Reflection on Bradford Game Festival

http://www.nationalmediamuseum.org.uk/BradfordAnimationFestival/BAFGame

On Tuesday and Wednesday, this week, our class visited the Bradford Animation/Game Festival which had a series of talks and discussions that were held.
Last year, I mainly visited the Animation part of the festival and this year only the Game part. Next year, I hope to attend both the Animation and Game talks depending on who they have on their line up.

I am going to be talking about the talks that I found interesting and what I took from the festival.
There were talks from Brian Horton (Crystal Dynamics), Steve Lycett (Sumo Digital), Warren Spector, Futurelab and Viktor Antonov.

WARREN SPECTOR

http://www.nationalmediamuseum.org.uk/Events/BAF/2013/W/WarrenSpector.aspx

In this talk, Warren talked about his childhood memories of Disney and how it has continued to influence his work till now. I enjoyed this talk because he explained the different stages that had to happen to make the game Epic Mickey.

Warren Spector has been in the industry for more than 30 years and worked in several companies, he stated. The concept he based the Epic Mickey game was to make Mickey be seen as a hero while still keeping the iconic character's characteristics intact. The concept was what helped drive their idea and the various team members that worked on this project also helped to bring it to life. Warren Inspector wanted to add that quality of cinematic storytelling to the game. He also wanted pay homage to certain artists that created previous cartoons that he enjoyed during his childhood. I learnt from him to learn to take inspiration from all sources that you can but still maintain the creative box that you were given to work with.

http://conceptartworld.com/?p=14678

http://conceptartworld.com/?p=17418

The images are some concept art done by various artists posted on Concept Art World.

KEVIN CARTHEW FROM TEAM 17

Kevin Carthew, Creative Manager from Team 17 had a part in creating many iconic video-games in the past 25 years. I enjoyed his talk because he made the topic of his presentation based on How Animation improves Interaction?. I thought that the points he made could be transferred to filmmaking, because even though an audience is not playing your game, you still want to create interaction with them through sound and visual imagery anyway that creates that connection with your audience, so although it was mainly based on games, I think that I can think about them when I produce future work.
He stated that they are an independent company and the game Worms has been their official breadwinner and biggest game. I thought that it was great that they built on that by creating more Worms games while still creating new games like Superfrog and Alien Breed.

The few points I wrote down that he made about how animation improves interaction were:

• MAKE IT SNAPPY: input driven, not animation driven and create levels of interactivity according to the game
• MAKE IT REWARDING: visual feedback is part of the game reward. Quality visual feedback can be used to modify player behaviour.
• MAKE IT PLAYFUL: keep animation fresh, multiple animations for frequent events, for example when a character dies in different environments/situations, try to change the animation so it does not get repetitive.

BRIAN HORTON FROM CRYSTAL DYNAMICS

http://www.nationalmediamuseum.org.uk/Events/BAF/2013/B/BrianHortonCrystalDynamics.aspx

http://www.tombraider.com/gb/base/home?refer=71

http://www.tombraider.com/gb/base/home?refer=71

http://www.tombraider.com/gb/base/home?refer=71

Brian Horton was worked in the games industry for 15 years as a fine artist and illustrator. He has done many works such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Star Wars, he is now the Art Director for company Crystal Dynamics.
He was given the project of creating the new Lara Croft: Tomb Raider game with a sequel announced 
during the talk yesterday. He stated that being given the responsibility of bringing the icon Lara Croft 
back was great because he enjoyed playing the previous games, however this time he wanted to move
the image of Lara Croft from a sex symbol back to the a strong woman seen as a survivor.
His team and him thought of the themes that most films and games are based on such as horror, love,
betrayal, vengeance and survival, to name a few. They chose to base it on survival because this meant 
that they could re-design the image of Lara Croft in much more stronger image and create a journey that
would make the players feel connected to.
I found this very interesting because he explained about ways of tackling a problem and the way he drew
from many various sources to understand how they wanted the character to move in the environment they
placed her in. They used various actresses and models as sources for the face, body and style of the Lara
Croft. They tried to keep her image still recognisable through the model. 
The Xsens technology allowed them to motion capture certain complex movements that were needed in 
the game, while the rest were accurately keyframed. I found the fact that you couldn't tell the difference 
between when the motion capture and keyframing were used, this meant that the animators were 
highly skilled in their field which Brian also stated.