Tag Archives: Game Art & Animation

Train2Game News: Mid-week round up

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Blizzard Entertainment released Mists Of Pandaria yesterday. The latest expansion for World Of Warcraft. Blizzard have also said that they have no fear of Windows 8 and will release games for any platform their players are on.

Avenged Sevenfold have released a new track that will feature on Call Of Duty: Black Ops 2. The song, Carry On, is the second song the band have released for a Call Of Duty game. They previously released Not Ready To Die with one of the Call Of Duty: Black Ops DLC packs.

Telltale’s five Walking Dead episodic games will be put on disc in December for Xbox360 and PS3. The game is based on the graphic novel turned TV show and through playing them myself I can say, if you are a fan of the series, play this game. You won’t be disappointed.

Nvidia’s head of cloud gaming, Phil Eisler, believes that cloud gaming could take over from consoles. He believes that consoles have one final generation in them before they die out, leaving the world of gaming in the hands of the cloud.

Ubisoft have announced that Assassins Creed 3 will not play on Windows XP. The company has released the specifications needed to play the game. There is a version for Windows 8 in the pipeline though.

Bethesda have released an animated prequel to its upcoming Dishonored. The webseries is called Tales of Dunwall and the gorgeous animated shorts are being released in three parts. The videos can be found on YouTube and they show the downfall of the in game city.

Sony Xdev are giving a small studio the opportunity to win £25,000. This new initiative, called Playstation Pioneers, will reward developers for a PlayStation Mobile game concept and will also offer successful candidates the opportunity to work alongside XDev. Further details can be found here.

An extra four titles have been added to the Humble Bundle 6. The titles are: Bit.Trip Runner, Gratuitous Space Battles, Jamestown, and Wizorb. If you have already purchased the bundle, you will get the new games added at no extra cost.

If you are attending Eurogamer this weekend you can get a special surprise when you play Company Of Heroes 2. Everyone that plays the game or attends the developer session at the event will get a code to access a future beta for the game.

Finally Train2Game will be at Eurogamer this weekend. If you are attending go and say hello, it is always nice to meet these people. I will be attending on the Saturday so if you see me feel free to talk to me. I hope everyone that attends has a brilliant time.

Train2Game News: Craig Moore student diary: Week 44

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Its story time kids!

This week has been a bit of a mammoth task for me, it has been a case of completely planning and attempting to organise the full storyline for the game. It’s a bit of a new beast for me, taking to creating a narrative is something I have only really ever lightly touched on.

Being an arcade gamer at heart my story lines tend to start and end at ‘Save the Princess’ so embellishing on that and pushing my narrative skills has been a good exercise. Especially when considering the fact that I am working with quite a strict set of predetermined story lines it certainly stretches the old grey matter.

That has literally been my week, when I look at the work I have done it doesn’t sound like much, but making it all intertwine and essentially work takes up a great deal of time and trying to ensure it’s going to work best for the player is another world entirely!

Apart from that I have been knee deep in my Train2Game work, I’ve moved on to my final few assignments while I am waiting for my first submission to be marked, hopefully I will get the course finished before the end of the year, at least that is my target.

Ciao!

Craig

Train2Game News: Amanda Blatch student diary: Week 1

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So.. first diary, first week. What is there to say? First day at DR Studio I met a lot of people, t’was pretty cool. Also did my first concept sheet for an in-game character and vectorized it and made her look so sickingly adorable it was fun.

Wasn’t the last character piece this week though as I went on to do the same to an additional two characters, before then getting my hand held through the entire cutting and rigging process in Maya and 3Ds Max as they were things I hadn’t done before.

That night I learnt to rig for this game I’m sure my housemates were going to forcefully drag me away from the computer had it not been so late and I was so very, very tired. Luckily after a good night’s sleep I was able to pick it up again in next to no time and storm my way through the remaining two vector characters so they were ready to go in the game.

Annnnd I think that is about it!

Not really much to say as my week was mostly about learning the style, processes, where to store files correctly and how to use programs that I hadn’t used before. Wait, actually there was that car accident after my first day of work at the beginning of the week where Matty and Craig did NOT nearly die despite what their diaries this week might say. Mostly based on the fact that when travelling at about 15-20mph, the vehicle will not scream into a blazing inferno.. so there.

Boom. Week 1 diary complete! See you all next week.

Train2Game News: Ezekiel Morris student diary: Week 14

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I have been sketching up eight characters this week for the new project, sorting out colour palettes so that everyone knows which colours will suit the characters. In the back of my mind when I was first asked to draw eight characters in a week I didn’t think it wouldn’t be possible considering the time it can take creating the colour palettes, I thought it would take longer.

Sketching was quick and there have been times when I have to get the character just right before continuing, making sure that when I draw over the mannequin layout the character looks right with the mannequin. Once the project manager is happy with the sketches I continue on to the next character, the last couple of weeks have been very busy. I have been working late with the guys to get some work done but luckily enough I’ve done five concepts in the week with three more left to go. I’ve almost finished my sprints and now I’m just working on my last concept and I’m done.

I think my next sprint is animation, I feel confident using Maya but I’m not so sure when it comes to the technical side, if there’s a problem that I can’t solve I will let someone know, I think its best that I work on my strengths and improve what I know, I have said this before I won’t say no to a challenge and I’ll give it my best.

Train2Game News: Matty Wyett-Simmonds Student diary: Week 41

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Sorry for the lack of diaries lately! I’ve been so busy with the current project that I just didn’t have time to write them.

Everything is going swimmingly well now and we are in a position where we just have to keep churning assets out to make the game. I’m working mostly on the tech side of art rather than creation. This is how I like it though as I enjoy doing it, but I’m not the most creative person. The others are working on concepts for characters and buildings and everything is starting to look awesome.

We also now have a new student starting next week who some people may know, Amanda Blatch!

I know her from the gadget show as she was on my team for a good 6 months. She is again another artist and specializes in character art mainly. She’s also moving in with me Craig and Ezekiel so should be good to see another face around. Also my tortoise is now living with us (was with my girlfriend before but she’s going to Leeds to start her new PhD! Congratulations to her!) At the same time though Amanda is also bringing her pet snake so now we have a house with two reptiles in, which is awesome!

The tidal wave that was Sea Park is slowly calming now and there are regular users, so the game must not suck which is always good. We may go back to it to make updates and such for the people that are completing the game but for now we are concentrating completely on the new project which we are hoping will take half the time to make and release.

Game Jam starts tomorrow! I hope everyone else is excited, will hopefully meet a few people from Microsoft, last year it was Epic Games, two very big names indeed!

I have a new portfolio site now using HTML5 only, which is working very nicely; check it out if you can http://mattyws.wix.com/portfolio#!home/mainPage

Hope everyone enjoys their weekends; I certainly will at the game jam!

Best

Matty

Train2Game News: Another student in his local paper

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Train2Game Student, Joao Soares, has been featured in his local paper following the World record Game Jam.

The article can be read in the link below:

Games_Wickford_Today__Walthamstow_September_2012

Train2Game News: Students featured in local papers

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Train2Game Students Dan Hawkins, Richard Scott-Jones and Jason Teefey have been featured in their local papers. The students talk about their time at the World record breaking Game Jam.

You can read the articles in the links below:

Games Sudbury Mercury September 2012

Redhill games industry student

The Surrey Comet September 2012

Train2Game News: Train2Game talk to Pocket Gamer

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Choosing Microsoft’s forthcoming Windows 8 wasn’t the only notable aspect of Train2Game’s recent game jam at the University of Bedfordshire.
The event was also a world record breaker.
The 48 hour hack saw a total of 299 students come together to create a series of games fit for the platform’s Metro UI, with an adjudicator from Guinness giving the event his seal of approval when the coding was over.
But, according to Train2Game course director Myra Smallman, Train2Game’s hacks aren’t all about setting records – they’re also about helping newcomers gain exposure, and uniting them with the platform most suited to the kind of games jams deliver: mobile.
We caught up with Smallman for her take on Train2Game’s record breaking bash in Bedford.


Pocket Gamer: What makes Windows 8 a good platform for today’s students to familiarise themselves with?
Myra Smallman: On our courses we aim to give students training with a wide range of different development tools.
We see Windows 8 as a vital development tool for them to be able to use as we think it will be one of the main platforms for games design in the future. It also supports the native languages they are familiar and comfortable with.
The students have the chance to choose what is right for them – C++/DX, HTML5/JS, XAML, C#

Can you tell us some more about the event’s ‘best in show’ winner, Royal Rush? Will it be released on Windows Store?
Royal Rush was chosen as the winner because the judges could see so many positives about the game.
The team jelled well together, the game used an innovative gaming mechanic and was perfect as a mobile title, with drop in game play and it’s instantly addictive.
We hope to see it in the Windows Store for Windows 8 on 26 October.

The game jam produced some 20 games, which have apparently been submitted for review to the Windows Store. How many of these will make it to market, and what slice of the profits would students see if so?
The plan is for all the games to be free to download, so there’s no revenue to share, but this is a great promotional opportunity for the students and their games.
Some would say there’s more value in them showcasing their work at this point in their careers, rather than making a quick buck.

Microsoft’s Andrew Webber, Guinness World Records’ Gaz Deaves and Myra Smallman


One thing we try to communicate to the students is the that gaming is a business, publishing and marketing are going to be vital to their future in the games industry. This experience is part of our whole ethos of getting students ready for work.
We hope to see the vast majority of the games in the Windows Store as long as they meet the required quality measures for successful submission.

Is a 48 hour game jam actually a good way of developing games intended for release??
Primarily, game jams are fun, but we also like to think that they teach our students how to work as a team and how to work under pressure.
We are very proud that our students have a level of dedication and talent that has allowed them to produce playable games within 48 hours.
In terms of quality of a release, it’s unlikely that all the titles completed in this way will be up to the standard of a game built over months or even years, but what it can produce is innovation.
Many mobile titles are based around a simple and addictive gaming mechanic, and the game jam environment is ideal to produce this simplistic game play that demonstrates a clever idea. Should one of the games prove particularly popular it could be further developed in the future by the students that created it.

Do you imagine you will work together with Microsoft on a similar sort of event in the future?
Hopefully. At the moment we are all exhausted, but we very much enjoyed working with Microsoft.
Those at Microsoft involved provided tremendous support to our students and given the opportunity we would very much like to work with them again.
Thanks to Myra for her time.

Train2Game News: Ezekiel Morris Student diaries: Week 13

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Ezekiel Morris week 13

First of all I had a weeks holiday to catch up with stuff but in my spare time while I was away for the week and over the weekend I have been sculpting using Zbrush and Mudbox.

I was experimenting with both sculpting programs, I do like both programs but the ZBrush I find more useful. When I’m sculpting in Zbrush I sometimes don’t think what I’m creating, I just go with the flow. It’s the same with Mud box but I do prefer the ZBrush tools. You start off sculpting some random model then, in a couple hours it starts to morph into something else.

I always start off with a concept before creating something but I was in the flow. I didn’t know the short-cut keys in Zbrush or the sculpting tools but you can tell by looking at the small picture icons on the sculpt tools column, for example move, sculpt, smooth, flatten etc.

I’ve been watching some ZBrush tutorial videos and it has helped me a lot. I’ve been diligently working through my T2G course work, creating a concept sea creature, quick thumb nails sketches with silhouette pose and then filling the detail later.

OK back at Dr Studios, finishing off robot animation in flash, creating tick boxes using vectors and placing text in speech bubbles.