The Animation Blog has a video of Pixar’s UP online, here.
Also, they have a few related posts about the upcoming Pixar movies and their schedules.
Archive for July, 2008
First video of Pixar’s next movie: UP
Sunday, July 27th, 2008Age of Conan animations suck
Friday, July 18th, 2008edit July 30th: Not sure of the relevance of this, but it’s still very funny. You’ve been Funcomed.
Age of Conan… Perfect example of a game that’s design to appeal to sucked in, hardcore MMO players.. Much like ever other Asian MMORPGs. Best word to describe it, it and many other mmorpgs: Shallow.
Besides the countless bugs, incomplete quests, missing content and much more, one thing that really steps up as f*cking ugly is its animations. Animations are the bane of most “realistic” games out there.
I mean, I know graphics are important, but most developers (by developers I mean people who takes decisions about where the art team is going) are like clueless kiddies, giving what their as much clueless fans are asking: OMGAWESOMEGRAPHICS. Well, you get the results you get: very detailed geometry (ie: oh so many polygons), nothing else. No art style, no immersion, no feeling and certainly nothing as close as believability.
Animations are important; it brings life to your creations. Well done animations brings credibility.
In Age of Conan, animations are all but pretty. They’re slow, jerky, lifeless and meaningless. Before accusing the “system” they’re using (ie: 3ds max’s biped I assume), I assure you it’s quite possible to produce something professionally looking with any system. Lots of games/movies did it already. Heck, using Torque Game Engine will give you decent results if you’re good.
Let’s have a look at some examples.
First set of examples is a common problem in the entire game: switching from idle positions to animations to idle positions and etc. It is so painfully obvious you can’t do anything but ask yourself “WTF?”. Have a look, some are pretty funny.
Second set are some examples of plain bad animations. From that drunk dude who’s arms go through his legs, to my mage casting different spells with almost identical spell animations (which makes you wonder if she’s drunk). By the way, why does she have to look at her left each time she’s cast a spell? There’s also these two dudes who are talking.. I won’t say what’s wrong with them, too many things…
More examples follow: cut scenes.
Here’s a little footage about feet position. While I understand it’s hard to do this well in a game, there’re just no excuses for this:
More? Sure thing! Some miscellaneous crap.. In there, you’ll notice how water looks like gelatine moving at 5 frames per second no matter how powerful your computer is.
And last but not least, lip syncing. Every animators will tell you to achieve credible or believable lip syncing the head (and if possible other parts) have to move while having the character talk: it’s basic animation theory here. But in AOC, characters are mostly stuck in their idle positions with their lips moving, Ashlee Simpson would be proud:
But really, art isn’t important. Let’s instead compare our dicks - I mean, computers - with Hardware Peformance Reviews running Age of Conan!
Diablo 3 and fanbois
Tuesday, July 1st, 2008edit August 7th, 2008: so much happening: first, Blizzard looking for new art director, then it’s not changing anything on art direction.
edit August 7th, 2008: again, more development: Penny Arcade’s Tycho shares my point of view.
edit August 5th, 2008: in your face.
On the left side there is Blizzard, a company that made millions selling hugely popular games like Diablo, Starcraft, Warcraft and World of Warcraft. Let’s take World of Warcraft for example; best MMORPG ever. Now, before calling me a fanboi, be realistic and realize that 10 millions subscribers is about 9.5 millions more than the second best MMORPG existing to date. In this case, when I say best, I mean “the most successful”. I have my own reasons why I think WoW is “the best”, but I won’t dwelve into that.
About the “controversial” art style in World of Warcraft…
It is my opinion that making it more cartoony, more “artsy” made it more believable. For those of you who confuse realistic and believable; it’s not the same. I strongly think games should have a focus on believability instead of realism. Most of the games (that includes every MMORPGs) that focus on realism (ie: wow! super awesome graphics!) end up with crappy results artistically.
But the point is, Blizzard is a step above every other video games company when it comes to their craft. Be it about conception, programming or art.
And then they announce Diablo 3 (news), which looks frickin’ awesome. (Official Site)
It’s about Diablo fans, who are “disapointed” about the art style in Diablo 3.
Congratulations to you, fanbois, you DO know how to play with Photoshop. But making a petition to tell Blizzard how they are wrong about their art style makes you ignorants of the über kind.
edit: I just saw a response from Diablo III lead producer Keith Lee about this. Computerandvideogames.com link. Original MTV blog link. It basically means “shut it up noobs”. (while being a bit more polite)
