Rovers of the Road

Barking, scratching, uh, something something - I forget the rest of the lyrics - Road Rovers!

This is a pic I did of Hunter and Colleen from the animated series Road Rovers. I actually drew this back in 2012, but recently updated the look (using the brush tool for the outlines rather than pencil. Still coming to grips with Photoshop y'see). Hence the revised date of 2015.

I'm quite chuffed with the result. Nailing the look of characters that weren't designed by
me is somehting I tend to struggle with. Though if I'm honest, maybe the legs are a little short.

This romantic-themed pic is a reflection on the attraction these two characters had which was hinted at in the series.

Just a shame that they waited until the last sodding episode of the series to start developing character personalities. I mean, I like Road Rovers, but looking at it retrospectively, the charcters were just so bland - they had very little in the way of personality traits and the only time they spoke to one another was for the sake of a gag.

I had a look at the last time I posted something on this blog. March 2013? Really? I've spent the last couple of years working as an animator for a TV series. It kept my incredibly busy and hadn't left me much time or motivation to work on my own stuff. Although we have finished the project, there may or may not be more stuff, so while I will try to keep updating the blog, don't be surprised if I drop off the radar again. But two years? That's way too long.

Getting back into the action

Oh this blog update was long overdue.

I’ve been busy over these past few weeks/months. I’ve relocated to another state for a job so I’ve been a bit preoccupied with the move and haven’t had much time to get around to posting blogs.

However now that I’ve settled in, it’s time to get back to work. I’m still working on my ‘Dogs Of War’ animation, but progress is a little slower than I’d like as my job takes up most of my day and it’s an animation job, so coming home to work on my animations isn’t really the first thing I want to do after I’ve spent all day animating in the workplace. Also, I’m still in pre-production, making all the necessary assets. The idea was to get them all done then start on production, but this is taking far longer than my patience is allowing so I’m probably going to just make the bare essentials, start animating and create/update assets as I need them.

Anyway, in the meantime, here are a couple of animation samples of one of my characters. I didn’t set out to create the best animation in these clips, they were really only done to test my character rig style, so please excuse the imperfections. I promise do a better job in my main project.

Boarded!

Well, I've just finished (more or less) the story board for my Dogs Of War animation project. It took a little longer than I hoped, mainly due to distractions from computer games. Things won't get any better, as there are a few highly anticipated games set for release later this month.

Anyway, with the story board done, I have now started pre-production. Time to construct character rigs, props, vehicles (both 2D and 3D models), backgrounds... good grief, what have I gotten myself into?

Yeah... I'm not expecting for the actual animation to start any time soon. Pre-production will take a while.

I was going to put up a picture of one the board pages, but decided not to as I couldn't decide which one and also, it wouldn't give anyone any insight as to what my project is about. I know I've been rather vague on details regarding my Dogs Of War concept and putting up some of the board wouldn't be enough to whet the appetite. Still, I'll be putting up pics of stuff as I work my way through asset design.

Dogs Of War - it's time

I was going to post an entry about how I need an animation project to keep me busy and argue the pros and cons of three projects I'd like to create, only one of which I'd have the time to make.

However that's been thrown out the window as I have made my decision. I do believe it is time for me to create an animation of my beloved 'Dogs Of War' series. What I plan is to animate one of the episodes that would appear in the series, if it ever was to be produced. This will not be easy. This will be a half hour animation done just by one person. Not just the animation, but character, background, prop and other asset development. The bulk will the 2D computer animated but some 3D scenes will be thrown in too. This means for some assets (mainly vehicles) I will need to build both a 2D and 3D model. Sooo, yeah. I'm going to be busy and I hope I have the patience to get through the design stage. That in itself can take ages.

The good thing is that as I go along, I'll be creating lots of stuff I could put up on this blog site. So finally I'll be putting up things you can actually look at.

So far it's been a week and I'm half way through drawing up the storyboard.

Here's hoping I can get through the entire project.

War's probably not what it used to be

Yesterday I watched an episode of Two And A Half Men. It was an episode that involved Walden and an old business partner of his developing a bit of software that ultimately, could be used to turn off the power to any region in the world. I hope the producers of the show realise that Walden would be legally accountable for any accident that may have occured during this 'blackout' and quite frankly, such an act could also be considered terrorism. Think about that next time you watch the show.

As much as I love to nitpick, this is not what this blog post is about. This episode actually raised quite an interesting point. We live in an age of information. Just about every aspect of our lives can be fulfilled by a gadget or computer program. Now, with my Dogs Of War TV series idea, I try to be as accurate as can be when it comes to how a world war may be fought. As you'd expect from the title, my series is all about war, with fighting, shooting, explosions and soldiers rolling in to smack the crap out of everyone. In other words, conventional warfare. However after watching the aforementioned episode of Two And A Half Men, perhaps my apporach is all wrong. Imagine if you could do something like remotely deactivate the power grid to any nation. You could cripple a country without firing a single shot. Yes, various institutions may have backup generators, but for the most part you could bring a nation to it's knees. They say the pen is mightier than the sword, but a computer mouse trumps them all. I know warfare today is still about shooting and blowing things up, but these are smaller engagements. I'm looking more at what a World War could end up like, should the world go mad again.

I feel I should say that I'm not planning to go to war, goodness no, nor am I encouraging anyone else to do so. The reason I have such an interest into how a war can be fought is purely for research purposes for my TV series. There. That's the legal kerfuffle out of the way.

Birthday 2012

Well, it's my birthday. Another year older, another year closer to insanity. Or something.

It's always been awkward having a birthday wedged between Christmas and New Year's, mainly because everyone's preoccupied with holiday things. My siblings are married/have kids, which keeps them busy, dad's been busy with his yacht racing and many friends are doing their own holidaying stuff.

Oddly though, this shouldn't bother me. I don't like having a fuss made over me - I certainly don't want to be the centre of attention. However I don't like being ignored, either. I prefer some kind of middle ground. 'Acknowlwdged' is probably the best fit.

However if I'm ever able to get my animation ideas out there into the world, then oh boy, things will change for the better. Or at least I hope they will.

Anyway, I hope everyone has had a decent 2012 and it shall be interesting to see what 2013 will offer.

Nintendo

Ok, so the Nintendo Wii-U has just been released in Australia. Will I be buying one? You betcha, but not until there's a 'must have' game available and I'm employed and earning money again.

But what I'm more interested in is what the competition - Sony and Microsoft - are doing. As far as I'm aware, very little, if anything, has been said about their next consoles. It would seem Nintendo will have free reign for a while.

Part of me likes to think that the others are holding back, waiting to see how Ninty's new console will fare before they make their own moves. After all, when the Nintendo Wii was released, showing the appeal of motion control, Sony and Microsoft both then decided to bring motion controls to their current consoles. If you were to ask each company why they would bring out a motion control scheme during the mid-life of their consoles rather than saving it for their next one, they'd probably say some kind of PR fluff like 'We believe motion control is the next step in producing entertaining and immersive gameplay experiences.' when in reality they probably mean 'We underestimated how successful Nintendo would be with their motion control and we are kicking ourselves for not following suit ealier. We have developed these motion control systems now as a hasty means of playing catch-up and getting our hands on the money and success we did not want our competitor to have.'

Speaking of which, Ninty seems to have always been the trend setter with video game controller design. The button layout of a PlayStation controller is more or less identical to a SNES controller, then both Sony and Sega (remember Sega and how they used to produce consoles?) added analogue sticks to their controllers once the N64 came into play. I think Nintendo may have also introduced the rumble feedback feature to controllers (but this is pure assumption on my part, I may be wrong) and then there's the aforementioned motion control.

However one thing that may be a concern is the fact that the Wii-U hardware does not support DirectX 11, which will make the console incompatible with games using the upcoming Unreal Engine 4. As I understand it, the current version - Unreal Engine 3 - has been used in well over 100 different games and this next engine is likely to be just as popular. It may not affect those games made directly by Nintendo, but may have an impact on third party support further on in the console's life cycle. Time will tell.

Apologies for the long gap between blog posts - I've been busy with my engineering studies. I haven't forgotten about my readers (all ten of you), so I hope you can forgive me for these occasional lulls.