This past weekend I went to see Detective Pikachu. i was really looking forward to watching the movie as its the first live action Pokemon movie and the trailers have looked very reasonable. I was both happy and disappointed with the full movie.
Does it live up to all the hype? No. The movie has a convoluted plot backed by a script that sounds like it was put through Google translate several times. Much of the acting (outside of some small moments with the main protagonist and Pikachu) is forced and feels ridiculously fake. This isn't helped very much by the script which stresses plot points as many times as possible in order for Pokemon's younger fans to keep up with the needless plot twists that can be seen coming from a mile away. With the unique cast of characters we already know and love in the Pokemon universe, it feels weird that we see none of them in this movie. Sure it's probably a good idea to keep Ash and gang quarantined in the anime world, but there are many evil teams that have cooler (and more understandable) objectives than the villain of this movie did. Additionally it would be cool to see nods to popular characters from the video game franchise. In particular an appearance of the mythical Pokemon trainer Red would be a perfect inclusion as he is rarely talks in the games but holds a special place in many of the series' fans' hearts. Despite all of these setbacks, there are many hidden gems in this movie. Whenever Ryan Reynolds seems to have been given a little more leeway in the script, the resulting jokes are funny and land a lot better. The relationship between the movies' main character and Pikachu is well developed and the scenes where we just get to see them interact are some of the best in the entire movie. Finally the animation is frickin' beautiful. The movie is honestly worth the watch simply for the live action Pokemon world it creates. The few sweeping shots we get of this world are breathtaking. I can feel the young child in me yearning to live in the world of Pokemon. Whenever we see Pokemon in this film they don't disappoint. Their reactions are equally life-like and unique. I simply wish the movie was longer so we could spend less time on the terrible plot and more time on the cool visuals of the world. Overall a terrible movie but an enjoyable experience. -Watching Detective Pikachu -Problems in the movie -Enjoyable parts of the movie -Final thoughts
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This week we continued to work on fixing glitches that we found while testing in VR as well as other individual tasks. I finished the last of the chicken animations and plan to start working on boning the pig model next week. In coding I helped I little bit to try and debug the chicken. Right now the chicken can't seem to figure out how to go back to it's patrol points after chasing the character. I'm confident we can figure out what's happening next week however with some more intense debugging.
The full map of our school building is almost done being modeled and I hope we can get that imported into our scene soon so we can make sure it won't lag our game too badly. If it does I plan to work on a script that would help us load different areas of the game separately. This would solve some of the lag issues if it worked. Next week I will: -Help debug the chicken -At least start to bone the pig This past week I got back to the grind of making our VR game work. I created a chicken animation for when the chicken attacks the player. This was much easier to make than my past animation as 3ds Max seems to have magically fixed its issues overnight and figured out how to bend chicken knees. Now that it's working better (knock on wood) I should be able to finish the remainder of the animations quickly and get them imported into the game.
We also put our game into actual VR test mode for the first time in a while. It worked relatively well. The game looks and sounds good and the chicken monster is very scary when it chases you around. We did find a couple glitches that we'll continue to work on in the future but I continue to be optimistic about the turnout of this project. Next week I will: -Create the rest of the chicken animations -Start to do pig research and come up with ideas for the pig animations This week I got several things done. The first thing I focused on was getting the chicken run animation done. After a lot of slow and steady work with 3ds Max I was able to complete this animation as seen here: The other thing I worked on was the cell phone ballet cue in Dead Man's Cell Phone. My director told me after my rough draft that she wanted the cue that she wanted the cue to build into more a a crescendo. To do this I found some detective suspense music and added it into the cue. I also added in real voicemails so I don't have to hear anymore about that dumb 6th sense detective agency. (If you don't get this joke listen to my rough draft of this cue which can be found on my portfolio page.) This past week in Game Design was a short one. With everyone in anticipation of the Thanksgiving holiday, our group actually started working on a couple new things within our project. The enemy movement script was successfully transported into the demo Unity level. I started working on boning the chicken model.
A unique challenge I faced this week came when I started boning the chicken. Unlike past models I've worked on, the chicken is made up of several different objects which are grouped together (instead of being one large, cohesive mesh. This means when I'm assigning bones and envelopes I need to be mindful of the different groups one bone might effect. One bone might have multiple envelopes assigned to it and I need to keep track of all of them as I start to animate those bones and create motion. Next week I will: -Finish the chicken skeleton -Fix envelopes -Start animating bones This week has been a flurry of activity. I created a tiling floor, researched chicken movement, and even started learning inDesign.
One big thing our group has had to focus on while making textures is making sure they are tile-able. This often involves going into Photoshop and editing textures by hand. This is a slow and tedious process but extremely worth it when you put it into the game. Each day the game design room is looking better and better. We've even started importing some of the key items into the game. An example of this is the flash drive which I created two weeks ago is now being put into the room as a pick up item. Some other challenges we've faced is making all the little details work. For example the computer monitors we made for our scene were too top heavy and fell over when gravity was applied to them. To fix this problem we decided it would be best to make them click into place when the player sets them down. This would allow the player to both freely interact with the computer monitors, as well as keep them standing up when they're placed the right way. Next week we will: -Create chicken animations -Finish textures -Make the game design room work How does a chicken move? How does it walk, eat, or look around? How does it fight. These are the questions I set off to answer before I dove into the animations for our main boss enemy. I wanted to make sure I had a firm grasp on what real chicken movements were like before I started modifying them for the purposes of our game. The point of the animations I will soon create isn't to be accurate completely to how a real chicken moves, but instead to build off those natural motions into something more sinister and scary.
The first thing I did was to look up reference images. I wanted pictures that captured the essence of each movement. With this picture I can know what at least one frame in my animation should look like. Once I have that I can build to and from that frame using my other research. I included some images below that I used. The next big thing to find is what the skeleton of a chicken looks like. This is very important as I will need to make a skeleton of my own to animate the model on. If I don't create this model skeleton accurately, when I go to animate the chicken I will have a hard time getting it to move correctly. Once I have this done I can start to plan how the animations will look in my mind. Soon I will be able to model and try and put them on the model. I check my imagined animations with my research to make sure they seem feasible. I don't want to have an epic imagination all planned out in my mind just to find that it doesn't match at all with something a chicken would really do. An example of this is the attack animation I need to make. Originally I didn't have much of an idea of how I would actually make the chicken attack the player. So I looked up images of fighting chickens. This led to a bunch of sad images of roosters fighting, but also some very useful material. I didn't know that chicken's pounced when they fight. Now I can incorporate that unique movement into the final chicken animations. -Why research is important -My research process |
AuthorSamuel Henry is a Senior at DSA in NC. He has 3 years of prior experience in the game design pathway and he's looking forward to becoming a great game designer. The views and opinions expressed in this blog are solely those of the author and do not represent those of Durham School of the Arts or Durham Public Schools Categories
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