Life Skills Summit

 Bruce Berman 

    This week I attended the presentation given by Bruce Berman, who was the producer that worked on Nickelodeon shows such as iCarly, Victorious, and Sam and Cat. During his presentation, he talked about his experiences throughout his career in the industry.

What I Learned

    I learned a lot during his brief time talking to us about his career and what he does. Although he works in the film industry, I get the feeling that the gaming industry would be similar because they both fall into the entertainment industry. He told us a lot about how you can work long hour days working on filming and all the other things that go into it. The gaming industry will be the same way with working long hour days because there is a lot that goes into making a video game. He also talked about what it was like to work with so many people starting out and making connections for future work.

    This made me think about what the gaming industry will be like; and I came to think that both industries are similar. With this in mind, I want to start preparing for working in the game industry. Another thing Bruce mentioned, was that when he first started out he went from project to project always looking for work to get experience. This is something I really want to consider because the only way to get noticed in industries like these is having work and experience under your belt. With that being said, I'm going to work on as many projects as I can for right now.

5 Tips for Animation

 Tip 1:

    The first tip from the reading that I want to talk about is the tip about making everything feel bouncy and alive. The first time I presented my animation the character felt stiff because only the arms and legs moved and nothing else. After going back and readjusting a few things, I think I did a good job of making my character look more alive while running. "Robertson says that you should always try to keep the character moving, even if they're standing still (Caoili, 2012). This is something that I am keeping in mind for all my animations.

Tip 2: 

    The second tip I want to talk about is the one about having strong keyframes and silhouettes. My animation in particular has a lot of keyframe movement within it. All of my frames were strong keyframes with a lot of movement going on to achieve fluidity. 

Tip 3: 

    The last tip I wanted to talk about is the tip on limiting frames. I know I just talked about how many keyframes I had, but I would really rather lower the number of frames I have to make the animation look neater. "It's best not to over-flourish your animations, limiting the number of frames and just using a good smear instead, to ensure the impact of the movement isn't lost" (Caolili, 2012). I feel like this is important to me because I think using a smear would have achieved the same effect faster. Also, I feel like my frames weren't the smoothest, and using a smear would have made it so.

Animation Principles in my Character Rig

 Slow In & Slow Out

The first principle I will cover for my character rig is the Slow In & Slow Out principle. I choose this one because I made a run cycle for my animation, so I have a fast in and fast out. The book states, "Objects that burst into full speed immediately can look weightless and unrealistic" (Cooper, 2019 p.g. 33). This is true but for strictly a run cycle that is used for running one would not want it to have a slow out while you are consistently running because then the run animation would just look wonky. For that reason, you just insert an animation of the character slowing down while exiting the run cycle.

Secondary Action

"Secondary actions are used to complement and emphasize the primary action of the character, adding extra detail and visual appeal to the base action" (Cooper, 2019 p.g. 36). For my run animation, I have secondary actions in place that involve the hair moving while mid-leap and so on and so forth.

Straight Ahead and Pose to Pose

This principle is probably the most important in my animation because I worked on all 10 frames individually and did pose to pose actions in my piece.

Animation Principles in Star Wars: The Old Republic

Intro

    I recently started playing Star Wars: The Old Republic (SWTOR) and instantly fell in love with the game. I played a lot of it this past week, so I decided that I would use SWTOR for this blog post. After reading chapter 3 of the book, I noticed how all of the principles are considered carefully not just in SWTOR; but any game I have played in the past. Some of these things mentioned I had never even thought to consider; which I thought was really interesting.

How SWTOR Utilizes the Principles

    If you do not know already SWTOR is an MMORPG that has 6 different classes to choose from on either side of the force you choose to play. With that being said, each class has its own abilities and skill they can use. Building off that, the classes that wield lightsabers have some pretty crazy abilities that I think demonstrate the "Slow In & Slow Out" principle. the Sith Warrior class has an ability that allows the player to leap to the enemy and delivery a fury of attacks. This results in a "fast in" being the leap and a "slow out" after you defeated the enemy; this is similar to the cannonball example given on page 33 of the textbook.

    The class I am currently playing in SWTOR is the Sniper sub-class of the Imperial Agent class. As this character, I am constantly going between cover and popping up to shoot enemies in the head. With that being said, I think they did a really good job in the "Pose to Pose" animation aspect of the game. "Many animations blending together creates a better and more fluid game character than a single beautifully animated animation" (Cooper, 2019 p.g.31). I think this is especially true in this case because all the movements are so fluid and visually appealing. 

    The abilities I have on the Sniper are all almost instant, with a few abilities that require some time before it fires the shot. This is a good example of the anticipation principle because you have to charge up the ability and when it fires it could either hit, the enemy could dodge, or they could absorb the damage. So, between the time when the bullet leaves my gun and when it hits the enemy I get this "what's going to happen" feeling go through me.

    Going off the last paragraph, the timed abilities also have a secondary action that happens when you activate them. "Secondary actions are used to complement and emphasize the primary action of the character" (Cooper, 2019 p.g. 36). the secondary actions are very helpful with these abilities because it makes me feel as if I am actually locking on to the targets head and proceeding to take it off.

    Lastly, I think SWTOR does a good job with principle five; the follow-through and overlapping action one. I say this because, while playing you can just spam abilities, but it will not you use another ability unless the action you are doing is complete. I think this good because it keeps the player from pretty much folding their character by going through so many animations so quickly.