Sunday 17 April 2011

The Button

Its been a long, hard and testing weekend. But at the end of it I have a website ready to host a game ive started working on called "The Button":
thebuttonexperiment.com

The game is a short and stylish adventure game set in the 1960s. An unethical experiment is taking place in a secretive institute involving an all powerful button. Given the choice, will you press it?

The game platform is simply, a browser.

In other news, my Twitter background has been updated.
I want to be open about what im making and how im making it in order to get as much feedback as possible from people willing to share their thoughts so that I can learn from the whole experience:
twitter.com/#!/ollieclarke

Ive got a few other bits to share in the coming weeks that will shed some light on what the game is and what it will be about. Im really enjoying myself so far and cant wait to see what thoughts people have, good and bad!

In the meantime, here's a logo I have been working on, till next post!
Ollie

Tuesday 12 April 2011

Flower Power!

In Bloom Part 2
Last post I put up some pictures of my favourite tree in Leamington, it looked a bit lifeless and grey, however that was before spring arrived and kicked it into bloom!
Check it out...

This is how it looked before




And this is how it looks in full bloom






a far our shot




and this is the sad way the bloom ends



Okay, I've finished with my flower powered tangent.
Next post will be on a new adventure game im working on in my own time called "The Button"

Have a good one!
Ollie

Wednesday 16 March 2011

In Bloom

This is my favorite tree.



In the long, cold winter months it is like any other tree. Bare, claw like and bleak.
However, come the Spring it blooms into the most beautiful tree for miles around. I get to walk past it everyday.
It's March, soon it will be in bloom. I'll post some pictures of it, simply because I love it.


New game!

In the meantime, ive got an exciting new game started.
Here is the first tantalising concept:


Monday 7 March 2011

Crisis of Confidence



In 1979 US President Jimmy Carter spoke to his people about a crisis of confidence in the United States. People felt that their children's future prosperity had come under threat. Previously infinite energy resources had become finite. In an impassioned speech, Jimmy Carter urged his people to unite and tackle the energy crises together.

He lost the 1980 election to Ronald Reagan.


I heard this speech and felt a genuine voice from the past that strangely echoed with today. Echoes that spoke of the rising cost of oil, the pressure on our resources and our worries for the future generations.

I wanted to commemorate the address with an ethereal visual and audio track that would lend weight to the words, strip away any visual clues and allow the participants mind to enter a kind of hypnotic state. Hopefully a peaceful one.

I recommend you turn off the lights, load the video in HD, turn the volume up and let the visuals drain away the day.

The video is 11 minutes, 34 seconds long.





In making this video I recorded the last 11 minutes of Jimmy Carters speech. Time stretched a piece of orchestral music to it*. Created some soft ambient visual effects in an aim to create a detached numbing feeling and allow the mind to wonder.

*If anyone guesses what the music originally was before my treatment, I'll be impressed.
The music and imagery ties into some of my first memories which are from around 1979 to 1980.

Sunday 27 February 2011

Eyvind Earle Post Mortem

My first tip toe into Unity 3D land is complete!

You can view it in your browser by clicking this link*:
OllieClarke_EyvindAndGetz.html
*ok it does require running the Unity plugin however it is very easy to install.

Or download it from here:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1151317/OClarke_EarleAndGetz.zip

Or watch it on YouTube here:




Development

So, how did my first Unity project go?
To create the almost 2D world I took the image originally created by Eyvind Earle and began to model it in a 3D application. Below is an in progress image of the scene being built.



It really didn't take long to model the pieces. With the buildings modelled I seperately modelled the moving parts such as the vehicles and boats.
Initially I wanted to use vertex shading to save on using textures that would increase the download size however I found that Unity doesn't support vertex shading out of the box. I ended up using textures, this was a blessing as it meant I could add a subtle texture to each of the pieces. It hasn't affected the download size too badly as it comes at 10mb for the browser version which means it loads in less than 16 seconds on a broadband connection.


Animation

With these complete I used a simple bone rig to animate them. The animations were set up so that they could loop from start to end seamlessly. Although importantly, each vehicle animation had a different length.

Once the animations were imported into Unity they were all set to loop. Because each animation had a different length, over time, they would go out of sync creating an illusion of randomness and therefore a sense that they had lives of their own independent from each other.


Sound

I searched around for a while to find the right piece of music. My inspiration was Bladerunner. Specifically the scene in which the Vangelis blues track is playing as Deckard leans out of his window. I liked the way the music and vehicle sounds juxtaposed and yet complemented each other, creating a sombre and grimy atmosphere.

I watched a couple of episodes of the American drama Mad Men to get some inspiration. I felt that jazz would be a good place to find the music and after a bit of searching I found an old recording by the Saxophonist Stan Getz. Once I had the music I put together a rough ambient sound track made of cars, foghorns and plane fly overs to create the feeling of being by the docks.

Combined with the music it feels like a lazy evening sitting by a harbour, perhaps with a solitary drink or two.


What went right

Thanks to my familiarity with art programs and the ease of use that Unity offers, it looks and sounds pretty much how I wanted it to.
Thanks to the help of my girlfriend (a coder) the code does pretty much what I wanted it to.





What went wrong

Debugging in Unity is a little tricky, you certainly can't break and see what's happening in the script for example.
Asset management is also a little tricky. I used drop box to store and maintain assets however there's nothing like having a database to check assets in and out of.
I also found that my scene and project hierarchy was pretty messy due to my unfamiliarity with the program.
As usual the project took longer than I would have liked. This was mainly down to a significant workload to get through in my day job that rolled into the evening. Time which I would have used to develop and publish this project and more.





Conclusions

Unity is an extremely powerful game making tool, especially as it comes for free. Its well worth looking into if you're looking to create fun and simple projects that don't require much maintenance.
I'm looking forward to becoming much more familiar with it as I try out new ideas and experiments.

Hopefully as I do become more proficient with it I will develop a finesse with Unity that will enable me to focus on the ideas more than the tools.




What's next?

My next project will be a mad little something small involving this:

Sunday 13 February 2011

Earle & Getz team up

It's done!.
My first "mini" Unity3D project weighs in at only 16mb.

Click here: OClarke_EarleAndGetz.zip
Download it to your machine. Double click it to play it, sit back and enjoy the music whilst the image animates in front of you.

The app is based on an old recording from the great saxophonist Stan Getz and the image below by the great artist Eyvind Earle:



Here's a screenshot showing how my take on it turned out in Unity:



and a link to it on youTube:



If you're interested in knowing more about the genius of Stan Getz and Eyvind Earle, click the links below.

Stan Getz
http://www.stangetz.net/index.html

Eyvind Earle
http://www.eyvindearle.com/default.aspx

If you want to know more about Unity3D click here:
http://unity3d.com/

Next Steps
Over the coming weeks I plan on working out how to get it uploaded to a website that plays the media automatically and write a port mortem on it for this blog.
If you do have any feedback on the app I would be happy to hear it, the good and especially the bad!

all the best!
Ollie

Thursday 20 January 2011

Blitz Games - Looking for a Concept Artist


Blitz Games Studios (Leamington Spa, UK) is looking for a Concept Artist to come in and work at the studio for a period of two and a half months. The concept work required is for an imaginative, magical & mystical video game. The art style is painterly, stylised and caricatured.
We are offering excellent working conditions and a competitive pay rate.

The kind of work required:
• Landscape concepts
• Character concepts
• Special Effect Concepts

• Key Art
• Thumbnail sketches
• Grey Block Paint over’s
• Key Art/Grey Block Paint over’s
• Breakdown of features/props into additional orthographic or detail views


The right candidate should have:
• Good communication skills
• A positive attitude
• Ability to take feedback and work iteratively
• Industry experience
• A proven track record of reliability and flexibility

If you are interested in this role please email me at:
oclarke@blitzgamesstudios.com

All the best!