Topology

literally, topology means topos, place and logos, study.
So I would say that the topology is the study of how to organize the parts of an object (a model, organic or not) in the space they occupy (their structure) so to obtain functionality and balance between themselves and the whole object. In CG that I suppose that would mean how to organize the structure and flow of edges, vertices and polys.

when applying topology Hard edged modelling does not require such a strict modeling workflow but can still take advantage of edgeloops to help create a flow to the mesh. Because it is often not necessary to subdivide a mesh entirely, polygons can be disproportionate in size and local subdivision of the mesh is more effiecient. Also, if the mesh is not deformed in any way, this grants even more freedom to modelling the mesh in terms of a nonquad surface.

When you model an odject, a chair for example, you only care for the chair to be visualy correct, whether in the case of a living creature topology has to be correct so the proper deformations appear when the model is animated. So, in the case of modeling creatures, topology defines the overal mass and muscular structure in combination to the flesh that covers it.

life drawings

here are a selection of my life drawings from this term, i enjoyed them to a certain degree, my skills certainly need polishing, mainly in every class i aimed to achieve the likeness in body shape rather than anything else, i never attempted the models face as in this early stage i felt it was unimportant.

in this one we drew the person in an animated sequence, starting off at 2 minute sketches and ending up at 15 seconds, the quality in image doesn't seem to change.

we varied from long drawn out half an hour drawings all the way down to a few seconds, this one here is an example of roughly 15 minutes drawing, once i had the shape to a level i was satisfied with i then tried altering other details, such as her piercings and even the mat she was laying on, i am the happiest with this one of all as the proportions seem ot be right, and is fairly accurate to her original posing.

research - uber entertainment

uber entertainment is a small time company behind the arcade and pc hit, 'monday night combat', with a development team of 18 people, they managed to make one of the biggest xbox live arcade hits to date, with most os the team having heavy experience in the industry they already had vast knowledge of how to produce a game effectively, with their founder and president who worked on one of the biggest pc titles of 2009—Demigod—with their creative director John Comes.

Chandana Ekanayake executive producer and art director - morrowind.
Steve Thompson, Cinematics Lead – Dungeon Siege, Dungeon Siege 2
John Comes, Creative Director – C&C Generals: Zero Hour, LOTR:Battle for Middle Earth, Supreme Commander, Demigod
Tim Cox, Environment Art Lead – Neverwinter Nights 2
Jon Mavor, CTO – Total Annihilation

the first year of development was solely based on finding the funnest method of this kind of game to play, with it being in 'white box mode' for a whole year, until they found the right combination to make the game the funnest it could possibly be.

''Keeping the art simple allows us to iterate on the gameplay fast, experiment with different ideas and throw away mechanics that don’t work. - Chandana ekanayake - Uber entertainment''

research - rare / rareware

rare are one of the most renouned game publishers/developers in the UK, if not the world. with many classic milestones such as goldeneye, perfect dark, banjo kazooie and a number of stern platformers, i have chosen them to research as my AAA company, mainly due to personal preferance, as there is much to talk about.

i have found a list of current employees who have been working for them for many years, the list goes as follows

Simon Farmer:
Perfect Dark - "DD Sniper"
Goldeneye - Production Manager
Grabbed by the Ghoulies - Production (with Andy Wilson and Leigh Loveday)
Starfox Adventures - Rare Production Director
Conker's Bad Fur Day - Rare Support
Jet Force Gemini - Production Manager
Banjo Kazooie - "Paper Pushers" (with Eileen Hochberg)
Blast Corps - Project Manager
Donkey Kong Country - Scheduling
Donkey Kong Country 2&3 - special thanks

Duncan Botwood:
Perfect Dark - Design (with David Doak)
Goldeneye - Production Designer
Starfox Adventures - starring as Andross

Mark Edmonds:
Perfect Dark - Programming (with Beau Chesluk and Steve Ellis)
Goldeneye - Director of Photography
Jet Force Gemini - Thanks To

B. Jones:
Perfect Dark - Graphics/Artwork (with Ross Bury, Karl Hilton, and Lee Ray
Goldeneye - Costume Designer

Grant Kirkhope:
Perfect Dark - Music (with Graeme Norgate)
Goldeneye - Original Music (with Graeme Norgate)
Grabbed by the Ghoulies - Music & Sound Effects
Starfox Adventures - Additional Musicians
Donkey Kong 64 - part of "Development Team"
Banjo Kazooie - "Big Noise Maker"
Blast Corps - Live Guitar
Donkey Kong Land 2 - Music

Martin Penny:
Perfect Dark - Sound (with Graeme Norgate)
Goldeneye - Rare Testers (with other people)
Starfox Adventures - Sound Effects
numerous credits as a game tester.

they have lost some of their more popular employees who went to start the videogame company 'free radical' who have been made famous for the 'timesplitters' franchise, free radical have now disbanded and reformed under the name 'crytek UK'. the workers who left to start free radical are as follows.

Martin Hollis:
Perfect Dark - Project Leader
Goldeneye - Produced By
Goldeneye - Directed By
Killer Instinct (arcade) - Technical Programmer
- Left Rare to start Zoonami

Steve Ellis:
Perfect Dark - Programming (with Beau Chesluk and Mark Edmonds)
Goldeneye - 2nd-Unit Director
- Left Rare to start Free Radical

David Doak:
Perfect Dark - Design (with Duncan Botwood)
Goldeneye - Original Screenplay
Donkey Kong Country 3 - Network Support
- Left Rare to start Free Radical

Karl Hilton:
Perfect Dark - Graphics/Artwork (with Ross Bury, B Jones, and Lee Ray)
Goldeneye - Scenic Art Director
- Left Rare to start Free Radical

Lee Ray:
Perfect Dark - Graphics/Artwork (with Ross Bury, Karl Hilton, and B Jones)
Banjo Kazooie - "Strange Noise Makers" (with Eveline Fischer and Chris Seavor)
Blast Corps - Voices (with other people)
Donkey Kong Country 3 - Backgrounds (with Phil Dunne, Carl Tilley, and C. Woods)
- Left Rare to start Free Radical

Graeme Norgate:
Perfect Dark - Music (with Grant Kirkhope)
Perfect Dark - Sound (with Martin Penny)
Goldeneye - Original Music (with Grant Kirkhope)
Goldeneye - Sound Effects
Jet Force Gemini - Music (with Robin Beanland)
Blast Corps - Music
Blast Corps - Sound
Diddy Kong Racing - Sound
Killer Instinct (arcade) - Music/Sound (with Robin Beanland)
- Left Rare to start Free Radical.

research - activision

activision is the big name company in comparison to tale of tales, the games they make are much more for the mainstream market, as opposed to risky art statements, under their belt they own many well known franchises such as, call of duty, guitar hero, blur, tenchu, true crime, and many more.

in terms of numbers of employees activision are well in their thousands, as they are a worldwide company, in comparison to tale of tales who have about 40 members, and are based in belgium and nowhere else.

at this point in time activision are still going strong as their games are much more aimed at the casual market, and with guitar hero being debateably one of the biggest party group games on the market right now, it doesnt look like they will be losing profits anytime soon.

i have done some looking into acitivision and it seems that

Activision have come a long way since the company first started in 1979. Then it was four programmers leaving Atari and starting up one of the first third-party development houses. They made their name in the 8-bit markets of the ZX Spectrums, Commodores and Atari 2600's, and progressing to be one of the leading publishers for the Amiga and ST 16-bit machines. they started to experience difficulty, as they went into reorganisation and filing.

they made up for the damages, as their current CEO, Bobby Kodak put together a small team to lead the company out of Filing, and steer them onto their present direction. Firstly focusing on the (then in its infancy) pc Gaming market, and moving to support the home consoles of Sony and Nintendo, Activision have remained, at their core, a "Traditional Video Game Publisher."

This slow build up has led to being the number two third party publisher in the world, and as the gaming world starts to embrace more mobile and wireless gaming devices, Activision are continually assessing the emerging technology.

research - tale of tales

i will be researching the company 'tale of tales', trying to find out the differences between big name game developers and the smaller indie developers,   tale of tales is a  games development studio, founded by auriea harvey and michael samyn in Belgium in 2002.

''
The purpose of Tale of Tales is to create elegant and emotionally rich interactive entertainment. We explicitly want to cater to people who are not enchanted by most contemporary computer games, or who wouldn’t mind more variety in their gameplay experiences. For this purpose, all of our products feature innovative forms of interaction, engaging poetic narratives and simple controls.''

from what i can gather, tale of tales make it their goal to make obscure games with a unique gameplay and art styles, as opposed to anything which might be considered 'mainstream', by looking at their games i can tell that in my personal opinion, they focus more on the art side of things to how fun the game is.

for example, 'the path' is a horror game they have made based off the old stories of little red riding hood, it apparently offers an unsettling atmosphere and environment and a unique style of gameplay, The six protagonists each have their own age and personality and allow the player to live through the tale in different ways. Most of the story, however, relies on your active imagination. i find this to be an interesting concept, but as there are apparently no goals to accomplish, enemies to fight or puzzles to solve, makes this debateable if it can even be classed as a 'game' at all.

another example is their debateably most popular game, 'the endless forest' their own description for this game is as follows ''The Endless Forest is a multiplayer online game and social screensaver, a virtual place where you can play with your friends. When your computer goes to sleep you appear as a deer in this magical place. There are no goals to achieve or rules to follow. Just run through the forest and see what happens.''  this seems to me like a charming idea, but doesnt sound like there must be very much to do other than run around as a deer, and by word of mouth that IS all there is to do.

Animation fundamentals - good examples

1. Squash and stretch - The Mask - This means to difine the rigitdity and mass of an object by distorting or changing it's shape during a certain action,  here we can see very clearly that the character is plummeting down, due to him being stretched very far towards the floor, this is an example of it being done well, as it's very clear what is happening.

2. Timing and motion - The Mask - This means to space the action and define the weight and size of the object in motion fitting the personality of the object of moving characters. Here we can see that he is obviously swinging the microphone, and that it is very lightweight because we can see it swinging very fast due to the almost false frames of where the microphone has been previously in motion, this is a very common method used for very quick animation in classic drawn cartoons and works well.

3. Anticipation - The Mask - anticipation in animation involves posing the characters and usually utilising pauses to build suspence for the following action, i.e anticipating what will happen next, used here with the villian being slowed down before doing his next move involving eye catching activities

4. Staging - The Mask - staging means to make a certain scenario or pose unmistakably clear, in this example we see that the person strapped to the table is obviously the hero, and the one with the buzzsaw is obviously the villian, with the facial expressions and colour choices, you could not mistake this as anything but a perilous situation

5. Follow through and overlapping action - the mask - this means when an animation is triggered / caused by the primary action, ie hair moving when a character moves his head, here it is used when the character moves one side of his face it causes the other to move apporopriately.

6. Straight ahead action and pose to pose action - MK Shaolin Monks - straight ahead action is when you animate from a starting point and go with the flow as you animate, never knowing what the next frame will look like until the one before is completed, pose to pose is when you animate pin points throughout the animation and fill in the gaps later once the foundations have been decided.

7. Slow in and out - MK Shaolin Monks - slow in and out is when objects or characters give the illusion of real depth, such as a ball bouncing and noticing its slows down at the peak of the bounce and speeds up as it moves ot the groud.


8. Arcs - Poke'mon - This is where something animated follows a realistic pattern when thrown, being affected by gravity and arcing (dropping) when not being handled and suspended in air, prime example being when a poke'ball gets thrown in the animated show poke'mon, every time they throw a poke'ball it arcs until it hits the ground.

9. Exaggeration - The Mask - an entertaining animation is one which pushes the boundaries of reality, especially if it's a cartoon or other hand drawn or even 3D entertainment, prime examples come from classic 90's cartoon like the mask, here we see his eyes, teeth and tongue bulging out of his head, as he sees a speeding car coming towards him, this could be depicted in any number of ways, but the one we see is the funniest on most entertaining, i feel.

10. Secondary action - The Mask - the secondary action is when a second animation is caused by the first,  here we see the primary animation being the character flying through the air and breaking the ceiling, the secondary is the bricks flying away due to the ceiling being broken, this is used many times through any action sequence so there is plenty of options to choose from when looking for examples.

11. Appeal - The Mask - appeal is simply making an animation that the audience will enjoy watching, i feel the best example i can give is yet again, the mask, everything about the show fits what a cartoon should be, it's entertaining, funny, and genuinely creative and never the same thing over and over, combined with iconic cartoon voice actors it hits every nail on the head.

12. Personality - The Mask - the mask is a good example again for all of the reasons stated above, it has character, entertainment, charm, everything personality entails.