Ed Sheeran recently settled a 16 million pound lawsuit over a copyright breach of his song photograph; Martin Harrington and Thomas Leonard sued Ed sheeran because ‘photograph’ sounded exactly like ‘amazing’ they claimed it was a “note for note copy”
Final Animation
VR Headsets
Vive – 779
Morpheus – 349
Google Cardboard – 15
Freefly – 49.99
Hololens – 3,000
Samsung Gear – 99
Google Glass – 731
I’d invest in the Hololens as it is the most advanced headset that is currently available and eventually it will be compatible with everything and will have amazing features.
VR – Virtual reality is an artificial environment that is created with software and presented to the user in such a way that the user suspends belief and accepts it as a real environment. On a computer, virtual reality is primarily experienced through two of the five senses: sight and sound.
Augmented Reality – a technology that superimposes a computer-generated image on a user’s view of the real world, thus providing a composite view.
Uses for VR- Surgery, Games, Socializing, Therapy, Porn
Hardware
GoPro 400
360 camera 250
developer kit 200
mocap 299
graphics tablets 300
blue yeti mic 89
copmputer 1k
studio space 275/pcm
Unit 6 Task 2
skillset jobs
Animator for games is the highest rated one because animating seems to be something I can do and I’d like to work with games.
Animating 3D is next up as I would probably be able to create something for a film if I was trained on it.
Stop motion is last because it would be the most tedious and only slightly interests me because of its animation aspects.
Unit 6
Animation Idea
The animation is set in space with a space ranger-like character called Xavi, in the short preview animation it will feature Xavi flying through space grabbing a weapon in his arsenal ready for a firefight; because of the violent nature I will most likely have to force the rating of the game and preview animation up to a 16+ minimum, this is because there will be fighting in the actual game however the preview may not feature any actual fighting as it it just a short introduction to Xavi and what he can do.
Target Audience
The target audience will be 16+ as this comfortably allows for a wider market while also providing a boundary to stop children from playing the game or from watching the preview, it shouldn’t stop me from selling the game for maximum profit because the average age of gamers appears to be over 36 years old, the data below also shows that statistically there are 52% male gamers and 48% female, this information means that gender specific games could be losing nearly half the potential sales, therefore I will be including some aspects that may appeal more to the female audience. 
Primary Data
I created a survey using Google docs to try and determine once and for all if my game idea would actually be successful, I had some fairly strong conformation that my game would be a success, however the only issue I could see in the data was that the survey participants were predominantly male, this could mean that it will only appeal to half the gaming community but it isn’t for definite as the results should be technically classed as inconclusive due to the results being slightly skewed.
This is one of the results that I got from a male participant, to start off with the age of said participant is above the age rating I will be giving the game and preview also they are male. This person’s favourite genre is ‘action’ which is ideal as this game will feature lots of action in the form of firefights etc; furthermore they like both spacey gun battles and is a fan of the space game examples that I gave, this means that I will be able to successfully market the game to other men like him and hopefully make a good profit from it. To finish the participant stated that he would be ‘pretty happy’ with some aspects of the space games mentioned being used in my game; this should is all the evidence I need to continue on with the game production with confidence that it will sell to the male sex.
Statistics from Similar Games
Above is a screenshot of the official game sales charts and shows which games had the highest gross sales over christmas time, the busiest time of the year for sales of games, as you can see COD Infinite Warfare is at the top of the list; therefore showing that I may be able to achieve high sales due to my game having the same genre and similar mechanics as the top selling one.
The previous year Star Wars Battlefront was the second highest selling game at christmas time, this game is also a space-based fps game so it must be popular for these games to have managed to achieve a slot so high up in the best selling charts.
And finally Halo 5 came top of the charts just 3 weeks into the lead up to christmas and was the highest selling game just before christmas, these bits of evidence all show that my game idea should be fairly high up as the population of gamers seem to be flocking to these games more frequently.
Conclusion
To finalise, in my research I can clearly see that my game idea will fit the target audience very well and should hopefully grant some good results and profit; furthermore I feel that producing a survey is the best way of finding out how the game will sell, next time I may use a focus group of around 50 people to get more accurate results. The research from the similar games shows that these games sold very well and made it very high in the charts of christmas sales with COD Infinite Warfare coming out on top, this supports my decision to create a game with similar assets to hopefully achieve similar results.
Aydin Clayton – 30161165
Bilbiography;
What Makes Me Buy a VideoGame and notes 27/1/17
I look for a compelling storyline that gets me wanting to progress or sometimes I buy a a game based on the prequel for example I played the first Assassin’s Creed a few years ago and I ended up buying all of the sequels after because they always ended on a cliffhanger that made me want to progress and find out more.
Another reason why I buy games may be because of the brand/name of the game for example I buy Call Of Duty Games because of the producers and the series, because they set the bar so high in all previous games I tend to expect a high level of quality.
Bartle’s Taxonomy test:
Negative and Positive Impacts Games Have on Players.
Negative
Manhunt was a game that was reported to be the reason behind a gruesome murder performed by Warren Leblanc. This seems to indicate that games cause players to become aggressive. Link below.http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1468088/Manhunt-computer-game-is-blamed-for-brutal-killing.html
Positive
Police in America use games to train themselves to be SWAT and they use the game to gain scores anything above 90 is suitable for joining the SWAT force, video games have been proven to improve hand-eye coordination as well as improve reflexes therefore making the police force more deadly and capable; below is a link to ‘Vinnie’s toughest cops’, the episode outlines how bad crime is in Baltimore in America and how the SWAT force and police force training including a part where they train with a video game. (This part is further towards the end of the episode. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YOHGfM6pxg4
Progress on the Cinematic + Evaluation
I started by getting some of the old assets and placing them into one C4D file, the screenshot below is from the start of the animation process where I was positioning the gun box to pop through the ground.
I started by key framing the location of the box and moving it to where I wanted it to go, the screenshot below shows the moving pattern of the box and the gun while it is keyframed and moved through the house.
The next screenshot is showcasing the box moving up so that it holds the gun up for the character to grab during the cinematic.
The screenshot below is the basic primitive room with a light on it the little black point in the middle is where the animation should take place and the gun box should come up through the ground for the character to grab.
The screenshot below shows the process I went through to create the character I started with cubes and put them into a subsurface division it is supposed to be a basic robot and I will eventually add some blue glowing effects to it so it looks like it is hovering or being propelled forward.
The picture below is towards the end of the animation production where the character was being animated and keyframes into position, the character will enter the room then grab the gun and zoom back off, this is the character flying in for the first time.
Below is how it will look when the character grabs the gun, in the final version I’m planning to have a little blue spark coming from his hand so it looks as if the robot is magnetising the gun to it’s hand.
The slideshow is just a rough show of how the final product will look.
Below is a quick video on how I did the rigging on the robot character.
Above is a screenshot of my project rendering in one of 2 views.
This is one of the views that will be used it shows the gun rising from the ground and the main character picking it up and flying back off to war.
Evaluation
I started the original idea as a space ranger fighting scene but soon ran into some issues involving polygon count and render time, this meant that I had to scrap the idea and start again, however due to the time in which I noticed the issue it meant that the new idea had to be done quickly and still following the space ranger idea. Originally I planned to feature a bar fight scene and have a gun pop up from a secret box under the floor which the main character would then grab and start fighting with, this has to be scrapped as I had got close to completing and was too far into the project to look back through everything I had previously done to try and find which version was ok to go off from, instead I settled with a scene which could be used as a prologue to the original idea, so I kept the gun rising from the ground scene and came up with a slightly new story, the main character is now grabbing the gun from their home meteor and is getting prepared to go into battle. The new animation idea had to be rendered and made from scratch (only keeping a few models like the character and gun) in the space of about 2-3 weeks, the planning could’ve been done bit more efficiently and I could’ve set out certain times in college to do certain aspects of the animation. I also had a slight issue with coming up with an idea to begin with so I settled with the first theme that came into my head and worked up from there, I wouldn’t say I have much knowledge of Cinema 4D but what I do know is more than other software such as; Blender or Maya, however Cinema 4D still proved to be a somewhat reliable piece of software that allowed me to produce and finish my animation.
During the process time I was very limited in what I could make as the issues I came across seemed to be very specific to me; therefore I wasn’t able to get help from tutors or the internet and had to find out the answer alone, i was also limited by the fact that I currently don’t have a working computer at home and had to create all of my assets in college time which was a massive pain as my USB stopped working in the last few weeks and I had to put up with switching between Dropbox and Google Drive.
The final product didn’t look as good as I had hoped because ambient occlusion and global illumination caused each frame to render incredibly slowly and would’ve caused me to be unable to complete the project in time. I originally wanted the main character to have little glowing rings that would signify that those areas are magnetic in order for the animation to make sense, but because of the effects not working I had to settle with a slight light going from the rings, also I originally wanted to use a sketch and toon effect to make the colours look softer and polished off professionally, this idea also had to be scrapped because of render times and the capabilities of the macs being pushed too far.
All together though the final product suits the target audience as the gun signifies violence and action aimed at older teens more towards the adult age range, and the robot flying and space setting continues the space ranger original idea and still shows the audience that this game/cinematic is about space fighting and wars in space themed places. Furthermore I enquired with a few of my peers what they thought about my cinematic, I had lots of mixed reviews as I asked them to be brutally honest and find any and all issues with the finished product, according to them the product “had bad optimisation but good quality rigging and smooth animations,” when asked about the idea itself they said it was “too simplistic” and “could’ve been more in-depth, however it was executed well and you did a good job of trying to implement the original idea into the new one.” As you can see the cinematic had mixed reviews and did had some issues that could’ve been ironed out if given more tim, but also had some good things too; therefore I would say that it would be good to send it out into a focus group of people to test out if I was correct with the target audience and to find any other improvements that could be completed.
Critical Approaches to the Creative Media Products
Theorists:
- Herbert Marcuse
- Theodor Adorno
- Max Horkheimer
Bobo Doll Experiment
We witnessed a study that showed the behaviours of children and the correlation between parent behaviour and child behaviour, a parent beat up the bobo clown doll and then the footage was showed to the children, sure enough the kids went into the room saw the doll and copied what their parents did, some of the kids also took it a step further by holding a gun to the clown doll and using a hammer to hit it. This helped to define the fact that children take in a lot of the information they see or get from their parents, they are like sponges to information.
Frankfurt prison experiment
Several college students were hired as actors to be either guards or prisoners in a made up prison and it was meant to show how far a human would go when issuing pain and suffering upon other humans, several of the prisoners were cracking and wanted to leave and started to revolt against the leader of the experiment, the guards didn’t seem to show any changes until a new volunteer was brought in and soon realised how bad the prison was, this subject then went on a hunger strike and was kept in ‘the hole’ for several days. some of the guards seemed to show some restraint when it came to this subject as they were willing to starve them self and be locked in solitary just to prove a point and go against the experiment. The results showed that humans had high tolerance for suffering and most of the guards were alright with everything but some were not. It was also fascinating how the prisoners who were strangers ended up banding together to try and oppose the common enemy, as one prisoner was given the chance to leave and having only been there for a few days the guards were shocked to here his response that he did not want to leave as he could not leave the others behind.
Aydin's Blog 