Shareholders cannot sell or transfer their shares without offering them first to other shareholders for purchase. Shareholders cannot offer their shares to the general public over a stock exchange.
‘Ordinary’ Business Partnership
In a business partnership, you and your business partner (or partners) personally share responsibility for your business.
You can share all your business’s profits between the partners. Each partner pays tax on their share of the profits.
For this partnership you are personally responsible for your share of:
The nominated partner must send a partnership Self Assessment tax return every year.
All the partners must:
The partnership will also have to register for VAT if you expect its takings to be more than £83,000 a year.
Public limited company (PLC)
Public Limited Company – A limited company is a system that you can set up to run your business -it has its own responsibility and is reliable for everything it does, its finances are also separate from the owners. Any profit that the company makes it owned by the company until it pays corporation tax when it can then be owned by the Owner of the Company.
Josh CG-Next Gen Blog 