This will be my daily record of progression throughout my final year of university. It will follow my thought processes and progress I make towards my final dissertation and accompanying project. It'll hopefully help me make sense of what I come across and how to order it.
This post will be all that I've accumulated and whatever I can remember of the last week. Wish me luck.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I've added the evernote app to my phone so that I can keep an on the move mental notepad so i don't forget as much as I do normally.
I've finally got round to reading the two dissertations from last year that Lynn kindly sent to me. Even though they are to do with animation and film, not games they were both interesting topics and I can still look at some of the places they went for references as a guide for a portion of my research. It also eased my mind a little as I feel they weren't quite as formal as I was building it up in my mind to be.
Looked at a book named "designing arcade computer game graphics" by Air Feldman. Not really useful as it focused on practical theory.
Read the handbook
I've jotted down the following as notes on evernote throughout the past week, bare in mind they are ramblings and are in no particular order.. I also think I repeat myself in places:
Topics of interest
Animation for games?
Animation for films?
Rendering?
Facial expressions?
Performance? (too cliché?)
Animations effect on player experience
Game cutscenes integrated into games (seamless transitions like uncharted series)
Programmer
How much would I need to rely on a programmers aid?
Research points
Look into game theory
Psychology of games and how people play them
Why people play games
Character animations that already exist and how they portray personality (case study? maybe using rockstar games as a constant?)
Will need to produce
Tests of various emotional states that can be shown through the body language of a 3rd person playable character.
Need to research into visual clues for emotions/body language studies.
Research
Type of person who would benefit from more in depth animations... those that focus on story? People playing games like cod probably not so much...
Mindmap created in Lecture today.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Things to do next
Look up Understanding Animation (Book)
Set up a meeting with the appropriate lecturer
Create a generic walk cycle for a 3rd person game character (warming up for future tests)
Write some notes on existing game animations.
No comments:
Post a Comment