A New Trimester Begins

By James Ball

So what’s it been? Like 2 months? Well expect more regular content from me for at least the next 13 weeks and maybe even more.

So a lot has happened since my last blog post, I’ve Passed my Second Trimester of UNI, got my Driver’s License and RSA Certificate.  I was also a SGL on camp down in Bunbury but that’s for another time.

So get back on track, on Monday I started my third trimester of Bachelor of animation at SAE Institute Perth and commenced work on our first Studio Unit. To say our class hit the ground running would be about accurate. Not only are we at a brand new campus, with a stylized rundown industrial feel, but there are also only 6 people left in my class after the first 2 Trimesters which could be called a Trial by Fire.

 Image 1 - Trial by Fire

Our brief is that we are to create assets for a new game By VALVE and the story is as follows . . .

The story of the game broadly focuses on a character who wakes up one day to find themselves alone and seemingly abandoned, and follows their journey as they set out to search for answers. Along the way they encounter dangerous foes and a hidden world of mystery. The setting will be initially in a contemporary modern city and then transition into a dark and brooding landscape. The visual style is to be somewhat dark and gritty with an underlying level of cartoon feel (similar to Papo & Yo).

Our tasks for the assignment is to create to Dioramas that represent key points and events in this fictional game. Hand off assets to the game development students and the design students and to eventually host this all on Sketchfab for the whole world to see.

The current working title so far is “ANI 210 - Bunri Project (ぶんり プロジェクト)”. Bunri (Boon-Ree) is the Japanese word for Isolation and is the main premise our team is going for in the game. The Main Character will be unambiguous and genderless. They will wake up in a rundown postapocalyptic city (Basing the Design on Perth) that’s been taken back by nature. The only signs of life are the graffiti on the walls that every now and then seemingly follow you as you pass by or blink or do something to make the viewer uneasy and try to work out just what the hell is going on, which leads to the next point, what caused this apocalypse will not be specified and be left to the viewer's imagination. Also we decided to have no guns or weapons, Similar to the concept of Journey Where in you have to sneak passed the enemy and preserve energy or run and get drained.

Besides this, we also had an animation lecturer come in and give us a refresher of the basics of timing and spacing and implement them in a pendulum swing using 3DS Max. I think one of the pluses of Now having such as small class is that now the lecturer can go around to each individual person and give them a lot more one on one tutoring time and help us to improve at a faster rate.

This Trimester is going to be a blast I really can not wait to see what the final outcome will look like when it is complete. Will have another post on Friday so stay tuned for more.

As always, This is Ballzy247 Signing Out!

References

Image 1 - Trial by Fire - Retrieved 23/09/2015 from - http://www.theschoolforheroes.com/questlog/154/trial-by-fire-reborn/