Researching Note No. 2

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/212003/game_animation_bootcamp_an_expert_.php

Once again in this article I noticed some rather helpful tips from Ryan Duffin:
"Study life. Always be watching people."

and

"Try to define what about their movement and posture tells you their story."

and

"Also, watch movies. Ones with real people who are great actors giving great performances. I love watching good animation, but don't imitate the imitators no matter how good they are; use life as your reference."

In short, he means don't try to copy other animations, try to copy the movements of real people.
The main reason I'm making a note of this is because I'm guilty of trying to learn how to animate by watching animations rather than actual people. So I've been attempting to copy the animator instead of the same thing they used as reference material. The main reason I feel like this is so important is because when someone creates an imitation of something, they miss out potentially key features and they create their version of what they see, which tends to be a little watered down and has less things to try to recreate compared to the original material.

Hopefully typing this up here will help me remember this, or at least it'll remind me when I check back through my notes.

Quotes taken from:

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/212003/game_animation_bootcamp_an_expert_.php

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Said by Ryan Duffin

Researching Note No. 1

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/212003/game_animation_bootcamp_an_expert_.php

While reading this article I noticed quite an interesting quote within a quote:

"Most importantly, go out and be active! Do stuff! You don’t have to run a triathlon or learn Krav Maga, but you need to have experiences to draw from when you are creating something. Go to a firing range, go running, go lift weights, go swimming, go for a walk, whatever. As Brad Bird said, “You can’t create the Illusion of Life if you don’t have one.”"

"You can't create the Illusion of Life if you don't have one." - Meaning you can't create an accurate animation of a person performing an action unless you have done it yourself.
This reminded me of when I was working on my first animation assignment, I was using visual reference material in the form of videos of people shooting a basketball, walking or kicking. The quote made me think about if I had created my own reference material, I could have looked at myself moving and remembered how it felt, where my weight was and how it shifted. This could have given me a far better understanding and made my animation easier to create.

Thinking about this I thought about facial animation, my second animation assignment involved some minor facial animation and I remember pulling the faces I was trying to create as I was making them, making them far easier to recreate. So obviously the quote and the quote within holds some truth and I'm excited to put the theory into practice, even if it involves me publicly kicking the air in order to get the required information to get the animation right and having a few people staring at me in confusion... I feel like that would give me a far better idea that just simply watching someone else perform an action.

Quote taken from:

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/212003/game_animation_bootcamp_an_expert_.php

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Said by Tim Borrelli quoting Brad Bird.

First Post

Hello, my name is James Martin and welcome to my final project blog.

Here I will be blogging each step of my final project and showing you how I'll be going about my Third Year Dissertation for Computer Games Design.

I'll show you my research as well as my thoughts on how learning new things have made me feel and how it will effect my project. Then I'll move onto the actual project which I will explain how I did certain things and share tips and tricks I found and used to help me with my work.