14/10/12 - Case Study Continues

I had other things i needed to do yesterday which stopped me from doing anything towards my case studies but i think that's not such a bad thing as this morning I read my Crit reflection post again and decided a better Case study to do would be on Wheatley and his character. If I analyse what makes him a great character and look into his animations a little more in depth then i could find out something which would influence my study on personality a little later.

Little case study plans.

Skyrim.
Approach NPCs as varying Races and note if there are any changes to animations as well as dialogue.
If not create small animations suggesting what should happen.

Will look more into it soon.

Wheatley - Portal 2




"Wheatley’s animation process involved creating an extensive and intricately planned library of reusable movement and acting components that could be rapidly composited together to create unique actions for each of his hundreds of lines of dialogue." Karen Prell, Animator.
http://www.karenprell.com/Video_Games.html

Reminds me of the technique i read about for facial expressions in RPGs where they attach certain expressions to keys on the keyboard and press them at the right times to record the animation for that bit of dialogue.

Pretty interesting method and would explain how they produced animations filled with personality for each individual bit of dialogue in the time allowed. Am currently hunting for a clue as to the animation list or how they went about planning the reactions they'd need. It would be interesting to see if there was any research into eye movements done and how they'd affect personality.

Knowing the method and watching the animations again does mean i start noticing the little movements that are repeated but that's just because I'm looking for them.

The main challenge this method would have if I tried to apply it to my research would be the number of factors that would have to be pre defined. You could have a set of whole body expressions to choose from because it wouldn't be flexible enough to cope with the variety of interactions players might try.

Interesting Links to things

Half-Real: Video Games Between Real Rules and Fictional Worlds (Juul) 

http://www.ted.com/talks/torsten_reil_studies_biology_to_make_animation.html
 Torsten Reil Ted Talk on methods they used to overcome repetitive movements in games. They use muscle structures and AI evolution to help create realistic reactions to impacts. This was from 2003 and they used GTA3 as an example of what was wrong so a lot of the information they found out will be used in games i've looked into such as GTA4 so if i were to do a comparative study this would explain the differences.

Life Drawing
Blogger is being a bit of a pain. Its not letting me see the upload form for pictures and videos so the life drawing from last week and this week will have to wait till tomorrow when it might show up.