Month: April 2023

Group

Week 3: Group Project

This week I started development on my first model for the project which is a cactus. After collecting example imagery I decided on making a Saguaro cactus.

Creating the initial shape for the cactus was not a difficult thing to do, it is a quite simple shape in terms of geometry and had it been that it would be a simplified lower-poly version of a Saguaro than my model would have been completed soon there-after however difficulty came upon closer inspection of a Saguaro.

The Sagurao’s needles are not strung about randomly on the surface of the cactus but are instead placed repeating like a geometric pattern originating from the center of the bulb and spreading outward. Initially a classmate suggested I attempt to recreate this using Xgen in Maya.

Had the cactus been more traditional, with spikes dotting the surface evenly, then X gen would have been perfect. While I got close manipulating the settings of Xgen I could never make it that the needles sprouted from an origin point outwards. Instead the needles would always start in a different place, then converge and then spread out which was not how the cactus worked. Eventually I settled on attempting to use MASH to create the needles.

I created a single needle pod model and then using Mash was able to duplicate the model along the lines of the cactus’s mesh creating this.

This would save me significant time in development as I wouldn’t need to manually place all the spikes and it allowed me to adhere to the geometric pattern of the cactus.

I also spent this week tracking the footage in 3DE. While I am not a composite artist for this project it is beneficial to understand all aspects of the project and practice more with industry standard software such as 3DE. While I currently have tracked the footage I have yet to implement it into maya for further matchmove work.

Thesis

Week 2: Thesis Proposal

A short explanation of what you’re researching? how you’re researching it?

I want to research Nostalgia and specifically it’s use and creation in modern media. I will have to narrow it down to a specific media group and currently I think I will limit it to games. The idea being that I personally have observed lots of projects in the indie/AA gaming landscape that harkens back to a lot of ‘nostalgic’ mediums for games such as the rise of what has been dubbed ‘boomer shooters’- emulating games like the original Doom, and games specifcally designed to emulate the restraints of the PS1. My question is still taking form as I continue my research. I will be researching it via two methods, the writings of published scholars on the topics of nostalgia and its presence in the games industry and if possible via interviews with indie devs that have created the more popular versions of these ‘nostalgia’ games. I say ‘creation’ of nostalgia because some of the consumers of this media are people that belong to my generation or younger who would not be old enough to have ‘nostalgia’ in the proper sense of having actually experienced and grown up with these games hence the ‘nostalgia’ I refer to is one of something never experienced. This can be seen with the popularity of films like The Guardians of the Galaxy or Stranger Things that make plenty of musical and visual reference to 70s and 80s and aim to create a nostalgic sense for its audience despite the primary audience being too young.

why it is important to research this subject?

I believe this is important to address as I and others have seen a sharp rise in ‘Nostalgia’ and its presence in culture here in the west. This is ranging from popular media such as games, television, film to more cynical spaces such as politics with slogans like “Make America Great Again” and general allusions to a ‘better past’ that needs to be recaptured by conservative parties in the United States and the United Kingdom. I believe it’s prominence in the current cultural zeitgeist is more than enough reason to critically engage it and analyze it.

Keywords

Nostalgia, Games, Retroculture, Sehnsucht

Sources

Howard, S. A. (2012). Nostalgia. Analysis, 72(4), 641–650. http://www.jstor.org/stable/23359115

This source provides multiple academic frameworks for nostalgia such as the Naivete model or the Poverty of the Present model which are important for my proposal as we need to define Nostalgia more concretely to engage with it.

Makai, P. (2018). Video Games as Objects and Vehicles of Nostalgia. Humanities. [Online]. 7 (4). p.p. 123. Available from: http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/h7040123.

This one provides an initial view into video games as vehicles of nostalgia and talks about retrogaming culture. It also engages with games and the retrogaming culture as to why these nostalgic movements may have come about.

Garda, M.B., 2013, August. Nostalgia in Retro Game Design. In DiGRA Conference.

Another one discussing retro game design with a heavy focus on Nostalgia’s presence in it, talking about constructive and recreative nostalgia. One being engaging with them to critically develop on them or critically engage and the other being the recapture of that era with rose tinted glasses.

Kehl, D. G. (2000). Writing the Long Desire: The Function of “Sehnsucht in the Great Gatsby” and “Look Homeward, Angel.” Journal of Modern Literature, 24(2), 309–319. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3831913

While not engaging with modern media or games directly it goes in detail over the function and definition of “Sehnsucht” a nostalgia or longing for something never have been experienced. A longing based on the sterilization and redefinition of historical periods.

Personal

Week 2: Personal Project

This week I actually began development on my game, following various tutorials online and things I have left over I have set up the basic bones of the player’s gameplay implementing movement, aiming and sword swinging. Alongside that I have implemented hit detection for the player’s weapon so when they strike it registers as hitting the enemy.

Gameplay showcase

The enemy hits can be seen below where it merely prints out a text that the enemy has been struck.

As can be seen the world is currently just a test ground in order to properly test out the currently implemented features. By next week I would want to have set up HP for both the player and the enemy and implement killing an enemy and the player, IE implementation of simple combat AI. Afterwards would be focusing on the development of a sword and enemy model with rigging and animation.

An example of the current script work in the game. Currently only the player is scripted.

While so far things are going quite well since there are plenty of tutorials online for Godot I do have to speed up my development a bit to properly anticipate any issues with the porting of Maya to Godot that could occur and leave myself room for improvement.

Personal

Week 1: Personal Project

My personal project that I wish to develop this semester is a small game. After the collaborative project last semester I felt a real joy in creating an interactive experience that my fellow students also seemed to really have fun with playing after it was done.

My idea for this game is to make a small ‘combat’ game where you fight a boss creature and upon its defeat you win the game. The boss will be difficult so if you struggle to beat it you can opt to fight 4 smaller minibosses that are in the area to defeat and gain upgrades to make the boss fight easier. To give a better idea of the layout of the game I made this mock up of the map.

We had to present our projects to our classmates so I made a power point presentation

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1x1n46rmpYP4vGQGfYC4hYqdJ1iE8N6JtJJavMyiHx-8/edit#slide=id.g22d262a5c5c_0_131

My plan is to focus on creating the boss models, rigging and animation as that’s a field I’d like to explore more and develop into a career as I think I’d like to take my skills into the games industry. As I have already developed a game following my chosen engine’s, godot, provided tutorial I already have a good idea of what my plan is.

I will first build the basic game structure. As its a first person game I do not need to worry about creating a player model. So next week I will focus on the implementation of player movement and player attack. Afterwards on creating monster AI and attack. Once I have the boss and and player attacks handled with death and respawn I will create the models.

Thesis

Week 1: Thesis

We had a delay in our lesson as originally it was meant to begin last week but due to illness Nigel was unable to attend. Though with this session he went in full force to catch us up and keep us on schedule. We mainly went over what the course is going to be focused on and that would be writing a thesis proposal and all the research and preparation there in. We were told to begin thinking on a topic for our thesis. I already have an initial idea that I would need to do some preliminary research on to further define but I’d like to look into Nostalgia.

Specifically I’d like to look into how Nostalgia is being used or generated when it comes to games development. I’ve noticed a trend of modern indie games and even some larger studios creating games meant to specifically emulate the restrictions and styles of older styles of games. Things like the Bloodborne Demake, a PS1 reimagining of Bloodborne, Dead Space Demake, the genre of ‘boomer shooters’ and low-poly games made to resemble the styles of older generations of games like PS1 and PS2. I may get modern film media involved like things like Stranger Things or the recent marvel films like Thor Love and Thunder and Guardians of the Galaxy which use older music genres and imagery in their films to harken back to the 70s-80s.

Specifically I used the word ‘generating nostalgia’ as a lot of the audience of Stranger Things and Guardians of the Galaxy are too young to have any lived experiences in these time periods but still feel a draw to them in a nostalgic sense, or at least I believe they do, so I’d like to do some research to see how its been written and further define my own question.

Group

Week 2: Group Project

Starting out this week we were given a break down on using a 3D tracking software called 3DEqualizer to track a scene and import that tracking data into 3D space with a virtual camera in Maya. We were emulating the match-move artist position.

With the help of Dom Maidlow we were quickly able to learn how to use the interface and what specific things we needed to focus on in order to do our job as a match-move artist. The work is relatively simple. With the computer handling a lot of the tracking automatically its mostly up to us to create tracking points in viable locations, verify them and then plug in the camera information to account for the curvature of the lens.

Then we imported all of it into Maya and reconstructed the shot’s 3D space with basic shapes to create an initial starting point for 3D artists further down the pipeline to springboard off of.

Tracked Scene remade in Maya

In addition our group had another meeting in the week to re-address our assignments and work flow as we were assigned additional group members with one of the other groups dissolving. I was no longer comp lead as I gave those responsibilities to Mingyue, one of our new members, at her request. With the restructuring our final group is as follows:

CG Generalist: | YaFang Zheng
CG Lead: | Daniel Loutfi

Compositor: | Guoxin Lin
Compositing Lead: | Mingyue

As a group we went through the brief and assigned the mandatory assets from that brief amongst ourselves. The next day Daniel and I met up to re-create the padlet board with our group members and their assigned assets so everyone has a cohesive starting point to their models.

https://artslondon.padlet.org/dloutfi0820221/reference-padlet-wm8nn2plrw4e9zk6

The work so far hasn’t been too difficult and the software and techniques involved thus far have been relayed in a very concise and easily understood manner. The greatest challenge thus far has been organizing such a large group and getting over the initial hurdles of figuring out exactly what is expected of us from the brief. While I have no official lead role in the group and will of course let those duties be done by their assigned people the group has found me to be a ‘leader’ in the sense that I will strive to organize the group. This will be something I need to be cautious of as to not overshadow anyone else’s input.

Group

Week 1: Group Project

Unfortunately due to illness overtaking some of our project leaders we had to delay the first meeting about this project till next week. In the meantime however my group and I have organized ourselves into a Whatsapp group for communication and compiled a mood board for our ‘Low-fi’ project. The idea is to create a new room in the university inspired by this specific aesthetic and then track that and incorporate it into real footage filmed by the staff.

The link to that mood board is here: https://artslondon.padlet.org/tschweizer0620221/cassette-punk-os5o010dkt45zbf9

After talking with Christos, our course leader acting as our ‘client’ for this project, we determined that what he meant as ‘Low-fi’ is what has colloquially now been referred to as ‘Cassette Punk’ ‘Cassette Futurism’ or ‘Retro-futurism’. This references the particular era of sci-fi found in the late 70s through the 80s with films such as Blade Runner and Alien. With that in mind we compiled a list of screenshots from media of, and inspired by, this period to serve as inspiration.

We have also since compiled and early asset list of what we will be undertaking in creating this room.

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