Cool little in-browser game using what looks like orthographic sprites of real Dark Void game assets:

Do we have the best marketing team or what?



Too bad about that jetpack...

John Williams joined Southern's art faculty during my junior year. If I had to pick one word to describe him, it would be "passionate." The man was on fire for his beliefs, wouldn't accept less than 100% from his students, and never held back criticism when it was needed or praise when it was deserved. I've never felt so afraid to disappoint, so encouraged to excel, or so rewarded for my efforts as I did in his drawing and illustration classes.

His children were born while I was a student at SAU. I only found out he was sick last week.

Thanks for everything, John. You will be missed.

I love art that is still a work in progress. When I took a trip to Europe and did the whole gallery/cathedral/monument circuit I realized that as beautiful as the finished art was I actually liked the unfinished works better. Finished paintings by the renaissance masters were amazing - so amazing that they almost make you forget about the artist. They almost become entities unto themselves and it's hard to imagine that the canvas was ever blank.

Michelangelo's David was once just a chunk of rock and as impressive as it is, it was much easier to see the hand of the artist and appreciate his skill when I turned around and viewed his "unfinished" slave sculptures.

I guess that's why, when it comes to animation, I love watching rough pencil tests so much. When the finished product is in theatres it has such a sheen of polish on it that it's hard to see the touch of the artist. The magic is so complete that you just believe the characters are alive. Of course that's the whole point - and it's the mark of a great animator to make you believe it. But what I really love is when I see these drawings, that are still clearly drawings - just pencil on paper - and they STILL come to life. The magic is still there, but I enjoy it that much more because I KNOW I'm being tricked. There's a magician behind it, putting his heart into his craft, fearing his work isn't good enough, sacrificing his time to get it just right, learning new things as he does it. It's beautiful and so, so inspiring.

I usually have to scour the Internet looking for great pencil tests because they're just not commonly available, but recently I had the pleasant surprise of finding all my searching was no longer needed. Jamaal Bradley has made it easy for people like me by starting a new blog dedicated entirely to pencil tests."...Pencil Test Depot..." has most of the work I had found on my own and promises to continue posting more. Go check it out if you like pencil tests, and subscribe if you want ongoing inspiration. I highly recommend it.

It's a good read. I knew the general story of course, but this is a bit more detailed then the version I've been told. Here's and exerpt:

To fund their venture, Deal and his three partners (excluding Fries) each anted up $6,000. The $24,000 start-up fund, he hoped, would carry them until they got a contract. Until they found a publisher, each member (and their families) had to live off savings. The team met anywhere they could, from coffee houses to the nearby public library. “We started small and built slowly,” said Deal.

Read the whole article here: How Airtight Games started a console game studio with just $24,000

Wait, is this Kotaku employee trying to get my identity stolen by filming my ballot entry for some Uncharted 2 swag? Aw, who cares, I'm on Kotaku!

original source: Kotaku.com

Marketing is having fun with this game. :)



On a subtler note, I think this swag-bag for members of the press is really smart. It's a little different, it's certainly appropriate for a game with a lot of flight and vertigo in it, and it's stuff that the traveling press might actually have occasion to use.

So good job marketing team, except why don't the developers get tons of free stuff?

Here it is straight from Bear's BSG Blog

And here's an interview he gave on Gamespot

This is actually really old news, but I haven't posted in about 5 months so I'm playing catch up. I think this news came out just about the day that I made my last post.

In a stroke of pure brilliance the powers that be approached Bear McCreary, the rising star known for his fantastic work on Battlestar Galactica and Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, to see if he would be interested in lending his unique musical aesthetic to Dark Void. It turns out that Bear was not only excited to accept this new challenge but that he is actually a big fan of games and, in particular, a certain Man from Capcom, who can only be described as Mega. Wow, some things just come together perfectly. Serendipity, I suppose.

Bear uses a very interesting mix of traditional orchestral scoring and some unusual tribal instrument solos. Anyways, the music fits our game perfectly and what's more it sounds so great that some commenters have gone so far as to say that the music alone will be worth the price of the game - that may be, but I hope you enjoy playing it too.

There are a lot of fans of the classics here at Airtight so sometimes someone will whip up a fun little bit of mock art - even our composer. So, seeing as yesterday was April Fool's Day, Capcom took the opportunity to share this stuff with the rest of you. Follow the link for more 8-bit artwork and an awesome remix of the theme music by Dark Void's composer: Dark Void's New Look

The past year or so at Airtight Games has been amazing. I love it here and Airtight has expressed interest in keeping me around, but for personal reasons it's time to move home to Ontario. I will be here until the end of April then... we'll see.

If you are an Ontario studio seeking an animator for film, broadcast, or games please contact me for a copy of my current demo reel: timsormin*at*gmail*dot*com

[UPDATE]: My wife and I have decided to put off our return to Ontario and stay here in Redmond for a while. Looks like I'll be here for another summer of ultimate frisbee with the Airtight gang! I am now working on a new, unannounced title.

In the midst of depressing news like Microsoft laying of 5,000 people and EA cutting 1,000 jobs it great to hear that someone is taking a different approach to relieving financial pressure:Blue Sky has moved it's studio from New York all the way, um, next door to Connecticut to take advantage of the "Hollywood East" tax breaks offered there. The best part is that instead of huge layoffs, they're actually expanding and hiring more people. Now I realize this plan was initiated long before the whole US economy collapse thing became big news, but it looks as if some smart planning may have saved some people their jobs, and that's always a good thing.

The local newspaper stopped by to take a look around and give a bit of a profile of us last week. If you're curious, there's some interesting info about our studio that I don't think has been made public before. Obviously, with the game still in progress no one can give it a glowing review, but it seems like most people are impressed with it so far and are looking forward to seeing the finished product. This guy doesn't seem to offer much of an opinion, however, opting to mostly give quotes from people who work here. (Click the picture to read the article)

Looks fun, that's all I care about... Well that, and that it makes lots of money so animators can still have jobs.

Chop Socky Chooks may not be the best animated series on television, but it's the best one from Canada. Congrats to the rest of my old Starz colleagues and the new guard over at C.O.R.E. Toons. The writers and creators always get all of the credit. It's too bad the studios and artists that actually MAKE these things remain completely unknown to the public.

I'm still using trusty old Maya 7.0 at work, but I must say that for the first time I'm actually excited about a new release of Maya. Maya 2009 will include animation layers, a la Motionbuilder, which is something I've wanted since I started animating for games. Just think, if they decide to change a character's idle pose you can simply slap that pose on a new layer in every other animation that needs to conform to that pose and you've got a non-destructively modified animation. Nice. Also helpful if you want to make several variations of similar moves. Other features include improvements to unwrapping UVs and easily rendering in stereoscopic 3D. Go to the Autodesk website to read more about it and watch some demo videos.

Kung Fu Panda is an awesome, movie. Way better than any other Dreamworks animated movie to date. The trailer doesn't quite convey this fact, but check it out if you haven't seen it yet. The art direction is beautiful (except maybe the Monkey character design) the animation is really organic and entertaining, and the story has a lot of heart and humour. I don't remember a single pop-culture reference or fart joke, either. Huge props to anyone who worked on this. Hit the picture above for a link to the Google listing and enter your zip code to find the showtimes at your nearest theatre, then go see it. Hurry, because Wall*E comes out in a couple weeks and you should NOT decide to just see one animated movie this month.

Cinematic Happenings Under Development (CHUD.com) has a cool interview with the Dark Void developers. There are some great shout-outs to the animation team, but alas non of the work attributed to me in the article was actually done by me and I kind of just wanted to be clear that I'm not claiming anyone else's work as my own. The quote in question is: "The UFO hijack sequence, where you're pulling up panels? That's animated by this guy Tim, who animated on 300 and did the rhino sequences." It's a combination of mis-spoken and mis-quoted information. I didn't work on 300 at all. Jose was just thinking of another guy. As for the sky-jacking animation, including the part when your pulling up panels: It was mostly done by the talented (and patient) Anthony who spent ages collaborating with programmers and designers working and re-working the gameplay, tech, and animation. I just animated the part where Will is trying to steal the pilot's gun and then either wins or loses.

The compliment from Ed Fries is awesome. He says "As far as animation goes this team has some of the best animators in the game business. They hand animate everything." A lot of games make extensive use of mo-cap. I think it can be good, especially for cut-scenes, but 9 times out of 10 it's better to have more exaggeration or just physically impossible moves that can't be mo-capped. I mean, check out the stuff that TJ and Cameron animated and then try to tell me you think mo-cap looks better than by-hand animation. In our case we couldn't mo-cap a rocket-packing, ledge-jumping hero anyways.

In fact, it seems most of the articles praise the animation, with one exception: Gamespot said that "...the animation still needs some polishing..." and frankly they're right. Thank you, Gamespot. A lot of the stuff in the demo is still in progress and I was starting to worry that people thought that its current state was good enough. Who wants to make animation that's "good enough?"

Capcom had a press event in Vegas last week called "Captivate '08" and the Dark Void demo we've been slaving on for the past few months made its debut. Okay, so the demo wasn't "playable" as far as letting members of the press play it, but it was a functioning demo mission that our lead designer could play and demonstrate in front of them. It turned out pretty well and the press coverage seems to be positive all around. There are some commenters complaining about things like the lack of multiplayer and the overall brownish look of the demo. The former is in the interest of a better single player experience and it works out for the animation team because we can make better, more varied animations if they don't have to be for multiplayer. The latter is a valid complaint, but keep in mind that this is only one small environment in the game and there will be more variety when we're done. I'm hoping for less brown myself. The only other complaint I saw a couple of times is that the helmet hides the hero's face and makes him hard to relate to. I think only one of the articles mentioned that he won't be wearing the helmet all of the time. It's an upgrade that you get at some point, but you start with Will's face visible. He's not some faceless military cyber grunt and he won't be one of those boring, mute (or nearly mute) characters either. Don't forget that there are cut-scenes, too.

Three new videos
Interview, Flying Gameplay, Vert. Cover/Grip Gameplay

Some articles from the event:
Joystiq: Impressions, Still a Year Away, No MP in Dark Void
Eurogamer: Impressions, Why Capcom
IGN: Impressions
Kotaku: Impressions

Head over to the Dark Void minisite on 1up.com or just click on one of these two pictures to go directly to today's article. (Just a note, however unimportant: DigiPen moved across the street) Based on what he says towards the end of the article it sounds like this reviewer enjoyed the animation we've done so far, but what's more important is that I enjoyed his choice of concept art to include:

Finally, real coverage of our game is beginning to surface in the media. Electronic Gaming Monthly (EGM) and its companion website, 1up.com, have been the first to start publishing previews of Dark Void.

There's a three page spread in the June 2008 issue of EGM, and 1up.com is featuring our game on the front page of their site with a new article every day this week. Today's article is "Eight things you need to know about Dark Void." This is just beginning and there will certainly be much more coverage before too long. There was a previous "debut" trailer making the rounds, but as you can now see, much progress has been made since then. It's exciting to know that people are seeing the work we've done. I hope people like it, but I know how hot/cold people can be when posting comments online. I think it's going to be a fun game when it's done, but for now I'm just having fun making it.

Below are a few screenshots of animations that I worked on, but don't hold it against me. They're still W.I.P