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 Wallpapers

If you just love survivin' right now, how about one of these Wallpapers? Some of them are certainly a bit different from what you'd usually expect, so, enjoy.
Clicky clicky to get full size. Just make sure you have enough room in your backpack.

DayZ painted logo

DayZ logo - VHS edition

Murky DayZ scene...

Unmistakably Chernarussian; unusually uneventful.

Why did the sneaky survivor cross the road?

Makarov, y u no drop anything?

What are you eaathen doing runnind near my tent?

Enjoy the Stary Sobor sunset before the snipers get you.

Pure and simple Chernarus hills. Suggestive is all you need.

DayZ Meanz BEANZ. Rocket's Bohemian Variety.

BANDITS DON'T KNOW BOUT MY MUSTACHE

DayZ Avatars

Here's a cheerful bunch of DayZ avatars to brighten up your experience of the most enjoyably depressing game you've ever played.

Note: Most forums etc. should accept these, but in some cases you will still need to resize them.

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.

DayZ Meanz Beanz

Stay tuned. This weekend I plan to release a short animation about Arma 2's hit mod - DayZ, made by Rocket from Bohemia Interactive. 

It involves beans, bandits, and possibly friendlies in Cherno. 

Minecraft Dirt Block Poof

For a couple of weeks I've been working on this gradually, and only today have I reached the final stages of  touching up my nice big poof. Foot rest poof, that is. Or poofie, as I was brought up to call it. (?)

My house now requires its own 'terrain.png'. Zipped, of course.

For all the Minecraft people out there, you'll recognise this straight away, as it's based on the unmistakable ordinary dirt block.
I took the opportunity to use the same high-pile rug material from Ikea as I already have as my carpet, so they blend together very nicely. You can buy it in 1M squared for only £10, and this only used half of it.

It did of course involve cutting the rug carefully into various pixel-edged shapes.

Cutting rugs gives me...grass

The poofie itself started as some sort of dull, black square bean bag. In fact, it still is - I simply glued all my materials on top of it. I started by covering the bean bag in big sheets of felt as the base, then cutting out an annoyingly large quantity of 1-inch felt squares in every shade of brown I could find (amazingly, each side of the bean bag measured exactly 16 inches; 16x16 also being the resolution of all Minecraft textures). 


I then got to work gluing the darn little things onto the cube.

In Arnie accent: "GLUE IT! GLUE IT NOW!!'

I used about 8 glue sticks in total fixing the whole thing together. EIGHT!! That's nearly ten!
I should imagine that's about half a pint of glue.

It wasn't as easy as it sounds, however, as often my rows seemed to go astray and I ended up having to trim some of the squares down, or use bigger ones. And the glue guns were super gunged up and faulty by the end, I was basically having to double-wield them. 
This is quite possibly the only Minecraft-related art project in the world ever that has required the use of two glue guns at once. Unbelievable.  

TOP NOTCH

But overall, I'm quite happy with the result. I can sit in my rocking chair like a proper old granny and put my feet up on a Minecraft dirt block.

BAD.

ASS.

There's a zombie on your lawn

A couple of years ago I had a little idea to turn my desk fan into a Plants vs Zombies Sunflower. I only just got round to it. So this is well out of date of current trends, but I still think it's nice.

It's almost finished, I just plan to add a couple of zombie remains somewhere.

A quick Google reveals a similar project making a fan out of the other obvious choice from the game - the Blover. It would look darn cool without the cover on it, but it would also hurt if you walked into it...

GET IN THE BACK OF THE VAN

...back of the van, get in the back of the van, get in the van. Back. Of. The. Van. 

(In the words of the Swede Mason remix...)

This spare-time project involves mud, multiplayer and minefields. 

More coming up later.

Not even half

a) Old Land Rover with spare wheel

b) Goldfield Unified School District

c) Desert A-10

d) Ambulance 705

e) Snow halftrack 

f) BRDM 2 Squad

g) Rebel Pilot

h) Argos

i) Quarry dump truck, from above

Each tray is a number, from 1 (top) to 29 (bottom).
Piece together the code by locating the tray number of the items above, and I'll give you a Micro Machine. 

If you're nice.

This is just the beginning of a bigger project involving my Micro Machine collection, unfortunately; with more cars, tanks, planes, helicopters, figures, Star Wars, motorbikes, bombers, camper vans, Star Trek, Aliens, blimps, Power Rangers, road signs, James Bond, trucks, tractors, Indiana Jones, boats, submarines, Terminators, crocodiles, Biker Mice from Mars, balloons, limousines, aircraft carriers and root beer-flavoured articulated lorries than you can shake a slightly-larger-than-N-gauge stick at.   

A spot of graphics for Brian Cox

I'm very excited to say that I'm currently working on the graphics for the next BBC series of 'Wonders' presented by Professor Brian Cox, with the lovely gang at BDH in Bristol. Safe to say there are some true Wonders coming up, and I get to work alongside some very talented people.

To find out more about what 'Wonders of Life' is all about, you better follow the Professor himself on Twitter.

Kelly's Heroes Minimal Movie Poster

Drinking wine, eating cheese and catching some rays?
Not yet, anyway.
Well, I felt inspired by some of the minimalist movie poster art floating around the web and decided to have a go at a Kelly's Heroes art design. I like the idea of incorporating a few in-jokes from the film that you won't understand if you haven't seen it.

The thing is about Kelly's Heroes is that its internet presence is very small, and yet I've never been to a military event which isn't drenched in references to this one piece of media; ranging from the simple 'Kilroy' sketch and subtly placing a few 'gold' bullions on the back of a Sherman, to fully-fledged Donald Sutherland lookalikes and loudspeakers blaring with 'All for the Love of Sunshine.' Safe to say there is not enough crossover of internet culture with the world of military enthusiasts and tank collectors. Yet.


Okay, so you probably have no idea what's going on. To justify this poster design, the film features a hippy tank which fires paint rounds, is fitted with a loudspeaker, and hunts gold. And the slogan is one of the more popular ones to spray onto the side of your real-life Sherman tank. There.

Have a little faith, baby!

Retractable turrets with nice faces.

So. Researching material for a future project, and realised that I just love these guys.

New background design

I knocked it up last night, instead of sorting out a dampness problem in the bedroom (Landlord's fault).

Every layer in the final design was still named 'TEST'-something; maybe I should have called the whole thing a test...not sure if I completely like?
I did like the simplicity of having no background, but ultimately it doesn't really suit my personality at all.

In the image are some mild references to things I tend to like, such as:

Photography
Minecraft
Talking Heads
Half-Life
Metalocalypse
Trains
London(?)
Victorian military technology
Three wolf moon
Various Soviet things
????
PROFIT

No, I didn't actually make a huge list of things I like and then narrowed it down beforehand, as clever as that would be...it seems to have been pure chance that these things ended up in there. Honest.
  

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.

Rommel on Recon

That title sounds pretty cool if you say it fast.
Although, of course, it was never cool for Rommel to go on recon.
I can only assume it was very, umm, hot.
Anyway...some interesting pictures of a diorama shot in natural light. If you've visited my Imgur, you'll probably have seen these already. But I thought maybe they deserve some limelight on my homepage!

Give 'em a click to see the full image.

Think Big. Play Small.™

I've started a little project that really is quite little.



Right now it's just a tiny (unfinished) picture. But at the earliest opportunity, this tiny little image of a convenient two-thousand nine-hundred and twenty-five pixels will (hopefully) take on a new life, the likes of which you have never seen before.

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!...