Over the past couple of weeks, we've been working in different Motion-Based Applications. These are Adobe Animate, Adobe After Effects and now we're moving into Premiere. Although I have done basically nothing in Premiere so far, I have a good understanding of some of the similarities and differences between After Effects and Animate. One thing to note off the bat is how After Effects is solely based off of using several different images to create an animation which is known as the traditional way of animation. Animate on the other hand allows you to use keyframing and tweens as well as the traditional style. I think creating animation in After Effects is MUCH more tedious than in Animate, but for me at least it was a lot easier to understand. In Adobe Animate I struggled over and over dealing with the Shape Hints to correctly make my animation fluid and not choppy. If you screw up your shape hints and don't choose the right type of easing, your animation will look terrible. In After Effects there are certain styles that you can choose to make your objects move or transform on the screen such as making them dilate, rotate, move and a couple more. I found Adobe After Effects to have a bit more of a complex looking interface but it was easier to pick up. One other difference that I noticed is how Adobe Animate seemed to allow you to create much more complex types of animation unlike After Effects, where it seems like the majority of what you can do in it is make text, lines, and shapes move on the screen. Conclusion
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For this blog post, I'd like to talk about Graphics in video games as it can be a key component of the game that can make or break the game. One of the most important parts of graphics in videogames is the colors that are used to allow the game to fully strive in how it looks. A lot of these newer games coming out seem to have this problem where they decide to have a million sources of light on the screen and you can't even tell where the enemies are. When you take a game and you don't overcomplicate the graphics and use nice contrasting colors, it allows the player to easily understand what to do and not have to worry about figuring out what the heck they're even looking at. Another huge problem that some companies seem to be interpreting in their games for I don't even know what reason are things such as motion blur, film grains, and more. I can't even comprehend why you would ever want to include something that is originally a film imperfection such as a film grain as it just makes the game look absolutely terrible. With motion blur, it makes it so basically whenever you turn around the graphics go from good to absolutely terrible. If the game company really wants to include motion blur, then at least give the player the option to turn it off. A really good example of a game that does graphics I think perfectly is Super Mario 64 due to the game having not the greatest graphics in a sort of high-quality mindset, but everything is simple enough and the colors contrast, allowing the player to understand every single object on the screen and what they're looking at. Conclusion -
Over the past couple of weeks, we've been working in Adobe Animate with 2 different projects. We've had the opportunity to use this software and really try to learn as much as we can about it. Currently, I've only done one of the 2 projects but I still have many opinions to share on this new software. One of my initial reactions was that the interface of Animate is very different than the other Adobe softwares that I have used. There are still some of the same things from previous ones though, for example, there are many of the same tools. One tool that is used heavily in Adobe Animate is the pen tool. You typically use it to create whatever you're trying to animate. For my first project, I used the pen tool to create the body, mouth, and teeth of the monster that I animated. One thing that I think is true is that the pen tool works exactly the same as in the previous programs (I might be wrong on this). One thing I consistently had trouble with was the remembering of how to create each different tween and how to create new keyframes. Since we typically don't spend that much time in one program, it can sometimes be really annoying to become familiar with the interface and be comfortable with it. With that being said, as I move into my next project I have some concerns with how I'm going to create my animation as for the next one we will have no guided video. Conclusion -
Idle Animations in video games are a key element to making the game look amazing visually. For this post I'd like to talk about not just one but two of my favorite Idle Animations in video games that I find amazing. The first I'd like to talk about is Mario's shiver animation that occurs when you are in an area with lower temperatures and you leave the controller unattended. What I find great about this that it adds to the environment that the player is in by making the player really feel as if they are in a colder area. In Super Mario Odyssey Mario will also sweat and get tired when in hotter areas of the game. The reason why I really find these details interesting is because the game has multiple different idle animations for different parts of the game. Another of my favorites is in Ocarina of Time where Link will adjust his belt if the game is left alone for a while. The reason why this is such a great idle animation is because it works so naturally and makes the game look much more real even for an older game such as this. Animations such as this can make a game seem so much more alive than other games where the character will just stand still when not moving. Idle animations are one of the things that can be seen as a small detail that makes a huge impact on how the game looks and feels. Idle animations can make a game go from lifeless to lively. Conclusion -
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AuthorMy name is James Gerondelis, I am 14 and in the 9th Grade at Durham School of the Arts. This is my first year of Game Art & Design. Archives
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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.
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