Well I have just decided to venture into the world of animation, beyond that of which I have currently been doing, which has been short animatics and storyboards in Flipnote Studio 3D. Besides not being able to have the time to work on it in school, it's somewhat difficult to learn at home, or rather just tedious. I've always been a slow detailed oriented sketcher, and an even slower line artist, just in general my process does not tend to be the fastest. When working in programs like FireAlpaca, it seems almost impossible attempting to work at the 24fps industry standard. Just 5 sketched frames alone took me approximately two hours, and that was the sketch itself, no outline or anything more complicated than a simple sketch. (I'm not even going to detail the soreness of my wrist and hand.) While I'd love actually animating something of length, no amount of copying and pasting will help me reach my goal as quickly as I want to, especially considering the multitude of unfinished digital pieces I still currently have in development. I know lots about key framing, inbetweens, body movement, onion skinning, the whole nine yards, don't get me wrong! I just need to practice more on my delivery and output times, as I feel that's my true handicap, especially considering I only have about 4-6 hours of energy left after any given school day before I completely collapse in exhaustion. Unfortunately, it almost feels as If my progress is stagnating, and that before long I'll cease improvement all together. I just wish I had more time to develop my skills further than what I'm already doing. The good news is, I've already been following some extremely popular animators within the digital art community, and while it's no college course, watching animation development streams and given tutorials has already begun to help me immensely. I'm tempted to try my hand at keyframing animations, as it seems more and more online creators are shifting to automatic animation rather than frame by frame, but it's still pretty mixed as is and I should aim to learn both methods just so I can have some versatility at my disposal.
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It seems like in recent times, remakes are becoming more and more prevalent, especially in the film, animation, and video game industry. For instance, Disney looks like it's aiming to remake all it's most popular classic films, with it's newest remake of The Lion King to be added to the list soon enough. Netflix adaptations and reboots of popular series are beginning to insert themselves in every possible nook and cranny. Even Nintendo and other similar gaming titans are falling to this trend, such as the Spyro Remastered series, the rerelease of the Crash Bandicoot trilogy, and remakes of Superstar Saga, Bowser's Inside Story, and with it's most current release of Let's Go Pikachu/Eevee. It's speculated that even more remakes of fan favorite games, especially those which are not typically thought of as being "Main Series", currently have a remake scheduled or in development. But why the sudden increase? Well, the dreamer part of me wants to believe that it's an attempt to shed more light on beloved but currently obsolete classics, however, the cynicist in me knows that it's more than likely an attempt at a quick cash grab. As I stated in my previous post, it's much more difficult to use modern culture to your advantage, due to it's volatile nature, but an equally effective way to create interest in your consumers is to cater to their nostalgia. To a film director or a game developer, it's much easier to create a remake than a spiritual successor. You've already got the basic groundwork, the script, the story, the code, and the mechanics. Even creating art assets is easier since you've already got the previous assets that you can use as reference. Not to mention, it's way riskier to try something new, as you know for a fact that with remakes, you're almost guaranteed that you'll have a positive reception from longtime fans-granted that you don't try to stray too far from the original model. Though, as much as I hate to admit it, I do love the re envisioning remakes tend to offer, good or bad, and I am exited to see where the new creative perspective takes longtime favorites, however hesitant I am to come out about it.
Well, with 2018 nearly out of the way, and 2019 fast approaching, here's a short reminder of just how long this year has been around for- the tide pods meme? That was in January. The Ugandan Knuckles? February. The Yannie/Laurel? May. Octo expansion was released this year, and the Teaser for Smash Ultimate was all the way back in this March. Feels like years right? Turns out in this day in age, trends are coming and going faster than they ever had before due to technology and the now widespread use of various forms of digital media used in an almost daily sense. With so much raw information at one's fingertips, it turns out that this overload of data to our heads makes us care less for the current, but what is 'happening'. To put it simply, we've lost a big chunk of our attention span. No wonder why trends last maybe a few weeks or so before dying, no one wants to stick around, everyone wants to move on to the next big 'happening'. This is incredibly significant to content creators - especially game design creators, because such a big part of game design is being able to connect to your audience, and an easy way to do that is by referencing current pop culture trends. The only issue is that these trends now come and go in a blink of an eye, all save for a few, and games can take years to produce. So what does one do in place of this? Well, for some, this means not referencing current pop culture, but referencing pop culture that has managed to linger for a while, that is still popular, even if it's simmered down in time, yet has proven itself against the tests of time. Or in place of a modern connection all together, one could take the route of nostalgia, an attempt to appeal to the deeper, older parts of an individual that have been ingrained into them at this point. Food for thought I guess.
Maybe I'm just getting older and horror is having less of an effect on me, but it seems like in recent times horror is just becoming less horrific. I'm talking about all forms of media, from movies to TV series, to video games, to even online stories. When you think of horror, you think of actually getting frightened by the material. Those who say they enjoy it for the settings and the creative writing have their own genera, thrillers, which while are 'thrilling' aren't inherently scary. The point of horror is to scare the reader, not to thrill them with fantastical concepts, however usually most good horror manages to do this anyways due to how well written it is. Some of my favorite writings do just that, primarily freak me out, but still manage to get me to come back to the story time and time again just for the mystery and the insane narrative I must figure out and solve for whatever reason.
With October in full swing, it almost seems sinful how I haven't mentioned one of the most important challenges present for artistic creators of all types. The Inktober challenge and it's counterpart, Goretober, are challenges that provide a new prompt for every day of the month where artistic creators then use these said prompts as the main topics of their daily project. This isn't just limited to traditional art however, as digital artists, writers, and even musical composers can participate, as long as they stick to the base line of the given daily prompts. It can teach discipline, perseverance, and focus to those who need it. It can also be used to teach creative thinking as one struggles to form an idea for their daily topic. Why is this relevant to game design and media creation? Well it serves as an example for various things, such as time management, project scope, and creative flow. Before partaking in the challenge, usually I only finished 5-8 drawings per month maximum, and while those drawings tended to be much higher quality, this challenge has taught me how to effectively communicate my design intentions while saving time by not adding strenuous detail. I've become so well versed in this that now I am completing 2-3 finished drawings a night, my production has never been higher! All creators should attempt this challenge at some point, as these skills of quality check and time management translate well into other fields such as game design. I'm fairly certain that if one wanted to, they could quite easily make their own Game design related challenge (Codetober perhaps?) in order to encourage game design based challenges of project management and whatnot, teaching new designers how to effectively manage workload and incorporate creative freedom to those who participated.
As I have already mentioned in my selected works page, I am starting up an ask blog of sorts, one for my little spin off AU of superstar saga, a game in the Mario series originally for the gba in 2003, and remade and rereleased in 2017. The fanbase for this game is small, but has achieved an almost cult like following. Why is this important you ask? Well, my small blog might have only 21 followers now, however that is almost a third of what my larger, main artwork blog has, and that has been active for nearly 3 years, whereas my humble ask blog has been open for only a month at most. Why the drastic change in numbers? well it's because of the interactivity it provides. Watching characters interact with each other in their own world is one thing, however interacting with them directly is another. This is seen time and time again, with the rise of things like VR simulation and Corporate media, like the infamous Wendy's twitter. Time and time again, it is becoming more obvious that in order to succeed and be recognized in the virtual world, one has to master social marketing. Social media has become an almost everyday part of the lives of most people, especially with the youth of today's generation, it's a medium that has never been seen before, and knowing how to use it to the best of your advantage will determine if you can stand out of the crowd and succeed, or drown in the crowd of mediocrity and fail. You have to manage everything, from all the layouts of your individual sites you'll use, to your own website, to the tags you put down to even what you can or can't say, as even censorship laws online. It is very hard to be bold, new, and captivating when you have to constantly monitor the content you produce.
https://www.digitaldoughnut.com/articles/2018/february/7-reasons-why-social-media-marketing-is-important Nelson, Sharron. “7 Reasons Why Social Media Marketing Is Important for Your Business.” Digital Doughtnut, 6 Feb. 2018, www.digitaldoughnut.com/articles/2018/february/7-reasons-why-social-media-marketing-is-important.
This is an example of what I'm talking about. Originally, I had planned to have moving tiles, and 4 levels, and 6 different enemies. Right now I'll be lucky to have 1 level and 3 enemies. I've been getting help from people both online and off line, but many times, despite how much I've trimmed and cut from my original project, it seems like I'll never get it finished in time. How simple do I have to go?
Ever since my initial beginning of learning to code in C#, I've had it's workings running nonstop in my head. What do I mean by this? Well, what I mean is that occasionally I'll wake up in the middle of the night thinking of how I forgot to put a semicolon at the and of a line, or how I accidentally added a public class type variable in a private OnDisable() action. Though, there is a strange problem that I face, where, I cannot prescribe a whole value to a term or concept. They remain abstract terms until I'm able to get a keyboard under my fingers and type away. For instance, you say "What is a bool?" and my response would probably be "Uhmmmmmm... It's that... True/false thingy yeah..?" But then you tell me "Go make an editable true/false statement in Unity." And my response would be "OK!" Before typing out public bool myStatement = (false); If there's something I'm doing wrong in my approach to this, I wish I could know, as It's way more frustrating than one would think.
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Creator InfoThis is a blog for a Game Art Design class. Future programmer and currently an artist and writer. Archives
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