Cuphead

I was recently reminded of the fact that this game is being released this year, as I had forgotten about it until now. Cuphead, announced back in the summer of 2014, is a "run and gun" style game being developed for the Xbox One and PC that looks like it ripped all of its art right out of a 1930's cartoon. The game puts the player in control of the character Cuphead, who, along with his friend Mugman (who can be controlled by another player for cooperative play), are forced to do the bidding of the Devil after losing to him in a bet. The developers of this game said that all of the art is hand-drawn, and it brings a very unique look to an otherwise familiar video game genre. Between the seamlessness of the drawing's animations and the overall wackiness of the art itself, it's hard to look at footage from Cuphead and not think that you might just be watching a cartoon instead of playing a game.

Madden NFL Video Game

Madden, by Electronic Arts entertainment has easily become one of the most popular sports video games of all time. I remember growing up playing this game and watching it evolve from using glitchy, pixilated graphics into one of the most realistic looking sports series that's out their today. With the release of the Playstation 4 and Xbox One, Electronic Arts has added even more attention to detail, with fans in the stadium now becoming dynamic, rather than static images, and even the grass on the field looks super realistic. The amount of work that goes into this game is incredible, and the video below shows all time and labour gone into making the series.

SolidTrack

Have you ever wanted to conduct marker-less camera tracking for real-time visual effects and on-set visualization but didn't have the right equipment to do the job? A company called SolidAnim, one of the major leaders in virtual production products, introduced the latest version of camera tracking system for film and broadcast industries at CABSAT 2015.


SolidAnim is actively promoting the professional utilization of SolidTrack because it is the most accurate, real-time camera tracking solution for recording camera moves and data logging of camera moves on the virtual set. One of the most notable functions of the system is flexibility to filmmakers; allowing individuals to shoot both outdoors and indoors with the same high quality production results.

On top of the fact that it is highly mobile, can be set up within 10 minutes, and adheres instantly to a new environment, SolidTrack (as well as other SolidAnim systems) can meet the highest demands in terms of facial motion capture complexities; the eye tracking system is so powerful that it provides consistent and unparalleled motion capture abilities that give virtual characters more realism. This is a great product that is highly versatile and will be leading the motion capture industry within the near future; I would definitely recommend this to any filmmaker who strives to produce the best content in motion capture.

Madden Predictions

EA and Madden have been predicting the SuperBowl winners since the 2004 SuperBowl when the New England Patriots defeated the Carolina Panthers. Over that span the computer has gone a very solid 9-3 with their picks, most impressively correctly picking the exact final score of the most recent SuperBowl New England 28 Seattle 24. During this span Madden has also released a video showing what their simulation had happening throughout the game, including, the touchdown plays and big plays from the game. Using the in-game graphics to show how these games play out, Madden has been eerily accurate over the past decade. Every year the graphics of these videos improve along with the game graphics for each Madden, with this years looking incredibly realistic.

As you can see from the clip the textures and backgrounds and almost every single part of the animations of the game are incredibly realistic and show a very high attention to detail. As these animations continue to develop and the graphics for games continue to improve we will get better and better quality SuperBowl prediction videos, eventually it may even be like we are watching real game highlights.

Gritty Reboots: The Process

Gritty Reboots is a youtube channel dedicated to remaking nostalgic television shows/video games/comics into something more well, gritty. And while these videos may or may not be your cup of tea, it’s interesting to see the kind of effects they have to do to accomplish what they want. They divide their work into three parts: the final product video, the back-to-back comparison video, and the how it was done video. They’re definitely a channel I’d recommend checking out if you’d like to see the process of video production and after effects with a small-scale company.

    Looking through their work, Gritty Reboots definitely had built a signature look: dark and edgy. They're lighting is more often than not borderline cold, catering to the dynamics of light and dark in a picture. It only makes sense given that they're final products are marketed as being more serious than their whimsical origins. 

    The before and after is a good look at what their original shots looked like without all the color-grading and special effects. It's really interesting to see what a change in lighting here or a single mask there, makes in a film. 

   Similar to other small-scale video production companies on the internet (such as the Hillywood show), Gritty Reboots has a small team that knows how to get the shot. Their behind-the-scenes are as interesting (if not more) than the final product. To me at least, it shows just how able you are to accomplish something if you're willing to put in the work. Like other BTSs of theirs, they also offer a glimpse in to the entire production process as a whole. Yes, these aren't meant to be tutorials but they can do just fine as inspiration.

   Gritty Reboots is certainly a company that's worth looking at, even if it's just to see their feats they've managed to accomplish. 

Second Son

I know I posted about a video game last week but I'm going to again. This trailer came out about a day ago and it was just way too good to not talk about. This trailer is for a game coming out in February 2014 called Infamous Second Son. In this game you play as Delson Rowe a man with super powers fighting for equality for himself and others like him. The reason I posted this trailer is because its all about his new neon power which is a sort of teleportation  power. That means this movie is literally all about movement. Very interesting and beautiful movement of the main character and how it looks in game. As a Game Development minor and someone in this animation class I was blown away both by how complicated it would be to pull of the mechanical/implementation aspects of this power. I was also amazed by how hard it would be to create the elements needed to make these pieces of animation and how hard it would be to actually put them all together. Anyway, watch this video I am so excited to play this game and look at this piece art even more.

Transistor

This week I'm posting about "Transistor". "Transistor" is a new video game that's being released in 2014 by SuperGiant Games. This is the trailer for "Transistor".

In "Transistor" you play as Red, a singer who finds an intelligent sword and because of that is constantly being pursued by the antagonists of the game. This trailer, shown at the announcement of the game is ripe by 2D animation both from the actual game, and cinematics created for and played throughout the trailer. This is a 2D game meaning all of the animation within it is in 2D. This is also a nice piece of work to look at because it really demonstrates how much animation goes into a video game. There's all of the cutscenes, the character animation, the environments, and more, these are all things that have to be created in order to make a complete game. In this trailer you can see all of that. You can also plainly see how all of the elements in the game are in 2D. In order to make a good video game, you need to think about everything you would think about while making a movie. Framing the scenes, lighting, costuming, all of that. I feel like sometimes people forget that games are art and I think this trailer really illustrates that well.

Mario is Warped to the "Real World"

Titular video game character Mario is inserted into the real world in this hilarious After Effects parody by Matthew Dominick.

While attempting to use a common item in his world (a warp whistle, thus the name of the video), which would normally transport Mario to a different location in his own world, Mario suddenly finds himself on the streets of what appears to be New York City. Wandering around for himself, he soon finds that things aren't quite so different from his world, and he adjusts accordingly.

Aesthetically, the video is fairly well made. Mario, a 8-bit character, is inserted sort of like a cardboard stand-in in our own world, as he has his own shadow and his lighting is similar to that of the world around him, even though he is a flat, pixelly little dude. He throws fireballs at actors, which are a lot higher detailed than he is, but it doesn't seem to take viewers out of the experience.

The video culminates in Mario suffering a disastrous fate at the hands of multiple real-life vehicles, but he ends up 'winning' anyway, as he made it to the castle - In this case, a White Castle. An entertaining short, at the very least.

Scott Pilgrim is Possible!

This week I'm posting about Scott Pilgrim vs. the World. This is a movie based on a graphic novel and because of that it incorporates a lot of graphic novel and video game elements as effects. I enjoy this movie quite a bit because of these elements and how the effect the look and feel of the movie. There's a lot of effects used to add excitement to the film by making it feel really fast paced and choppy. More importantly I feel like a lot of these effects are totally replicable with the skill set we now have in After Effects. I post a lot about effects like this, by that I mean effects we are able to replicate, but that's because I think it's really cool. Being able to look at a movie like this and say "I could do that" is pretty cool. granted it takes a lot of work to mimic anything like this but with the exception of the flaming sword I think it's all stuff that we've gone over in class. There's a lot of 2D elements layered over the video track, like the "LEVEL UP" graphic and the others like it. Those are things we could make in Photoshop or Illustrator and incorporate into  a movie with ease. I just can't believe how cool effects like this are so simple to create. Don't get me wrong, it's a lot of time effect to put these things together but it's totally doable with what we know now.

"The Last of Us" Title sequence

http://www.artofthetitle.com/title/the-last-of-us/

Start the video at 14:00 for the full effect of the Title Sequence in context.

This is a really interesting title sequence of a game that I have played, called "The Last of Us". The importance of this title sequence was something I didn't realize until after I read the interview on Art Of the Title. The very first scene in the game is the main character and his daughter as she dies. This moment has surprising narrative weight even though it's incredibly early in the story. At first, the story then immediately jumped ahead several years and continued along. In early testing it was clear this jump was a problem, because the narrative weight of the story didn't have enough time to sink in, so the next scene was confusing and hard to pay attention to. Naughty Dog, the game studio behind "The Last of Us", decided that a film style title sequence would be ideal to give some time to the player to absorb the story. So, this title sequence is both an interesting artful piece, but is also utilitarian in that it is necessary for the story to work. The textures were all inkblots suspended in water, recorded and composited in After Effects, to represent the spread of a zombie virus. It works really well, the textures are intruiguing and you want to figure out what they are, but not so much so that they detract from the titles. The thing I really find cool about this however is that the title sequence wasn't originally intended to be in the game, it was later decided on because it made the story work better. In particular, the vast majority of video games don't have title sequences and those that do usually just flash the title of the game and move on, like for example in Mass Effect 2.

Start Video at 6:20

While this flash to title is interesting and effective in this context, you don't really get to see the more traditional film title sequence in games, and I think that "The Last of Us" is an example of how as video games become more cinematic, how film style opening titles can be incredibly effective.

The Last of Us

The Last of Us is a popular video game released just this passed June. I've yet to play the game myself, but I really hope to soon. I've heard incredible reviews about how successfully the game puts you right into the action. My roommate said he stopped playing the game because it got too terrifying. The game takes place in a post-apocalyptic 2033. You must defend yourself against the zombie-like monsters along with savage humans and cannibals. The story line is apparently very intense with complex characters and twists in the evolving plot. Along with that, the game looks beautiful. Here's a in-game screen shot to give you an idea:

With so much thought going into a game, the title sequence could not be given any less. On theartofthetitle.com, I found a video of the title sequence and an in depth interview of how they made it.

First off, the intro:

The director of this title sequence was a dude named Henry Hobson. 

During the interview posted on the website, he was quoted in talking about the making of this video.

Kevin and I spent a day in San Diego, just covered in black ink, pouring it on every surface imaginable, and every shot just ended up looking like paper! We had black ink, some natural sponges, mosses — everything borne of nature — and then we had compressed air, literally computer cleaning compressed air. If you shook the can heavily you could actually freeze the surface of whatever you sprayed it onto, so the back end of the sequence is actually the reversed footage of this freezing and unfreezing of black ink. It creates the look of the black mould, but it wasn’t anywhere near far enough. It worked perfectly for the back end, but the front needed that extra help from real mould.

If you want to read the rest of the interview here's the link:

http://www.artofthetitle.com/title/the-last-of-us/

It's a very interesting read and really got my mind thinking about ways to get creative shots. What's slight ironic (and I didn't realize until later) is that this intro was made with absolutely no CG effects. But we could easily apply this in After Effects and transform this footage into something that looked even more surreal. If you were looking for that effects anyways. 

As it is, I love the footage they got and I think it fits perfectly with the game. 

Let me know what you think!