Croixleur Trailer now online

Here's a video game trailer I finished recently for Nyu-Media . You can vote for the game on Steam Greenlight. 

For this video I created some composited text scenes to bridge and blend in with the gameplay footage, animated the logo splashscreen, captured my own gameplay footage (don't think I was particularly acing it...)  and then edited it all together to the 1 minute mark. 

Download a demo of the game here for some propa hack and slash lols!

A weekend with Curse @ Minecon

Okay so I've been really slow on the blogging front lately. A good few weeks ago now, Curse invited me to help them cover the very special gaming event that is Minecon 2012 in Disneyland Paris.

It was an amazing weekend of Disney-Minecraft mashups, interviewing exhibitors, late-night editing and  cardboard square heads.

My favourite video from the weekend is below. It was edited like a trailer, and shows various highlights from around the place. Check it out!

Wonders of Life with Prof. Brian Cox coming soon...

Check out the teaser trailer below for the fantastic forthcoming series, Wonders of Life. I worked on the graphics for this programme for over six months. Can't wait to see the results! 

DayZ: Animation to celebrate 1 million players

I have spent some spare evenings creating this short animation, which I finally posted on the same day that 'DayZ' reached 1 million unique players worldwide.
DayZ is a harsh zombie survival mod, built on a hardcore military simulator game called Arma 2 - which itself is the 2009 version of Bohemia Interactive's ongoing military simulation series I have been playing for over 10 years...would you believe it?

Yes, you would.

I found myself creating two different atmospheric styles simultaneously - the serious, but tongue-in-cheek night scene, and the childrens' book-style daytime scenes. I found them rather difficult to edit together, and keeping them at opposite ends of the video was the only way to do it!

The colourful daytime style is what I was intending to pursue if ever I produced more of these. The style is inspired by the old BBC series, 'Spider!' (In the Bath)...

The watercolour paintings were fun, and were mostly produced in about 5 minutes each. Splashy and quick.

Stock video clip picked for free download of the week...?

That's right, even though its such an extremely specific piece of content, stock media archive pond5.com have apparently chosen my shot of an M3A2 Halftrack as their free download clip of the week. Of course, it means I won't get paid for it, but for what its worth, why not!



So, if for some reason you want or need a patriotically American shot of a WWII armoured vehicle manoeuvring in slow motion through a cloud of dust, you better download it now.

It's right here on Pond 5's homepage.

Kudan 'Augmented Reality' Minecraft concept making a stir!

...Well, in two niche camps, anyway - The Minecraft community and the Augmented Reality community. Despite its raw simplicity, this video more than any of the other concepts I produced has made an impression. This is probably because, not only would many people love to see this happen for real, but they can believe that it is possible, and perhaps not even that far off.

With a simple camera move in the real world, a basic alignment of the Minecraft world, and an adequately synchronised step forward in both worlds, you have something that people can relate to the technology. Plus a little bit of wobble and blur to fend off the Hollywoodists and make it believable as a modern, slightly laggy AR engine.



As well as being Tweeted and +1'd by some brainy academics and innovators, this video has been posted by the authors of many leading Augmented Reality news sites, communities and blogs, including Augmented Reality Overview, Augmented Views, Augmented Reality Layer, and Augmented Times.

Keep this idea in your minds, kids, 'cos there's a bigger splash to be made yet!

Official BlazBlue Continuum Shift trailer online...

Well now! Zen United, the official Western branch of Japanese game studio Arc System Works, have uploaded the official trailer for BlazBlue Continuum Shift 2 - which is coming to Nintendo 3DS and Sony PSP on the 4th of November. I took a 2-week break from Kudan's augmented reality fun to join Zen United (downstairs!) to edit this trailer.

As you can imagine, the most time consuming part was assembling the introduction scene, which involved browsing through Zen United's archive of game sketches and concept art for extended periods, selecting vaguely corresponding character poses and then filling in the gaps with stills from the final character art!

Unfortunately, there was no quick n' clever way to patch up these sketches into a fight scene. With the selected files at hand, I simply assembled them in Photoshop, frame by frame. Even (most of) the characters' slight movements were just down to the placement of the layer in each frame. With the addition of some random, Japanese notes from the sketches flickering around, I had a complete fight scene - totalling around 70 frames.

Exporting these frames as transparent PNGs to After Effects allowed me to do whatever I wanted with them - from changing and animating backgrounds, to masking and moving sections of the animation. Even the titles were just still PNG files knocked up in Photoshop.

I'm pretty pleased with how it came out, considering the short timescale. Safe to say there's loads more that could be done with more time. Before making this, we discussed loads of different options, more ambitious ones. Who knows, maybe Zen United will make more viral stuff soon!...

Kudan / Qoncept 'Digital Hijack' of the London Gherkin!

For a few weeks now I've been working an internship at Kudan, part of Clifton Cowley in Bristol. My job is to produce video mock-ups that represent the Qoncept marker-less augmented reality engine. This idea suggests something that could be used to promote good sexual health - or advertise condoms, of course... 

Watch the video (in 1080p!) and let us know what you think!

Meet Jazz.

She's my dog. And she doesn't really like tanks.

Watch in HD to appreciate how fluffy she is.

Lumen Soup: Production complete!

It seems that I haven't posted on here in quite some time...however, as Lumen Soup is pretty much done, I'm making a comeback to my individual blog (but will continue to update Lumen Soup's blog too...so many commitments!)

So here's an overview...

The Lumen Soup project has pretty much taken up all of my time since Christmas, so head there to see how we've been filling up the time!

In a nutshell, we did some visual tests:

And some concept art:





Until we eventually ended up with a whole bunch of digital assets:






And after projecting, acting and filming the whole thing:





Ended up with something like this:

Lumen Soup

Follow this link to Lumen Soup to have a look at the beginnings of our final project.
Here's a clip of some of our early tests. We are creating an animated live performance piece...


First Projector Tests from Livvy Brewer on Vimeo.

Summer work...

So, it seems I haven't posted anything on here since before the summer. To be honest, most of my own creative work has been on hold during the holidays, except for Lumen Soup, which is the start of my 3rd year collaborative project with Livvy Brewer...

Other than that, I have done a little bit of community outreach (is that the right term? Probably not...), including running a small drop-in animation studio at the Basildon Festival on behalf of the Basildon Arts Collective and Basildon District Council. This was extremely successful, over the two days I introduced hundreds of people to traditional 2D and stop-motion animation.

Photography by Darren Chaplin

  
Many people popped in to my animation studio to just have a peek or to contribute a frame or two towards the 2D animation or stop motion film. As well as many children, parents and grandparents, I was visited by artists such as Aden Hynes , and also got a bit of help from Stephen Metcalfe MP.

I've been having a bit of fun with my new Canon 7D, which has replaced my 40D because of its HD video capabilities. I also grabbed some fat memory cards and a Rode mic just in time for the War & Peace show.

(The quality of Blogger-uploaded videos is AWFUL, by the way. I'm heading to Vim/Tube next time)

And, on impulse I grabbed the 7D on that night when they said on the news that there would be lots of shooting stars. Here's the time lapse night sky over Lancing for about 3 hours...

I did a little bit of standard photography in Lancing and Basildon. You get over 9000 points for correctly guessing which is which! It's not that hard if you look closely...

Combine my new camera with my annual desire to put my 1/16th army to use, and you end up with a few videos, a few gigs of strange model photography and a couple of juddery After Effects compositions that feel a bit Attack of the Cones in style, but with more Olive Drab. I hope I don't ever get in a spot of bother for telling people that I do 'Model' photography.

This is a rough source image (It was not my intention to advertise Kid Robot, but hey), for capturing a model at various angles in a stop-motion kind of way, to be composited in After Effects. That rubbish crinkley blue screen is actually my old apron from Asda, which would seem like a bad idea if it was ever actually used...

Also over the summer I have run a few animation and game design workshops which have all been very successful. So, from now on it's back to my own creative work...

Background and Scenery Design

Here's some of the background and scenery designs I've been working on this year...

'20th Century Participation' - 1910


'20th Century Participation' - 1942

The Fall of the Wall - 1989
(The year I was born, actually...)

A screenshot from the first render of the 1989 Berlin Scene

Here are some of the wall sections, with graffin' painted digitally on top of an acrylic-painted texture of a concrete wall...

La-De-Da... Cos' it's a Lada? Get it? Yeah.

It's a cheesy, hippy-sort-of line, but apparently it was a popular one.

A lovely picture of some sort of peaceful bird (dove maybe?)
emerging from the barrel of a Soviet tank.
Bloody Commies.

The original textures, created in acrylic paint...

The original planned image was first produced as a sketch...

An incredible scene...

The Mongolians have swarmed the border!
(hmm, sounds a bit like a military code...)





A really, REALLY flowery and camp forest scene.
I would definately die of hayfever in there.

IN THE NEAR FUTURE...

In the near future, the escalation of transport congestion must be countered by a new traffic control system. Programmed to evolve by calculating more effective methods of control, it concludes that the extermination of mankind is the only way to resolve the problem.
With an army of 5 billion robotic cones, barriers and bollards, it coordinates a devastating blow to human civilisation which is only the start of the massacre of mankind...

Working together with my production team and a small army of extras, we created this film in just under four months.

Woodlands 50th 'Birthday'

Recently I completed a short animation that was commissioned by a school in Essex which is celebrating its 50th 'birthday.' The short animation is mixed media, using 2D traditional/digital, stop motion, pixelation and motion graphics to convey the construction of the town as well as the school itself.

The film was very successful, being used as the opening piece to 'set the mood' for a much larger show and event celebrating the birthday.