Post 12 - Week 13 session

The session focused on task two (ACM Draft report) and we talked about finalising our final project ideas. At this stage, I am a little unsure about what I wish to do. I'm pretty sure that I wish to work for a games company, but whether its modelling or animation is still up for debate. I enjoy the sculpting in ZBrush, but I have a natural aptitude for animation and the motion capture suite is what drew me to this course so I am a little confused, but I'm sure I'll have a better idea in the next week or so.

Possible ideas at this stage include:

1) Construct and animate a character in a series of short films

This would involve rigging and possible use of motion capture.

2) Study the differences between key framing and motion capture

This would be leaning towards the animation side of the course and allow me to investigate both areas of the technology. Slight modelling may be applicable, but unsure at this stage. May use stock characters, or make my own depending on my own technical competencies.

3) Model a series of characters

This would require minimal animating, but would be modelling heavy so not sure about this option.

Ms Strudwick mentioned the XBox 360 Kinect. This would be a very interesting tool to use (granted it costs £130, but it is the latest in commercially available motion tracking software). Could relate to option 2, but again at this stage I'm keeping my options broad, until I am sure about what I wish to do.

Post 11 - Task One, plus grade

Since my last entry, I have completed task one (web diagram plus bibliography). in total, the bibliography has 49 separate references and have all been written whilst following the Harvard form of referencing.

Additional research which was not added to the blog had been added to the research diagram. This is due to the fact that some of these materials feature on my other blogs and I did not want to end up repeating informaiton.

The web diagram has been created with a kind of space / retro game theme. The idea was at every significant change in the web diagram's narrative to include a simple drawing. This would be a recognisable character, or gaming related icon (such as space invaders, power ups and son on). As the viewer progresses through the web diagram, the icons become more recent (i.e, icons start with Taito's 1978 classic space invaders and ends with 90's Mario style mushroom power ups). It includes and documents my research into the relevant areas of interest such as 3d modelling and animation. This was done using a large range of sourced materials and I feel that I did a thorough job.

Here is a link to my Prezi web diagram - LINK

I recently received my grade and was delighted to discovery that I was given a 70% grade. Very pleased with the result and hoping to keep up the good work. I did not get any feedback for this work, but I did work very hard on this and feel that the mark I got was fitting.