My chosen study is video games, but more importantly indie gaming. This is because it is more likely that I can enter this industry, as it does not take a massive team and massive amounts of money to make a successful game. Artistic creativity is allowed to be free.

After researching the indie games scene, it has changed my aspirations of wanting to simply make a game. Before I wanted to make the best game the world has seen, but now this is not the case. Indie games are known for their gameplay and style, not for story. Most people make the assumption of thinking of a story idea, and that it is a game idea. This is not true, and even though this is how some people work in the industry, it is not how an indie game is made. A good honest game is about the gameplay, in the same way a good musician is about the music, not the image and money.


WArio Ware Diy on the Nintendo DS is a game where you can draw, animate, compose and program your own mini game. This has been a big help for me to understand programing in the game world. GAming is not just having a character who does something, its about how it affects the world around it, for example, movement in comparison to the background. Also using Adobe Flash to learn action scripting is another example of this. It will help me to learn the basics of how a game is programmed.

I made this animation to explore the possibility of animating to Noise Music. Noise music is an avant garde form of music, where there are no rules. No rhythm, no beats, just non-conformist sound.

I want to explore this concept further in my final year project. I intend to make a game that use this style of animation in the background, as an attempt to confuse the player. I will tie this in to the story of the game, which involves the game not wanting the actual player from reaching the ending, in a fourth wall breaking way.

More Pixel artwork...

Pixel Art

Using Microsoft Paint, I have been attempting to create my own style of pixel art that could translate into a game. Many of the drawings are spontaneous, but are ideas of how a game will look, characters and what happens in the background.

Since the idea of downloadable gaming, there has no been many developments in Indie gaming, but when considereing new types of gaming experiences, there have been many developments. As new hardware allows for different ways to play a game, I will focus on this area.

OnLive is a new gaming platform being developed which allows for an on demand gaming system. 2D Boy, the indie games company who made the critically acclaimed World of Goo have signed up to the OnLive to have their games made available.

http://news.cnet.com/onlive-could-threaten-xbox-ps3-and-wii/

Motion controls have been the biggest changes to mainstream gaming thanks to the Nintendo Wii. After the success of the Wii, Nintendo's other competitors have now started to believe i the power of motion control.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/rorycellanjones/2010/06/will_gamers_want_to_kinect_or.html

Microsoft have created here motion controller the 'Kinect' which has a camera that tracks the body, allows for controller free gaming.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iK_UlfO42sc


SOny have opted for a controller called the 'Playstation Move' which is an advanced controller that allows for 1:1 movements and works in conjunction with the Eyetoy camera.
Both companies have built upon the ideas Nintendo had started and try to improve the situation.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s9ybHddDMgM

From an animation perspective, both of these new technologies are in a sense going to use augmented reality for a gaming purpose. Instead of bringing a computer generated model into real life it will be the opposite, your body becomes the animated character on screen.

The newest technology to grace gaming, like cinema, is 3-D stereoscopic. Sony have introduced a firmware update to make all PS3's 3-D. The only downside is the need for a 3-D TV and the glasses.

One of the latest developments in technology and gaming, is the parallax barrier. This is a new type of screen which allows for the stereoscopic 3-D effect to be achieved with only a screen, eliminating the need for glasses to process the two images. The Nintendo 3DS , which was revealed at E3 on June 15th 2010, uses this technology to grant immersive 3-D gameplay and the lack of glasses. The console will also include a slider to adjust the effect for the individual.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nta2nff7faY

http://www.engadget.com/2010/04/14/dxgs-3d-view-sacrifices-hd-but-makes-3d-video-recording-pocket/

Lost WInds

No More Heroes 2

Canabalt

Super Meat Boy

Cave Story

Bit Trip RUnner

Bit Trip Runner is an indie game available for the Nintendo Wii, and is one of the best games to be released this year. It perfectly encapsulates the notion of simplicity and redefines the beauty of pixel animation. The main character is called Commander Video, and his animation is fluid and builds character. There is no story in the game, but by allowing such a striking character simple animation that perfectly captures his every move, the story becomes redundant. The backgrounds in the game are built in 3-D, which really adds to the movement of the character. As Commander Video has only around 5 different actions, they tend to be more memorable than all the not needed gimmickry of todays games.

The gameplay is simple to jump, duck and kick, whilst the character runs; this simple idea allows for more fun to be had.

Goichi Suda or Suda51 is one of my biggest inspirations. He is an indie games developer who makes games like no one else, and has been compared to Quentin Tarintino and Takashi Miike. He is an indie developer who has found an audience in the west and has somehow been able to produce original games with also having a publisher. He created an ethos for his games design, "Punx Not Dead" and lives by this. His games usually contain the spirit of Punk and this is seen in all aspects of games design, even animation. Mature themes riddle there way though his games, but the style and animation really elevate his work to a more interesting level. In his game No More Heroes, the main character Travis Touchdown animates in an almost comical over the top way that satires both Japanese animation and games animation. At 2:41 best shows this. The explosion that does not affect Travis reflects the lack of realism and ejection of following the norm, video game anarchy.

Pixel Documentary

This short documentary raises some interesting points. The fact that a pixel was viewed as something completely different as the pixel of today is very interesting. As someone who was only young when 8-Bit gaming was around, I have to say that a pixel has always been a little square to me.

Overview

Video games are something I have been interested in for most of my life. This means that I have had the opportunity to grow up with all the changes in this relatively young industry. Compared to any other medium, video games have grown considerably fast. If you compare the birth of the modern video game console, the Nintendo Entertainment System with the current generation of consoles, you can clearly see the many evolutionary steps this industry has taken. From pixels to polygons, from five channels of music to full orchestration and from buttons to actual motion control.

Indie games tend to reject the modern video game trends, such as 100 man teams, photorealistic graphics and all he other unnecessary aspects. With the current generation of consoles, downloadable content has allowed for indie gaming to shine. There is no need for a publisher with indie gaming, therefore giving full artistic creativity to the developer. This means the quality of gaming is more artistic and less about making money.

How this has affected animation is ore interesting. As an indie game is made by a smaller team and involves less money, the animation is more limited. This sounds like a negative point, but in actual fact is a very strong plus. Lots of indie games have returned to the pixel, mainly for nostalgia, but also for a strong statement on how the photorealism that gaming strives for today has lost a lot of charm. Animation in indie games has returned to the basics, the simplicity of animation. Their focus is not on capturing all the realism of how sweat will drop from a characters face, as this is pointless. This doesn't add to the gameplay, and certainly is not needed to create a good piece of entertainment. By reverting back to the simplicity of older games, thinking of how to animate a character becomes more interesting, as they don't need to be made realistic. This may seem weird, but it adds a lot more charm into a character, and relates back to one of the 12 principles of animation, exaggeration. If a photorealistic games character was animated like a disney cartoon, it would be a monstrosity to see, and would not work. By choosing this old primitive form of animation, it allows for more traditional animation techniques and therefore more character.