MrDoodles

Been a busy time it has, though I must admit I have made poor use of my time. I bought both Deus Ex games after awareness of their greatness had built up a gooball of hype in my brain over several years, and after seeing them on sale over Steam. This did not help my productivity, but they are excellent adventures. Well, the first Deus Ex is especially good.

It is kinda related though considering LlamaLAN XV's theme is Dystopia. And War, of course. War in a dystopian setting. The poster has come very late but ever since someone first used the words 'dystopia' and 'LlamaLAN' in one sentence I have yearned to draw an Equilibrium-inspired LAN poster. The result turned out better than I hoped, despite that the effort was a rushed one. I've used it as a warmup to LlamaLAN XVI's poster, which I intend to get on with before LLXV arrives. No hints on what the heck happens THIS time though.

I am very happy with the final result of the LlamaLAN XIV finale video. I am very sorry it took me so long to sort out, though in my defence I set myself a very steep learning curve, mostly cos I wanted to make it super cool. Check it out if you haven't already: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wQbcXwG6yLk

I added closed captions just for the boomer of it. I found a nifty website for doing so (links from YT's own help on captioning) and realised the true beauty of closed captions is YT's experimental real-time pigeon-language translation.

I'm gonna wrap up on something I've noticed. We've been building up to the latest theme (Dystopia) for some time, ever since the Pirates and Ninjas brought about Llamageddon last April (2010). LlamaLAN XV's dystopia theme arrives in April 2011 coinciding with a surge of protests against oppression in the Middle East, and at exactly the same period of time when my other half has taken a big interest in novels like Children of Men and movies like V for Vendetta.

Just something I've noticed.

I thought the LlamaLAN XII work was time consuming enough but I just keep making more work for myself every time! I must enjoy it else why would I do it to myself, right?

Well, I know I enjoy it. Playing with toys like Maya 2010 and Cararra and now Vegas 6.0 gives me great pleasure. LlamaLANs are perfect excuses to go crazy with ideas to push what I can do with these tools. I worded that last bit carefully - this is also about pushing myself to do better as well as pushing what the software is capable of, if I can.

Anyway, you don't care about that. What's all this about LAN XIV vids then? Well I can't go into detail obviously, that's a surprise. But there are a number of jobs in the queue because I intend to build a number of videos and they require a number of camera angles.

Since getting hold of Maya 2010 I wanted to ditch Cararra, but so far Carrara has taking up all four cores of my PC, 100% for most of the time, for the last week. I built the last LAN's setpiece (the LlamaDome scenario) in this software and I tried to export to Maya without any success. Still, Carrara is not a piece of rubbish. It does have a huge issue with memory leaks though. And while rendering the multiple scenes of the XIII-XIV bridge video, it smacked into walls of errors. A lot. However, this time round no video has aborted part way through. I wonder if my PC was less stable back then.

The results so far are looking fantastic, thanks to Carrara's nifty modifier options but also thanks to Vegas 6's video post-processing effects. You may have figured out by now that I cannot resist making something into some epic drama, and that is no less true of what we're doing for LlamaLAN XIV.

One camera angle of one video is completed. It is the longest running take at 30 seconds of 30 fps, though I will be running it in the final cut at 24 fps. The next three takes of the same scene at different angles are rendering at 60 fps. I hope I have time but I want to render two more scenes in Maya to join onto this one. There is a video I'll be doing purely in Vegas, and one final video with multiple scenes and takes which I intend to do in Maya also.

Depending on how things go and what the results look like... this may also involve work in Poser and ZBrush...

Meanwhile, check out what our video voiceover talent has got himself involved in: http://www.youtube.com/user/TwistedPeel

Thanks to a recommendation by my fourteen year-old sister, I've been playing this most bizarre, unique and fantastic game called The Void. To explain what this game is and, specifically, why it's so good, is difficult. But I'll try.



By what is thought to be a random 1 in 1000 chance, a soul has ended up between mortal death and eternal death. It's not purgatory as this is no gateway to either heaven or hell. This is the only place between life and death - The Void. Well, that's what some call it. It appears to be a place devoid of Colour (capitalisation intended) and it appears to either have been starved long before this soul appeared, or it's in the process of dying. This is pretty much where you start, with nothing to tell you where you came from, where you're going, and what you must do. Well, nothing except some alluring sorrowful voice telling you to approach and take your first Heart.



This is a first person game, but it's no shooter. The goals you think you have to aim for change and shift in priorities. One of the facets of this fascinating game is how information is fed to the player because the information you receive isn't necessarily factual. Most games build their stories bit by bit, as is the case with The Void, but within a short while you come to realise that everything the characters say is just an opinion, or maybe even an outright lie. You feel you're playing into someone else's ulterior motives. I've already decided what voices to listen to and what to ignore (and there's always someone with an opinion about what you're doing,) but I could be making a huge mistake. Another aspect is this issue with Colour; it's the most precious resource and is used for everything. Any use of it has ramifications, but use of it is unavoidable, and what you do can set you up to succeed or fail a few cycles down the line.



And you get this increasing sense that your presence and ability will become the most significant and important thing to ever occur in this place.



There are three distinct character types. I'll mention two: The Brothers are horrifying, and the Sisters are all stark naked. I don't know that this is necessary, but I do think there's a purpose to this - you're meant to find the sisters alluring. I think they all use this to their advantage, and I think as the story moves on you learn to become wary of both words and appearance, but I've not finished this game yet so I'm not yet sure. Even if I was I'm not about to spoil this for you.



The story continues to deliver its revelations and, up to where I've played, has now taken a very interesting twist I think I have an idea of where this is all going.



Now here is both a praise and a warning - this game is quite non-linear, with failures not necessarily ending the game outright, and steathily offering you plenty of chances to screw yourself over and forcing a reload. I had to reload once because I'd run out of the two colours I absolutely needed, and this was because I'd not noticed I needed to cultivate them properly. In the first days of my playing of The Void, I started again completely because I'd put myself in an unescapable dead end, had learned a few things in the process, and knew I could set myself up far better. This doesn't kill the game if this is necessary in your first few hours. There appears to be an opinion amongst reviewers that this is an intended mechanic and knowing this means you should be free from being too harsh on yourself too early on. I didn't plan ahead, and learned my mistake.



So now, currently in this game, I'm second guessing every movement of every character in the Void, including myself, and every use of colour. When travelling between chambers you can control how fast time passes. I'm always immediately moving the dial to the lowest setting possible to reassess everything, holding CTRL to bring up my colour palette to stop time completely if I have all the info I need to work out my next five moves. I'm thinking constantly as I play, working out, planning ahead with every decision. In my game so far, it appears to be working. You think, therefore you exist and you play. It's like playing chess on about five different boards at once, all of which affect the other. If this sounds like too much hard work for you, don't touch The Void. If this kind of tension sounds exciting and/or rewarding, (and I think, for all the frustrations this setup promises, it is), I implore you to consider this game!



I think the best hint I can give to successfully get through this is to consider each time you receive a new goal. If a Brother says you have five cycles to achieve it, save the game, and make a note of it. This one is important. Figure out where you need to go and what you need to get there, and work to that goal. Plan well ahead and work out what colours to cultivate, where, and how.



I also wanted to mention that the vocal casting and acting is of a pretty darned high quality.



I'll now just link to a pretty good review I found for this game by quoting a brilliant line from the reviewer.



But this isn't a regular game, that doesn't satisfactorily describe your task, and even though that's what you're first told to do, there's this unavoidable nagging thought in your mind that the game might be lying to you.



It's mostly first person, but it's strategy, it's resource management, it's mystery, it's horror, it's action. This is an arty game, and it is can offer a unique and very challenging story and gameplay. I think there are quite a lot of hours here for your money. If that's up your street, and you like the sound of the review on Eurogamer, check it out.

I'd like to begin this post with...



'DAMN YOU YAZOR!'



I am playing Mass Effect 2, ok. Bioware have done the best ever thing for a game franchise. Everything is persistant. I thought it stopped at the summary you are presented with when choosing a character to import to ME2. Every choice I made in the first game, even the little ones I didn't think were too important, has had an effect on this sequel. The persistant character thing (evidently not just my own!!), with the persistancy of the outcomes of my every decision, from how I talk to people to what I choose to do in life/death situations, is now an even bigger issue. I've learned that there's a chance that the romantic interest of Bruce Shepard may reignite in Mass Effect 3 if I do not persue a romantic interest to its finish in Mass Effect 2.



Do you know what this means!? It means I have to actually think like a real person and bear in mind all these people I would consider important if it were real. Except, because of this, I am now actually caring about these people and my decisions as if they WERE real. I'm sitting here and a rather less-than-ideal encounter with a character from the first game, and a subsequent personal message to my captain's personal console, is still going through my mind as a result!



I tell people off for caring too much about people in soap operas because they're all fictional. And here I am, in the same trap...



Bioware have done an amazing thing. I am actually emotionally involved in this story and especially its characters. Darn you all!



Don't get me wrong - I am loving that a work of fiction has actually managed to grab my attention to the same degree Braid had previously. It fully deserves the praise it gets but I'm not sure this whole persistant personal story has received enough attention from its reviewers. It means you don't only have the option of playing each game through again and make different choices but the entire series. That's quite an achievement.

Colour! I'm using extra techniques this time round, which may account for the extra time it's taking me... still worth it though.



Before now I've used cell-shading style. This style of colouring uses distinct blocks of colour with no gradients as such on the shades. In more recent posters I've complimented the cell-shading with subtle gradients and smoother highlighting/shading in some places, but not all. With this one, I'm going much further, steering clear from a very definite cell-shading style.



I'm nearly there..! Following this process throughout the poster, extra effects will be added. Light gleams, glows, fog, etc, all to come...

I must first apologise for another use of the same cliche (you know, what's up there in the title), but it's appropriate because the poster, depicting utter chaos in a world about to go mad, has begun.



See.



So without waffling on too much, ideas for this one were many, but hitting on one I thought would work wasn't easy. I wanted a vista of devastation, but simultaneously wanted to put us right in amongst the action. Ultimately I sketched something I thought could work very nicely and set about getting this done about a week ago.



Sorry KF... I realise this is another late one!



Okay, so here's just a snippet of the work so far. The actual image is far more expansive. I kick things off by sketching everything in skeleton form, fleshing out the shapes that will act as my guides. This takes a while because these have to be setup right and its at this stage that I can see if anything isn't proportioned correctly, or has dodgy perspective, etc.



On top of the guidelines I then draw much stronger detailing lines. These don't feature all the detail that will ultimately be on display, but they do give the image much more life and character. The purpose at this point is to finalise the outlines that I'll make permanent with ink.



But that step comes later.

I admit, I let myself get carried away with this idea.



Here's a little secret. Throughout this whole process of planning the last LAN party, we knew what the next theme would be for LlamaLAN XIII, because originally we intended the apocalypse for event number twelve. The very first suggestion from Kanonfodda was to parody 'Twelve Monkeys'; hence, ideas revolved around the 'End Of World' scenarios. Eight months later, Cyberdrac became aware that some members of the LAN community were keen on a Pirates theme and that perhaps we should capitalise on the enthusiasm. When the Pirates buzz started, I had the idea of parodying the 'Pirates of the Carribean' movie titles, the last one being 'At LAN's End.' I said at the time that this would lead into the next theme very nicely...





At first, despite the whole Pirates vs Ninjas thing being my suggestion after Cyberdrac's suggested theme change, I felt initially like it was a rather cheap bandwagon we'd just jumped on. Personally speaking, it didn't take too long before the whole idea actually started to become quite a bit of fun. No, I'm not just talking about the costumes.



Mostly this was due to the number of event, twelve. Every LAN poster since LlamaLAN 2004 has been an attempt at parody. However, only since LlamaLAN VIII did we actually start theming the LANs, and thus began a feature of LlamaLAN parties that I'm pretty sure goes a long way in making them such a hit with the community. The attendee count rocketed after LlamaLAN VIII to a consistent high. The themes seem so wildly different from eachother - Hawaiian party, Borg assimilation, Superheroes, Rock Music and now Pirates vs Ninjas - but each have been inspired by one common factor - that is, the number of the event.



LlamaLAN XII could have been different. After strong hints from some of our regulars that a Pirate theme would be appreciated, we went all out by throwing the ninjas in there too as mentioned above. But, still keen to maintain the numerically-inspired pattern, we thought about what possible significance the number twelve could have to either Pirates, or Ninjas, or both. We thought, a lot. After pretty much giving up on using twelve in the theme anywhere at all, it was one day at the gym that I spotted a clock on the wall and, after a series of related thoughts and memories came to mind, I quite excitedly realised that we could go even bigger with the theme. The whole Pirates vs Ninjas thing already hints that they've been at eachother's throats for a long long time, and you can't get much more of an epic battle than between two groups without going supernatural (or biblical). Time was the key!



That's why the Ring of Golden Llamas was so prominent in pretty much anything LL/XII related. It was all tied in to time, history, and the search for these twelve artifacts that, when combined, actually have the power to control all of time and space itself.



Or at least, end life as we know it.



Well, I couldn't stop there. Proposing an idea of such epic proportions needed more. We layered on more parody as we took inspiration from as many 'adventure hunt for ancient apocalypse device' texts as we could, Indiana Jones and Tomb Raider included. And it would have been hard to miss the reference to Lord of the Rings.



In like manner, the whole tale had to be an epic one, from start to finish.



At first the idea was whoever held the most llamas was clearly the master and would gain control of the world, and hence settling the issue. In time, my overdramatic apocalypse-obsessed mind presented me with a far better idea to lead in to LlamaLAN XIII. Yes, the Golden Llamas were the key to ultimate power. However, it was a power that could be used to protect, to control, or to destroy. An idea that really appealed to me was that the desire for destructive domination, fueled by a bitter rivalry, would lead to devastation for both sides. What neither side realised was that recombining the Llamas would spell the end of all things. It kinda hooks in to many stories and to certain truths about human nature. As the character Wade said in F.E.A.R: "It is the way of men to make monsters... and it is the nature of monsters to destroy their makers."



So then we had our plan and reason to say this was the big one - the Pirates and Ninjas now have a means to ultimately destroy eachother. This quest for the Golden Llamas, with the intention to ruin the other side, is what the whole weekend was themed on.





The teaser poster for LL/XII had 'EPIC' written all over it. We began discussing how to execute a clock-face scoreboard, depicting the progress of all four teams as the LAN proceeded. It was expertly executed by Kanonfodda. I had this idea to have it permanently projection on the ceiling, which is why I spent some months meticulously researching projectors and keeping a close eye on E-Bay deals, bagging a true bargain. I wanted this ring hung overhead because there was a deliberate duality to the slowly forming device - its look was appealing and magical. It's true nature is of violence - that was, after all, what the two sides intended it for.



Hanging it overhead was supposed to be another suggestion of its ominous presence and potentially malevolent power.



Like I said, it had to be epic from start to finish. We needed an epic finale. I considered how that would be possible. Simply announcing who won wouldn't be enough and so I set about planning a video to play on the overhead projection. It had to be as dramatic as I could make it, depicting the combining of the llamas and bringing about widespread cataclysm. I saw what I wanted in my head and got to work.



Carrara 6 is the 3D modelling and rendering tool I used to create most of the footage. It's very powerful stuff, providing means to create volumetric clouds, realistic skies, and complicated animated shaders with relative ease. For example, changing the moon and sky colour from white and amber to deep reds took just a minute to setup. Slightly more involving was the 'ash' effect. Inspired by the Max Payne movie's excellent apocalyptic skies, I wanted to scatter ashes from the sky for additional end-of-world horror.







Applying a glow wasn't too hard, but it took a little bit of random button pushing before I worked out how to apply a physics effect to every particle coming from the particle generator (the physics force in use is 'flow'; the reference manual states this is a good one for simulating fallen leaves in a breeze.)



But I was demanding rather a lot of it. I had to use a little utility called LaaTido to alter the Carrara executable so it was Large Address Aware (LAA), allowing it to use over 2gb of RAM while processing! And it took a couple of days of solid rendering on 4 cores of 3Ghz to finish the animation.



The lightning was a trouble. At first I tried creating lightning shapes in Carrara but this was taking up way too much time for an effect that didn't look all that nice. Real photos of lightning just looked way cooler. In the end, I ditched the idea of creating my own and superimposed every instance of lightning in the video editor - Vegas 4. Vegas is brilliant. You can apply envelopes to both video and audio tracks, and very quickly alter the length of a fade period, providing nice and smooth transition effects. On top of each appearance of lightning I added a Vegas-generated radial gradient of some appropriate colour for that extra big flash effect. The other thing Vegas does in a far superior way to Adobe Premier is Panning and Zooming, used on the Ninja icon and the final texts.



The golden llama ring itself was just a flat plane, texture-mapped with alpha-transparency, but I think this was obvious. You can see the edges of the image, a little annoyance which I didn't have time to sort out. Also, there were more falling fireballs than are easily visible. I wanted to fill the sky with them, and I have, but the cloud obfuscated most of them and their trails. It was a bit tricky because the camera had to be angled up at the sky, hence the distance available was limited. It had to be angled up so the LAN attendees saw it as if the fireballs really were falling onto our heads.



I really wanted to create that 'old world epic' story atmosphere and so drafted in my brother Gabriel Wolf to narrate, in his best 'narrator' voice he could muster. He did a stunning job. There's a lot of careful timing going on in this vid as well. The music from Tomb Raider: Underworld was timed so that after he's finished his lines, the church bell in the music track goes off. I tried to guide the viewer to make the most of the video by placing lightning where most of the visible fireballs were about to appear. I had a fireball impact near the viewer early on so the violence and peril was clear. The video was nowhere near as effective until I'd added the copious amounts of screaming sound effects and again I tried to time these so they filled the soundscape without overwhelming us too much and so they matched what was going on. For example, there is a single scream when the first fireball can be spotted, which kicks off the crowd, and I tried to follow this setup throughout so that they worked eachother up into a frenzy.



Finally, I had to finish off with a Wilhelm.



Thanks for watching!

With most of the projects and hobbies I take on, I believe in doing something properly if it's worth doing at all. This means I like filling up whatever I do with all kinds of minor details that most people probably wouldn't even notice; and then, even if they did notice, not really be fussed about. There's a certain satisfaction in going to this level of effort though, regardless!



Anyway, let's talk about what I want to talk about - when the concept of the Golden Llamas spewed forth, I set about imagining the setpieces for the legend and thus the artwork. I wanted to achieve something which actually looked mystical and ancient, and thus set about working out what kind of patterning would provide such an aura.



I am fascinated by constructs in nature, be they in physics, geography, biology or astronomy. One such construct was discovered by a bloke called Fibonacci. Here's the mathematics:



Imagine you have a flat square 1cm x 1cm in size and have it placed on a flat surface. You place another 1x1 square to the left of it. Now, if you place a 2x2 square above them, the lower side of the 2x2 square fits exactly against the other two. The combined left edge now measures 3cm, and so you put a 3x3 square alongside the left edge. And so on. You can start adding preceding pairs of numbers together to get the next one in the sequence - 1+1 = 2, 2+1 = 3, 3+2 = 5, 5+3 = 8, etc.



If you carried on placing squares, and fancied noting down the numbers in sequence, you eventually end up with this.







Great, what's so good about that?



This very quick but more interesting presentation 'What the Hell is the Fibonacci Series' helps illustrate why this is actually quite cool (as far as maths go.) What you end up with, drawing that spiral through all vertices, is a propagating spiral.



Again, so what?



That particular shape appears everywhere. Those particular numbers are, likewise, everywhere.



The total petals on many species of flower can be found in the sequence. The distibution of seeds on the heads of many flowers is precisely arranged to form several overlaying Fibonacci spirals, one famous example being the head of a sunflower. Or, you can check out the 'coneflower'. Evidently this is because this creates the most optimised distribution of seeds possible. Check out this little image to see it. The pinecone is another example of Fibonacci spiral distribution in nature. Even major galaxies display this particular spiral shape in their formation - The Andromeda galaxy (M51) has two. Many plants distribute petals and leaves in line with the sequence - a term for this is phyllotaxis. And, you can look up what the Golden Angle is all about, tied strongly to this mathemetical marvel and, again, ideal distribution.



Okay, so I've gone on about this a lot but I just wanted to make note of how vastly important this is in nature. It's related, honestly; As these shapes are so intrinsic throughout the universe, I figured something that is fabled to eventually be able to control aspects of it (according to our little legend) should reflect it somehow. I decided to create the ring on which those mighty Golden Llamas sit using just two shapes - circles and Fibonacci spirals.





The pattern you see behind the llamas, on the surface of the golden ring, is made up of just these shapes. There's a particular pattern I put together repeated twelve times around the ring. Here it is, but coloured to show the eight fibonacci spirals within it. I didn't know how it would turn out, but the result worked and actually ended up quite asthetic. This shouldn't have surprised me really - if this shape is indeed everywhere, we're probably very likely to find it an attractive one.



This wasn't quite enough though as I wanted to represent actual astral bodies on it somehow. The simple answer was to distribute several circles on its surface of varying sizes. But even their distribution isn't random and uses Fibonacci's findings. I laid them out in order of size, largest to smallest, using the Golden Angle.



So there you have it! I figured I'd explain it all here because I doubt anyone would have noticed. In all likelihood, you probably are still left wondering why the hell I spend so much effort going to this much detail. Like I said, there's a certain satisfaction in it all.

Today I bring you another little sneaky peek as, ten days later, we nearly have our twelfth poster for our twelfth event.







Very nearly done here. I've tried to make the detail as interesting as I can imagine. There's a number of things about the result niggling my need for perfection, but I'm trying to learn from them rather than get irritated by them. Not easy... Still here we are, a tiny little catflap of a window into the final result. Coming very soon, llamas...

I've always used references but before now had to study photos of athletes and other graphic novel/comic panels - then kinda make up the rest. This is not the most efficient way of doing things, especially when you work on paper, because I'll sketch something, decide I hate its direction, proportion or value and rub it out. Then try it again. This happens a lot.



I recently picked up Poser 7. It was recommended by my manager as perhaps a means to create the LAN posters more quickly. I had a slightly different idea; I could play with Poser and use it to provoke my creative juices, pulling virtual dolls all over the place to find the exact funky pose I want. In other words, I can create my own reference image, place elements and characters within a frame, then mess about a bit, see what would work better, try a few different expressions and tweak body part angles. I can produce a mock of what I have in mind before any sketching takes place!



Unfortunately, Poser 7 is a new toy, and I couldn't resist playing with its many features and spending WAY too much time fine tuning how a llama's tail might look if I used Poser's hair engine, animating walking, playing with lights, etc. This probably ate up some time, but worthwhile I reckon. One thing Poser allows is complete manipulation of the entire anatomy. Our Llamas in our posters have an altered physiology to human beings, but I could account for this by stretching necks and legs appropriately.



Their outfits are still sketched without strong references, but they're so much easier to do when the figure's form is spot on.





This week, I sat down and made a concerted effort to be productive. Monday to Wednesday was spent sketching in pencil, and last night I was determined to pen in the outlines.



So here's a little sneak peak of the next LAN poster as it currently stands (stage 2). Colouring begins tonight!